According to Pollster.com, among all American adults President Obama has a 52.2% approval rating. Further, among all American adults, only 22.8% self-identify as Republican. Finally, among self-identified Republicans, only 16.5% approve of President Obama's performance in office. Simple multiplication of these numbers shows that 3.8% of American adults both approve of President Obama's job performance, and self-identify as Republican. It also shows that President Obama's current coalition of supporters is only 7.2% Republican.
If one looks only at registered and likely voters, the Republican composition of President Obama's current coalition does not increase much. Even then, only 5.8% of the county are both self-identified Republicans and Obama job approvers, and President Obama's coalition is only 11.4% Republican.
By contrast, self-identified Democrats who approve of President Obama are 28.7% of all American adults, and 55.0% of President Obama's current coalition. Among registered and likely voters, Democratic self-identifiers soar to 65.2% of President Obama's coalition.
There are many implications of these numbers, but the primary one is that we are still a partisan, polarized nation, and not just in D.C. To this point, all attempts at bi-partisan, national coalitions have continued to prove futile. That really shouldn't be surprising, given that no presidential candidate or political party one has ever won more than 61.05% of the vote in a national election in about 200 years.
We can complain all we want about the broken promises of politicians, but at this point any voter who believes any politician when that politician says that s/he will bridge the divide between the parties--well, that voter is simply being foolish. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me eight zillion times, shame on me.
The bulk of your "A list" progessive bloggers are now between the ages of 30 and 50. Many blog readers also fall into this age range. Those of us in this demographic are too young to have personal memories of progressive political power. There was some of that in the 1960s according to what I've seen on the History Channel and in books but I've never felt it.
This age group is also too old for unfettered idealism. Our political memories include the dark Bush-Cheney years, the "pragmatic" Clinton years (and an impeachment) and, for some, the Reagan-Bush years and the less-than-successful Carter years. There may be some idealism still lurking inside but it's, well, fettered idealism.
And so, perhaps unsurprisingly, your thinking can become limited by what has been rather than what could be. I think that, in part, explains the persistence of voices, even in Democratic circles, underestimating the chances for real progressive change. Today Nate Silver is acknowledging his error on the chances of success for the public option (though he noted, presciently, that is wasn't a done deal yet). As usual, Nate is trying to be reality-based when making predictions. He has not been alone is expressing pessimism on the public option's chances.
I would suggest to Nate and other empiricists that the ground has shifted and if you want to be reality-based you need to appreciate the new terrain. I'll describe this inside and offer what I think are reality-based reasons for embracing optimism for a progressive future.
President Obama has repeatedly emphasized a bi-partisan approach to politics. Early on in Obama's presidency, the highly respected Pew poll declared that "Independents Take Center Stage in Obama Era," indicating that perhaps the country was following the President's lead in de-emphasizing partisanship. More recent polling trends on partisan self-identification suggests that this trend has continued. Over the last five months, Pollster.com shows self-identified Independents gaining significant ground at the expense of both Democrats and Republicans in their partisan self-identification chart:
However, before we declare a new non-partisan, Independent dominated era of politics, it would behoove us to look at the numbers more closely. This is because the polling data suggesting a sharp rise in Americans identifying as non-partisan is among all adults, not among the smaller percentage of Americans who actually vote. Among registered and likely voters, it turns out that the percentage of non-partisan self-identifiers is actually declining:
Over the past year, registered and likely voters in America have demonstrated little, if any, change in partisan self-identification. Democrats are still at 39%, just as they were on Election Day in 2008. Republicans have gained about 2%, moving from 31% to 33% of the electorate. Independents have actually dropped from 27% to 26%. It is also worth noting that third party voting in congressional elections hit a 20-year low in 2008.
The rise in Independents among less likely voters, and the corresponding lack of change among more likely voters, can perhaps be explained as an increasing alienation gap in America. Those people who were only loosely attached to civic institutions like major political parties have become even less attached, while with a greater degree of participation are doubling down. It is perhaps a symptom of increasing socioeconomic stratification in America, and with the seeming inability--or lack of desire--of elected officials to do anything about it.,br>
While their disgust might be understandable, the increasing non-partisan trend among non-voters is not going to change the political dynamic of this country at all. The more people who drop out, the more that powerful institutions will solidify their grasp on the system as a whole.
Even though the national media narrative is now portraying the public option as the focal point of the debate on health care reform, that debate hasn't held up health insurance reform by even a single day. Instead of the public option, it is the process focus on bipartisanship, and negotiating with bad-faith Republicans, that is the hold-up. Consider the following:
Five Congressional committees--three in the House and two in the Senate--have been given purview over health insurance reform legislation. Four of those committees have passed a health insurance reform bill. The only one to not pass a bill is the Senate Finance Committee.
All four bills to pass committee have a public option. The one committee expected not to report a public option is the one that hasn't passed a bill. As such, the public option is not the source of this delay.
Of the 65+ members of Congress who have threatened to vote against health care reform legislation without a public option, not a single one of them sits on the Senate Finance committee. The Progressive Block is not the source of this delay.
Not a single Republican voted for any of the four bills to pass a Congressional committee so far. The only committee where Republicans are being given equal negotiating power is the one that hasn't passed a bill. As such, it seems that Republicans are holding up the bill, not the public option or the Progressive Block.
Whatever attention the debate on the public option is drawing, the variable holding up health insurance reform is the degree of bipartisanship sought in the process by the Senate Finance Committee. It is a focus on bipartisan process is holding up health insurance reform, not the public option.
While logically fallacies are still a fresh topic in my mind, allow me to take issue with another one that has always annoyed me. Specifically, I am referring to the idea that Democrats, a partisan organization, are interchangeable with ideologically left-wing organizations:
"The President discussed how the current tone and culture in Washington made it more difficult than it has been in the past to work in a bipartisan fashion. In particular, he singled out Republican Senators who are trying to work in a bipartisan fashion even in the context of a vocal minority in their party who doubt that the President was born in the US. In this context about the less productive tone of the debate in Washington, he said he didn't like to see 'left wing groups attack fellow 'Democrats.'
Since President Obama isn't actually asking any of the left-wing organizations running ads against Democrats on health care to stop doing so, I find this irritating primarily on a logical level rather than on a political one.
First, if President Obama assigns such high value to non-partisanship, why does he wish that left-wing groups would stop attacking "fellow Democrats?" Attacking "fellow Democrats" would be a non-partisan act. As such, one would think that President Obama would praise it, rather than wish it would stop. Make he only values bi-partisanship, rather than non-partisanship.
Second, partisanship is not interchangeable with ideology. Just because a group is left-wing does not make them a Democrat, and just because someone is a Democrat does not make tem left-wing. Many of the Democrats being targeted by left-wing ads would agree. Check out the Blue Dogs explaining the etymology of their name:
The 52 conservative and moderate Democrats in the group hail from every region of the country, although the group acknowledges some southern ancestry which accounts for the group's nickname. Taken from the South's longtime description of a party loyalist as one who would vote for a yellow dog if it were on the ballot as a Democrat, the "Blue Dog" moniker was taken by members of The Coalition because their moderate-to-conservative-views had been "choked blue" by their party in the years leading up to the 1994 election.
It is hypocritical for Democrats who describe themselves as "conservative and moderate" and who attack the Democratic Party for choking them blue to say that they should be exempt from attacks by left-wing groups on the grounds that both they and the left-wing groups are all Democrats. If Democrats want to be exempt from attacks by left-wing groups, then at a minimum those Democrats should at least describe themselves as left-wing. Otherwise, a double-standard in simply being invoked.
Leaving the logical nitpicking aside for a moment, one thing I do like about this story is that President Obama is offering vocal support to a center-right position (getting left-wing groups to stop attacking conservatives and moderates), but then not doing anything to make that center-right position a reality. It is nice to see that he sometimes only offers symbolic support to center-right wing positions, too.
Following the August recess, Democrats appear ready to drop "bi-partisan" negotiations, and push health care through with a party-line vote:
With the health care bill languishing in the Senate and under fire in the House, Democratic leaders are quietly preparing for Plan B.
Under the scenario now being discussed, bi-partisan talks would be aborted and parliamentary maneuvers used to force the bill through with a party-line vote.
Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., still has time to try to work out a deal with his Republican counterpart Chuck Grassley, but fellow Democrats are growing restless.
"There's rising disgruntlement with how Baucus has handled this," a senior Democratic aide tells ABC News. "We have to look at other options."
Good. There were several problems with the Baucus "bi-partisan" plan:
Over-representative of Republicans. The mini-committee of six included an even number of Democrats and Republicans (three on each side), even though Democrats control 60% of the seats in both the House and the Senate.
Republicans weren't negotiating in good faith This is demonstrated by Enzi's demand that, other than the gang of six, all other negotiations in Congress and with the Obama administration must be dropped until they three Republicans in the gang agree to anything. Demanding total power over all negotiations is not actual negotiation. It is just a power grab.
For the reasons outlined above, the Baucus bi-partisan plan was flawed in both concept and in execution. Further, whatever function it might have served as a public display to attempt bi-partisanship has already been accomplished.
At this point, if Democrats don't circumvent Baucus and Republicans, we are doing ourselves, and the country, far more harm than good. Abstract process concepts like bipartisanship won't reduce the percentage of GDP spent on health care, and certainly won't cover any more uninsured Americans.
"On the Senate side, there is more outreach ... to Republicans than was the case during the early days of the stimulus," said Collins, who said she has heard frequently from the administration and Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., a key architect of the health care effort. "It's in everyone's interest to try to advance a bipartisan bill."
Actually, the goal of health care legislation is to reduce the cost of health care and increase access to health care. By contrast, the goal of bipartisanship is to get Democrats and Republicans to agree with each other. Those are different goals with no inherent connection.
Let's say, for example, that no changes whatsoever are made to the Senate HELP committee's health care bill before it is passed into law. Now, what will be the real-world impact of the health care bill in the following two scenarios?
It is passed into law with every Republican voting for it.
It is passed into law with no Republicans voting for it.
While I don't know what the exact impact will be in either scenario, I do know that the impact will be exactly the same in both scenarios. This is because legislation doesn't change based on the number of Republicans who vote for a bill. Rather, Republicans change legislation in order to be able to vote for it.
Bipartisanship has nothing to do with reducing the costs of health care or increasing access to health care. However, bipartisanship has a lot do with providing politicians political cover in the event that a piece of legislation fails to deliver on its ostensible purpose. Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi explained this pretty well last year during the bailout:
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is telling Democrats that she will not support President Bush's $700 billion bailout of the financial sector unless there is significant Republican support for the controversial plan.(...)
In the Senate, Republicans have also lined up to oppose their president's bill, which led Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) to worry that he may not have enough Republican votes to pass the package.
"We need Republican votes to help us," he said. "This is a Republican package and we need Republican votes."
The purpose of bipartisanship is so that, in the event that you pass legislation that is unpopular and / or does not end up working, then it is impossible to take all of the blame for it.
That is the purpose of bipartisanship in health care reform legislation. Not reducing costs or increasing access.
Pollster.com's methodology of putting all polls into a regression line was vindicated by the 2008 elections, so these findings cannot be dismissed. Both Democratic (by about 3%) and Republican (by about 4%) self-identification have increased over the past five weeks. Independents have declined by 7-8%. This means that we are going through a period in our national political discourse where people are taking sides, not moving toward an undifferentiated center.
This shift coincides with the tea-parties, the torture debate, Specter's party switch, and the abortion debate. All in all, you have to hand it to wingnuts: even when they are out of power, right-wingers are still driving the debate, and still good at making people take sides. Even the Specter switch led most to discuss the implications it held for the Republican Party, rather than for Democrats or progressives.
What Republicans appear to be doing right now is shoring up their base with these arguments. They are bringing their anti-government, anti-choice, harsh foreign policy voters back into the fold. It has allowed them to make up some ground on Democrats, though they still trail by a sizable 8%. It seems unlikely to me that this is a path back to competitiveness for Republicans in and of itself. Even with all of their best recruits, they are likely to lose more Senate seats in 2010. However, a more coherent base, combined with an economy that is still struggling in 2012, might be enough to make for a close election in 3.5 years time. (That is, it will be competetive, unless either Romney or Gingrich is the nominee. Those two will never become President).
AP-GfK: +8% "right direction" since February 17th
Daily Kos: +10% "right direction" since February 5th
Ipsos / McClatchy: +3% "right direction" since February 9th
CBS News: +16% "right direction" since February 4th
ABC / WaPo: +11% "right direction" since February 22nd
Diageo / Hotline: +7% "right direction" since March 2nd
Unsurprisingly, this increased sense that the country is already improving comes entirely from Democrats and Independents. According to the crosstabs of the three most recent Daily Kos "state of the nation" polls (including the one released today), 50.3% of Democrats, 46.3% of Independents, and 29.3% of Republicans believe the country is moving in the right direction. By contrast, for the first three polls conducted entirely after President Obama's January 20th inauguration (starting on January 26th and ending on February 12th), the partisan "right direction" crosstabs were 33.7% of Democrats, 34.7% of Republicans, and 34.0% of Independents. Here is the rate of change over that period of time:
Change in % indicating country is moving in the "right direction," 1/26-2/12 and 4/5-4/23 Democrats: +16.67%
Independents: +10.33%
Republicans: -4.67%
So, belief in whether the country is moving in the "right direction" is highly contingent on partisan affiliation. Democrats and Independents increasingly see the country as moving in the "right direction," while Republicans increasingly view the country as headed in the "wrong direction."
This shows, first, that opinion on the direction of the country is mainly an ideological belief based on perceived effectiveness of policies that have yet to have a substantial impact. Second, it also shows that the country probably is moving in the right direction. The last eight years have consistently shown us that whenever rank and file Democrats and rank and file Republicans have opposing views on the direction of the country, it is highly likely that Democrats are the ones on the right track. Right up until the end of his presidency, even after the economic collapse, a majority of Republicans still approved of President Bush's job performance. If these same Republicans are now turning against President Obama, then it is a pretty good bet our current President (and Congress, given their rising approval ratings) is doing something right.
As a lefty, talk of increased bipartisanship in Washington has often made me squeamish. My discomfort with bipartisanship stems from a long track record of supposedly "bipartisan" legislation passing with unanimous support from congressional Republicans and the support of roughly half of all congressional Democrats. Back in December, Matt and I pointed to twenty recent instances (see here and here) where right-wing legislation passed the Senate with this "bipartisan" pattern of support. In practice, the actual meaning of "bipartisanship" has been "a substantial portion of Democrats supporting Republican legislation." That should be enough to make any lefty squeamish at the mention of "bipartisanship."
Now, new information from The Hill further demonstrates the connection between "bipartisanship" and centrist or center-right ideological predisposition. The Hill asked all forty-one Republican Senators which Democratic Senators they found easiest to work with. Collectively, the 41 Republicans gave 91 total responses (some Republicans listed more than one Democrat). While progressives such as Ted Kennedy (mentioned by nine Republicans) and Tom Harkin (mentioned by five Republicans) finished high on the list, overall there was a fairly strong connection between how "bi-partisan" a Democratic Senator was considered to be, and how right-wing that Democratic Senator's lifetime voting record was according to Progressive Punch. I also collected data on Evan Bayh's "conservodem" group, which was both more "bipartisan" and overwhelmingly more right-wing than the rest of the Democratic Senate.
The Pew Internet and American Life project has just released their survey detailing online political engagement in the 2008 campaign. In the category of "everyone already knew that," were findings that more people are using the Internet than ever, the Internet is now at least equal to newspapers as a source of campaign news, political activism is increasing online, Obama votes are more politically active online than McCain voters, and young people use the Internet more than old people. Well, duh.
However, as is typical for Pew, there were also some very interesting findings. In particular, people are now seeking out partisan websites in much greater numbers than ever before. In fact, partisan news sources are much more sought out online than non-partisan websites (emphasis mine):
Fully a third of online political users (33%) now say that when they get online political information most of the sites they visit share their point of view - up from 26% who said that in 2004. This rise in partisan information-seeking matches a decline in the number of online political users who say most of the sites they visit do not have a particular point of view. In 2004, 32% of online political users said most of the sites they visited had no particular point of view and that percentage dropped to 25% in 2008. There was no difference between 2004 and 2008 in the number of online political users who said most of the sites they visit challenge their point of view.
Both Democrats and Republicans are now more likely to gravitate towards online sites with an explicitly partisan slant than they were in 2004. Fully 44% of Democratic online political users (up from 34% in 2004) and 35% of Republican online political users (up from 26% in 2006) now say that they mostly visit sites that share their political point of view. However, the biggest change between elections occurred among the young. In 2004, 22% of online political users ages 18-24 said most of the sites they visit shared their views. That doubled to 43% of online political users in that age range in 2008.
Those who are most information hungry are the most likely to browse sites that match their views.
It is not surprising that partisanship is increasing even as President Obama is praised for his talk of trying to get past partisanship. Whether the country's public thirst for bipartisanship is an act of projection in pretending that partisanship is something foisted upon it from the outside even though it is rising up internally, or whether it is a backlash response from the dwindling ranks of non-partisan in response to an inevitable rising tide of partisans remains unclear. The truth is that it is probably a mix of both, combined with a nice dash of politicians offering up fake solutions (like bipartisanship) to real problems.
The truth is, however, that no one, even President Obama, can stem or slow a cultural shift of this magnitude. For 7% of Internet users to stop reading non-partisan websites in just four years is a broad social trend bigger than any one person. The country is getting more partisan, whether we like it or not. The best idea is probably to start figuring out how best to manage an increasingly partisan country, rather than pretending it can be wished away by Republicans and Democrats eating lunch together.
Much of the world seems to love Barack Obama. At home his popularity is mostly among Democrats and Democratic-leaning Independents. I presented some historical data on President's job approval ratings last week which showed that Dwight Eisenhower, John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson started their terms with public support well over 70 percent. You can't get numbers that high without significant support from opposition-party voters.
Even when Richard Nixon was elected in a closely fought 1968 race he enjoyed early public support of 65 percent thanks in part to 55 percent support among Democrats. The support gap between Democrats and Republicans was 29 points according to this report by Pew. But look at the trend in the partisan gap (all polls from early spring of first term):
Nixon: 29 point gap
Carter: 25
Reagan: 36
Bush 1: 38
Clinton: 45
Bush 2: 51
Obama: 61
That's a pretty clear partisan trend. Some more details on Obama's huge gap. He is supported by 88 percent of Democrats which is the highest support by voters of the President's own party among the ones listed here. His support among Republicans is only 27 percent which is almost the lowest level of support from opposition voters among those listed here. The only one who did worse? Bill Clinton, with 26 percent support among Republicans in 1993.
The country is becoming more partisan. Mass media are becoming more partisan (and more fractured). What does it all mean?
It turns out that the Blue Dogs will increase their membership beyond the 51 they had previously announced. Now, they are targeting 56 members, although they aren't telling you who those members are:
Leaders of the centrist Democratic coalition have expanded their membership to 56 members, balancing the group's desire for influence in the caucus against the need to remain exclusive.
Under the 20 percent cap that was in place during the 110th Congress, they would have allowed only 51 members. That number was reached last week, causing many, including the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC), to speculate that they'd reached their limit.
But leaders say that at least four new members are under active consideration, and there's actually room for five.(...)
They wouldn't give any clue about who those members are.
As an activist that has been a part of Act Blue pages that have helped raise over two million dollars for Congressional Democrats (see here, here and here), I find both the growth of the Blue Dogs, and the lack of transparency about the potential membership, intensely frustrating. I am so friggin' sick of raising money for Democrats who, upon their arrival in Congress, do whatever they can to openly distance themselves from both me and the causes I believe in. Why do I keep giving money to people who will respond by publicly slapping me in the face?
There is a fundamental, and intentional, lack of ideological transparency in the Democratic Party. When candidates are running for federal office, we rarely know what ideological caucus they will eventually participate in. This is intentional, because Democratic candidates want to tap into the large small door networks have appeared over the last decade, and the grassroots activists who make those networks valuable tend to be much more left-wing than the pro-corporate Blue Dogs and New Democratic caucuses that these candidates join en masse. Almost all of the new Democrats elected to Congress last year have apparently joined either the New Democrats (15 freshman members) or the Blue Dogs (seven or eight new members). Once in a while you get an Alan Grayson, they appear to be in a distinct minority.
It is high time that Democratic House candidates announce, during the primary season, which ideological caucus, if any, they intend to join should they end up in Congress. I am done raising money for Blue Dogs, although I will at least consider New Democrats (for example, the largely progressive Populist caucus was founded by a New Dem.) In 2010, unless a candidate directly tells me that they will not apply for Blue Dog membership once s/he is in Congress, then I am not raising money for that candidate, period.
This gets to a fundamental lack of transparency in the two-party system itself. Particularly on the Democratic side, you really don't know what you are getting in ideological terms when you work to help elect a Democrat to Congress these days. What baffles me is that many actually want to increase this lack of transparency even further, as they find partisan differences between Democrats and Republicans to be abhorrent. Calls for more bi-partisanship strike me as nothing more than calls for even less transparency in the ideological bent of congressional candidates. While that might attract some people, I am tired of the two-faced obfuscation, where right-wing Democrats raise huge amounts of money from largely left-wing small donors, and then, once in Congress, regularly work to thwart progressive governance.
Three days ago, Rasmussen released their latest partisan identification numbers. As I discussed at the time, the unmistakable, four-year trend in Rasmussen's numbers showed the number of Democrats rising, the number of non-partisans remaining stable, and the number of Republicans dropping. In all likelihood, this is not due to Republicans becoming Democrats, but due to weak Republicans becoming non-partisan identifiers, and Democratic-leaning Independents starting to self-identify as actual Democrats.
Yesterday, Harris released their partisan ID numbers for 2008. Although it is a smaller poll than Rasmussen (15,210 compared to over 200,000), the sample size is still large enough that the margin of error is minimal (plus or minus 0.8, compared to plus or minus 0.2 in Rasmussen). The four year trend in Harris is not compatible with the four year-trend in Rasmussen, as Harris shows the number of non-partisans rising, the number of Democrats remaining static, and the number of Republicans dropping (everyone agrees that the number of Republicans is declining). Here are the Harris numbers, with 2005 results in parenthesis:
"Regardless of how you may vote, what do you usually consider yourself - a Republican, a Democrat, an Independent, or some other party?"
Democrat: 36 (36)
Independent: 31 (22)
Republican: 23 (30)
Other: 10 (12)
Rasmussen released its latest monthly report on the partisan makeup of the electorate today. The numbers for February show Republicans somewhat narrowing the gap on Democrats to 7.2%. To put this number in perspective, it is still a larger lead for Democrats than any they held before February of 2008--even immediately after the 2006 elections. Beyond the sporadic monthly trends, the meaningful numbers from the Rasmussen data archive are not the month to month changes, but the long-term, yearly numbers. In the midst of endless pundit and politician drivel about the national yearning for bi-partisanship, these numbers conclusively show that the country is not becoming less partisan. It is, instead, becoming more Democratic and less Republican.
With roughly 200,000 interviews a year, and with interviews conducted every single non-holiday, Rasmussen's yearly party identification totals are the best resource for partisan trends over the past five years. Here are there yearly totals:
Elitist (as in, only accountable to large donors), false (as in, doesn't describe any actual problems we face), non-transparent (as in not offering clear choices to the electorate), and right-wing (as in consistently thwarting progressive governance) are only some of the ways we have described "bi-partisanship" here at Open Left. Now, we can add "strategy shelved by the Obama administration" to that list:
White House aides say they have concluded that Obama too frequently lost control of the debate and his own image during the stimulus battle. By this reckoning, the story became too much about failed efforts at bipartisanship and Washington deal-making, and not enough about the president's public salesmanship.
For Obama's next act, the program is the same as he has been planning for months: New Deal-style plans to rescue struggling homeowners and rewrite regulations on the financial markets, plus a budget proposal that lays the groundwork for sweeping health care reform.
But the strategy to promote these items is getting an emergency overhaul. Obama plans to travel more and campaign more in an effort to pressure lawmakers with public support, rather than worrying about whether he can win over Republican votes in Congress.
Awesome. I am excited about this shift in focus, and eager to engage in the legislative battles that will take place over the coming months. What we need now is a populist, progressive President who offers a clear choice to Americans, and allows his activist supporters to place pressure on fence-sitters. President Obama seems prepared to move in that direction.
There is a long-running debate in the progressive blogosphere about whether, in terms of peeling away Republican votes to pass legislation and / or putting Democrats in a stronger political position ofr future elections, it is better to adopt a strong, clearly partisan approach or a conciliatory, friendly, bi-partisan approach. Forgive me if I don't link to any specific articles making the case for one side or the other of this argument. Now that we can actually govern, I have grown less interested in such discussions, especially since they can turn into intra-blogosphere personality fights that distract from the broader partisan vs. bi-partisan argument at hand. For now, I think it is safe to say that such an argument exists.
When it comes to passing legislation like the stimulus, are congressional Democrats and President Obama better off with an aggressive, partisan, intimidating approach such as, say, making speeches like the one President Obama gave last Thursday to the Democratic House caucus coupled with massive phone call campaigns generated by President Obama's campaign email list? Or are congressional Democrats and President Obama better off with a coy, conciliatory, "trap them" approach of, say, constantly making public overtures to Republicans on both the symbolic (drinks, dinners parties) and meaningful (administration appointments, pre-emptive legislative concessions) levels? Which approach will do better at peeling off congressional Republican votes or, if that is impossible, putting Democrats in a stronger position for the 2010 and 2012 elections?
I'm going to suggest that, at least in terms of winning Republican votes on key pieces of legislation is concerned, neither approach is correct. This is because, fundamentally, there is no amount of intimidating or schmoozing Democrats can do to Republicans that matches the political leverage conservative institutions have over Republican members of Congress. From corporate PACs, to conservative media, to the Club for Growth, to the Republican congressional leadership, to their culture of primary challenges--there is simply no way that Democrats and progressives can ever--no matter if we take a partisan or bi-partisan apporach--put as much pressure on Republican members of Congress as conservative institutions currently exert.
Sorry for my absence today--I was on jury duty (not selected though)
The stimulus bill has suffered a major setback. Lacking the 60 votes to pass the bill, Senate Democrats have moved to a conference off-site, delayed the vote, and seem to have ceded negotiations on the plan to a gang of twenty or so center-right Senators who aim to cut $200 billion or so of spending from the plan. (The current size is $825-890 billion, spending on if you are talking about the House or Senate versions. Both have about $550 billion in spending).
The stimulus bill just passed the House, 244-188. Only eleven Democrats voted against it. Notably, zero Republicans voted in favor of it.
Cool. While we will need two Republican votes to pass the stimulus through the Senate, I'm glad no Republicans supported it in the House. Not only does it offer a clear contrast between the parties, not only does it give good reason to re-write the legislation without any concessions to Republicans when the bill is reworked in conference, but it puts a quick end to the "bi-partisan" charade of the last few days.
As demonstrated on so many occasions, most recently by the 95% drop in Republican support for TARP, almost all Republicans in Congress are bad faith actors. You can't compromise or appeal to people whose motives are simply to oppose you, rather than to actually stand for any principles or values (except, I guess, the principle of opposing you). The sooner congressional Republicans make their purely contrarian motives clear, as they have done in this case, the sooner we can move on to just passing good legislation. Let's drop futile attempts to appease those who caused our problems in the first place, and stay focused on cleaning up the mess they left.
A new fad is sweeping the national political media: attacking President Obama and Democrats for not securing enough Republican support for their proposals. I agree with Josh Marshall that it is a pretty stupid fad, but I still think Democrats and President Obama brought it on themselves by so consistently harping on their desire to be bipartisan. Like many left-leaning pundits, I would greatly prefer the Democratic trifecta just pass all of their desired legislation with the minimum amount of Republican support required, and allow the consequences of that legislation to cover all political concerns for now. After all, whether or not Republicans support the legislation, we are going to be on the electoral hook for the real-world impact of that legislation. As such, we should make the legislation as strong as possible, rather than worrying about how many Republicans support it.
The good news is that this will happen no matter what President Obama and Democratic congressional leaders say or do. The simple fact is that Republicans are going to overwhelmingly oppose whatever legislation the Democratic trifecta supports, and then constantly remind everyone how they had no hand in crafting said legislation. Despite this, President Obama and the Democratic trifecta are going to pass pretty much whatever they want anyway. So, over the next two years, no matter what we say about bipartisanship, we will be constantly passing legislation without any Republican support, and the public will repeatedly be reminded that the legislation was overwhelmingly opposed by Republicans.
The latest House vote on the Wall Street bailout, otherwise none as TARP, makes it clear that Republicans will be opposing the Democratic trifecta for the sake of opposing the Democratic trifecta. Back in October, when the bailout bill first passed, 91 Republicans voted in favor of it. Last week, in a purely contrarian move, only 4 Republicans voted in favor of it. (Click here for more information on bailout voting.) So, Republican support for the bailout dropped by 95%, even though the legislation itself didn't change. Truly, Republicans are a party of principles! If that isn't a sign that Republicans are just going to oppose everything Obama does simply for the sake of opposing Obama, nothing ever will be.
So, Republicans are actually going to be useful in this Congress, by solving the bipartisan problem we face all on their own. They are not going to succeed in stopping Democratic legislation, they are not going to support it, and they are not going to be quiet in their opposition. Problem solved. Now, we just have to make sure that the legislation we pass is actually going to dig us out of the myriad crises we face. We will continue to govern as long as we are making the lives of the majority of Americans better.
