| One big-picture example of how this works is that it allows Team Obama to point to Jared Bernstein's deplorable performance on Rachel Maddow and argue that he was right, and DFH Maddow didn't know what she was talking about. Score another one for Team Obama standing up to the left. Of course it isn't true, because all those qualifications don't alter the fundamental fact that Obama is making the same mistake as FDR did in 1937, or that the Japanese did repeatedly in the "lost decade" of the 1990s. But it creates a plausible narrative given the abysmal standards of Versailles stenography.
One can see other examples right here in the comment threads at Open Left, as it facilitates the hard core army of Obamabots to make all manner of specious arguments in the blogosphere, as well as activating the "I too, could be a master political consultant" sleeper reflex in folks who otherwise might be susceptible to critical reason.
A few examples from the discussions that occurred late Monday should suffice. First off, in my Monday night diary, "It's Official: Obama is an idiot", dwbh could write:
do you know
any specific discretionary spending that Obama is planning on cutting?
as if the lack of specifics somehow meant something significant that mitigated the central harm of (a) embracing the GOP's pre-1932 message, and (b) delegitimizing the essential policy option of increasing spending counter-cyclically to deal with continued massive underemployment and the related underperformance of the economy as a whole.
In a related manner, along wrote:
I agree that there's very
little in the discretionary budget. but he promised to do it over and over again. and I think he believes in it. so we shouldn't be surprised that he's proposing it. politically, since it seems (to me at least) that it was a given, there's no point in waiting till after the midterms. lots of good house dems won't like it--and maybe won't abide it--but it could give lots of other moderate and conservadems cover. I don't like that, but maybe it will get them to stick with him on energy, education, etc. maybe even health care.
To which I replied:
It Won't Give ANYONE Cover
That's stupid Versailles Dem consultant talk.
What it does is amplify the GOP's message 100-fold and cut the legs out of down-ticket Dems that want to run as populist progressives based on good old-fashioned Democratic values.
It's literally killing the Democratic Party.
And wobbly very perceptively followed up:
The thing about consultant class thinking
is it tricks people into thinking they can be the guy giving the advice and, therefore, are just as good as the people who themselves actually have power.
It's kind of similar to why some (and a highly exaggerated number at that) working class people vote Republican. But very much unlike the wishful thinking that motivates so-called "Reagan Democrats," it's actually a fact that a majority of people who can speak in complete sentences would make perfectly capable professional political consultants.
What's so false and insidious about it is it deceives people into believing that what builds broad based political coalitions that win elections over the long term is the right consultant who can come up with a "magic bullet" in the form of a brilliant technocratic strategy driven by the "right message."
And nothing makes a ridiculous political claim more compelling than acting it out as your very own fantasy. Who cares if it's not true? It makes you feel powerful, just like a Bushbot member of the 101st Keyboard Brigade.
Moreover, in response to David's diary that preceded mine, dwbh wrote another minimizing comment:
it's not that bad
Entitlements such as health care, medicare/medicaid, etc. will be unaffected. Same for stimulus spending and the upcoming jobs bill. This goes back to his 2008 campaign statements about using targeting cuts in spending (the whole "use a scalpel not a hatchet" argument). However, it's been framed as a "spending freeze" to warm independents and soft Republicans to the idea.
This perfectly reflects the battery of irrelevant messages that Team Obama wants to deploy to distract from what it's doing. If dwbh's not getting paid for this, it's criminal. Of course, the reality is that this adoption of neo-Hooverite messaging is just preparing the way for the really big show--the GOP wet-dream of dismantling the welfare state, as partially previewed in the NYT coverage:
It is the growth in the so-called entitlement programs - Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security - that is the major factor behind projections of unsustainably high deficits, because of rapidly rising health costs and an aging population.
But one administration official said that limiting the much smaller discretionary domestic budget would have symbolic value. That spending includes lawmakers' earmarks for parochial projects, and only when the public believes such perceived waste is being wrung out will they be willing to consider reductions in popular entitlement programs, the official said.
"By helping to create a new atmosphere of fiscal discipline, it can actually also feed into debates over other components of the budget," the official said, briefing reporters on the condition of anonymity.
Of course, it was Obama himself who rightly chided McCain for his obsessive focus on the minutia of earmark reforms during the 2008 campaign, so the contradictions just keep coming.
But in the game Obama is playing, small contradictions are a feature, not a bug. They're like patter in a game of three-card monte. And the dust-ups they generate are like the byplay of the hustler's confederates pretending to play the game. They distract attention from the real action--the outright betrayal of the 20th Century Democratic Party's most fundamental achievement, the creation of the first mass middle class in the history of the world. Welcome to Dickensian England, folks, 21st Century American style, brought to you by the Party of Obama. |
