( - promoted by Chris Bowers)
If you haven't yet done so, go read Digby's Bipartisan Zombies, a thoroughly enjoyable attack on the preachy musty meddling Broderites 'threatening' to back Michael Bloomberg's Presidential bid if the next President doesn't pledge to put in place a 'unity' government. As Chris Bowers and Matthew Yglesias among many others have pointed out, what this bipartisanship is really about is undermining the public's ability to participate in policy-making. One example illustrates this very clearly.
The first time the public showed opposition to the war was during the Congressional fight over the $87 Billion supplemental request in 2003. Bush very cleverly manipulated this into a negative for Kerry (I voted for it before I voted against it), but the actual request was remarkably unpopular and could have been used for electoral gain if Kerry had run a savvy progressive campaign. Here's what the public thought at the time:
"Earlier this year, Congress approved spending 79 billion dollars to help pay for the war in Iraq and the rebuilding effort there. George W. Bush has now called for spending 87 billion dollars more. Do you support or oppose this additional spending for the war and rebuilding in Iraq?"
| Support | Oppose | Unsure | | 10/26-29/03 | 34 | 64 | 2 | | 9/26-29/03 | 36 | 62 | 2 | | 9/10-13/03 | 38 | 61 | 1 |
So that's what the public thought. And yet it passed the Senate 87-12, and the House by 303-125.
Senate Democrats voted by 37-12, or 76%-24%, to pass this bill opposed by 60-65% of the public. House Democrats were better, with a 83-118 vote against the bill. Still, 41% of Democrats in the House voted for this bill, and 59% voted against it, which is still less than the percentage of the public at large that opposed this bill. And that's the Democratic Party. In fact, the overall margin in the House was 70-30 for the bill, which is actually less conservative than the vote among Democratic Senators themselves.
I chose the first supplemental to examine, but the nature of these bipartisan votes is basically the same. It goes like this. The public is against a policy idea, and the bipartisan elites push it through anyway, and then, because it's bipartisan, no party can be held accountable for their choices. If everyone's at fault no one can be blamed, right? I chose the first funding bill to go through rather than the initial vote for war. The initial vote for war was popular, though public opinion was always more complicated than just 'yay war', so that was not exactly the right case to examine. But the same dynamics were obviously in play with the war vote.
Clearly, we are dealing with an extremely conservative set of decision-makers in DC within both parties and a public that is completely cut out of the process. That is bipartisanship, by the numbers. The vote authorizing the war in Iraq was a bipartisan vote, and partisanship would have stopped it. Five years later, wiretapping authority has been expanded and legalized by a bipartisan majority; partisanship would have stopped it. The Military Commissions Act which destroyed habeas corpus and legalized torture passed by a bipartisan vote; partisanship would have stopped it. Every attempt to reign in the national security authoritarian state has been beaten back by a bipartisan majority; partisanship would have pushed to roll it back. In fact, if we could just get Democrats to consistently vote the way the public would like on issue after issue, this would be a progressive country. Partisanship in other words would mean a progressive country responsive to the public, and bipartisanship means an authoritarian country where the public is cut out.
Keep that in mind. |
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