Liberals News

The Perfect Pony Is Dead

1:29 am EST March 11th, 2010 | Politics | 71 Comments

You cannot get the perfect pony. It is a mythical creature that doesn’t exist. Sort of like the perfect health care reform.

What would be ideal would be some form of a single-payer system here in America. The problem is we don’t have a zero moment here, a time when we can just hit “pause” and make it so. Here’s Obama back in 2007:

“If you’re starting from scratch,” he says, “then a single-payer system”—a government-managed system like Canada’s, which disconnects health insurance from employment—“would probably make sense. But we’ve got all these legacy systems in place, and managing the transition, as well as adjusting the culture to a different system, would be difficult to pull off. So we may need a system that’s not so disruptive that people feel like suddenly what they’ve known for most of their lives is thrown by the wayside.”

I’d go a step further and point out that even when Democrats had 60 votes in the senate, they never had a progressive enough majority to make such a thing happen. Anything that progressive was off the table once you have people like Joe Lieberman, Harry Reid, Max Baucus, and Kent Conrad among others with powerful seats at the table. That doesn’t even take into account the vehement, hysterical opposition from even supposedly moderate Republicans let alone the conservative ones.

We are unlikely to see single-payer health care enacted in one fell swoop in America any time soon.

So the next best thing was the public option, and I’ll be the first to say the White House fumbled on it. They didn’t come out strongly in favor and they let congress do the detail work (always a recipe for a mistake). I would argue that this White House was trying to avoid the fate of the 1993 reform attempt in which the Clintons were regularly seen as being too involved in Capitol Hill work. As Steve Benen points out, now that the White House is more involved, congress is already bitching.

While the whip counts for public option via reconciliation keep increasing, I think it’s doubtful we’ll see it in a final bill from the House and Senate.

So what is to be done? I think the bill that exists now should be passed. Not because I think it’s a wonderful bill – it isn’t – but because three months into an election year it’s likely to be the best possible plan that is politically feasible. I think the bill has some clear upsides, and while not the perfect pony it at least gets us up and running like a seed investment.

I understand those with qualms about the reform package, but for any Democrat to be against it on those grounds seems to signify non-realism. There’s essentially nothing in Washington that comes out exactly how activists want it to, and while the best solution should be your eventual gold it doesn’t make sense to search for a perfect pony rather than get what you can get accomplished.

Topic: Health Care, Liberals

Jane Hamsher & FireDogLake Are Not “The Left”

8:40 pm EST March 8th, 2010 | Politics | 50 Comments

As Matt Yglesias points out here, that site is effectively a PUMA-style operation whose opinions are nothing like most of the people on the actual left.

Topic: Democrats, Health Care, Liberals

Howard Zinn Dead At 87

6:20 pm EST January 27th, 2010 | Uncategorized | 25 Comments

Link

Howard Zinn, the Boston University historian and political activist who was an early opponent of US involvement in Vietnam and a leading faculty critic of BU president John Silber, died of a heart attack today in Santa Monica, Calif, where he was traveling, his family said. He was 87.

Topic: Liberals

The Liberal Blogosphere Goes Fox News

3:06 am EST January 26th, 2010 | News | 79 Comments

Obama

One of the problems I’ve always feared is that should we elect a Democratic president in this country, he or she might face a domestic handicap among that most unlikely of sources: liberals. Sadly, I’m turning out to be right, and today’s collective pants-wetting on both liberal blogs and on Twitter has been a sight to behold.

Let’s go back to the beginning. Every viable candidate for the Democratic nomination came down on the center-left of the American political spectrum. Especially when it came down to Clinton and Obama. On the Republican side (at least perception wise) the candidates that were viable were seen by most to be on the center-right. Why? Because when it comes down to it the American people are not overwhelmingly of any consistent ideology. The same people who would riot in the streets if you touched Social Security or Medicare are the same people who think they should get a tax cut and that the government “spends too much” (just don’t cut the government money that *their* member of congress brings home, the problem is with the *other* 434 districts and 49 *other* states, naturally).

What happens in the Democratic party is that the center left candidate makes his positions on the issues pretty clear, and the progressive base of the party assumes that like the Republican candidate, he or she is secretly one of them and upon election day will bust out with some Howard Zinn on everyone’s ass. On the Republican side, they don’t win unless they cover up their zealotry with “compassionate conservative” pixie dust, they largely stay the hell away from clerics like Pat Robertson and Grover Norquist come election time.

As we saw with Bill Clinton’s presidency, the reaction to this not happening can get pretty loud pretty quickly.

Personally I’m not as liberal as a lot of the Democratic base, but I’m not nearly as conservative as others inevitably accuse me of being. I’m pretty liberal on social issues but a caveman on national defense and criminal justice. I think that’s pragmatic, but one man’s pragmatism is another’s Mao or another’s DLC. Whatever. Either way, I tend to think Democratic presidents don’t do enough of what the base wants – for example Clinton’s NAFTA mistake or Obama’s inexplicable foot dragging on Don’t Ask Don’t Tell repeal and fruitless concessions to the GOP and conservadems on the size and impact of the stimulus.

That said, the liberal attacks on Obama, just short of calling him The Black Hitler, don’t accomplish anything other than sending a signal to Democratic presidents that their base really does want to find the quickest most expeditious path to knife them in the back.

I’m not saying liberals should keep themselves quiet and rubber stamp the president – people who make this argument are simply making a down payment on the straw to run their farms. But what I am saying is that liberals to often treat Democratic presidents like Maury Povich just told them that he has in fact failed the lie detector test.

We saw that on Monday with the leaked story that the Obama administration planned some spending freezes. What we know about the proposal:

* It exists
* Defense spending is exempt
* If/when there’s a second stimulus or jobs bill it is exempt
* Health care reform would be exempt
* It is targeting redundancies, waste, excess, etc.
* The details of what will be targeted have not been released yet

That halfway story seemed to be all liberals needed in order to issue their own Fox News Alerts about the betrayal and then began the parade of frankly embarrassing hysteria.

I don’t personally like the framing of these issues in one that favors conservatives, that is a fight versus government spending. Not at all, and in an ideal situation a Democratic president should laugh at the idea, knowing that everyone with common sense understands the long term value of government investment in the American economy and social safety net.

We do not live in this ideal world. We live in a world where, as I noted above, the people across the spectrum hold contradictory ideas within their own minds about what constitutes rational public policy. If some are concerned with spending, it seems the least harmful way to do this is to have a bone thrown their way that will actually lower *some* spending without harming the President’s domestic agenda.

Is it less perfect than a pony? Sure. Would President Jed Bartlett do it? Probably not, but real life isn’t a pitch-perfect Aaron Sorkin script and a fade out after 60 minutes of plot.

How does one correct someone who is on your side but has bouts of straying like President Obama? Offer constructive criticism, rather than throwing his clothes on the lawn, for one. You’ve got a perfectly good right to bitch as well as moan about things, but the equivalent of crying “fire” in a crowded theater just makes for a crappy moviegoing experience.

Barack Obama is the center-left, charismatic politician he has been for most of his life in the public. There are numerous issues on which he should be much more progressive, not just for the overall fortunes of the progressive movement, but for the future strength of the country. But we won’t get there if every perceived misstep (especially one based on a less than clear story that is slowly being filled in) is greeted as if he kicked a puppy in the teeth. We shouldn’t help a media environment that already favors Democratic politicians wagging their finger at the base, nor should we allow Democratic pols to get away with conservative nonsense.

Measure pols like Obama on their words and hold them to high standards, but don’t profess anger at them for not holding up to a caricature you dreamily doodled in your Trapper Keeper.

Topic: Liberals, President Obama

Learning From The Failure Of Air America

3:23 pm EST January 25th, 2010 | Media | 5 Comments

This is key. KEY.

In interviews last week a half-dozen former Air America employees cited similar complaints, namely that a series of owners and managers lacked the necessary broadcasting business expertise. They spoke to what may be Air America’s other enduring legacy: that political media from either side of the aisle is more successful when run as a business rather than as a crusade.

I will always contend that Air America’s biggest mistake, content-wise, was hiring too many comedians and non-radio people while also not taking phone calls – the life blood of political “hot talk” radio. The biggest offender in this regard was Al Franken, who is a far better satirist and US senator than radio host.

Topic: Liberals

Firing Squad Strikes Again

6:53 pm EST January 18th, 2010 | Democrats | 36 Comments

I’ve privately noted in 2004 and 2008 that the biggest obstacle, once we elected a Democratic president, would be from the left. Sure, the opposition party is a pain in the butt and the teabag-infused Republican party is almost more virulent than the GOP of 2001-2, it is the left that tends to give Democratic presidents a truly substantive opposition. I’m not saying liberals should always give Democratic presidents a pass, but there were some who were chomping at the bit – before Obama was even sworn in – to declare his presidency a progressive failure. Some of us are probably more inclined to give Democratic presidents more leeway than they deserve, but throwing in the towel one year in is the height of lunacy.

Topic: Liberals, President Obama

Jane Hamsher Jumping The Shark

3:18 am EST December 24th, 2009 | Uncategorized | 30 Comments

fonz jumping shark

Teaming up with Grover Norquist? You have got to be kidding me.

I don’t care what overarching principle you’re interested in furthering, no progressive should be locking arms with that guy:

To Norquist, who loves being called a revolutionary, hardly an agency of government is not worth abolishing, from the Internal Revenue Service and the Food and Drug Administration to the Education Department and the National Endowment for the Arts. “My goal is to cut government in half in twenty-five years,” he says, “to get it down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub.”

Topic: Jane Hamsher, Liberals

The Left’s Sacred Cows

5:18 pm EST December 13th, 2009 | Uncategorized | 44 Comments

So, so far I’ve found that there’s a backlash on the left if you dare to say anything negative about certain people. So far I’ve seen it when I’ve talked about

Matt Taibbi
Amy Goodman

Any other liberal leaning journalists we put up on Mount Olympus without anyone telling me?

Topic: Liberals

NARAL’s Rear-Guard Action

6:50 pm EST December 3rd, 2009 | News | 3 Comments

So, like three weeks – an eternity – after the Stupak amendment passed, NARAL is running ads against it. Brilliant. This is part of the reason so much ground has been lost in the abortion debate. Organizations like NARAL are playing last decade’s media game.

Topic: Abortion, Liberals

Is The Dream Dead?

7:33 pm EST November 30th, 2009 | News | 53 Comments

white picket fence

I’ve been troubled for the last couple weeks at some things I’ve heard, particularly from my friends on the left. Is the American dream dead? In fact did it ever exist in the first place?

First some background on where I come from. I was raised by a single mother in what I characterize as “lower middle class”. I lived in the suburbs, we weren’t well-off by any measure and in school I sometimes qualified for the reduced lunch program. But looking back at my childhood experiences I didn’t miss out. I went to Disney World multiple times (I’m due a trip right now, heh), and always had my mother taking me here and there expanding my horizons intellectually (she busted her butt to do these things, and sacrificed more for herself than she’ll probably ever let me know). I say that to give you a foundation for where I’m coming from on this issue. My background is grounded in reality. My mother is religious, I’m not. I was taught to work hard, keep my nose to the grindstone, and to do what I can to reap the rewards. Sometimes I followed those guidelines, and often I didn’t (like dropping out of college). I wasn’t raised to believe that anything gets handed to you. I had life much easier than my mom did, and that was all her doing.

So, whither the American dream. In times like we live in now, it may seem like the dream is way out of touch. But some even seem to believe that in the so-called boom era, the dream was a mirage.

I think this is crazy.

For all the problems we’ve got, especially in America we have opportunities many others couldn’t even dream of. It’s far from perfect, but the standard of living for even someone considered “poor” is far ahead of so much of the world. There are clear obstacles to upward mobility that shouldn’t be there. Our system puts too many obstacles on middle class and poor people that the rich and ultra rich have no concept of. That said, you can still make it here.

We have a giant middle class in America, we have free schools from Kindergarten to 12th grade, and we have an entrepeneurial culture that can produce wealth and upward mobility.

I want to reiterate: I know it’s not all flowers and roses. There are obstacles all around – some of them structural, others cultural, and others class-based. But. Americans, with the right combination of work and focus, can get ahead. I personally know of people who haven’t had the built-in advantages of knowing our culture or language, who took the opportunity afforded to Americans and got ahead – with the current generation eons ahead of the previous. If people can get ahead in America without knowing English as a first language, it should be a path that can be followed by a native-born American.

Why doesn’t it happen for everyone? Success in America often comes from genetics, no doubt. Some people win the genetic lottery and inherit their wealth or the opportunity for success. It happens. It happens everywhere. We have a relatively large millionaire/billionaire class, while other countries have royalty. There’s also the element of luck. I don’t like to pretend that if someone doesn’t get ahead that it means that you’re not thinking positive enough or working hard enough. Some people just don’t get the breaks you need, and it isn’t their fault.

But that is not a reason to throw out the baby with the bathwater. We’ve got the opportunity here in America for people to rise up from nothing to something. In the last 20 years we’ve had two kids from broken homes rise up to the same presidency as the wealthiest kids with silver spoons in their mouths. In metaphorical garages across the country, kids with cheap computers have the potential to upend the apple cart of existing industries with hundreds of years under their belts.

HP Garage

We have to make it easier for people to succeed. We have to tear down the existing, calcified barriers that insist on keeping the uber-wealthy wealthy without giving others a shot.

But the dream isn’t dead. You can make it in America.

Topic: Economy, Liberals, USA