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The White House is signalling that they plan to run against Republican obstructionism. If they make this a big issue, it will be a death sentence in the midterm. This dumb strategy should be shut down before it brings down the party.
Only 26% of Americans even know the filibuster takes 60 votes to overcome. Only 32% realize the Senate health care bill did not get any Republican support. If they don’t know that a bill as big as health care reform was passed on a partisan basis, they will never know that about any other bill.
American’s don’t care about or pay attention to procedure or whip counts. They don’t know how Congress works, and the more they learn about how it works the more they hate the people in it. What they know is that the Democrats control everything and are doing nothing. Democrats will be blamed for failing to govern this time around–not Republicans. When Republicans controlled fewer seats in the Senate, they were able to get what they wanted done. No one remembers Republicans whining about how they only had a 55-seat majority.
Running on how the mean old 41 Republicans won’t let the most powerful man in the country do anything sounds childish, petty, and, frankly, like an extremely lame excuse. It makes Democrats look impotent. If you try to tell some person in middle America that Democrats couldn’t pass X because they have only 59 votes in the Senate, instead of 60, they will either laugh at you, call you a liar, or think you a corrupt crook making very pathetic excuses.
Endorsing this “we can’t do anything with just 59 votes” myth will send a clear signal to the American people that it really does not matter who the vote for because electing Democrats still leaves the Republican party in charge.
Whining about non-constitutional procedural rules is not “changing the way Washington works”–it is everything people hate about Washington.
Running on what you have done for the American people might get people to the polls. Running on what you plan to accomplish for the American people next year if they are kind enough to re-elect you might get people to the polls. Running a campaign simply whining about how a tiny minority of mean Republicans in the Senate can use arcane Senate procedures to prevent you from ever delivering on any campaign promise ever will not get people to the polls.
If you make an issue about Republicans’ abuse of the filibuster, you better also be out there demanding the filibuster is eliminated. Never complain about something unless you are talking about how to fix it. That is the difference between being a weak, wimpy, complainer and a tough leader who knows how to fight. No one wants to vote for wimpy complainers who spend all day whining about how the other team refuses to play nice.
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Typo! Typo! Add the “are.”
[modnote: thank you.]
I agree that Dems need to stop with the excuse that they have a 59 percent minority, but I don’t think it’s a mistake to point out Republican obstructionism.
Showing the Republicans are willing to sacrifice the good of the country for cheap political tricks is not a bad thing, IMO.
Explaining how much the same Republicans who couldn’t say “up or down vote” enough just a few short years ago are abusing the filibuster is not a bad thing either.
Truman had some success with a similar strategy.
that’s been my personal experience exactly.
and hope and pray that voters don’t find out you didn’t need to change the rules to get past the 60 vote bogus threshold. because if that info spreads, you will be hated both for being weak and lying about it.
…
and while i’m at it, i’ll probably be hating the pointy headed elitist liberals who only cared about senate procedural minutia while the country suffered because real solutions were needed.
Yes, but Truman ran against a Republican majority in both Houses of Congress. Will Deomcrats run in the Fall against a Democratic majority that’s larger than anything Bush ever had? Somehow I don’t think that’s going to work. Also, you said:
I agree that this is true, but what happens if the Republicans reply that the Dems could have made them physically filibuster and probably managed to get much more of what they said they were for through Congress?
And what happens if the Republicans reply that the Democrats could have used the nuclear option at any time to get rid of the filibuster entirely, but chose not to?
And what if they point out that the Dems could have used reconciliation back in the Summer to pass health care reform if they’d really wanted to?
In short, perhaps the Republicans aren’t the only Party “. . . willing to sacrifice the good of the country for cheap political tricks . . .”?
I don’t agree with your last comment! Obstruction should be pointed out and the abuse of the filibuster with it. There is no, “tough or wimpy issues” here. There is abuse!
it’s one thing to want to change senate rules, we can all debate the pros and cons of those issues. but it is profoundly depressing to read that axelrod said “jump” yesterday and in response today so many seem to be saying “how high? sir!”
Agree that it won’t work.
But, there is that core of D-Party faithful for whom politics is less about issues than it is about ranting about Republicans–and the people they believe Republicans represent.
So, the continuing existence of this core D-Party constituency, the product of 40 years of cultural war–as politically senile as I may think they are at this point– will likely convince Bam’s political operatives that it’s an effective campaign strategy for 2010, yet again.
That usually DOES secure the D-Party base, no? And we can already see that the attempt to get swing voters will be “spending cuts to big government.”
However, it looks to me that the state of both the job and stock markets going forward this year may put a few wrinkles in that terminally lame strategy.
I can’t imagine what they can pull out of their butts that won’t be glaringly hypocritical.
Americans may not know much about whip counts, filibusters, reconciliation or any of the other public/private mechanisms, structures, procedures, protocols, and regulations created by politicians and their advocates to justify their existence. But they do know what they see. And what they see is neoconservatives and neoliberals alike, along with their allies and advocates, playing politics with people’s lives.
They see the preference to save insurance companies over saving voters lives.
They see the preference to save banks and corporations over saving workers, homeowners and families.
They see the preference to expand the National Security State over saving Civil Liberties.
They see the preference of war over peace.
They see the preference given to lies over truth.
It is what they see, their witness, which will carry them to the polls or leave them at home, disenfranchised by liars and hypocrites.
It is what they see which will fuel their resentment, and their rage. Resentment and rage being all they are left with, hope for change brutally discarded by their leaders, their intellectuals, their “free” press.
Keep your powder dry.
“Endorsing this “we can’t do anything with just 59 votes” myth will send a clear signal to the American people that it really does not matter who the vote for because electing Democrats still leaves the Republican party in charge.”
The blame game is just another Corporatist trick to do have to nothing REAL. The Dems. have been playing a variation of this since 2006. Although, when BV$H wanted something for the most part they gave him whatever and had some lame excuse about not LO wanting to be seen as obstructionists no less! Now they have the power they’re true nature as mostly paid for Corp. shills is revealed.
Well said! Their rage is growing. Dashing people’s hopes is a dangerous game.
Many of us are tired of EXCUSES. If the Dems. think this is a winning hand good luck to them as the minority party in 2011.
The campaigns ads will be thrilling…. send John Kerry out to discuss the policy points with a power point presentation.
Just a comment. I submit that the evidence says its not a myth. Of course, that is not a defense, that is merely an observation. They truly do not have a clue as to how bad they look to the public. But, somehow, when this all comes down around them in November they’ll probably blame those horrible liberal bloggers for not showing solidarity. It was the liberals that killed ‘em, yet again.