Why the Democrats are Losing (Guest Voice)
Feb 18th, 2010 | 32 responses
WASHINGTON — If you want to be honest, face these facts: At this moment, President Obama is losing, Democrats are losing, and liberals are losing.
Who’s winning? Republicans, conservatives, the practitioners of obstruction, and the Tea Party.
The two immediate causes for this state of affairs are a single election result in Massachusetts, and the way the United States Senate operates. What’s not responsible is the supposed failure of Obama and the Democrats to govern as “moderates.”
Pause to consider where we would be if a Democrat had won January’s Massachusetts Senate race. In all likelihood, health reform would be law, Democrats could have moved on to economic matters, and Obama would be seen as shrewd and successful.
But that’s not what happened, and Republican Scott Brown’s victory revealed real weaknesses on the progressive side: an Obama political apparatus asleep at the switch, huge Republican enthusiasm unmatched by Democratic determination, and a focused conservative campaign to discredit Obama’s ideas, notably his economic stimulus plan and the health care bill.
The Obama administration argues that both the stimulus and the health bill are better than people think. That’s entirely true, and this is actually an indictment — it means that on the two big issues of the moment, Republicans and conservatives are winning an argument they should be losing.
The dreadful Senate is a major culprit here, and that’s why Sen. Evan Bayh’s complaints in explaining his retirement rang partly true, but also partly false. What’s true is that the Senate isn’t working. What’s false is that there is no room for moderation. The fact is that the legislative outcomes on both the stimulus and health care were driven by moderates.
Economists agree that the stimulus worked, but Senate moderates made it less effective by shrinking its size and including irrelevancies — notably $70 billion to fix the alternative minimum tax — that did little to create jobs. The moderates got their way because the stimulus needed 60 votes, an absurd standard now that we have an ideologically polarized, parliamentary-style party system. We can waste time mourning that development, or we can recognize it and act accordingly.
On health care, months of delay in a futile quest for Republican support got the Democrats the worst of all worlds. The media gave them no credit for reaching out to the other side but did blame them for an ugly, gridlocked process.
The demands of moderate Democrats for concessions — remember the politically lethal Nebraska payoff for Sen. Ben Nelson? — made the process look even seamier. The bill’s conservative opponents shrewdly focused on such side issues and on made-up issues like the “death panels.”
Nobody wants to admit that on health care, the moderates won all the big fights. Single-payer was out at the start. The public option died. A Medicare buy-in died. The number of Americans who would be covered shrank. The insurance companies held on to their antitrust exemption. If a bill eventually becomes law — as it must if the Democrats are not to look like a feckless, useless lot — the final proposal will be much closer to the moderate Senate version than to the more progressive bill passed by the House.
And if the Republicans refuse to cooperate, this will not mean that the bill isn’t moderate. It will mean only that Republicans refuse to vote for a moderate bill.
But if all the media talk about the “failure of moderation” is nonsense, this doesn’t get liberals or Obama off the hook.
While liberals were arguing about public plans and this or that, and while Obama was deep into inside deal-making, the conservatives relentlessly made a straightforward public case based on a syllogism: The economy is a mess. Obama and the Democrats are for big government. Big government is responsible for the mess. Therefore the mess is the fault of Obama and the Big Government Democrats.
Simplistic and misleading? Absolutely. But if liberals and Obama are so smart, how did they — or, if you prefer, “we” — allow conservatives to make this argument so effectively? Why do the mainstream media give it so much credence?
Of course, I think the conservatives’ argument is wrong. But at this point, I have to admire their daring and discipline. Moderate and progressive Democrats alike have eight months between now and this fall’s elections to change the terms of the debate and prove they can govern. Otherwise, they’ll be washed out by a tidal wave.
This copyrighted column is licensed to run in full on TMV. (c) 2010, Washington Post Writers Group
32 Responses to “Why the Democrats are Losing (Guest Voice)”
With all due respect, revisionist history doesn't work that well when the history was last year. Health care died when the Democrats crafted the initial bill behind closed doors and excluded both Republicans (who couldn't stop it anyway) and blue dog Democrats. Yes, there was plenty of wrangling and many bills after that, but the tone was set, the lines were drawn, and they had alienated two minorities that together make up a majority. I'm sure they had their reasons, but they were wrong and shortsighted. You can pretty much trace their disability back to that one supreme act of snobbery.
To his credit, Obama has attempted to get past the division, but that's useless without attempts by progressive Democrats in congress to reconcile with either group (an apology is usually a good start). Do you think that maybe, just maybe, the blue dogs feel caught in the vice right now. They're yelled at by conservatives and progressives with neither group likely to give them a say in future legislation.
I think there is a second major factor in HRC failure, and one that had a greater effect on the Democrats as a whole, and Obama individually.
When the final deal making, give-aways, and semi-legal bribery to pass HRC through the Senate become too obvious to ignore, it caused many people to see the HRC as 'politics as usual' rather than a transcendental event like civil rights, just another special interest gift from the US Senate.
That hurt Obama, as the change he promised and many believed he could deliver, was clearly not there.
Health care died when the Democrats crafted the initial bill behind closed doors and excluded both Republicans (who couldn't stop it anyway) and blue dog Democrats.
…and then attempted to treat the wrong leg. Runaway costs have long been *the* problem in healthcare, the uninsured merely a symptom. The progressives ignored that message, steered reform away from any serious cost control, and were caught out by the CBO and now an angry public.
Victimized by wily Republicans? Nonsense. The Democrats have been undone by their own hubris and the laws of economic gravity.
Good points, all. But I do want to add one small note to this:
I don't believe that any party could address costs, in the current system. Tort reform, as it's been proposed, is largely a non-issue. Health insurance is a player, but only partly at risk, while the AMA, Pharma, and medical manufacturers have largely been coddled and protected. I believe that the lobbyists can prevent anything that might help reign in the biggest cost drivers.
I don't agree with this. Baucus's bill is the largest part of the current healthcare effort, and THAT was crafted by a committee made up of a number of Republicans (who promptly voted against their own efforts). Much of the Republican ideas for healthcare reform are actually in the current bill. It was only after Republicans promptly proved, beyond a shadow of any doubt, that they had NO intention of negotiating in good faith that they were shut out of the process. Frankly, if the Democrats had told the Republicans to F themselves months ago and JUST negotiated with the blue dogs, healthcare would be law right now.
I would never admit it aloud, but very good points made. I would also like to add that Pres. Obama isn't completely failing; but is choosing not to pander to the Democrats nor the Republicans–and let's not forget that Clinton made similar moves and was also slammed for being too 'centrist' early on. But while I'm comparing the two, Clinton did what Obama still hasn't done. He actually stepped up into a position of power and the country was not in such a crappy state when he stepped into office–thus Clinton's agenda WORKED at the time, whereas Obama is scrambling to fix the unfix-able. I would also like to add that Clinton did much better towards the end of his first term and into second term.
Republicans are 'winning' that 'big government is bad' and 'don't spend too much' argument because it appears as if the current initiatives in place are very big government and all carry a hefty pricetag–they aren't making things worse necessarily; but if Americans don't see some sort of b.s. immediate change, then it's always the President's fault. That's just how it is.
Obama, like many Democrats is increasingly lacking any backbone and it is my hope that he grows a pair of balls, or we just might have a Palin in office in 2012. Yes, I said it. And yes, there's enough idiots that would vote her in–she pretty much kisses her base's ass.
I haven't given up hope and am still an 'Obama fan'; but I'm growing increasingly worried about the future.
Republicans are winning because the Democrats misread their mandate and moderate Democrats have resisted the efforts to move the agenda to a very progressive one. Its that simple.
“Health care died when the Democrats crafted the initial bill behind closed doors and excluded both Republicans (who couldn't stop it anyway) and blue dog Democrats”
Okay, lie. Republicans were on every committee. And they sucked and were generally useless.
“Yes, there was plenty of wrangling and many bills after that, but the tone was set, the lines were drawn, and they had alienated two minorities that together make up a majority.”
You want to wave around numbers? These two darling little victim coalitions of yours happily discarded bill features a majority of Americans sought.
“To his credit, Obama has attempted to get past the division, but that's useless without attempts by progressive Democrats in congress to reconcile with either group (an apology is usually a good start).
You'd love that, wouldn't you? Progressives gave up everything and received nothing.
“Do you think that maybe, just maybe, the blue dogs feel caught in the vice right now. They're yelled at by conservatives and progressives with neither group likely to give them a say in future legislation.”
AW DIDDUMS!
” Runaway costs have long been *the* problem in healthcare, the uninsured merely a symptom. “
Costs for whom? Those with insurance? Or are you talking about the immense overhead costs doctors are stuck with?
Either way, the current bill was deficit neutral. I find most of the criticism of the bill to be lazy, complacent and post hoc.
Healthcare Reform has destined to fail when David Axelrod and the Obama Administration made blaming the Republicans for its eventual failure as the number one goal. The Democrats know that any healthcare reform will create massive problems (single payer leads to laying off a million insurance workers, the cost estimate are probably not within an order of magnitude of being correct, and the government will grow with every program.
The Republicans were smart enough not to play the patsy and the Democrats do not want to be the patsy.
It also does not help that Democratic leadership like Pelosi are from ultra-safe districts and will not be voted outed of office no matter how bad the reform becomes.
Until the Obama Administration and David Axelrod decides that real leadership is more important than short term political gain, virtually ever policy initiative of the Obama Administration will not achieve anything.
The Republicans were irrelevant from the beginning. Because of the Democrat commanding majority, this was an internal fight that conservative Democrats, like Bayh with his wife on the board of a healthcare insurance company, wanted to manipulate into corporate income. Essentially Bayh and a few like him, were holding up the passage of legislation for personal gain.
People are going to have to come to the conclusion, and, they will eventually, that we do not need the “healthcare industry so much as a business”, but we need healthcare. We do not need the healthcare insurance industry at all, but we need healthcare.
The rest of the world has done this socialized medicine adaptation and their healthcare is medically better than ours because of it. We have many international examples to chose from for our people. Unfortunately these choices are just not as profitable as our current very profitable healthcare calamity. We have traded high profitability, for availability, which is simply not necessary.
Leaving healthcare alone is not an option since the affordability of healthcare is declining rapidly. Fewer and fewer people will be able to afford these rapidly rising insurance premiums. Without insurance, more and more people will lose everything they own to the hospital lawyers. The healthcare “industry” is essentially out pricing itself to the point that it will simply “bust” one day. Such a breakdown will most probably lead to government emergency measures like nationalization and complete reorganization.
So, IMO, government either does it now or does it later, but socialized medicine will occur. The longer we wait, the greater the disaster.
So you are willing to lay off a million or more in the health care insurnace industry, you are willing to destroy health care as a career for the middle class, and you are willing to turn health care into the same economic system as primary and secondary education, so that the parasite class of the U.S. can have free health care. Of course, the producer class will just love either losing their jobs, having their pay lowered, or having their taxes go sky high so that the core groups of the Democratic Party (blacks, Hispanics, public service workers, academics) can have free health care.
Do you really want to live in a country where being a budget analysist for the Center for Medicare/Medicaid Services is a better job than being a nurse, pharmacist, physical therapist, or physicians assistant? If you want to see what the U.S. will look like the, look at the current Detroit, Baltimore, Newark.
You have no idea what you are talking about.
It is estimated that one million people work in the health care industry. If you eliminate private insurance, those million people will lose their jobs. It is the biggest wet dream of the left. To eliminate private sector jobs and replace them with public sector jobs at CMS.
To cut costs in healthcare will require cuts in pay. Since no one can make more than the physiciains, all pay will have to be reduced. The U. S. currently has to import people to work as nurses, pharmacists, x-ray techs, etc. Lower the pay will make health care a career for first generation immigrations who will never want their children to go into health care.
Under the plans of the Obama Administration, the biggest winners are the public sector unions who will have 100,000 more budget analyst working for CMS/HHS. They will work 07:30 to 04:00 Monday through Friday and make more money than most people working in health care.
Also, to give everyone health care means taxing the crap out of the middle and upper middle classes to pay for health care for the poor. Image the middle class trying to get an appointment while the non-working class and go to the doctor all they want.
The Obama Administration has to stop kicking the middle class in the ass and make the parasite class suffer for their own failures. People who are subsidized need to be at the back of the line instead of at the front. However, the Democrats live on the votes of the parasite classes and will give them anything while punishing the middle class for not being as rich or connected as they the elite progressives are.
Health care in the future will work like the public schools. Urban health care will be expensive, overfunded, and a failure. Where whites and Asians can work together in the suburbs, the health care will be acceptable. And the elites will still get to go to the Mayo Clinic ahead of everyone else.
As the man says, lets be honest and face facts. The facts are that the American electorate is fickle, impatient, and not very bright. They will endlessly keep cycling between the two major parties somehow imagining the democrats will become organized and grow a spine, or that the republicans will end thier worship of ignorance and hypocrisy. Other than that, EJ pretty much has it right. Alas poor America, I knew it well…
Costs for whom? Those with insurance? Or are you talking about the immense overhead costs doctors are stuck with?
All the above. Insurance rates go up every year, this year especially–no wonder so many people can't afford insurance. And insurance rates rise because providers' rates rise. And those rise for a variety of reasons, from wasteful practices to people dying too lavishly
Either way, the current bill was deficit neutral. I find most of the criticism of the bill to be lazy, complacent and post hoc.
The cost problems are not confined to the current bill, nor to the federal government's books. American consumers/taxpayers are being drowned by rising health care costs, and every year the tide rises by another 5 or 10 percent. Medicare costs alone will sink us over the next few decades if we don't reform the cost structure.
As for complacency, laziness, or tardiness, you should have read my comments on the topic a year ago. As indeed should the Democrats.
I believe that the lobbyists can prevent anything that might help rein in the biggest cost drivers.
It's true, Professor. We need big changes, and the system fundamentally resists big changes. Between the seniors and the unions and the insurers and the doctors and so on, there are a lot of livelihoods in the balance. That the government is unable to disrupt them all with a wave of the pen is not entirely a bad thing.
I tried to address this beforehand by writing that there have been subsequent bills, but that doesn't matter. This is politics: relations and messages count. The conservative Democrats were excluded from some drafting committees:
As long ago as May, the Blue Dogs complained of being shut out of the health-care debate. In a sharp letter to Democratic leaders, they wrote they were “increasingly troubled” by their exclusion.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124865363472782…
You can't declare war then say that you're at peace because your not actively shooting at the moment.
Father Time,
I appreciated your comment. Months ago I read an Economist article that described why the Bush Tax Cuts didn't result in growth of the economy: the assessment–healthcare costs for the average American. It was actually unprecedented that the tax cuts didn't grow the economy.
However we ultimately slice it, the problem is not going to go away. It won't be put on some backburner because it's so glaringly a real and present danger. This American problem will define our economics and politics for years to come, regardless of those who shout “it's not broke!”
I don't think the need for the service for healthcare is going away, regardless of the business structure that will ultimately serve Americans. Health care workers, at least the ones I know, are a pretty altruistic bunch for the most part. They do it with varying degrees of altruism, but there are easier ways to make money. I can't imagine that the justification for keeping an insurance industry alive would be to “save jobs.”
Milton Friedman used to have a PBS program called “Free to Choose.” During my college years, I remember a lasting impression: he had the camera pan across different parts of Washington DC, saying “this building houses the lobbyists for the tobacco industry, spending millions of dollars promoting the value of tobacco and protecting their interests” –and then the pan would go to another building– “This building houses a huge collection people who advocate the dangers of tobacco.”
I get the same feeling when I consider the argument that we should keep American people in this rut for the sake of the industry itself.
revisionist history doesn't work that well when the history was last year
well put
I get the same feeling when I consider the argument that we should keep American people in this rut for the sake of the industry itself.
No one argues quite that. “Industry” tends to represent the legitimate interests of millions of actual people. To the extent industry lobbyists oppose change, it's because their customers oppose change.
Witness the immovable health insurers, made so in part by unions that don't want to endanger their hard-won health insurance benefits.
As if it were just the unions… a LOT of people are making money off the current system. They will feed off the corpse until there isn't enough to go around. With fewer people to share the insurance risk, insurers raise premiums which result in fewer people to share the insurance risk, and around we go down the spiral. Hospitals raise what they charge because they increasingly bear the burden of the uninsured. Which ups the costs for everyone, and shortens the time to medicare collapse. Those cushy seniors are in for a rude awakening.
I know this is a moderate site, and we're all supposed to rally around that which is moderate. However, I think the major reason Obama's administration, and Democrats in general, are losing (which, I'd agree with the post, is most certainly the case), is that they seem to have forgotten about Democratic ideals. I know a lot on this board are quite insistant that Obama is a crazy radical leftist and has tried to push a far-left agenda, but I'd love to know: what far-left agenda? I've seen absolutely nothing particularly progressive even being floated as a possibility by this administration or this Congress since very soon after Obama took office. At least then he was talking like a Democrat, even if he was doing nothing remotely progressive. He's given up on even pretending to give a sh*t about progressive ideals.
Yesterday Obama repeated again that he doesn't believe gay people should get married because of his religious beliefs. This is a change from what he believed a decade ago. You know what's really, really not progressive, and in fact is a mainstay of far right-wing conservatism? Saying that the head of state's Christianity should dictate policy. Heath care negotiations started off with single payer entirely off the table; that was and is the only actual progressive solution to our country's health care issues; a moderate compromise may have been reached if they had at least started out with some progressive ideas on the table. The stimulus bill, which (as the OP said) worked very well, was inexplicably loaded up with billions in bull tax cuts (yeah, that $600 check sure does wonders keeping you in a $1000/month apartment when you have no job) and non-stimulating spending. I'm all for spending our way out of a possible depression, but let's spend that money on things that actually *stimulate the damn economy*. In addition, we're spending more on defense than before Obama got elected, we're still doing the very Bush-esque indefinite detention, still funding investigations to purge gay people from the military. Where, again, is the far-left agenda?
Obama and the Democratic Congress spent every iota of their political capital trying to be “moderate” and “bipartisan”. Now, they have damn near nothing to show for all that spent capital except a few minor wins for Cash for Clunkers and less funding for busting medical marijuana dispensaries.
I'm very frustrated right now, very tired of voting for supposed progressives who turn out to be miquetoast conservative-lite wimps. I'm tired of my vote and my passion being taken for granted. Hell, if it weren't for my state's awesome senators, and my districts wonderful congresswoman, plus Hillary Clinton, I'd think very seriously about renouncing my since-I-turned-18 Democratic registration.
Obama and the Democratic Congress spent every iota of their political capital trying to be “moderate” and “bipartisan”.
Whoa, slow down there. Obama, like all serious presidential candidates, campaigned as a centrist, and I agree with you he hasn't lurched hard left since then.
But Congress is quite another story. Nancy Pelosi has been anything but moderate or bipartisan. If you're looking for someone to blame a mis-spent stimulus on, you need look no further.
“he hasn't lurched hard left since then”
He's lurched right. He campaigned as center-left, and he most certainly advocated progressive ideals throughout the campaign. Not only has he failed to uphold those ideals, he doesn't even seem to be marginally interested in them any more.
“Nancy Pelosi has been anything but moderate or bipartisan.”
No, of course she hasn't. She seems to be one of the only people actually getting anything done in Washington, as well. BTW, she was the wonderful congresswoman of which I was speaking; she's not perfect, and don't agree with everything she's done in her career, but she remains a work horse for the progressive causes she's always stood for, and she hasn't changed her views or her passion since becoming Speaker in 2006. She represents the people of San Francisco, and she represents our needs quite well, which is why we continue to vote her into office year after year.
No, Obama hasn't lurched anywhere. He's let many of Bush's policies go unchallenged, just as he's let Pelosi drive Congress into a ditch. I'm disappointed with his tendency to duck unpopular decisions.
Kudos for Pelosi for her passion, but that's not enough. It's because of her that the Democrats have not gotten much of their agenda through and are expecting a rout. She doesn't speak for all of San Francisco, and I will be happily voting to dunk her in the bay at the next opportunity.
Dr J — I just named a handfull of issues on which he has lurched right. You can say he hasn't, but he has. I think that “ducking unpopular decisions” also counts when we're talking about issues he campaigned on, with passion, and has now decided don't matter.
Pelosi has passed through everything she's been asked to, with almost no leadership from the White House. You certainly can vote however your conscience tells you, but I don't think her position is in much danger.
Obama didn't campaign center-left, he was very crafty about delivering messages that allowed both left and right to hear what they wanted. He talked about cost control in health care, he was hawkish on the “good war” in Afghanistan, and he came out against gay marriage.
I don't know that I'd call it a lurch, but he does seem further right on foreign policy than the can't-we-all-get-along vibes he gave off during the campaign. Guantanamo remains open, we're still in Iraq, we're escalating Afghanistan. Obama has taken the edge off our imperialist reputation abroad, but he seems to have learned on the job that no, we can't all get along. At least, untying the big geopolitical knots we're bound up in will be a very long process.
If you're talking about the suppliers, I've got mixed feelings on that. In general, the work performed is more important than the paycheck. When people are overpaid for the work that they do, they are hurting the economy, and any theory that can say otherwise is, IMO, seriously flawed. Surgeons who could be doing the work for $20 to $100 per hour, but is making $5,000 to $10,000 instead, is hurting everyone who has to pay that bill. Is it because he has to pay off his million dollar education? Then lower the cost of education! There's no way that the cost of college is going to actual education.These sorts of problems build on each other, and the political system seems to be geared toward avoiding anything that would resemble addressing the root causes.
If anyone, including me, is not worth what they're getting paid, their job should be in jeopardy.
A surgeon who could be doing the work for $20 to $100 per hour, but is making $5,000 to $10,000 instead, is hurting everyone who has to pay that bill.
If you can just convince them to see it that way, I'll totally vote for you.
Obviously, you don't convince them, you tell the AMA to take a hike, figure out how to train cheaper surgeons and flood the market.
You wouldn't happen to have a campaign manager handy, would you?
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