Is It Time For A Purge?

In considering the Stupak amendment and one's response to it, it is vital to understand that the Democratic Party is above all a coalition. It is not a unified ideological movement with a coherent leadership and a motivated, cohesive activist base. It is therefore a very tricky thing to craft policy, because sometimes varying interests of the coalition members must all be appeased. It is also extremely frustrating for the numerically larger progressive wing of the party to make concessions to the tiny but majority-making "moderates" in the party, but such concessions are probably inevitable - as inevitable as the fact that moderates aren't going to be able to dictate policymaking either. The two sides have to get along.

All of which makes the Stupak amendment the political equivalent of a mugging. Ha! You thought I was going the other way, didn't you? No, there are a few issues that define the Democratic Party - issues that are supposed to transcend ideological division and interest-group loyalties. Health care is one of those. For decades Democrats have been trying to put forward national health insurance, and time and time again the liberals in the party have set aside their own preference for a single-payer system in an effort to get moderates on board. And every time we are told it is just not enough. Well, I understand, I suppose, however unhappy it makes me.

But what is entirely unacceptable, what is in fact an act of gross political sabotage, what I am frankly not going to forget, ever, is the effort to introduce a piece of legislation that divides the party to block health care reform. Stupak and his pro-life (and quisling) allies decided to use the chance at health care reform as an opportunity to shove a pro-life policy down the throats of an overwhelmingly pro-choice party. In a coalition one avoids putting issues that divides you on the agenda in favor of focusing on what unites you. You do not sidetrack things onto divisive issues, and you most certainly do not crassly manipulate your coalition partners' desire to pursue the common agenda. It is just. not. done.

Since the beginning of Obama's presidency, every significant piece of progressive reform has been undermined by a group of self-serving "centrists" whose chief loyalty is neither to their constituencies nor their party but instead to their contributors and their own egos. What precisely have liberals gotten out of the last year, anyway? Card check legislation? Health care reform? Winding down our foreign adventures? Protection of civil liberties? Pro-choice laws? The end of don't ask/don't tell? A climate change bill? Can you please point to me one area where the "mods" have not either badly weakened or outright blocked everything that the majority of the party wants?

And after that year of frustration, they attempt to impose the most regressive, anti-woman legislation in a decade on us? What, so we can have a hopelessly compromised health care law with no public option, no cost controls, and huge subsidies to insurance and drug companies?

I'm sorry, but these are not the actions of a political ally - but of an enemy. No, the "mods" are not as bad as the Republicans. But if their demands are conceded to, then progressive will be permanently blocked from any of their agenda. Our politics will continue to be an alternating cycle of conservative policy under Republicans and the consolidation of conservatism under Democrats. Thanks, but no thanks.

But you know what? Those mods are destroying themselves anyway. If they succeed, they'll be washed away in the next election, and the Palinists will come to power. And they will have earned every bit of it.

Reflections on a Disturbing Election Night

I've spent a few days mulling over the results of the elections on Tuesday. There weren't any in my state, for which I was profoundly grateful - which suggested the first clue as to what happened. I suspect a lot of folks are still a little burned out from the last race, and there wasn't much happening to excite us. Obama has been a bit of a disappointment: incremental change in time of crisis isn't what I would call strong leadership. As many commenters have noted, off-year and mid-term elections are far more dependent on turning out one's base than Presidential elections are. Since the overall turnout is so much lower (often dramatically so), enthused minorities can have a much greater effect on the outcome.

But even should the Democrats manage to push through national health care, and even a climate change bill, before the middle of next year, they're still looking at big losses in 2010. As all of us political scientists have noted for decades (killing whole forests in the process) economic conditions are the single strongest determinant of aggregate electoral performance. In other words, if the economy is bad, the incumbent president's party loses. Period. The economy doesn't have to be fully recovered in 2010, but people have to start seeing real progress or the Democrats are risking another 1994. The Democrats' unwillingness to really grapple with the underlying causes of our economic difficulties virtually guarantees that we'll putter along in a jobless recovery for the next few years. You'd think that "moderate" Democrats would know this and act accordingly, but they're either a) terrified of big contributions from corporations going to their opponents, b) listening to David Broder too much, or c) suffering from extreme cognitive capture. Probably all three. As usual, the Blue Dogs have learned nothing, and they'll once more be wiped out and blame liberals for their defeat.

Could the tea-baggeres bail out the Democrats? Are the Republicans so nutty that they'll destroy their chances by nominating a bunch of wingnuts? Maybe that would save a few seats, but I don't think it would in the end make much difference. I'm sure at some point a party becomes so insane that voters would refuse to support it even against an unpopular incumbent, but it's unclear whether we've reached that point yet. I doubt it. People's ability to make excuses for lunacy, particularly by Republicans (thanks media!) is near-infinite. The Democrats will probably use that as their chief strategy, running viciously negative campaigns against their opponents. I don't think it'll work any more than it did for Corzine in New Jersey, but what else will they have?

Or maybe the Democrats in Washington will wake up on Monday morning, realize they're in deep doo-doo, and start passing a bunch of legislation: going after Wall Street, another stimulus, tax reform to end corporate welfare, national health care with a strong public option and national exchange anybody can enter, and campaign finance reform. And maybe my boss will suddenly decide to double my salary.

On a related note, I find it deeply saddening that the gay rights movement have lost their 31st straight referendum. But I have to say that this is what we can expect from the use of referenda, an institution totally inappropriate to civil rights legislation. It's absurd that we put civil rights up to a popular vote - if we'd done that on ending segregation or giving women the right to vote, I really doubt they would have passed. You don't give the majority the right to decide the rights of the minority - that's what the courts are for. Hell, I have major misgivings about the use of referenda at all. I mean, look how wonderfully it's worked for California!

And on that note, I'm going to start my little vacation. BH and I are headed to NYC for our 20th "anniversary" (since we met, not since we got married). Ciao!

Quote of the Day

Another Halberstam quote:

"… he had come away with one impression above all, which was that the government of the United States was not what he had thought it was; it as if there were an inner U.S. government, what he called “a centralized state, far more powerful than anything else, for whom the enemy is not simply the Communists but everything else, its own press, its own judiciary, its own Congress, foreign and friendly governments – all of these are potentially antagonistic. It had survived and perpetuated itself,” Sheehan continued, “often using the issue of anti-Communism as a weapon against the other branches of government and the press, and finally, it does not function necessarily for the benefit of the Republic, but rather for its own ends, its own perpetuation; it has its own codes which are quite different from public codes. Secrecy was a way of protecting itself, not so much from threats by foreign governments, but from detection from its own population on charges of its own competence or wisdom.” Each succeeding administration, Sheehan noted, was careful, once in office, not to expose the weaknesses of its predecessor. After all, essentially the same people were running the governments, they had continuity to each other, and each succeeding Administration found itself faced with virtually the same enemies. Thus the national security apparatus kept its continuity, and every outgoing President tended to rally to the side of each incumbent President.”

Quote of the Day

Now I want you to replace "Bush/Cheney" for "McCarthy" and think War on Terror rather than Red Scare and then think about this quote:

“All of this was part of one of the great illusions of the country and the Administration in 1961, the belief that the McCarthy period had come and gone without the country paying any real price, that the Administration and the nation could continue without challenging or coming to terms with the political and policy aberrations of that period. If there were problems, the Administration would somehow glide around them, letting time rather than political candor or courage do the healing. It was a belief that if there were scars from the period (and both the Democratic Party and the Department of State were deeply scarred), they were by now secret scars, and if there were victims, they were invisible victims. If one looked away and did not talk about them, somehow they would go away. Yet the truth was altogether different: the scars and the victims were real, and the McCarthey period had frozen American policies on China and Asia. The Kennedy Administration would in no way come to terms with the aberrations of those policies; it had not created the, as its advocates pointed out, but it would not undo them either.”

There's No Need For Me To Be In Congress

My goodness Alan Grayson is hard core. He sounds like me after too many beers hanging out with political friends. What's scary is that Grayson does it sober.

Frightening Parallels

I hesitate to compare Vietnam to Afghanistan. We are far too ready to compare wars of the present to wars of the past, and the circumstances of this conflict are in many ways quite different. What inspires to make such a comparison, however, is the eerie sense of deja vu I had recently while reading David Halberstam's "Best and the Brightest." It's a wonderfully written book, but aside from its literary merits it also gives a disturbing account of how pride in one's country and one's intellect can lure the most experienced and brilliant men into catastrophe. In fact, the greater a man's success in life, the more vulnerable he appears to making such disastrous errors. Perhaps this is a banal point, nothing more than the typical identification of hubris. But whatever its originality, it is always best - especially in foreign affairs, where the stakes are so great - to move cautiously, with a profound respect for the limitations of one's own knowledge and power. In Halberstam's book, a well-meaning President with little experience in foreign affairs found himself entangled in a war that he never wanted. Lyndon Johnson feared that withdrawing from Vietnam would destroy the Great Society (because hawks would use it to weaken him), but by temporizing, by escalating in such small moves, he found himself in a great war after all. It is a story of how the military, which knows how to fight great conventional wars, attempted to impose that conception on a war which was in no way conventional, however tediously common guerilla warfare has become in the last generation or so. The generals in Vietnam knew no more about diplomacy or politics than the civilians knew about war, with disastrous consequences for both.

The debates I see now over the decision to escalate or nearly carbon copies of the debates over whether to escalate in Vietnam in 1964-1965. The military wants 40,000 troops, but will accept less if they can get the civilian command to accept a given strategy. Once that strategy is in place, they will call from another 40,000. And another. And another. We have a political discourse which presumes that Republicans are the only ones "strong" enough to handle foreign policy, a Democratic President will be afraid to cut his losses or even reduce the mission to as modest a set of aims as possible. So he will be tempted to accept the strategy put forth by "his" generals while trying to draw the line on the number of troops. If Obama does so, the game is up. It is the strategy that has to be addressed, before tactical or logistical questions.

To be more specific, the strategy we are supposed to accept from the generals is the doctrine of counterinsurgency. If anyone thinks that doctrine sounds familiar, they should. It was originally championed by the Kennedy Administration as a means of combating communist-supported revolutionary movements in the third worlds. Its first great test was in Vietnam. No, there is nothing new here, and little to be optimistic about.

I am no expert on Afghanistan, obviously. But I am a student of history, and I know that western military powers from Alexander the Great through the British and Russians have come to grief in those mountains. I have no desire to see us follow in the footsteps of the Russians as well did so with the French in Vietnam. Let us try to learn, if not from others mistakes, then at least our own.

Can I Use Someone Else's Money Instead?

I mean, that's what Wall Street does.

Q. When someone comes up to you and says, “I love food, I love people, I want to get into the restaurant business,” why try to talk them out of it?

A. I had somebody approach me who had a very good job with a major company and an MBA from a prestigious university. I looked at him and asked, “Is your career in danger?” He said, “No, but I’ve always loved food. I love to cook. I love to have parties.” I told him to invite 20 friends over, throw a great dinner party, and then take a stack of $100 bills and burn them one by one. It will be fun -- and cheaper than opening a restaurant.

(via Ezra Klein)

I'm working at home today so I can get this stupid proposal finished. I've been working on a post on Afghanistan for about a week. With any luck I'll be able to write it tomorrow. Unless I really can't keep the procrastination gods away, which for some reason is always a lot harder when I'm working at the office than at home.