[lbo-talk] Obama Appears to Prefer Trigger - WAS Re: RIP, "robust" public option; Barack tails Olympia

SA s11131978 at gmail.com
Fri Oct 23 11:14:50 PDT 2009


Michael Smith wrote:


> On Fri, 23 Oct 2009 13:17:07 -0400
> Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
>
>
>>> But of course she isn't, as you well know. The insurance
>>> companies are. Olympia is the fig leaf.
>>>
>> Well, you may be right. But how do you know this?
>>
>
> I don't know it, of course, in any sense that would satisfy
> a philosopher. I infer it. But I figured you might have made
> the same inference and might share my confidence that it is
> correct.
>
> As I understand it, the Dems don't actually need a filibuster-proof
> majority at all -- there's an arcane maneuver called, I believe,
> "reconciliation", which the Republicans repeatedly used during
> their majorities.
>
> Obie has never given me any reason to believe he was really committed
> to anything beyond marginal tinkering with the existing system. If he
> did have any such commitment he's had plenty of opportunities to act
> on it, and he hasn't.
>
> The notion that he's constrained by some idealistic commitment
> to bipartisanship seems laughable to me. If anybody here
> believes that, I have a handsome suspension bridge for sale, with
> two splendid neo-Gothic masonry towers.
>

Americans like bipartisanship and are allergic to "extremism." Obama is worried about the 2010 election and, even more, about 2012. A bipartisan bill protects Obama and his party from the stigma of "extremism," a stigma already visible in polls. If they used reconciliation to pass health care, it would make things even worse - it would mean not only that the Democrats passed an "extremist" bill - one so "partisan" it couldn't get a single Republican vote - but that the bill was so far out it "even" split the Democrats. That's not how I see things, obviously, but it's how a lot of voters see things, and therefore how Obama sees things. It's clear from the press coverage that Obama and the Dems strongly prefer to avoid reconciliation, *even* holding constant the actual substance of the bill.

I often think one of the most common pitfalls in political analysis is the belief in puppets. As in: Maliki is a puppet of Washington; Honecker is a puppet of Moscow -- or Obama is a puppet of the insurance industry. In politics, there is no such thing as a puppet. If A always seems to do B's bidding, it's because B holds all the cards, because A is dependent on B, not because A has no will of his own - such people almost never exist in politics. In American politics, the insurance industry holds a lot of cards vis-a-vis politicians, for a lot of reasons. But it can hardly be doubted that if it were up to Obama he would have the industry lose all its power over him, since by definition that would give him more room for maneuver.

SA



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