On 2010-11-16, at 3:17 PM, c b wrote:
> Marv Gandall
>
> The Obama administration crafted the legislation not for maximum
> economic impact but to attract Republican votes, in the naive belief
> it could persuade the Republicans to take ownership of a bipartisan
> bill and refrain from criticism.
>
> ^^^^
> CB: And Blue Dog Democrat votes. The belief was not "naive"; it takes
> account of the political reality in Congress. It is your expectation
> that a more radical stimulus could have been won in this Congress that
> is naive. The effort at bipartisanism was merely an extension of the
> approach of the winning Presidential campaign, non-confrontational and
> appealing to Independents and Republicans. Since it had worked in the
> campaign, there was good reason to continue in the same vein. It is
> the American public and media that did a flip based on the nutty
> demogogy of the Tea Party broadcast by the monopoly media.
It all seems pretty hopeless, doesn't it, Charles? If you and the other apologists for the administration are right, you can hardly fault Doug, Carrol, Louis Proyect and others for thinking both parties are indistinguishable at the top and that there is no potential for an easily manipulated Democratic base to bring countervailing pressure from below. The tea party and Murdoch media have foreclosed all possibility for change.
You're rewriting history in suggesting that Obama's campaign was understood by both Democrats and independents as representing "non confrontational" continuity with Bush administration policies. Whatever Obama's own intentions, it's pretty well established that both Democrats and independents voted for him in great numbers because he was seen to represent a break with the previous administration, an impression he cultivated in pledging to bring meaningful change ("change you can believe in") to domestic and foreign affairs. However vacuous his slogans, voters understood them and the overall tenor of his campaign in no other way.
You overlook that in "taking account of the political reality in Congress", the administration misunderstood or with characteristic hubris chose to ignore the political reality in the country, ie. that voters expected strong action to stem the rising tide of joblessness, falling home prices and foreclosures, and rising health care costs, and to punish rather than encourage the avarice and recklessness of the financial industry.
The administration may well have had to negotiate with the conservative congressional minority to accomplish what it could not do by executive order, but, as I've previously argued, politicians, generals, trade unionists, capitalists and movement leaders understand that this necessarily occurs at the end of a conflict rather than the beginning. By surrendering in advance without taking the fight to the country and putting pressure on the obstructionists in Congress, the administration guaranteed that its health care, housing, and financial reform measures would be diluted to the point the masses would see only soaring deficits and higher taxes in the future and nothing tangible to address their present urgent concerns. By consistently negotiating from a position of weakness rather than strength, the administration produced results which succeeded only in demoralizing its own base and driving the vacillating independents in the swing states who had taken a flyer on a black man promising change back to the Republicans.