I often feel a little self-conscious linking our little blog to a heavy hitter, but just go read Josh Marshall’s latest on our feckless House Democrats, snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. Don’t come back here until you read it!
For about 40 years, the Democrats played the game of doing what it took to stay in power, and that meant messy compromise and mushy principle. Well, that’s never ideal, but it’s at least understandable.
Beltway Democrats: WAKE. UP. You are not in power anymore. The only thing that’s going to get you out of the hole is if you have the vision to stop digging. That means you punish Republicans for taking a position that would harm Americans. That means you can’t always play the nice guy, the conciliatory conflict-avoider. I don’t doubt that the focus groups don’t like the idea of Democrats playing tough — people have a natural distaste for the rough-and-tumble of politics. They always have. It doesn’t matter. Democracy is necessarily adversarial and often antagonistic. You’ve got to know your principles in order to know when to compromise, or walk away from the table entirely.
Any parent knows that you’ve got to lay down the law at some point or another. You can only triangulate your kids for so long before they’re playing in traffic.
The article that touched off that whole post is nothing but blind quotes from ‘prominent Democrats’. If there is a change in tactics regarding Social Security, I’d be as surprised as Senator Kennedy was this morning. Don’t you think that an article about Democrats changing their strategy should have, I don’t know, a Democrat quoted in it?The reason why the article is so believable, however, is because we have been conditioned to expect this kind of wishy-washy hand-wringing and poll-watching from Democrats. I believe that this is a result of the nature of the Democratic coalition. When you build a coalition around specific issues (the environment, labor, reproductive rights, etc) you end up more vulnerable to these sort of charges than if you build a coalition around overarching themes (government bad, business good), as the Republicans have.Just my two cents.
Well, maybe we’re all overreacting. It really does seem plausible, and I find it hard to believe that Glen Johnson of AP would have just made that up, or gone with a single source for a pretty sweeping opening paragraph:”House Democrats have decided to quit emphasizing that they will not negotiate changes to Social Security until President Bush drops his idea for private accounts. The switch in strategy comes after Democrats learned from focus groups that people frown on the lawmakers for being obstinate.”In any event, I’d rather over-react than under-react on stuff like this. Everyone needs to have their feet held to the fire.
Obstinate. For fuck’s sake, what’s wrong with being obstinate when the other side is trying to do something really bad?