Four years ago this month, the worldview of conservatives began to collapse with Hurricane Katrina.
The reliance on leadership, the rhetoric about drowning government in a bathtub, the assumption that government was more a hindrance than a help, it all came together in the figure of Michael Brown. "You're doing a heckuva job, Brownie" became the epitaph of the movement.
The Netroots rose as a direct consequence of Bush-era failure. The idea was that people, ordinary people, could get involved in politics, could take power on behalf of intelligence, and prevent new Katrinas from happening.
But a Katrina is happening right now, testing whether that movement, or any movement dependent on volunteer activism, can long endure.
That crisis is health care reform.
The hurricane in this case consists of Astroturf groups, bankrolled by health insurers, who are going around the country disrupting attempts by Democrats to hold town hall meetings on the subject. Like Katrina, this weather front was predicted, yet sites like DailyKos still remain, like Brownie, dumbfounded by it all.
The response so far. A TV ad attacking the Republicans and their industry allies.
Supposedly bloggers like Kos, Firedoglake, and the Huffington Post have developed this enormous army of activists, and the Obama campaign turned them into a fighting force for change. Yet what was organized as a bottom-up movement has instead become a top-down affair, with A-List bloggers speaking truth to power but the army following it acting powerless.
It is past time for this movement to go back to its roots and stop pretending that a single election is transformative. The press hates you. Washington hates you. Call the wahmbulance.
On the TV, Chris Kofinis has offered some good ideas. Start each meeting with personal testimonies from local people impacted by a lack of care or coverage in the current system. To that might be added, have a sign-in sheet outside each meeting that people must sign to get in, check their IDs and if they're not from the member's district don't let them in.
But this is supposed to be a grassroots movement. Now that the grassroots are needed where is the movement? It's in TV studios or in Washington, waiting to go into a TV studio.
Unless the "momentum" of the last week is turned around health reform will be lost for a generation, and those in the Netroots will deserve most of the blame. If you talk about bottom-up power and then rule from the top-down, the contradiction will kill you every time.
Your passion for principled policy is equal to your knowledge of open source software, Dana, and your analysis is dead on. Negotiating from the middle gets you run over every time. The Blue Dogs and Rush Limbaugh are pulling out every trick they used against Clinton.
I’ve kept up with Dailykos, but like too many liberal blogs, they are now simply cheerleading organizations, listing Obama’s present popularity poll number at the top of the page and worrying about Michelle Bachman and obsessed with the “thing” from Alaska.
Meanwhile, cable TV adoration of Obama has predictably turned from thrills up their legs to talking about his ‘Waterloo’ moment.
Both Obama and his supporters need to understand the one thing LBJ knew: everything he’s in office, he’s losing votes. So he needs to review his campaign statements and promises about change we could believe in — i.e., not just another round of empty promises — and get to work on what exactly he wants to accomplish in his 4/8 years in office. There are no do-overs after you leave office.
Your passion for principled policy is equal to your knowledge of open source software, Dana, and your analysis is dead on. Negotiating from the middle gets you run over every time. The Blue Dogs and Rush Limbaugh are pulling out every trick they used against Clinton.
I’ve kept up with Dailykos, but like too many liberal blogs, they are now simply cheerleading organizations, listing Obama’s present popularity poll number at the top of the page and worrying about Michelle Bachman and obsessed with the “thing” from Alaska.
Meanwhile, cable TV adoration of Obama has predictably turned from thrills up their legs to talking about his ‘Waterloo’ moment.
Both Obama and his supporters need to understand the one thing LBJ knew: everything he’s in office, he’s losing votes. So he needs to review his campaign statements and promises about change we could believe in — i.e., not just another round of empty promises — and get to work on what exactly he wants to accomplish in his 4/8 years in office. There are no do-overs after you leave office.
Oy, that should read: “everyday he’s in office, he’s losing votes.”
Oy, that should read: “everyday he’s in office, he’s losing votes.”
It’s not a lack of understand; it’s that Obama specifically doesn’t want to be LBJ. He wants people to like while he’s in office and still like him once he leaves. He’s playing a very long game here — get a little done now and hopefully get some more done later. It goes against conventional wisdom that you’ve got to get it all done up front, but conventional wisdom is often wrong. Conventional wisdom had Hillary as President, not Barack. I’m not sure I agree with Obama’s approach, but if he succeeds it will change the shape of Presidential tactics for decades.
It’s not a lack of understand; it’s that Obama specifically doesn’t want to be LBJ. He wants people to like while he’s in office and still like him once he leaves. He’s playing a very long game here — get a little done now and hopefully get some more done later. It goes against conventional wisdom that you’ve got to get it all done up front, but conventional wisdom is often wrong. Conventional wisdom had Hillary as President, not Barack. I’m not sure I agree with Obama’s approach, but if he succeeds it will change the shape of Presidential tactics for decades.
Obama’s a likeable guy, no question, and will remain so for the rest of his life, I presume. Problem is, the “long game” is effectively done. The cycle of 8-year administrations is determined by the election cycle, not the President or his popularity at any given time.
Now that Obama has had to make actual policy decisions and choices, we see his popularity rating decrease and come back to earth. But whatever the president does not accomplish in his first 16 months in office, what follows is usually trivial by comparison. Clinton got a major budget deal out of his Congress without a single republican vote in ’93, but then turned around and got clobbered on healthcare reform in ’94. The next six years was spent triangulating with moderates and republicans in order to get as many things done as possible. Back then, Republicans wanted to tax the internet every single year and Clinton said no.
Bush had the crazy 9/11 event in his first year, which allowed him to exploit the fear and paranoia created in the wake of 9/11 to wage war, expand executive powers, and use torture at Gitmo among other things. After that, all he did was Medicare Part D, an unfunded prescription drug program that created the infamous “donut hole” coverage. (Medicare already covered prescription drugs quite efficiently. Bush’s Part D allowed drug companies to charge more by preventing the government from negotiating for lower prices as a block. Obama agreed to the same thing last week in his secret compromise to big pharma — no open negotiations, Americans were not part of Obama’s deal.)
Now skip to 2009 and Obama — I believe — made the classic rookie mistake of waiting too long to jump in the game. This recess killed both single payer and the public option. Without either, you really can’t call it reform. And most congressmen are meeting with constituents during this recess to raise money for their next election, not to gauge constituent reaction to Obama’s health reform plan; mainly because Americans have no idea exactly what the “plan” is!
My other real concern is that whatever Obama wants to do from this point forward, he won’t have the money to do it. The first real (hard) choice he’s going to have to make is whether endless, purposeless war is worth the cost. China, Russia, and the EU have stopped buying our securities in the last three auctions, and they have also warned us not to keep printing USDollars and dumping them on the market just to reduce our debts.
I see the glass as half empty and I’m all out of hope. I don’t want to see Obama campaigning for reelection in three years saying, “If you give me four more years, then I’ll get something done.” Second terms tend to bring scattered cabinets, scandals, and at best, just ride it out, and since candidates for president in both parties begin posturing for the next national election, the last guy they want to hear from is the current guy in office. They just want him gone.
Obama’s a likeable guy, no question, and will remain so for the rest of his life, I presume. Problem is, the “long game” is effectively done. The cycle of 8-year administrations is determined by the election cycle, not the President or his popularity at any given time.
Now that Obama has had to make actual policy decisions and choices, we see his popularity rating decrease and come back to earth. But whatever the president does not accomplish in his first 16 months in office, what follows is usually trivial by comparison. Clinton got a major budget deal out of his Congress without a single republican vote in ’93, but then turned around and got clobbered on healthcare reform in ’94. The next six years was spent triangulating with moderates and republicans in order to get as many things done as possible. Back then, Republicans wanted to tax the internet every single year and Clinton said no.
Bush had the crazy 9/11 event in his first year, which allowed him to exploit the fear and paranoia created in the wake of 9/11 to wage war, expand executive powers, and use torture at Gitmo among other things. After that, all he did was Medicare Part D, an unfunded prescription drug program that created the infamous “donut hole” coverage. (Medicare already covered prescription drugs quite efficiently. Bush’s Part D allowed drug companies to charge more by preventing the government from negotiating for lower prices as a block. Obama agreed to the same thing last week in his secret compromise to big pharma — no open negotiations, Americans were not part of Obama’s deal.)
Now skip to 2009 and Obama — I believe — made the classic rookie mistake of waiting too long to jump in the game. This recess killed both single payer and the public option. Without either, you really can’t call it reform. And most congressmen are meeting with constituents during this recess to raise money for their next election, not to gauge constituent reaction to Obama’s health reform plan; mainly because Americans have no idea exactly what the “plan” is!
My other real concern is that whatever Obama wants to do from this point forward, he won’t have the money to do it. The first real (hard) choice he’s going to have to make is whether endless, purposeless war is worth the cost. China, Russia, and the EU have stopped buying our securities in the last three auctions, and they have also warned us not to keep printing USDollars and dumping them on the market just to reduce our debts.
I see the glass as half empty and I’m all out of hope. I don’t want to see Obama campaigning for reelection in three years saying, “If you give me four more years, then I’ll get something done.” Second terms tend to bring scattered cabinets, scandals, and at best, just ride it out, and since candidates for president in both parties begin posturing for the next national election, the last guy they want to hear from is the current guy in office. They just want him gone.
This comes back to the comparison I’ve made between Obama and Nixon.
Nixon leaned against the liberal assumptions of his time and, while he began the turn to the right which is climaxing in our time, he compiled a very liberal record. The EPA. OSHA. The CPSC. All created under Nixon. But you never saw liberals celebrating Nixon then, and you won’t see them celebrating Nixon now.
Obama is doing much the same thing. Move incrementally in the direction you want to go. Lean into the conservative assumptions. Maintain. Going further to the right from where we were a year ago, however, would be a disaster for the nation. Goldman Sachs is running the country, the worst impulses of the CIA are running our foreign policy. Boone Pickens is directing our energy policy.
Why is he being Nixon when he could be Reagan? Why is he assuming he’s Truman when he could be FDR? He’s not showing enough backbone against extremism, and thus giving extremism more power than it deserves, IMO.
This comes back to the comparison I’ve made between Obama and Nixon.
Nixon leaned against the liberal assumptions of his time and, while he began the turn to the right which is climaxing in our time, he compiled a very liberal record. The EPA. OSHA. The CPSC. All created under Nixon. But you never saw liberals celebrating Nixon then, and you won’t see them celebrating Nixon now.
Obama is doing much the same thing. Move incrementally in the direction you want to go. Lean into the conservative assumptions. Maintain. Going further to the right from where we were a year ago, however, would be a disaster for the nation. Goldman Sachs is running the country, the worst impulses of the CIA are running our foreign policy. Boone Pickens is directing our energy policy.
Why is he being Nixon when he could be Reagan? Why is he assuming he’s Truman when he could be FDR? He’s not showing enough backbone against extremism, and thus giving extremism more power than it deserves, IMO.
You hit the nail right on the head again, Dana Blankenhorn.
President Obama demonstrated an excellent command of the public media in hist first week in office. President Obama could do the same thing now.
The town hall meetings should be conducted exactly as you describe – like an election. Only registered voters of the district are allowed attendance. That would slam the doors on the republican shenanigans of “stacking the votes.”
Only President Obama could do the same thing on national TV. Present actual people who have suffered and are suffering under the present medical care system. Then back it up with documented stories of insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies (the Paxil case is a poster child for this), tort law judgments, and other big-money exploitations of medical care to the American public.
And then present the basic question to the American public: THESE are the people who are taking money out of your pockets to enrich themselves will YOU get less and less. Is this how you want American health care to continue?
The health care crisis has come down to an “us and them” moment. The public versus the crooks. Can Obama take off the kid gloves and punch back hard?
We shall see.
You hit the nail right on the head again, Dana Blankenhorn.
President Obama demonstrated an excellent command of the public media in hist first week in office. President Obama could do the same thing now.
The town hall meetings should be conducted exactly as you describe – like an election. Only registered voters of the district are allowed attendance. That would slam the doors on the republican shenanigans of “stacking the votes.”
Only President Obama could do the same thing on national TV. Present actual people who have suffered and are suffering under the present medical care system. Then back it up with documented stories of insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies (the Paxil case is a poster child for this), tort law judgments, and other big-money exploitations of medical care to the American public.
And then present the basic question to the American public: THESE are the people who are taking money out of your pockets to enrich themselves will YOU get less and less. Is this how you want American health care to continue?
The health care crisis has come down to an “us and them” moment. The public versus the crooks. Can Obama take off the kid gloves and punch back hard?
We shall see.
I don’t know if he’s willing to. He’s in a bind. He’s pushing a thesis of consensus against a thesis of conflict, and conflict is sexier.
He must somehow show the silent majority that this thesis of conflict is a direct threat to the American way of life. He has to demonstrate a link between his being called “Obango” and a direct threat to America.
I know he can. I just don’t know if he’s willing to do it.
Dana
I don’t know if he’s willing to. He’s in a bind. He’s pushing a thesis of consensus against a thesis of conflict, and conflict is sexier.
He must somehow show the silent majority that this thesis of conflict is a direct threat to the American way of life. He has to demonstrate a link between his being called “Obango” and a direct threat to America.
I know he can. I just don’t know if he’s willing to do it.
Dana