Blaming the blogosphere for Democratic Failures

http://crooksandliars.com/ian-welsh/blaming-blogosphere-democratic-failures

Media Criticism
Blaming the blogosphere for Democratic Failures
Ian Welsh
Friday Jul 16, 2010

So. In response to a Politico piece in which the authors and White House whine about the left wing blogosphere not being happy with all of Obama's "wins" and not caring about potential losses in 2010, Kevin Drum writes:

Here's the good news: this record of progressive accomplishment officially makes Obama the most successful domestic Democratic president of the last 40 years. And here's the bad news: this shoddy collection of centrist, watered down, corporatist sellout legislation was all it took to make Obama the most successful domestic Democratic president of the last 40 years. Take your pick.

Here's the thing. What matters is whether policy works. It does not matter if what Obama did was more left wing than anything that's been done in a while (though in absolute terms I would argue it mostly wasn't left wing, the health care plan, for example, was essentially a Republican plan from the 90s), what matters is if it was left wing enough (big enough stimulus, smart enough health care plan) to improve people's lives enough that they noticed.

It wasn't, and that's all that matters. Policies such as the stimulus were not done well enough, and everyone from Nobel prize winners with good predictive records like Stiglitz and and Krugman, down to nobodies like me, predicted it at the time. The President hired the wrong people to give him advice, didn't even do as much as many of them wanted, and now we all pay the price.

Sometimes half doesn't work. Half-assed rarely does. All Obama's half assed "left wing" policies have done is discredit the left for another generation. Combined with the ability of the media, Republicans and hysterical Tea Baggers unable to use a dictionary to define him as a "socialist" this means that Obama's policies are seen as left wing, and left wing policies are seen to have failed.

I don't want Obama doing anything I agree with, because he will screw it up and discredit it. In this respect he is like Bush. He is poison because he is incompetent at policy.

As for the original Politico post, the hysterical ranting at the peanut gallery the authors clearly don't even read, says more about them and the White House than it does about the left wing blogosphere they try to blame for Democrats own failures.

Nameless Obama Aides Want Him To Confront Left

http://theplumline.whorunsgov.com/bipartisanship/politico-nameless-obama-aides-want-him-to-confront-left-to-look-tough/

Politico: Nameless Obama Aides Want Him To Confront Left To Look Tough
Greg Sargent
09/02/2009

So some Obama advisers think there’s a political upside in foregoing the public option, getting the left to scream, then having Obama stand up to the screamers in order to look tough? That’s what Politico is reporting, citing unnamed administration aides.

It’s hard to tell whether this really represents West Wing thinking or whether it’s just Politico writing the story they want to write. But some Obama officials seem to be saying this:

On health care, Obama’s willingness to forgo the public option is sure to anger his party’s liberal base. But some administration officials welcome a showdown with liberal lawmakers if they argue they would rather have no health care law than an incremental one. The confrontation would allow Obama to show he is willing to stare down his own party to get things done.

“We have been saying all along that the most important part of this debate is not the public option, but rather ensuring choice and competition,” an aide said. “There are lots of different ways to get there.”

Liberals will ask why unnamed advisers aren’t showing the same zeal for “staring down” Republicans and centrist Dems. After all, the GOP’s approval rating still languishes; GOP leaders have ruled out compromise unless Obama dramatically scales down his ambitions; and the GOP Senator leading negotiations is openly working to defeat “Obamacare.”

But the unbreakable rule is that when Dems confront the left, it’s the right kind of tough, and when they stand up to Republicans, it’s the bad, shrill kind. And of course party leaders can’t take on moderate Dems, because that would be showing disrespect for the “center.”

Given that Obama aides frequently ridicule D.C. conventional wisdom, it’s hard to imagine them in the grip of thinking as tired and conventional as this. But someone or some faction in the administration (or perhaps mainly Politico) seems to want this idea out there.