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Monday, November 01, 2010

Cornyn's Concession Means Nothing -- Republicans Already Control the Senate

John Cornyn has conceded Republicans cannot win back control of the Senate tomorrow (the math next time round is far more congenial to them) -- but, of course, the truth is that Republicans managed through literally historically unprecedented unfathomably irresponsible obstructionism to control the Senate without a majority for the last two years.

While there is much to complain about in the Democrats -- too many of whom are more conservative themselves than the constituencies they claim to represent -- the fact is that the Senate is institutionally vulnerable to the Republican strategy. Obama cannot even get uncontroversial court appointments through this obstructionist Senate. Those who fancy we didn't get a larger stimulus or single payer or EFCA because Democrats are secretly indistinguishable from Republicans in their secret coal-cinder hearts tend to underestimate the actually existing constraints that define the legislative process in the United States. Almost every single legislative outcome that has demoralized the left is a consequence of this obstructionism. The Republicans are going to be rewarded and not punished for this bad behavior, and rewarded in a way that renders the Republican caucus incomparably more radical and crazy.

The stimulus was diminished and weakened, as was healthcare reform, as was financial reform in efforts to deal with Republicans and now strengthened Republicans are going to hack what did manage to get through to pieces. Not only will we not get an urgently necessary second stimulus, it isn't clear to me that we are even going to get budgets through. It isn't clear to me that rabid anti-government and yet somehow pro-war morality-police zealots aren't going to shut down the government altogether over the next two years. The Circus is coming to the House of Representatives, and Jon Stewart is going to have a whole hell of a lot of incivility to lampoon and pretend both sides are equally responsible for. At long last, the Impeachment Democrats took off the table for a literal war-criminal who lied us into the single most catastrophic moral and fiscal disaster in generations will be back on the table again for a President who has done nothing wrong but being a bit browner than white racists are comfortable with. (Of course, the problem there for some will be people like me who are uncivil enough to say that, rather than the fact that it is happening.)

I will admit that I was hoping that the level of Republican irresponsibility this last two years would be punished, that sticking to their relentless Party of No strategy in the face of the greatest economic crisis since the Depression and two (at least) unpopular catastrophic wars would reduce the Republicans to a marginal regional rump and that they would have to return to something more like their Eisenhower profile to survive as a viable national organization (and hence be a party with whom compromise and legible governance can be made), and that progressives in turn could push the Democrats left in the face of browning secularizing demographics.

I knew all that would be difficult given the depth of the recession, but I hoped the level of crazy on view on the right would manage the trick. But few Democrats have the courage of their convictions, few actually care to explain what they are up to or actually tout their real accomplishment, and in that vacuum, Republican lies and hysteria have framed public perceptions, meanwhile the intellectual left has complained about the failures of Democrats in ways that are hard to distinguish in their ferocity from the ways that they complained about Republicans, and at best have reacted defensively to the worst of Republican lies rather than framing an objective case for Democratic accomplishments while pushing for more from the left.

Americans believe that their taxes are higher when they are lower, they believe the bailouts cost orders of magnitude more than they did, they believe Congress was unproductive compared to usual sessions when this was in fact historically one of the most productive congresses in a generation -- and Americans don't seem to care that people are about to be elected who don't think climate change is real when it is, who don't think evolutionary theory is more scientific than folk poetry though it is, who don't think the separation of church and state is a constitutional principle when it is, who think the sorts of economic decisions a household makes in hard times are precisely analogous to the ones a state makes in hard times when they aren't.

People who did more in the way of the right thing are going to be punished for not doing enough and replaced by the people who ensured that enough didn't get done and now declare they will do the opposite of what people want. It doesn't matter how you spin it, this is a catastrophe for our country. This is a crisis born not of blanket incivility but of insufficient respect for factuality.

Lies, ignorance, error, and distortion are driving too much of our public life for an actually functional civitas. The left is abdicating the need to clearly delineate and support the facts as we understand them, and the right is actively debauching fact in an orgy of stunning ignorance and flabbergasting opportunism for incredibly short-term gains. What the right is up to is unsustainable, but destructive enough to do more damage than can be undone. There is no civil or polite way to testify to such facts when we actually face them.

There is a chance (but I hold out no hope for it anymore) that Democrats will cling to their majority in the House by the fingernails, hence sparing us the spectacle of Impeachment and witch-hunts and government shut-downs. If our showing is better than expected there is a chance that the Senate filibuster will be reformed (again, I hold out no hope for it anymore) enough to overcome irresponsible Republican deadlocks and so seduce the Party of No into a willingness to compromise in the name of survival. Under those circumstances wholesome virtuous circles can emerge with which activists to the left of the President can work to push him from that left to strengthen healthcare and financial reform piecemeal and get back to environmental and labor regulation and push through necessary lgbtq civil rights legislation.

For heaven's sake, vote. Get every registered voter you know to vote. A decent showing gives those of us to the left of mainstream Democrats the material with which we can work, rather than two years of Bush epoch rage and despair. A decent showing would also demoralize the radical Republican Base whose expectations are sky-high and who are living in a full-froth of fantasy that their mean small backward ignorant hateful views represent overwhelming majorities -- to force them to face the fact of their marginality might nudge the GOP a step toward sanity sooner rather than later and for the good of the whole country. As I said, though, I am far from hopeful anymore -- I am steeling myself for the worst, frankly. And if the worst it is, it's going to be bad.

2 comments:

jimf said...

> For heaven's sake, vote.

Just "hold your nose and vote a straight Democratic ticket",
as a friend of mine is wont to say. It's what I do.


_Washington Monthly_
Political Animal, by Steve Benen
November 1, 2010

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2010_11/026405.php
-------------------------------------
THE LIMITED VALUE OF THE 'VOTE FOR THE PERSON' MAXIM....

I've lost count of how many times I've heard people say, with some
degree of pride, "I vote for the person, not the party." I get the sense
those who repeat it consider it evidence of high-minded independence.

But I've never fully understood what the sentiment is supposed to mean,
exactly. After all, most of the time, those Ds and Rs candidates put
in parentheses after their names are not just for show -- they
generally stand for something. One party wants to pursue policies that
would take the country in one direction; the other party has a very
different direction in mind. Especially as the differences between
the parties become greater than at any time in generations, voters
can express a preference between two visions that have precious little
in common.

With that in mind, the "I vote for the person" crowd is making an
odd argument. These folks seem to be suggesting they're not especially
concerned with policy differences, policy visions, or agendas, but
rather, are principally concerned with personalities. Maybe the
candidate seems more personable; maybe they ran better commercials.
Either way, as a substantive matter, the "vote for the person,
not the party" approach seems pretty weak. Indeed, it's what leads
people to express a series of policy priorities, and then vote for
a candidate who opposes all of those priorities -- a dynamic that's
as exasperating as it is counter-productive.

Michael Kinsley had a piece on voting party lines a few years ago,
and its point still resonates: "There is nothing wrong with voting
for the party and not the person.... A candidate's party affiliation
doesn't tell you everything you would like to know, but it tells
you something. In fact, it tells you a lot -- enough so that it
even makes sense to vote your party preference even when you know
nothing else about a candidate. Or even vote for a candidate that
you actively dislike."

jimf said...

"Return of the Yellow Dog: A case for voting for the party
over the person"
by Michael Kinsley
Oct. 29, 2006

http://www.slate.com/id/2152350/
-------------------------------------
One of the axioms of small-d democratic piety in this country
is that you vote for the person and not for the party. People
just love to say, "I evaluate each candidate on his or her own
merits" -- even when it's not true. A related form of democratic
piety is to refrain from voting at all if you know little or nothing
about the candidates. . .

The term "yellow dog Democrats" used to mean someone who would vote for
any Democrat over any Republican, even if the Democrat were a yellow dog. . .
[P]eople feel sheepish (to introduce another animal) about voting the party line.

My advice is: relax. There is nothing wrong with voting for the party
and not the person. There is even nothing wrong with blindly voting
for the Democrat (or, I suppose, the Republican) even if you know nothing
else about him or her. In other democracies, such as Britain, this
person-not-the-party piety is not just unknown but would be hard to
comprehend. Whatever Burke may have said, a member of Parliament is your
representative. He or she runs on a party platform promising various
things, and if that party wins a majority of seats it "forms a government."
You would be silly to vote for the person and not the party. The party's
views are what counts. The person's own views are almost irrelevant.

Even under the American arrangement, there is nothing ignoble about voting
the party line. It is an efficient way to minimize your information costs.
Voting is an irrational act: Despite what they drum into you starting in
kindergarten, your vote does not matter unless it's a tie. And even 2000
was not a tie. The more effort you put into learning about the candidates,
the more irrational voting becomes, and the more likely you are not
to bother. A candidate's party affiliation doesn't tell you everything
you would like to know, but it tells you something. In fact, it tells
you a lot -- enough so that it even makes sense to vote your party
preference even when you know nothing else about a candidate. Or even
vote for a candidate that you actively dislike.