Matt Yglesias writes:

I assume the entire progressive blogosphere will agree with me that trying to pursue a more “bipartisan tone” in Washington is a substantively foolish idea for the White House to pursue. But the fact of the matter is that I think the smart thing for any President to say is that he wants to pursue a bipartisan tone, so it’s hard to know what to make of that remark.

(Emphasis supplied.) Is that really true? I think FDR, Reagan and Bill Clinton during the government shutdown (and the 1993 tax fight) would say it is not true. Does anyone outside of the Beltway care about "wanting to pursue a bipartisan tone?" The evidence seems to the contrary to me. High Broderism is important to the Beltway, but results are what matter to the voters. As Yglesias writes in the same post:

Ezra Klein:

It's worth saying, again and again, that the Bush tax cuts cannot pass without Democratic support. They expire before the House changes hands. And even if they didn't, Democrats still control the Senate and the White House. They have a much stronger negotiating position than the Republicans: They can decide what passes, and Republicans have never been willing to end the tax cuts for most Americans simply to preserve the tax cuts for the rich. But though they're the party in charge, Democrats aren't acting like it.

Here's what Ezra Klein won't say - President Obama does not need to bargain with anyone if he wants the Bush tax cuts to expire. He can simply veto any bill that extends them (and he does not need to announce this either.. He can just do it.) From that position, the President can negotiate new tax cuts for the middle class. It really is that simple.

Speaking for me only

In a purely Ivory Tower sense, I thought this was an interesting exchange between Yglesias and Atrios. Yglesias initially posited:

Traditionally raising the Medicare eligibility age more than a teensy bit would be unthinkable, since absent Medicare an elderly person would be totally uninsurable. But under ACA that’s not the case. Of course subsidies will be needed for most retirees, but a workable highly progressive system would be in place to ensure that nobody has to go without access to health coverage.

The "workable highly progressive system" Yglesias is talking about are the vaunted exchanges. Representing those of us who disagree with the idea that the exchanges are a "workable highly progressive system" was Atrios:

One of the things I wrote a lot about early in the Obama Administration was political bargaining. Another theme was the role of activists. On both issues, the liberal blogosphere, in large measure, completely missed the boat in my estimation, choosing to largely defend the ineffectual political bargaining techniques of the Obama Administration and criticizing activists for not being sufficiently supportive of feeble Obama policy initiatives. I dubbed these folks the Beltway Bloggers in an attempt to separate them from the activist blogger. Unfortunately, many of the Beltway Bloggers, Ezra Klein in particular, like to play liberal activist on TV and MSNBC, Keith Olbermann in particular, let them play that role. It was a terrible mistake for all.

Digby writes about a TV segment that illustrates why:

Sam Seder went on to [say . . .] the left has been willing to compromise for a long time, while the right hasn't. [Conservative Matt] Lewis, grinning like a jack-o-lantern, ended with this sage observation:

Well I think the real world implication here Dylan, is that if the Republican base does not want to compromise and the Democratic base is willing to compromise Republicans are going to win more public policy battles than they lose.

What can you say to that?

That he's right, that's what you can say. The question then is what do you do to try and change that? That's the question for progressive activists.

Speaking for me only

I always refer to my self as a Centrist, in part because I think it is expedient, but really, I think I pretty much am a Centrist, in the sense that my views fall pretty much in the middle of opinion in the country. In the Beltway, probably I would be Left, but the Beltway is a bubble all its own.

I tell you this as a preface to commenting on this from Matt Yglesias:

Self-identified conservatives outnumber self-identified liberals by a large margin and moderates are a much bigger force in the Democratic coalition than in the Republican one. So if you want a deal, appointing an orthodox conservative Republican and a moderate Democrat from North Carolina makes a lot of sense.

This is fun with labels nonsense. The Catfood Commission's proposals are filled with proposals that not only are bad, they are far outside the mainstream of what Americans want, and, more relevantly, what Congress will ever approve. I mean really - eliminate the mortgage interest deduction is going to happen? Cutting Social Security benefits is going to happen? Never. Ever. The Catfood Commission proposal is unserious and unSerious. What might it be about? I dunno, but Yglesias' post is silly.

Speaking for me only

Speaker Pelosi:

[O]ur position in the House has been we support the tax cuts for the middle — for everyone, but not an additional tax cut at the high end. It’s too costly. It’s $700 billion. One year would be around $70 billion. That’s a lot of money to give a tax cut at the high end. And I remind you that those tax cuts have been in effect for a very long time, they did not create jobs.

The advantage of having Speaker Pelosi continue as Dem leader in the next Congress would be precisely to articulate the liberal position. If in 2012, Dems decide to choose another image for the election, they can retire Pelosi. For now, the reality is Dems will have no say in what legislation comes out of the House the next two years. But they can distance themselves from policies that they disagree with. And of course, lame duck Speaker Pelosi can basically say no to all the bad ideas floating around now. Let President Obama and Speaker Boehner pass their bad policies in the next Congress, if they can.

Speaking for me only

Matt Bennet of the dishonest Right Wing Third Way:

"I don't think Russ Feingold lost because he wasn't liberal enough," said Matthew Bennett, a vice president at Third Way, a group that urges Democrats to focus on such issues as deficit reduction.

If Russ Feingold had been more conservative, he still would have lost. And Blanche Lincoln, Gene Taylor, Travis Childers, Jim Marshall, Walt Minnick and all the rest of the Blue Dogs who lost did not lose because they were too conservative. They all lost because the economy sucks.

A good, honest, constructive discussion of policy and politics would be healthy for the Democratic Party. But The Third Way is not interested in that. They are interested in dishonestly pushing their Right Wing agenda.

Speaking for me only

Matt Yglesias writes:

I think that where a lot of progressive political junkies go wrong is that they think “blame Republicans for failing to pass plan to fix the economy” is a close substitute for “fix the economy.” In reality, the evidence that fixing the economy would help Democrats politically is overwhelming, while the evidence that the plan/block/blame strategy would work is non-existent.

I don't know what "progressive political junkies" Yglesias is referring to, but most progressives critical of the Obama economic policies argue that Obama should have fought for better policies, because, you know, maybe he would have gotten them. A lot of folks are pretending the inadequate stimulus and the utter failure of a housing/foreclosure policy implemented by the Obama Administration was not what they wanted. In fact, it was. Was it the best they could do? No one knows because they didn't try to do better.

In the bad old days of Clinton Triangulation, the Clinton Administration enacted a policy they thought was best, the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1993. That bill passed in the House by 218-216 and with Vice President Gore casting the tiebreaking vote in the Senate. The Obama Administration, with a less conservative Congress, did not fight as hard for a better economic policy. That is what I criticize.

Speaking for me only

Surprisingly, it's Eugene Robinson:

Making the tax cuts permanent for the wealthy would increase the deficit by $700 billion over the next decade. Which party claims to be urgently, desperately concerned about the deficit? The Republicans, of course. So which party is prepared to bust the budget, if that's what it takes, to serve the interests of the rich? The GOP. And which party, to get its way, refuses to approve desperately needed tax relief for the bruised and battered middle class? Once again, the Republicans.

Now, which party holds the presidency and, until January, ample majorities in both houses of Congress? That would be the Democrats. Which party can point to public opinion polls indicating that Americans support its position that the Bush tax cuts should be extended only for the middle class? That, too, would be the Democrats. And finally, which party somehow appears to be looking for a way to lose this argument and capitulate? Incredibly, the Democrats.

(Emphasis supplied.) It's incredible that the Obama Administration and its Catfood Commission can play this dishonest game about the need to destroy the social safety net at the same exact time they are about to permanently extend the irresponsible Bush tax cuts.

Speaking for me only

Krugman:

[H[ow, exactly, did a deficit-cutting commission become a commission whose first priority is cutting tax rates [. . .]?

[. . . W]hat the co-chairmen are proposing is a mixture of tax cuts and tax increases — tax cuts for the wealthy, tax increases for the middle class. They suggest eliminating tax breaks that, whatever you think of them, matter a lot to middle-class Americans — the deductibility of health benefits and mortgage interest — and using much of the revenue gained thereby, not to reduce the deficit, but to allow sharp reductions in both the top marginal tax rate and in the corporate tax rate.

[. . . T]his proposal clearly represents a major transfer of income upward, from the middle class to a small minority of wealthy Americans. And what does any of this have to do with deficit reduction? [. . . C]an’t we say that for all its flaws, the Bowles-Simpson proposal is a serious effort to tackle the nation’s long-run fiscal problem? No, we can’t. [. . .] It’s no mystery what has happened on the deficit commission: as so often happens in modern Washington, a process meant to deal with real problems has been hijacked on behalf of an ideological agenda. Under the guise of facing our fiscal problems, Mr. Bowles and Mr. Simpson are trying to smuggle in the same old, same old — tax cuts for the rich and erosion of the social safety net.

(Emphasis supplied.) Yep. Speaking for me only

The Chief of Staff of a Democratic Senator writes to TPM:

[I]nstead of pressing our political advantage--which was also clearly the right policy choice [. . .] we flinched[.. . .] Voters could have had a last and important impression about who was on their side and who wasn't, but gracious to a fault, we didn't want to anger anyone, and the result was predictably awful.

Now it appears that we may well make the same mistake again[. . .] If that's what we do, it will make President Obama's many comments about fiscal responsibility an utter joke -- how can we talk about decimating Social Security, raising gas taxes (which hit low and middle-income folks disproportionately hard), raising fees for veterans' health care, messing with student loans, etc., when we're going to blow a $700 billion dollar hole in the budget because of our concern for folks who make $250k and over, who are doing more than fine? Or because those bad Republicans are just too mean? [MORE . . ]

In the bad old days of Clinton Triangulation, President Clinton signed the 1993 Omnibus Tax Reconciliation Act. Two provisions of that law:

(1) Raised the top marginal rate on the wealthy and corporations; and
(2) Lowered taxes for the working poor by increasing the Earned Income Tax Credit.

As Brad DeLong notes, the Catfood Commission is proposing to "pay[] for reductions in the top income tax rate by cutting the Earned Income Tax Credit so that there are once again lots of families in America where a parent works full time and yet the kids are still in poverty[.]"

Evan Bayh Democrats like Kent Conrad love this proposal. Does President Obama?

Speaking for me only