What Would Republicans Do?
I can’t pretend that I came up with this idea myself (a tip of the cap to this guy, who is doing a marvelous job of filling in on this radio show while the regular team takes a well-deserved vacation), but I think this is a point that needs to be emphasized:
The reason the Republicans have spent the last 30 years building an intricate infrastructure to trumpet even the most hair-brained ideas and make them seem mainstream is that they have always taken a long-term view of the struggle to make their ideas into legislative reality. So when they don’t overturn Roe v. Wade in one fell swoop or they don’t get get the Ten Commandments posted in every government building or school throughout the country or eliminate every regulation on business, they don’t get discouraged — they double down instead. They chip away at small parts of the woman’s right to choose. They turn their attention to keeping “God” in the Pledge of Allegiance. They push for tax cuts for big businesses and their wealthy patrons. They win those, and then they slowly but surely bite of more of the pie until they end up eating teh whole thing.
That’s in part because Republicans understand something vital that it would behoove Democrats to learn as well (and I think President Obama understands this): It’s not about winning every battle. Ultimately, it’s about winning the war. It’s about winning small battles that eventually add up to an overall victory eventually. It’s the difference between taking a short-term view (“I want single-payer now, and if I don’t get it, I’m taking my ball and going home”) and saying, “This Senate bill has some significant steps forward, and once we pass it we move more easily — through reconciliation — to expand health care even further.” The latter is the more sensible attitude to take about politics, and I would ask all of you to look at the health-care battle through that prism.
Incisive Commentary From The Hustings
I have this brilliant friend of mine who gets even more incensed by politics (specifically the idiocy of our friends with Rs in front of their names, but certainly not exclusively). This person gets equally angry when the person, like me, feels the Democrats are betraying their principles. Here was the email I received about this tool:
I say GOOD RIDDANCE to Parker Griffith. If you vote against Obama’s budget, Obama’s stimulus plan, health care reform and the cap and trade legislation, AND you say you wouldn’t vote for Pelosi as Speaker, you are not, in fact, a Democrat in 2009. You’re a DINO who doesn’t advance any of the causes that the party cares about. No sense continuing this charade any longer. I think the caucus is stronger without this guy, and Rachel Maddow reports that the Tea Partyers are already turning on this guy. Good! They deserve each other!
And then there was the follow-up, which as usual was often better than the first:
So I hear a soundbyte on NPR this morning from Parker What-his-whosit’s new conference yesterday where he says he needs to “go further … and join the party that more reflects my beliefs and convictions.”
Beliefs and CONVICTIONS? So, 13 months ago he was elected as a Democrat and now, suddenly, his “convictions” tell him to go to the other party? Did it come as a surprise to him that the Democrats are for health care reform and cap and trade? Did he not know that Nancy Pelosi was already Speaker of the House?
Good riddance to this shallow, opportunistic, right-wing idiot!
I couldn’t have said it better myself (and so I won’t even bother).
For historical context, this isn’t the first time this kind of nonsense happened. After Bill Clinton’s stunning electoral defeat in the midterms in 1994 (which I’ve already discussed here), a handful of Democratic Senators jumped ship because they were only interested in power. The one that really stands out for me is this guy, who was so out of his league with his move that it remains one of the most stunning party switches in memory. I always wondered whether he knew that the people who were running the party he was joining were the same people who used to run his people off their lands and kill them for sport. I doubt he ever got the irony.
But pseudo-Democrats have a long history of this kind of party switches. In fact, this is how the Republican Party handed its leadership over to people like this, who fled the Democratic Party in 1964 and 1965 after we did the unthinkable and provided African-Americans the rights they deserved from the first day they were brought here in slave ships (what horror!). So it allowed people like this and this to join the Republicans (and vault right into leadership, I might add), and for this guy to switch parties (after ratting out his fellow actors to this abomination) and run a presidential campaign that he launched at the site of one of the most infamous massacres of the entire civil rights movement.
Maybe there’s some really smart Republican operative out there who can explain, using small words I can understand, why people jump from the Democrats to the Republicans when the Democrats are in the majority, but it never works in the reverse. I don’t get it (well, I sorta do, and I suspect it has at least something to do with this).
The Day The World Changed
I sat in front of the television set on Nov. 8, 1994, with a slowly increasing sense of dread. My mouth felt like the Sahara Desert, my stomach contracted with pain and I couldn’t understand what was happening.
Newt Gingrich, that petulant little Republican backbencher who to that point had been most famous for being an obnoxious little snot and bringing down then Democratic Speaker Jim Wright, had done it. With his mix of distortions, misuse of the English language and flat-out lies, he had lead what would become known as the Republican revolution (which has in fact started 14 years earlier with the election of that corporatist empty suit Ronald Reagan, whose full antidemocratic — small “d” — program wouldn’t be fulfilled until the selection of W and his thuggish gang got through his two terms — but I digress).
Those of us who had watched Gingrich do his work behind the scenes trying to destroy the Democratic party through a use of the English language that was unrecognizable to anyone who actually loves it like me were gobsmacked. How on earth did the American people buy into their lies and distortions? How could Americans believe that Democrats were traitors and evil? We’d done OK for more than 40 years. We’d built Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, the Voting Rights Act — the list is practically endless. What changed?
I couldn’t fathom it then (and to some extent I still don’t entirely understand it), but the fact is politics changed on that day forever. It had become more brutish. It became more like a knife fight. It suddenly became all about the winning and not about serving the American people.
But what amazed me then (and to some extent still amazes me to this day) is that the Democrats didn’t realize the game had changed. They still felt they could do deals across the aisle with people whose sole purpose (articulated first by Gingich, Grover Norquist and others) was to destroy the Democratic party. They reached out, and each time had their hands slapped, their noses bloodied and their teeth knocked out. And yet they still continued to try as if they had actual partners in Congress.
For the next 12 years (and to some extent some of them still do today), they spent their time cowering in the corners while the Republicans beat them bloody. And progress in protecting the least among us stopped and, in some cases, was reversed because the Democrats couldn’t figure out what had hit them.
What’s important is us to stop pretending we have partners in the Republicans. Whatever progress this country makes under Obama will be completely without their help, and we must keep up the pressure (and I will have more to say about how to make that pressure productive rather than destructive in a later post) to make sure we continue the glorious progressive tradition of Democrats in the post-Gingrich era. Be prepared to bring a gun to a knife fight because this is a fight we can’t afford to lose.
I hope everyone has a Merry Christmas and that the Senate Democrats can deliver us a Christmas present tomorrow morning on health care. It’s a good bill (not a great bill, I understand, and not single-payer the way I want, but a good bill nonetheless), trust me. And we’ll make it better over time.
I really should be wrapping Christmas presents with my wife, so I’ll sign off for tonight.
