Newsweek’s Predictions for 2010

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Newsweek‘s top ten predictions are online. Read the article for Newsweek‘s reasoning — the comments are mine — but here are the predictions.

  1. Pelosi keeps the house — Dems lose some House seats in the midterm elections but keep their majority. I say probably yes.
  2. GOP Ousts Reid — a Republican will take Harry Reid’s Senate seat. I think this is highly possible, and the Left should be finding a progressive challenger for the Dem primary. Who should be next majority leader, assuming Dems keep the majority?
  3. GOP Blocks Immigration Reform — if “reform” doesn’t involve fences and cattle prods, they’re agin’ it. Although the real reason their agin’ it is they want to keep their undocumented household help.
  4. California Stays Blue — Republican challengers for Senate seats will lose.
  5. Palin Gets a Talk Show — Bravo, Lifetime, or Fox? I say Fox.
  6. Florida Elects Sen. Crist — rightie challenges of Gov. Crist will backfire, and Crist will be elected to the Senate. We’ll see.
  7. Senator Dodd Loses Connecticut Seat — maybe the Left ought to be looking for a primary challenger there also.
  8. Obama Gets Second Court Pick — he’s bound to get another pick before 2012, anyway.
  9. Obama Does Nada on Gay Rights — probably true.
  10. Dems Steal Texas Governor’s Mansion — Houston Mayor Bill White will win the gubernatorial election by a nose. That would be sweet.

Senate Shenanigans

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By now you’ve probably seen the video in which Sen. Al Franken declines to allow Sen. Joe Lieberman to drone on past his 10 minute allotted time. Well, it wasn’t just Lieberman, and it wasn’t just Franken. Sen. Mark Begich (D-Alaska) similarly declined to allow Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) to go over 10 minutes.

It turns out the freshman Democrat from Alaska was acting under orders of Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., the Senate majority leader, who said he had grown tired of what he deemed Republican delaying tactics.

Begich, who as a junior member of the Senate is required to preside over the chamber frequently to learn its rules, had been asked to limit everyone to 10-minute speeches to speed up proceedings. Another freshman, Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., treated Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., much the same way Thursday.

OK, but … so little, and so late.

For another exhibit in the “IOKIYAR” museum, see Paul Kane and Lori Montgomery in the Washington Post:

Senate Republicans failed early Friday in their bid to filibuster a massive Pentagon bill that funds the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, an unusual move designed to delay President Obama’s health-care legislation.

On a 63 to 33 vote, Democrats cleared a key hurdle that should allow them to approve the must-pass military spending bill Saturday and return to the health-care debate. After years of criticizing Democrats for not supporting the troops, just three Republicans supported the military funding.

Proof that atheists are on to something — Eric Kleefeld reports for TPM:

The Family Research Council Action PAC held an extraordinary “prayercast” event last night, praying for the intercession of God to change Senators’ minds and stop the health care bill. …

…Co-host Lou Engle focused the event as a protest against abortion, alleging that the bill would result in government funding and promoting it, and likening their prayers to Biblical figures who worked to stop the genocide of the Jews. “But the Bible’s very clear that prayer affects government,” said Engle. “Esther’s three-day fast changed public policy; Daniel’s fast changed public policy; and it’s the same, yesterday, today and forever, and that’s why we’re here.”

Does that mean they’re going to fast until the health care bill is defeated (she said, hopefully, thinking that this could take a while)? Apparently not; they’re just going to pray a lot. Anyway, I’m saying that any self-respectful wrathful omnipotent being would have sent enough lightening bolts to vaporize the lot of them by now. Yet members of the Family Research Council are still corporeal.

On the plus side, Susie Madrak’s report on yesterday’s blogger conference call on health care (which I skipped, sorry) is reassuring.

The Mandate Fight Is the Wrong Fight

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The health care “debate” among progressives has crumbled into a fight over the mandate to purchase insurance. This is the wrong fight. We all need to refocus and look at the bigger picture.

At Firedoglake, Jon Walker writes that the Senate bill with a mandate is unacceptable because the Senate bill’s provisions for insurance industry regulation are weak. Well, worse than weak. Jon Walker is right about that. And the Senate bill with no public option, no regulation of the insurance industry, and a mandate to purchase insurance would be a mess that would mostly benefit the insurance industry.

But the Senate bill would not be the final bill. There’s a House bill, remember? And the House bill is much stronger in the regulation department. The House bill strips health insurance companies of their antitrust exemption and outlaws price fixing, bid rigging and “market allocations” by health insurance companies. With those provisions, we’d end up with something that is closer to the systems in The Netherlands and Switzerland that Jonathan Cohn writes about at The New Republic.

No, it wouldn’t be exactly the same, but it would be close enough to be a big improvement over what we have now. It would be a big improvement over what Mitt Romney established in Massachusetts, because there would be much stronger regulations than a state could impose.

If by some miracle, someday, we really got somewhere with universal healthcare, it’s going to be some variation of single payer or some kind of mixed public-private system that mandates insurance purchase, as is done in The Netherlands or Switzerland. In other words, there will either be universal coverage provided by a government or through an individual mandate. Nothing else is possible.

Jon Walker is right to say that the Senate bill provisions are way different from what works in Switzerland. But if we ever did get a fair and workable system short of single payer, a mandate would be a necessary part of that. That’s because caring for the uninsured is one of the biggest factors driving up cost for everyone. And if a substantial part of younger, healthier people are opting out of the risk pool, it drives up premiums for everyone else.

So if hell does freeze over and we get a shot at passing a reasonable universal health care bill that is something like what they’ve got in The Netherlands and Switzerland, it will have to include the individual mandate. And all the arguments against the mandate progressives are making now will be hauled out of mothballs and used against it.

But insurance industry regulations are essential also. Without the regulations in the House bill there really is no reform, just a big social welfare program that funnels money into private industry.

So put aside the mandate for a moment. As I see it, there are three issues we should be discussing (in my order of preference):

1. Insurance industry regulations in the final bill. Instead of fighting to take out the mandate, we should be fighting to put in the regulations from the House bill. The Senate bill is completely unacceptable on that score.

The Senate bill even has the ridiculous “buying insurance across state lines” provision, which is an invitation for the insurance industry to set up shop in Texas and sell junk policies to the young and healthy. Older and sicker people would be left behind in higher-risk pools, driving up their premiums. And the young folks might pay premiums for years before making a claim and finding out they’ve been ripped off — Dear Policy Holder: This policy doesn’t cover whatever it is you have. Sorry.

If we can’t get traction with regulations, the next option is —

2. Go to reconciliation. I’d say do this before going to a final bill without regulations. However a healthcare bill passed under reconciliation would have to be rewritten so that it would reduce the federal deficit over five years by at least a billion dollars and be deficit neutral after that. Plus, any part of the bill that does not significantly impact the budget could not be included in the bill. Most people who understand how this works say you’d lose insurance industry regulations and other good stuff with reconciliation, although you could include the public option. So reconciliation is not a magic bullet that will make everything the way we want it to be, but it might give us something somewhat less obnoxious than the current Senate bill.

3. Kill the bill. This really is a nuclear option, because if the bill is killed it may be years before we get another shot at reform. But if the final bill is mostly the Senate bill as it is now, we’re better off without it. If this weakens the Obama Administration, so be it; the President might learn something, and he’s got three more years to change his modus operandi. But this has got to be followed up by a very strong effort to defeat every “centrist” Democrat up for re-election in 2010 and 2012.

These three issues are what we should be discussing, not the mandates.

Why Progressives Are Nuts to Oppose the Mandate

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For years progressives (like me) have asked why we can’t have a health care system more like those in other countries. Well, folks, listen up — Jonathan Cohn writes,

The Netherlands and Switzerland require their residents to purchase health insurance from private carriers. Residents who do not are subject to fines. Yet most knowledgeable followers of health care policy have only good things to say about the Dutch system and mostly (though not always) good things to say about the Swiss counterpart.

The Dutch system, in particular, is widely considered among the world’s best and achieves most of the goals liberals in this country want: The insurance is universal and comprehensive, access to care is convenient and easy, the quality of medicine is high.

Cohn argues that if the public option is politically untenable, we should be pushing Congress for insurance regulations similar to the Dutch and Swiss systems. Then we might actually end up with universal health care similar to what they have in The Netherlands and Switzerland. That wouldn’t have been my first choice, but it’s a damn sight better than what we have now But the mandate is essential to that.

Cohn explains why the mandate is essential here, but see also Ezra Klein and Nate Silver. Please read Klein’s and Silver’s arguments before commenting here. I don’t have the time or energy to explain this for you.

Why I Don’t Want to Be a Senator

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I don’t know how any one could stand to put up with all the nonsense in the Senate. It wears me out just reading about it. If I were in the chamber itself I would have been driven to throw something at Joe Lieberman’s head by now.

On the other hand — until very recently, news media seemed incapable of publishing anything about Joe Lieberman without calling him “principled.” Those days seem to be over, at least in some places. Ezra Klein responds to some critics who still think Holy Joe has principles. See also “More explanations from Joe Lieberman that don’t make sense.”

Matt Yglesias argues that the flawed and disappointing health care reform bill will still help a lot of people, so I’m inclined to say what the hell. Pass the damn thing. Dragging the fight out further is unlikely to improve it. That doesn’t mean the fight isn’t over, though.

Time to Kill the Bill?

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The question many of us have debated is, how bad does the health care bill have to get before we’re better off killing it? Howard Dean says the time has come.

The gauntlet from Dean — whose voice on health care is well respsected among liberals — will energize those on the left who are mobilizing against the bill, and make it tougher for liberals to embrace the emerging proposal. In an excerpt Kinzel gave me, Dean says:

“This is essentially the collapse of health care reform in the United States Senate. Honestly the best thing to do right now is kill the Senate bill, go back to the House, start the reconciliation process, where you only need 51 votes and it would be a much simpler bill.”

Kinzel added that Dean essentially said that if Democratic leaders cave into Joe Lieberman right now they’ll be left with a bill that’s not worth supporting.

On the other hand, Nate Silver writes Why Progressives Are Batshit Crazy to Oppose the Senate Bill. You’ll have to read his post for the argument, but it’s a solid wonk argument.

Greg Sargent:

There’s a debate raging in the blogosphere about whether the Senate bill has been so watered down that it’s time to try to kill it, and one thing that’s interesting is how cleanly it breaks down as a disagreement between operatives and wonks.

The bloggers who are focused on political organizing and pulling Dems to the left mostly seem to want to kill the bill, while the wonkier types want to salvage it because they think it contains real reform and can act as a foundation for further achievements.

All I know is that I have a headache.

The System Is Broken

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We may be selling the original Manichaeism short — I wouldn’t know — but the word has come to refer to a way of looking at the world through a two-color prism that sorts everything and everyone into two piles — good/bad, right/wrong, light/dark, us/them. You might remember that Glenn Greenwald wrote an excellent book about Manichaeism in the Bush Administration. In short, looking at the world this way is a distortion of reality that lures people into doing terrible things in the name of Good.

Although Manichaeistic thinking is more pronounced on the Right, there’s a version of it common on the Left also. This is the view that sorts all Democratic politicians into one of two categories — they are either pure and noble defenders of the righteous liberal cause or blackhearted, corrupt sellouts to the moneyed Powers That Be. And while the default mood of righties is seething resentment, the default mood of lefties may be either annoying self-righteousness or deadening cynicism, or the two combined.

The recent much-discussed essay “Liberals Are Useless” by Chris Hedges is a good example. I have enjoyed much of Chris Hedges’s work over the years, but this essay could be an object lessons in How Progressives Marginalize Themselves. Although Hedges makes some valid points, too much of the essay amounts to his self-righteously lambasting “liberals” for not being liberal or cynical enough, and then proudly announcing that he remains pure because he voted for Ralph Nader.

Excuse me for being cynical, but I think Ralph Nader is useless, and cynics who vote for him are doubly so. It’s easy to stand outside the system and rail about how awful it is, which is all Nader does any more. Hell, I do it all the time. Ain’t nothin’ to it. But that’s about all progressivism did from the 1970s until very recently, and look how effective that was. As long as that’s all we do, nothing is going to change.

“Anyone who says he or she cares about the working class in this country should have walked out on the Democratic Party in 1994 with the passage of NAFTA,” Hedges says. In fact, with few exceptions progressive activists pretty much walked out on party politics altogether in the mid-1970s, and nobody noticed. It’s been only very recently that we’ve been putting our energies back into party politics, as opposed to standing around on street corners and handing out fliers for the cause du jour.

Whether we like it or not, the fact is that nothing gets done except through the system, and the system is two parties, and that’s how it’s going to be until we revise how we run elections. As I see it, we either play the game as it is or take our ball and go home. The former is going to be frustrating and messy, and we may fail. But if we do the latter, failure is certain.

I think the biggest problem we face right now is not that our political leaders aren’t as good as they used to be, but that the system is broken. This is bigger than just whether President Obama or Nancy Pelosi or Harry Reid are trying hard enough. None of those people are beyond criticism, but simply carping at them as “sellouts” isn’t helping any of us.

Matt Taibbi’s Rolling Stone article “Obama’s Big Sellout” is a variation on the “It’s Obama’s Fault” meme that is currently popular on the Left. Brad DeLong — not exactly a rube — finds the piece riddled with errors, beginning with the positions on issues that Barack Obama took during the 2008 campaign. See also Tim Fernholz.

In a post called “Blame Obama First,” Matt Yeglesias explains that it’s the whole bleeping government, not just President Obama, that is not performing as hoped.

The implicit theory of political change here, that pivotal members of congress undermine reform proposals because of “the White House’s refusal to push for real reform” is just wrong. That’s not how things work. The fact of the matter is that Matt Taibbi is more liberal than I am, and I am more liberal than Larry Summers is, but Larry Summers is more liberal than Ben Nelson is. Replacing Summers with me, or with Taibbi, doesn’t change the fact that the only bills that pass the Senate are the bills that Ben Nelson votes for.

The problem here, to be clear, isn’t that lefties are being too mean to poor Barack Obama. The problem is that to accomplish the things I want to see accomplished, people who want change need to correctly identify the obstacles to change. If members of congress are replaced by less-liberal members in the midterms, then the prospects for changing the status quo will be diminished. By contrast, if members are replaced by more-liberal members (either via primaries or general elections) the prospects for changing the status will be improved. Back before the 2008 election, it would frequently happen that good bills passed congress and got vetoed by the president. Since Obama got elected, that doesn’t happen anymore. Now instead Obama proposes things that get watered down or killed in congress. That means focus needs to shift.


Michael Tomasky, writing for The Guardian:

Watching American politics through British eyes, you must be utterly mystified as to why Barack Obama hasn’t gotten this healthcare bill passed yet. Many Americans are too. The instinctive reflex is to blame Obama. He must be doing something wrong. Maybe he is doing a thing or two wrong. But the main thing is that America’s political system is broken.

How did this happen? Two main factors made it so. The first is the super-majority requirement to end debate in the Senate. The second is the near-unanimous obstinacy of the Republican opposition. They have made important legislative work all but impossible.

The super-majority requirement – 60 votes, or three-fifths of the Senate, to end debate and move to a vote on final passage – has been around since the 19th century. But it’s only in the last 10 to 15 years that it has been invoked routinely. Back in Lyndon Johnson’s day – a meaningful comparison since American liberals are always wondering why Obama can’t be “tough” like Johnson – the requirement was reserved for only the most hot-button issues (usually having to do with race). Everything else needed only 51 votes to pass, a regular majority.

Steve Benen:

Over the last several months, the right has come to believe that the president is a fascist/communist, intent on destroying the country, while at the same time, many on the left have come to believe the president is a conservative sell-out. The enraged right can’t wait to vote and push the progressive agenda out of reach. The dejected left is feeling inclined to stay home, which as it turns out, also pushes the progressive agenda out of reach. …

… Remember: nothing becomes law in this Congress unless Ben Nelson and Joe Lieberman approve. Literally, nothing. That’s not an encouraging legislative dynamic, and it’s not within the power of the White House to change it.

It is within the power of voters to change it.

Obama has asked Congress to deliver on a pretty large-scale agenda. For all the talk about the president’s liberalism or lack thereof, the wish-list he’s presented to lawmakers is fairly progressive, and it’s not as if Obama is going to start vetoing bills for being too liberal.

But Congress isn’t delivering. The two obvious explanations happen to be the right ones: 1) for the first time in American history, every Senate bill needs 60 votes, which makes ambitious/progressive policymaking all but impossible; and 2) there are a whole lot of center-right Democratic lawmakers, which, again, makes ambitious/progressive policymaking that much more difficult.

I think Jane Hamsher is just flat-out wrong when she writes that a health care reform bill with no public option and no Medicare buy-in — what Joe Lieberman wants — is “giving Obama what he wanted anyway.” Yeah, that’s what most of the Kewl Kids are saying. But I think what Obama wanted is whatever reform he could get from Congress. And as Steve Benen says, Congress isn’t delivering. It can’t deliver, because it’s broken. Yeah, there are lots of things Obama could have done differently, but had he done any of those things we may have been no better off than we are now.

The relationship between progressive activists/bloggers and Democratic politicians is, um, dynamic. The same figures might be on the “bad” side on one issue (David Jay Rockefeller, warrantless wiretaps) and the “good” side on another (Jay Rockefeller, health care). Sometimes characters are re-cast in relation to other characters; for example, Hillary Clinton’s miraculous makeover from corporate sellout to champion of progressivism during the 2008 primaries.

But this has always been so. People are a lot messier and complicated than archetypes. Earl Warren became a champion of civil rights, but before he became a Supreme Court Justice he was one of the chief proponents of the Japanese Internment during World War II. Likewise, FDR — champion of progressivism that he was — was complicit in the internment and also made a deal with southern Dixiecrats that left African-Americans out of the New Deal. Harry Truman got his start in politics through a friendship with one of the most corrupt city bosses of all time.

And the moral is, if you’re looking for knights in shining armor, rent some movies.

This Way to the Egress

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P.T. Barnum used to post signs in his New York “museum” that said “This way to the egress.” People who didn’t know “egress” means “exit” were tricked into exiting. But sometimes the freak show gets too freaky. So — don’t click on this link. You’re better off with the egress. Or, read this commentery by Thers that describes the specimen behind the link.

More signs and wonders — thousands of people demonstrated in Copenhagen, demanding that the climate change conference actually accomplish something that might slow global warming. Of course, in WingnutWorld this is explained away as “astroturf.” John at Power Tools has brilliantly concluded the protests must be the products of astroturf, because so many protesters were carrying identical printed signs.

Note the identical, professionally printed, color-coordinated yellow and black signs. This is what Astroturf–fake grass roots–looks like. The signs use the same colors as the International ANSWER signs that are ubiquitous at far-left rallies here in the U.S., but carry no identifier. It would be interesting to know who paid for the signs, and whether the same organization that bought the signs also paid for the demonstrators.

By the Big Tool’s logic, the 1963 civil rights march on Washington was astroturf:

Here’s a close up view of some of the signs:

Library of Congress

Library of Congress

“This is what Astroturf–fake grass roots–looks like,” says the Tool. They are carrying identical printed signs. Apparently people who are capable of organizing themselves for a cause cannot find their way to a print shop. Only corporate sponsors can print signs. Makes you wonder who paid for the signs back in 1963, and if the same organization that bought the signs also paid the demonstrators. Because you know a lot of highly motivated African American persons would not have demonstrated for civil rights in 1963 unless they were paid, according to the Tool.

As for International ANSWER — I have no use for ANSWER, which is no more a grassroots organization than I’m Brad Pitt. Sometimes they do carry yellow signs with black print, and sometimes they carry signs that are other colors. But if carrying yellow signs with black print is proof one is part of the International Communist Conspiracy (ANSWER actually is, which seems to me to be proof that one needn’t be much worried about it any more), then one wonders what this crew is up to.

In another exhibit of the Stupid Museum — the American Un-thinker wonders about rich people like Michael Moore and George Soros. “How can someone preach socialism while being the most rapacious “capitalist” imaginable?” he asks.

It’s simple, genius. Moore and Soros are not socialists, and they do not preach socialism. Oh, and this way to the egress.

Update: Just to show that not everyone protesting climate change in Copenhagen is a Communist — here are a couple of protesters dressed as Republicans.

Is America Irrevocably Ungovernable?

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Steven Pearlstein writes that America would be better off with a Republican like Mitch Daniels, Governor of Indiana, as Senate Minority Leader rather than Mitch McConnell.

The bad Mitch, as most Americans know by now, is the charmless and shameless hypocrite who offers up a steady stream of stale ideology and snarky talking points but almost never a constructive idea. McConnell has decided that the only way for Republicans to win is for President Obama to lose, and he will use lies, threats and all manner of parliamentary subterfuge to obstruct the president’s programs.

The good Mitch, by contrast, is a principled but practical conservative who respects the intelligence of voters and would rather get something done than score political points. Daniels is a genuine fiscal conservative who took a $600 million state budget deficit and turned it into a $1 billion surplus but managed to do so without cutting spending for education and even increased funding for child welfare services. He pushed hard to lower property taxes but didn’t hesitate to propose temporary hikes in income and sales taxes to keep the state in the black. He privatized the state’s toll road and then used the $4 billion proceeds to launch a major public works investment program.

Many have pointed out that Republican governors tend to be less crazy than Republican congresspersons — there are exceptions — mostly because governors actually have to govern. So if Mitch Daniels went to Washington he might end up being as big a waste of time as Mitchell Mitch McConnell. Ezra Klein says, “Telling this story in terms of good people and bad people doesn’t give enough weight to the structural incentives that make people of all sorts do good and bad things.”

Matt Yglesias takes this a bit further —

We’re suffering from an incoherent institutional set-up in the senate. You can have a system in which a defeated minority still gets a share of governing authority and participates constructively in the victorious majority’s governing agenda, shaping policy around the margins in ways more to their liking. Or you can have a system in which a defeated minority rejects the majority’s governing agenda out of hand, seeks opening for attack, and hopes that failure on the part of the majority will bring them to power. But right now we have both simultaneously. It’s a system in which the minority benefits if the government fails, and the minority has the power to ensure failure. It’s insane, and it needs to be changed.

A rightie blogger, missing the larger point, snarks that when Republicans were the majority many Dems made noise about obstructing the Bush agenda. However, as I remember it, it mostly just noise — rarely were the Dems able to stop the Bushie steamroller. On the other hand, Republican obstruction of the Obama Administration has been pretty effective.

So the problem is not just that Congress can’t get anything done. Under some circumstances it can act effectively and decisively. However, in recent years when Congress acts effectively and decisively, it does so to do things that should not be done — e.g., wreck the nation’s finances with ridiculous tax cuts, start pointless wars, interfere with Terri Shiavo’s medical care. Pushing each of these bad decisions are mighty forces of ideological and vested interests.

But when it comes to taking care of the needs of the American people — forget it. It seems that nothing the American people really need the federal government to do can ever get done. Which means, basically, that Washington cannot govern. Because using the country’s power and resources to serve narrow partisan, ideological and vested interests is not governing. Responding to the needs of the people is governing.

Update: Another rightie mis-reads Matt Yglesias and thinks Matt is just complaining about the filibuster (see rightie’s earlier post in which he does the same thing). Of course, the issue is not the filibuster itself but the fact that a large chunk of Congress serves partisan and corporate interests only. We, the People, are screwed.

[Update: The rightie tells me I am in error. No; I say again, the filibuster itself is not the principal issue. See the Steney Hoyer interview linked in the next paragraph, where Hoyer says “This is a United States Senate that has had more cloture votes in one year than in the ’60s and ’70s combined.” The use of the filibuster as an instrument of obstruction is part of the institutional set-up to which Matt Yglesias refers, but the filibuster itself has been around forever, even in times past when the Senate really could do useful work.

And there is a lot more to the “institutional set-up” than just the filibuster. The procedures for getting bills out of committee, for example, were often used by the Republicans to bottleneck Bill Clinton’s initiatives and appointees in the 1990s. In the past few weeks we’ve seen Republicans using amendment procedures to block progress in the Senate. This is way more than just the filibuster.

The deeper issue is the obstructionism itself, what is causing it, and how it functions. This reaches into far more aspects of Senate procedure than just the filibuster, but more importantly it reaches into the way all of our political processes have broken down.]

See also Ezra Klein’s interview of Steney Hoyer. Hoyer is talking about the difficulty of working with today’s whackjob Republicans, although of course there are also Democrats who don’t represent their constituents any more.

Newt Gingrich was of course the chief proponent of that policy, and he and Bob Michel, who was leader of the Republicans, disagreed. And Gingrich eventually succeeded in pushing Michel out. Michel’s view was you sit down, offer your input, and move forward. The theory was that the American people elected the legislative body to make policy and so you make policy. Gingrich’s proposition, and maybe accurately, was that as long as you, Bob Michel, and our party cooperate with Democrats and get 20 or 30 percent of what we want and they get to say they solved the problem and had a bipartisan bill, there’s no incentive for the American people to change leadership. You have to confront, delay, and undermine and impose failure in order to move the public. To some degree, he was proven right in 1994. …

…The motivation Congress has on each side of the aisle is to be in the majority so it can set policy. But it’s very difficult for the institution to move forward on a bipartisan basis when the minority party does not believe that that’s in their best interest to regain the majority.

And it really isn’t in the Republican’s best interest to regain the majority, because they have no interest in governing. Their interests lie in serving corporate and partisan needs, and at that they are actually just as effective, if not more so, remaining in the minority.

Update: As usual, BTD filters this discussion through the prism of his own ego and interprets it as an excuse for President Obama. But I don’t see it as being about Obama; this is much bigger. Bill Clinton battled the same forces during his administration — he couldn’t get health care passed, and many other of his initiatives (such as the airport security bill that might have prevented 9/11) were watered down to the point of total ineffection. Now the same forces are more concentrated, more entrenched, more rigid.