March 14: Democrats Really Were in Disarray Over Spending Bill
Having spent much of the week watching the runup to a crucial Senate vote on appropriations, I had to express at New York some serious misgivings about Chuck Schumer’s strategy and what it did to his party’s messaging:
For the record, I’m usually disinclined to promote the hoary “Democrats in Disarray” narrative whereby the Democratic Party is to blame for whatever nightmarish actions Republicans generally, or Donald Trump specifically, choose to pursue. That’s particularly true right now when Democrats have so little actual power and Republicans have so little interest in following laws and the Constitution, much less precedents for fair play and bipartisanship. So it really makes no sense to accuse the powerless minority party of “allowing” the assault on the federal government and the separation of powers being undertaken by the president, his OMB director Russ Vought, and his tech-bro sidekick Elon Musk. If congressional Republicans had even a shred of integrity or courage, Senate Democrats would not have been placed in the position this week of deciding whether it’s better to let the government shut down than to let it be gutted by Trump, Vought, and Musk.
Having said all that, Senate Democrats did have a strategic choice to make this week, and based on Chuck Schumer’s op-ed in the New York Times explaining his decision to get out of the way and let the House-passed spending bill come to the floor, he made it some time ago. Nothing in his series of rationalizations was new. If, indeed, “a shutdown would be the best distraction Donald Trump could ask for from his awful agenda,” while enabling the administration to exert even more unbridled power over federal programs and personnel, that was true a week ago or a month ago as well. So Schumer’s big mistake was leading Senate Democrats right up to the brink of a collision with the administration and the GOP, and then surrendering after drawing enormous attention to his party’s fecklessness.
This doesn’t just look bad and feel bad for Democrats demanding that their leaders do something to stop the Trump locomotive: It also gives the supreme bully in the White House incentive to keep bullying them, as Josh Marshall points out in his postmortem on the debacle:
“[P]eople who get hit and abused and take it tend to get hit and abused again and again. That’s all the more true with Donald Trump, a man who can only see the world through the prism of the dominating and the dominated. It is a great folly to imagine that such an abject acquiescence won’t drive him to up the ante.”
The reality is that this spending measure was the only leverage point congressional Democrats had this year (unless Republicans are stupid enough not to wrap the debt-limit increase the government must soon have in a budget reconciliation bill that cannot be filibustered). Everyone has known that since the new administration and the new Congress took office in January. If a government shutdown was intolerable, then Democrats should have taken it off the table long before the House voted on a CR. Punchbowl News got it right:
“Let’s be blunt here: Democrats picked a fight they couldn’t win and caved without getting anything in return. …
“Here’s the lesson from this episode: When you have no cards, fold them early.”
Instead, Democrats have taken a defeat and turned it into a debacle. House and Senate Democrats are divided from each other, and a majority of Senate Democrats are all but shaking their fists at their own leader, who did in fact lead them down a blind alley. While perhaps the federal courts will rein in the reign of terror presently underway in Washington (or perhaps they won’t), congressional Democrats must now become resigned to laying the groundwork for a midterm election that seems a long time away and hoping something is left of the edifice of a beneficent federal government built by their predecessors from the New Deal to the Great Society to Obamacare. There’s a good chance a decisive majority of the general public will eventually recoil from the misrule of the Trump administration and its supine allies in Congress and across the country. But at this point, elected Democrats are going to have to prove they should be trusted to lead the opposition.
Interesting that the only post to get any response in a while is this one, showing, I think, how Democrats this time around are more interested in personalities and images rather than real policy issues. Pretty sad.
Thanks, folks, for the comments. I’d like to specifically address Gregg’s, since his there-are-plenty-of-other-veep-options argument against the unity ticket is one you hear from a lot of people (viz., Mark Schmitt’s post in the TNR colloquoy).
It’s true there are a lot of good names floating around out there, but that’s the problem: there are as many rationales for a particular choice as there are candidates. What kind of running-mate does Obama need? A woman? A “populist?” Someone with a strong national security background? Someone from a battleground state? There’s probably no one choice who covers as much political ground as HRC.
Ed Kilgore
In discussions I’ve had about this, the usual comment is why would Obama want Hillary as VP? With Hillary comes Bill, and between them they would be constantly trying to take the spotlight off Obama.
But the VP is powerful only to the extent that the President yields power. Hillary in the Senate has her own power base, and we can expect her to have a leadership position there.
I can envision a situation like that in the late 1970s and 1980, when Ted Kennedy and Tip O’Neill joined forces to destroy the Carter Presidency [at least, that’s how I saw it at the time]. In this scenario, Hillary has too much “integrity” to compromise on health care, or whatever, and noisily protests this and that until, finally, in 2012, she MUST run against Obama for the sake of the country.
Maybe keeping Hillary close at hand is the best course.
As someone who supported Obama during this primary campaign, I would have to say there were times when Hillary said things that were offensive to me, and seemed un-Democratic. These sorts of things happen in all campaigns, and will come back, as they always come back, to hurt Obama in the general campaign. But I am not a Hillary hater, and winning this election is too important to the future of our country to allow my personal pique to undermine my understanding of the big picture.
Really? Perhaps you would like the Clintons and their Dem voters to sit silently behind a curtain, the way the women delegates were forced to do at the First Anti-Slavery Convention.
Of course, it would have to be an awfully big curtain, since the Clinton voters make up half the Dems.
While you’re at it, maybe you can tell the Clintons and their voters; “You can vote for us and send money to us, but we don’t want any input from you, much less sharing any power with you. After all, the Democratic Party has a long tradition of losing nobly, and the only Dem President who’s won two terms is an awful embarrassment to us.”
That way, you can be assured that the Dems lose again in 2008. That’s what you want, right?
You may count me as one who would fall off the Obama wagon if HRC is his running mate. Whether I would then vote Republican is an open question I will reserve judgement about. With McCain running, given his age, I would see HIS VP selection as at least as important as Obama’s.
The arguments against Hillary as VP are well stated above, and resonate with me. To me, his biggest vulnerability is that he is painted by the GOP as “just another pol”, and choosing Hillary as a political ploy would give that theory real legs.
I probably represent the “swing voter” bloc pretty well, based on my history and views. I also have concluded, after 5 decades as a voter that that current Democratic Party has an uncanny penchant for shooting itself in the foot, for pulling defeat out of the hot fire of potential victory. This “dream ticket” (read: nightmare scenario) would be the proof positive of that view, in my opinion.
I could be wrong, I admit, but why risk it? If Obama is not strong enough to craft a winning campaign without a Clinton flavor, then he does not deserve the office of President.
I see two issues: whether such a “unity”ticket would sell and whether it would work in an Administration.
There might be some plausibility that it would sell and help get Obama elected. I think a more interesting question would be who else would help deliver voter segments that Mrs. Clinton has some strength with and who could make inroads into segments that McCain has strengths.
When I heard Sam Nunn’s name mentioned in this regard, my gut reaction was that would make a formidable team. And Mr. Nunn is a real statesman. Self-serving is not a term I would ever attribute to him. There are others.
Whether having Mrs Clinton as VP in an administration– not to mention Bill with time on his hands– would work, c’mon! That would be a situation that would have to be so highly managed. I think Sara Powers’ remark that Hillary was a monster that would say anything was very revealing. It would be very surprising if Obama perceived Clinton as not bringing severe risk factors into his administration.
–Gregg
Ed, besides the repudiation issue you mention, there are two more reasons for Obama not to want Clinton on the ticket. 1) Hillary’s traditionally high negatives and the fact that she is sure to be a GOTV organinzing bonanza for the Right (since McCain is their nominee it is possible that, without Hillary on the ticket, many GOPers will stay home); and 2) Bill. If I were Obama I would not want him on the loose as even a tangential part of the Administration.