washington, dc

The Democratic Strategist

Political Strategy for a Permanent Democratic Majority

Ed Kilgore

The Bottomless Crack Pipe

As all you budget junkies know, the Senate followed up its rejection of the essential PAYGO amendment to the congressional budget resolution by approving amendments taking out instructions to cut Medicaid and Community Development Block Grants.While I join most Democrats in applauding the Medicaid and CDBG votes (which, among other things, have maintained a slender hope that the whole budget exercise, which will actually increase the federal deficit, will go down in another intra-GOP dispute), there’s no question the overall outcome was intellectually incoherent.Mark Schmitt deserves major props for unraveling these votes, and nailing the four Republican Senators who voted against PAYGO and for rescinding the Medicaid cuts: Sens. Norm Coleman, Gordon Smith, Mike DeWine and Arlen Specter.These aren’t brave “moderates” fighting Bush’s budget priorities; they are either (a) free-lunchers who want to support popular spending and tax cuts simultaneously, or (b) starve-the-beasters who want to constrain government without the political grief involved in specifying actual cuts. And actually, (a) and (b) are pretty much the same thing–which is why I always say Bush’s fiscal policies offer Republicans the political equivalent of a bottomless crack pipe.


SO Busted!

Some of you may have read my snarky little post about “Episcopalian Sociology” yesterday, expressing a desire to attend the next conference of sociologists within commuting distance. Seemed like a harmless little joke. But instantly, my friend Amy Sullivan let me know via Political Animal that in fact, there’s a Sociology Conference going on right now in Washington. Unfortunately, I didn’t read her post until the just now, the shank of the afternoon, when, in my experience, most professional conferences have wound down to the friends, relatives, and research assistants of those condemned to the Last Panel. And much as I truly (and sincerely) wish I could head over tomorrow to hear the panel on political writing that Amy, Garance Franke-Ruta, Noam Scheiber, Ramesh Ponnuru, and others are conducting, I have to head down to Central Virginia tonight, where the livestock require tending. It’s a classic Blue State/Red State conflict–feed your mind, or feed your farm animals. But duty calls, and I’ll just have to wait for the DVD.


Sociological Insight

Like a lot of people, when the internet was young I subscribed to a lot of list-serves that fed me little items to brighten my day and provide an excuse not to do real work. One I’ve retained as an expression of solidarity with my beleagured Faith Community is the Episcopal Church’s list-serve, which also provides a handy way to keep current on the endless Human Sexuality fights that have made Anglicans sound like the last die-hard disciples of Freud. But I just got an email with a headline that really made my day:”Episcopalian sociologist finds that most teenagers are inarticulate about their faith.” This created in me an overpowering urge to attend the next major conference of sociologists within commuting distance to seek out its Episcopalian subgroup, which will definitely sponsor the best-stocked open-bar reception. But it also made me sad for the millions of religiously confused Americans who must now look elsewhere for the theological guidance our teenagers are incompetent to provide.


Buzzkills

Well, in the Senate yesterday the Feingold-Chafee Pay-As-You-Go amendment requiring offsets for new budget-busting proposals went down 50-50, which means GOPers will likely get themselves a congressional budget resolution and the power to ram through tax cuts and some screw-the-states-and-the-poor budget cuts on a time-limited, simple majority vote. In addition, an amendment authorizing funds for oil-drilling in the Alaskan Wilderness reserve passed 51-49. As in last year’s elections, close losses have big consequences. I thought the beginning of March Madness might at least distract me from these bad vibes, but with the men’s tourney barely underway, my bracket’s already a shambles, thanks to Pitt and Iowa. So far, my brilliant picks are losing to the whose-mascot-would-win-in-a-fight system.


Nuclear Deterrence

Harry Reid and Senate Democrats have thrown down the gauntlet, in no uncertain terms. If GOPers follow through with their threat to pursue the so-called “nuclear option” (a procedural maneuver that would outlaw filibusters on judicial nominations and allow them to slide through on a simple majority vote), Senate Dems will stop cooperating with all the legislative lubricants (many of which require unanimous consent) that keep the chamber operating.According to (subscription-only) Roll Call today, every Senate Democrat is on board with this strategy, and while Republicans claim to have 50 solid votes for upholding the rule change that’s at the heart of “going nuclear,” their ranks are shaky, beginning with Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter.There are several smart things about the way Reid has approached this fight.First, he’s made it clear that Democratic resistance will not extend to issues like support for U.S. troops, urgent national security matters, or the basic functioning of the federal government. This will avoid some of the parallels the media, in its two-sides-to-every-argument approach to partisan issues, would otherwise draw to Newt Gingrich’s defiant and hugely unsuccessful government shutdown of 1995.Second, Reid is treating the “nuclear option” not as a procedural matter, or even as a defiance of Senate traditions, but as part of a broader pattern of abuse of power by the Republicans who control Washington. As such, he is linking Democratic opposition to this tactic to a broader message of reform, which is exactly what Democrats ought to be doing every day of the year. If nothing else, it will help remind the roughly one-third of the population that doesn’t know who runs Congress that Republicans can no longer pose as the anti-Washington party, because they are in charge of the whole federal government.And third, in terms of the underlying dispute over the judiciary, Reid is linking Democratic resistance to a long bipartisan tradition of opposition to one-party and executive-branch control of the federal bench. I hope Democrats take every opportunity to remind people that these are lifetime appointments we are talking about, which could have a profound impact on the laws of this country for decades.Now, Democrats obviously have a Big Bertha in reserve: the GOP’s real goal, which is to pave the way for Supreme Court appointments designed to overturn Roe v. Wade, the long-delayed payoff to the cultural conservative foot-soldiers of the Republican base. As a self-proclaimed (if moderate) pro-lifer, Reid may well have special credibility in opposing an indirect assault on the right to choose, by GOPers who know they would lose any straight fight on abortion.Add it all up, and you’ve got a formula for raising the stakes on this obscure-sounding conflict, and that’s what Democrats need in order to win. Some real drama is required to overcome the media perception that this is just cloakroom maneuvering by the partisan pols in Washington, over a snoozer of an issue.Maybe the Democratic battle-plan will act as a deterrent to the deployment of the nuclear option. Some GOPers, after all, want to use the so-called Judicial Obstruction issue as a conservative fundraising and crowd-pleasing device going into the 2006 elections. And even more of them won’t be happy with the consequences of provoking a partial shutdown of the Senate, interfering with all sorts of opportunities for pork-barrelling, constituency-tending, and beast-starving (not to mention those handy little bills naming some home-state highway interchange after a big contributor or local potentate).But deterrent or not, this is a fight well worth having, and a fight that can only be won if Democrats are serious and systematic about waging it with a large reform message.


Big Doings in the Senate

Suddenly, the World’s Greatest Deliberative Body, the U.S. Senate, is full of meaningful activity this week, thanks to the annual debate on a congressional budget resolution. Today Bill Nelson of FL offered a sense-of-the-Senate resolution expressing opposition to any Social Security proposal that involved “deep benefit cuts or a massive increase in debt.” It failed on a 50-50 vote, but as Sam Rosenfeld noted at Tapped, its big-tent wording not only attracted support from every single Democrat and five Republicans, but also put 50 GOPers on record as having no problem with “deep benefit cuts or a massive increase in debt,” a gift to Democrats that will keep on giving for many campaigns to come. And it was a particularly smart move for Nelson, a prime target for Republicans in 2006 in a state where messing with Social Security is just not something you want to do. But as Mark Schmitt of The Decembrist has explained, the Senate will consider another amendment tomorrow with perhaps bigger implications: an amendment to the budget resolution cosponsored by Democrat Russ Feingold and Republican Lincoln Chafee that would reimpose pay-as-you-go (PAYGO) rules for spending increases AND tax cuts. This amendment would block the current administration/GOP leadership effort to extend some of the 2001 tax cuts without offsetting spending or revenue measures. If it passes–probably an even bet at this point–PAYGO might well replicate last year’s House-Senate Republican impasse over the budget resolution, which means GOPers would not be able to ram through their specific budget plans (not only tax cuts, but some nasty spending measures, especially on Medicaid) without the usual 60-vote requirement to avoid a Senate filibuster.In other words, this is a key step in unravelling the whole Bush legislative agenda for the year, and in stopping the insane tax and fiscal priorities that will eventually disable our government from doing much of anything to meet big national challenges. The vote tomorrow merits some real attention and energy.


DeLay Wants To Talk

Funniest lede of the day? This one, from AP (via CNN):”House Majority Leader Tom DeLay strongly denied wrongdoing Tuesday in connection with two overseas trips financed by outside organizations, and said he is eager to discuss the facts with leaders of the House ethics committee.”I like that “strongly denied.” What’s he going to do? “Weakly” deny wrongdoing? It reminds me of a great Hunter Thompson fantasy (we miss you, man) from Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail, wherein a doomed candidate denies reports he’s withdrawing from the race and “predicts total victory in all states.” DeLay’s alleged “eagerness” to talk about his junkateering–especially the little casino-financed jaunt to the U.K.–is pretty funny, too. Yeah, I bet he just can’t wait to lay out all the details. The way this story’s going, it’ll probably turn out he made the trip on Hooters Air.But the best part is DeLay’s designated confessional box: the House Ethics Committee. Good thing he had the foresight to neuter the watchdog committee completely in a series of moves earlier this year. Making his case to those guys is the functional equivalent of sticking it in a bottle and dropping it in the ocean. But maybe he should wait a week or two before he gets chatty about his latest series of ethical lapses. At his current pace, there will be two or three more, er, ah, situations to explain by Friday. DeLay, of course, is blaming all his problems on a partisan Democratic witch-hunt. He’s giving us way, way too much credit for industry and imagination. Nobody could invent this level of ethics recidivism. And with more smoke in the air than a roadhouse on Saturday night, DeLay could burst into flames any day now, with or without Democrats helpfully offering some lighter fluid.


On Second Thought….

One of the inherent risks of blogging is that once you hit that “publish” buttom, it’s Out There and you can’t really take it back. My last post defending myself and the DLC from a tirade by Kos will likely earn me lots of emails and links deploring my involvement in this “fight” (vindicating the school-yard axiom that nobody really cares who hits first or hardest; the Assistant Principal will punish everybody). What I should have done is to link to the screed, and then quote Woody Allen’s words to the Christopher Walken character in Annie Hall:”Excuse me, Duane, I have an appointment back on Planet Earth.”


Beams and Motes

Well, it was just a matter of time, I guess. Perhaps upset at occasional bouts of Sympathy for the Devil being posted on his own page, Kos of DailyKos has more or less called for kicking the DLC out of the Democratic Party for being mean to other Democrats. Or at least I have no other way of understanding today’s characterization of myself and my colleagues as “the media’s handy tool for Democratic bashing. Enemies of unity of the left. Self-important fools who exist merely to advance the other side’s agenda.” Nothing much ambiguous about that, eh?The crowning “outrage,” apparently, is the recent suggestion by Al From and Marshall Wittman that maybe the leadership of MoveOn doesn’t speak for the Democratic Party as a whole, a suggestion Kos chooses to interpret as a call for the party to “purge millions of supporters from its ranks.” (Oh, yeah, Al also mocked bloggers; I somehow managed to get over it, down there in my basement).Man, talk about beams and motes. The vitriol that’s been poured on the DLC by Kos and several other netwarriors in the last couple of years is endless, personal, often obscene, and frankly, a little nuts. If we’re as irrelevant as he keeps insisting we are, why bother? Just ignore us, and we’ll go away, right? If our only value, as Kos suggests today, is to provide right-wing media with anti-Democratic quotes, then you have to wonder why so many elected officials bother to identify with us and come to our events (e.g., one today attended by Sen. Joe Biden)?Indeed, that question seems to bother Kos as well, since his very next post begins a process of “calling out” DLC-friendly Democratic pols and asking them to disassociate themselves from us. He even took the trouble to dig down in our web page–bypassing a few hundred thousand pages of policy work, which is what we do to pass the time while waiting for the next call from Fox News–and discover that Sen. Barack Obama is still listed in our data base! Scandal! (He’s in there because he recently joined the Senate New Democrat Coalition, all of whose members are in our database, which is about as controversial as a phone book). Hillary Clinton? Evan Bayh? Better get away from those people, or risk the consequences.This is more embarrassing than anything else, to tell you the truth. If Kos was screaming at us for alleged agreement with Bush or something, he’d at least have the beginnings of an argument. But being called “divisive” by a guy who’s way around the bend in hating this particular group of Democrats is just a bad joke.Well, I for one ain’t going anywhere. And having contested this particular guy’s right to show me the door, I will say no more about this or future Kos temper-tantrums. After all, I’ve got some of that deceptive Republican-bashing to do, and a few of those issues to work on that nobody cares to hear from me about. And despite this terrible anathema, I remain ready to break bread with anybody in the party who wants to talk, self-important fool that I am.UPCATEGORY: Ed Kilgore’s New Donkey


Changing the Subject on Security

Thanks to the American Prospect’s apparent new policy of hiding content to sell actual magazines, I’ve been waiting, and waiting, and waiting to write about a fascinating new Matt Yglesias article on Democrats and national security. I read a bootleg copy, but didn’t want to discuss it until I could steer eager readers to a link.But fortunately, in a Tapped post today, Matt did a nice summary of his basic hypothesis:

On forward-looking issues there are, to be sure, disagreements among Democrats. But in my experience those disagreements don’t split the party into two camps, don’t map onto a hawk-dove divide, and don’t have a great deal to do with the Iraq War. The bigger divide is just between people of various persuasions who are determined to continue focusing on national security and find a way to make the Democrats competitive on the issue versus those who’d prefer to put their heads in the sand and hope for a revival of ’90s-style “it’s the economy, stupid” politics.

In the full article, Matt goes on to suggest that this politics of evasion on national security is partly attributable to the constituency-group mindset of so many Democrats. If there ain’t a Big Democratic Group that cares about a subject, why should the rest of us care, right?I’ll do a fuller treatment of Matt’s article when the fine folks at the Prospect put it online, but it does remind me of a satori moment I experienced back in the 90s when the constituency-group focus of my party became clear to me. Shortly after Roy Romer became general chairman of the DNC, a colleague ran into my office with a big fat book, crying “Look, Romer’s already making a difference over there; this is an actual issues book for Democratic candidates!” Together, we excitedly looked at the table of contents, only to find that the “issues” were all organized by constituency group (“Public Employees Issues,” “Asian-Pacific Islanders Issues,” etc., etc.). Made us want to howl at the moon.