Feed: The Left Coaster - AggScore: 57.8

Harry Reid achieved a minor miracle a half-hour ago when he got 60 votes to begin the health care debate in the Senate right after the Thanksgiving recess. No sooner had he done that, with the help of alleged Democrats Blanche Lincoln and Mary Landrieu, did Lincoln make it clear she would never vote for any final bill that allows cash-strapped middle class families to choose a public plan instead of being forced to buy from the pimps who bankroll her campaigns. Landrieu needed to be bought with $100 million for her state just to allow a vote.

And Joe Lieberman, despite a CBO report that shows the flawed Senate Finanace Committee plan actually reduces the deficit, swore that he would fight health care reform because it adds to the deficit, showing once again that he is wholly-owned by Aetna and other industry pimps. I look forward to someone, anyone, running commercials in Lieberman, Lincoln, and Landrieu's states showing how willing they were to deficit spend a trillion dollars for the war in Iraq, but now cannot stomach a paid-for bill that helps Main Street.

Glenn Greenwald offers a devastating comparison.

Jeralyn explains that the fall of Greg Craig was the triumph of politics over the law.

The Hill has some good news, for which we owe some thanks to Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR).

Digby does what digby does.

Dave Johnson makes a very smart case for taxing the rich. As he said, in the hey-day of steep taxes on the rich, America did a much better job of living up to its billing as a land of opportunity for all and everyone was better off then.

Great piece, Dave. So glad to see that the Merc was willing to publish it.

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi today unloaded on Afghan "President" Hamid Karzai, and made clear that the House will not go along with a major troop buildup in Afghanistan.

Reuters:

Afghan President Hamid Karzai is an "unworthy partner" who does not deserve a big boost either in U.S. troops or civilian aid, U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi said.

Pelosi, a skeptic on sending more troops to Afghanistan, also said in an interview with National Public Radio aired on Friday that there was not strong support among her fellow Democrats in Congress for "any big ramp-up of troops" to oppose resurgent Taliban forces.

She told NPR she had asked fellow Democrats to give President Barack Obama room to decide his Afghan strategy, which is expected to be announced in the coming weeks. Once Obama, also a Democrat, announces his decision, lawmakers would "not be shy" about responding, she said.

"The president of Afghanistan has proven to be an unworthy partner. We cannot fund a mission where we don't have a reliable partner and where whatever civilian investments we want to make, which are so necessary, will be diverted for a corrupt purpose," Pelosi told NPR News' Morning Edition.

A stolen election, a lack of clear purpose, an ambassador opposed to the buildup, and a skeptical president. Let's hope the president decides against the escalation, but even if he doesn't, it's clear that the Democratic House won't support one.

(h/t T2)

The re-emergence of Sarah Palin has provided a stark and depressing message about the way our media cover politics. Because Sarah Palin is a politician, yet she is treated as a pop culture celebrity. And then some in the media defend her, by saying it's unfair that she is treated as a pop culture celebrity. Arguments about whether or not she is responsible for the coverage are irrelevant, because no matter how she presents herself and behaves, it's still up to the media to decide how they react to her presentation and behavior. If she sells herself the way most celebrities sell themselves, the media ought to make that their focus: that whatever she is, she is not someone who focuses on what should be a politician's focus. Instead, too many supposedly serious media outlets also fail to focus on what should be a politician's focus.

I've subscribed to Salon.com since it became a subscription website. Salon publishes some of the best political commentary, anywhere. Its reporters often prove themselves among the best, anywhere. Its coverage of Bush administration crimes, the Walter Reed scandals, and the still emerging Arlington National Cemetery scandal have been invaluable. So, it is painful to read Salon's puerile coverage of the re-emergence of Sarah Palin. Salon's coverage is a lesson in how not to cover Sarah Palin.

First, Sandra Tsing-Loh writes a mind-numbingly inane puff piece, that starts off with an attempt at folksy cutesy humor, before taking a weak stab at exposition:

If I am giving Palin's book a thumbs up, it is qualified by the fact that, let's face it, the genre of the female political autobiography is itself in its infancy. It's like some 53rd state, housing at this moment in time only a handful of crude, wooden, lean-to outposts. These are times when former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright can do a book tour based on her pins and brooches, about which "Morning Edition's" Susan Stamberg will huskily midwife a most empathic and unironic discussion. These are times when Nancy Pelosi comes out with a memoir slender as a Hallmark card, a memoir no living person but me has apparently read, vaguely titled "Know Your Power: A Message to America's Daughters," which her publishers carefully deemed ("How shall we describe this?") a "keepsake." Then again, one understands why female political books tend toward focus group-approved mottos and tasteful brooches -- women have not been in politics for very long and, even more than the men in this rabid age, if they dare utter an opinion or take a stand, they and, weirdly, also their children get media-raped and shredded.

Um.

So, because there haven't been a lot of women on the national political stage, that means we're to grade this woman's book on a curve? And comparing Palin to Albright and Pelosi gets to the nub of what's wrong with Tsing-Loh's entire approach. Because even if a television foof did in an interview with Albright what television foofs are supposed to do, and even if few read Pelosi's book, the fundamental difference between them and Palin is that they can talk circles around most people, when it comes to matters of public policy, while Palin's attempts to discuss public policy inevitably make one feel one has been spinning in circles. Albright and Pelosi are people of great substance and intellect. They work at it. They value intelligence and knowledge. They might occasionally play the media game, but they are most at home when they are discussing and working in the complexities of policy. One cannot control the public's reaction, however much one may try. But one can control what one has to present to the public. Albright and Pelosi present depth and complexity. Palin does not.

So what's refreshing is that Palin seems unafraid to express herself, warts and all -- informal campaign motto: "Heels on! Gloves off!" -- and the book just goes where it goes.

It's refreshing for a national politician to ramble openly? The substance of that rambling doesn't matter? Is there any celebrity in any genre of superficial pop culture that isn't capable of rambling openly about whatever they want to ramble about?

Tsing-Low then proceeds to ramble into anecdotes from the book that have nothing to do with anything. Personal anecdotes. Cutesy folk tales. Tsing-Loh even attempts to play snarkily folksy in her descriptions. As if this is all about having a good time. As if Palin's re-emergence on the national stage is no different than that of any celebrity attempting a come-back. Tsing-Loh buys into the Alaska myth, and buys into the rugged individualist myth, in a simplistic manner reminiscent of the corporate media's buying into the myth that a man who has never been seen riding a horse was a rancher. Which is doubly ridiculous, given that even if these myths were true, they should be irrelevant to what qualifies one to be a national political figure. By the end of the review, one has gleaned nothing other than that Tsing-Loh wants to play along. One has learned nothing about the subject of the review, and plenty about the reviewer.

The other Salon article is by Amanda Fortini:

Say what you want about Palin or her positions (and, in the past, I have), it takes scrappiness and guts to strike back at the old-boys' network that anointed you by publishing a book, so soon after the campaign, detailing your frustrations and disillusionments. We might want to take a long breath before discounting her. As Gwen Ifill recently said on "This Week": “You can not underestimate the degree that women will be drawn to her story.” We don’t hear many real-life fairy-tales of American female success, which makes the few that exist intrinsically compelling.

We probably don't hear many real-life fairy-tales of American female success because there are no real-life fairy-tales. There's no Great Pumpkin. There's no Santa Claus. I hope I'm not ruining anyone's day! We hear plenty of real-life stories of real American female success, because there are so many successful American women, involving so many real definitions of success. Palin has become wealthy and famous primarily because she is relentlessly greedy and selfish. In that, she's a good Republican, with standard Republican values. She has no apparent talent other than that of self-promotion. She hasn't ever worked hard at anything substantive, and it is, in fact, wealthy and famous because the old-boys' network pettily saw in her an opportunity to capitalize on what they saw as a simplicity in the motivation of female voters. The calculation was as condescending as is possible: a) Hillary Clinton is a woman, Palin is a woman, b) Hillary Clinton's supporters supported her because she is a woman, and they therefore will switch to supporting Palin, because Palin is a woman. That cynical and misogynistic political calculation is the only reason most people ever heard of Sarah Palin.

There is nothing at all scrappy or gutsy about Palin's attempting to cash in on her moment in the public spotlight. Joe the Plumber attempted the same. That McCain's team treated Palin so disrespectfully speaks to their own motives and values. Palin took advantage of those motives and values to further her own. Perhaps she is stupid enough to believe her own hype. Certainly, she is not smart enough to realize she is not smart. Palin was an embarrassment on the national stage. More than a year after she was foisted in front of us by the pathetic John McCain, some 60% of the public still sees her as unqualified to be president. The public is not that stupid. The public recognizes such obvious stupid. And for all the legitimate criticism of the sexism involved in some of the criticism of Palin, the bottom line is that people reject her as a serious person primarily because she is not a serious person. It has nothing to do with her looks or her family, subjects about which I do not write. It has to do with the fact that she has never stuck with a job, has never accomplished anything substantive other than self-promotion, has a long record of quitting schools and jobs before she has finished that with which she was tasked, and proved herself astonishingly ignorant on matters of public policy.

If one looks back on her public polling, people were, initially, inclined to like Palin. The more they saw of her, the less they liked. That wasn't because they were mean or sexist, or because the McCain campaign or the media mistreated her. That was because Palin does not belong on the national political stage.

As the vice-presidential candidate, she showed, despite her postgame spin, little real knowledge of matters non-Alaskan, and at least for the span of the campaign, she didn’t seem bent on acquiring much more. Her current desire for visibility, the motives for which remain unclear, suits our age of reality television, this moment in American life when fame for fame’s sake is the ultimate goal. One might argue that Palin’s ambition, which some have branded simple narcissism, allowed her to forget her own unreadiness for the presidency and accept the nomination in the first place.

That's the best part of the article. Because it's valid. But Fortini then veers off into trivial garbage:

It wasn’t only that she looked older, the creases around her mouth having deepened, it was also that, no longer under the shadow of McCain and his handlers, she came off as natural, confident, good-humored and even, at times, articulate. Though her tendency to ramble persisted, she wasn’t as awkward and garbled as in the past. She was also disarmingly honest.

She looks older, and is more comfortable in the spotlight? So? Fortini's examples of Palin's new maturity in the spotlight all have to do with personal matters and personal reactions. Such examples could pertain to any generic celebrity who took a moment to adjust to fame. Which many do. But we're talking about a national political figure, aren't we? Isn't the standard supposed to be just a tad higher? Didn't we all scoff at Bush for many of the reasons we scoff at Palin- until the media muddled the public perception of who and what Bush was, playing a decisive role in allowing him to become president, and then to abuse that office in pretty much every possible way?

Fortini then goes on to discuss Palin's public act, again appearing to make valid points, before again descending into the trivial.

She was given about seven seconds to learn her role and then, after eight seconds, patronized and mocked. The reasons she performed so poorly are the very reasons her fan base loves her. If, over the next three years, her performance improves as much as it appears to have in just the last year, the conventional rap about her rustic idiocy may come off as mean-spirited and archaic.

Once again: the improvement in her performance, as described by Fortini, is all on the surface. It's all about Palin's ability to negotiate the superficialities of our superficial media. Palin still has yet to demonstrate any understanding of policy. When talking actual politics, Palin still is all about stereotypes and talking points. She is as ridiciulous as was Bush. Which remains the most apt political comparison. Palin may not have been born into a political machine, but she now is part of one. They package her and protect her, and even successfully foist her off on the corporate media as someone worthy of public attention. And the corporate media play along, still praising or criticizing Palin for reasons that are all about theater, and that should be irrelevant when analyzing politicians. Fortini buys into that, in every way. She mentions the extremism of Palin's political views, but only in passing; and she doesn't at all mention that Palin still has yet to prove herself capable of engaging in a thoughtful conversation on any substantive political issue. Palin's entire career has proved that she has neither the interest nor the focus to develop such a capability. Imagining her in a political debate with someone as smart and knowledgeable as President Obama is almost painful. Nothing about the new Palin is any different from the Palin who so dramatically imploded, every time she was forced into substantive conversations.

We expect the corporate media to both praise and criticize Palin for the most superficial reasons. We expect better from the alternative media. Salon's Joan Walsh already offered the type of insightful commentary we expect from Joan Walsh. Why Salon then chose to follow that with two pieces of such embarrassing shallowness is anyone's guess. Salon often is a superb website, and often defines what makes alternative media so important; but with their coverage of Palin, they are giving us much too much of more of the same.

Instead of building trust for the government, Obama's economic team has made it worse. It's too bad, because it didn't have to be this way. Will he have a second chance? Not very likely. And that means some continuing and even growing hard times for Americans. (But the bankers are doing right nicely, thank you very much.)

In Salon, Gene Lyons summarizes the stupid that is pressuring President Obama to escalate the war in Afghanistan:

Hurry, hurry. There's no time for thinking; it's time to act. Washington's permanent war lobby has worked itself into a veritable lather. The proper Pentagon press leaks have been made, Op-Eds written, talk show commandos deployed.

No less influential a military mind than the Washington Post's David Broder declares that even a bad decision about Afghanistan would be better than a postponed decision. Conceding that "a flood of leaks" has shown that "the perfect course of action does not exist," Broder nevertheless counsels haste. "[T]he urgent necessity," he writes, "is to make a decision -- whether or not it is right."

Read that again. Better to do something stupid, the man says, than for President Obama to ask too many tough questions.

Shorter Broder: when in doubt, panic. After all, it's only lives, our national security, and our strategic interests that are at stake.

And while the president very judiciously very deliberately weighs his options, in a no-win situation he inherited from an all-lose predecessor, the Republicans are turning to a new authority, to help them strategize.

Jonathan Allen, at Politico:

House Republicans have a new foreign policy adviser with a controversial pedigree: Oliver North.

North, an aide on Ronald Reagan's National Security Council who is best known for his role in the Iran-Contra scheme to sell arms to Iran and divert the funds to Nicaraguan revolutionaries in the 1980s, was the special guest at a House Republican Conference meeting on Tuesday. North was convicted on three counts related to the Iran-Contra scandal and his efforts to cover it up, but the convictions were later overturned.

Of course, Politico neglects to mention that the conviction were overturned on a technicality, and that North's brilliant efforts in Iran-Contra included helping trade arms for hostages, giving the hostage-takers an incentive to take more hostages. Brilliant on strategy, and specifically banned by law. I'm sure North has invaluable insights... "Brilliant" being a very relative concept, to Republicans...

Make no mistake. The pressure on the president is enormous, and not just from irresponsible idiots like Broder. CBS News recently reported some of the financial stakes:

In fiscal year 2009, for example, the civilian U.S. Agency for International Development awarded $20 million in contracts for work in Afghanistan, while the U.S. Army alone awarded $2.2 billion -- $834 million of it for construction projects. In fact, according to Walter Pincus of the Washington Post, the Pentagon has spent “roughly $2.7 billion on construction over the past three fiscal years” in that country and, “if its request is approved as part of the fiscal 2010 defense appropriations bill, it would spend another $1.3 billion on more than 100 projects at 40 sites across the country, according to a Senate report on the legislation.”

Follow the money. Because a lot of people have less than honest reasons to be pressuring the president. Amidst conflicting unsourced reports on his intentions, he continues to approach it cautiously. Let's hope he stands up to these pressures, and does the right thing.

California once again takes the lead in energy efficiency by setting standards on how much energy a flat screen TV can use. By using our resources more wisely, we won't have to build lots of new, bigger and more expensive power plants. This is good policy and good news for Californians.

A funny thing is happening on the way to economic recovery: certain economists are warning that things are going to get worse; that these include some of the very few economists who warned about this economic implosion before it happened ought to make them among the very few economists to whom we actually pay attention. If we care about credibility. And about the direction of the economy.

NYU Professor Nouriel Roubini was so singled out for his dire predictions about the direction of the economy, during the housing bubble, that he was given the moniker "Dr. Doom." People don't like hearing what he has to say. But given the record, we all need to. For months, he has been warning about rising unemployment. As Mary pointed out, on Tuesday, Roubini's warnings now are taking on a more urgent tone.

Think the worst is over? Wrong. Conditions in the U.S. labor markets are awful and worsening. While the official unemployment rate is already 10.2% and another 200,000 jobs were lost in October, when you include discouraged workers and partially employed workers the figure is a whopping 17.5%.

While losing 200,000 jobs per month is better than the 700,000 jobs lost in January, current job losses still average more than the per month rate of 150,000 during the last recession.

And he warns that after both the 2001 and 1990-1991 recessions had ended, unemployment continued to rise for another year and a half! Which, in the present case, means rising unemployment through next summer! When we will be in the midst of an election which will largely determine the ability of President Obama to implement his agenda for the rest of his first term! Frightened yet?

The average length of unemployment is at an all time high; the ratio of job applicants to vacancies is 6 to 1; initial claims are down but continued claims are very high and now millions of unemployed are resorting to the exceptional extended unemployment benefits programs and are staying in them longer.

He sees unemployment peaking around 11%, and remaining very high for at least two years. And that doesn't include the underemployed, as employers cut hours, which he says will equate to another 3,000,000 lost jobs. He says the recovery will be weak, and the likelihood of a double dip recession is increasing. But he does have an answer.

There's really just one hope for our leaders to turn things around: a bold prescription that increases the fiscal stimulus with another round of labor-intensive, shovel-ready infrastructure projects, helps fiscally strapped state and local governments and provides a temporary tax credit to the private sector to hire more workers.

Extending unemployment benefits is not enough. We need the government to create jobs. And quickly! And in an October interview, Roubini also warned of an impending crash in commodity prices. Which is just what we need. His overall answer?

I don’t believe in market discipline. It doesn’t work. That was the ideology of the last 10 years; self-regulation means no regulation. Market discipline doesn’t exist with irrational exuberance and reliance on internal risk management models that don’t work. Nobody listens to risk managers, because it’s risk takers that make the profits. The reliance on ratings agencies that have their own conflicts of interest, the reliance on soft-touch regulation, the focus on principles instead of rules—that particular regulatory philosophy has been a disaster, and we’ve learned it the hard way. We have to go to simpler rules, tougher rules and more binding rules. That’s the right approach.

Jobs and regulation. Which brings us to another of those very few economists who warned about the current economic crisis. Paul Krugman. That Nobel Prize guy. A couple weeks ago, he had this to say about the question of a WPA-type jobs program:

As it is, job-creation efforts are generally indirect. Tax cuts and transfers in the hope that people will spend them; aid to state governments in the hope of averting layoffs. Even infrastructure spending is routed through private contractors.

You can make a pretty good case that just employing a lot of people directly would be a lot more cost-effective; the WPA and CCC cost surprisingly little given the number of people put to work. Think of it as the stimulus equivalent of getting the middlemen out of the student loan program.

The problem being politics. Which makes little sense, given that the Democratic Party now controls the politics. Or ought to, given that we have the White House and both houses of Congress.

In a column, last week, Krugman reiterated:

Just to be clear, I believe that a large enough conventional stimulus would do the trick. But since that doesn’t seem to be in the cards, we need to talk about cheaper alternatives that address the job problem directly. Should we introduce an employment tax credit, like the one proposed by the Economic Policy Institute? Should we introduce the German-style job-sharing subsidy proposed by the Center for Economic Policy Research? Both are worthy of consideration.

The point is that we need to start doing something more than, and different from, what we’re already doing. And the experience of other countries suggests that it’s time for a policy that explicitly and directly targets job creation.

Jobs. A government stimulus based on the direct or only slightly indirect creation of jobs. And regulation? Referring to a recent post by UC Berkeley professor Brad DeLong, Krugman writes:

Big financial institutions are a small club, with a shared interest in sustaining the system. Ever since the days of JP Morgan it has been standard practice, in times of crisis, to get major players together in a room and get them to forgo short-term profit maximization on behalf of the industry interests. It happened in the Panic of 1907; it happened in the Latin American debt crisis of the 80s; it happened in the LTCM bailout, which was financed by private firms, not the feds.

Also, individual banks are in a long-term relationship with the public and the government.

An insiders' club that is all about self-interest, and not about public interest. Which is sort of the Republican Party ethos. And suggests that the government ought to be forcing a public interest agenda, whereas it recently hasn't been. It's been catering to the banks.

Krugman agrees with DeLong, that the risk of an actual depression is rising.

Why? Because bank-friendly policies have squandered public trust in all government action: try talking to the general public about stimulus, and it’s all confounded in their minds with the deeply unpopular bailouts.

By itself, the AIG story would be damaging enough. But it’s part of a pattern — and that pattern has ended up undermining the economy’s prospects, big time.

And DeLong, himself? After more than two years of saying there was no chance of another Great Depression, he's changed his mind.

In my estimation the chances of another big downward shock to the U.S. economy--a shock that would carry us from the 1/3-of-a-Great-Depression we have now to 2/3 or more--are about 5%. And it now looks very much as if if such a shock hits the U.S. government will be unable to do a d----- thing about it.

We could cushion the impact of another big downward shock by a lot more deficit spending--unemployment, after all, goes down whenever anybody spends more (even though sometimes falling unemployment comes at too-high a price in rising inflation), and the government's money is as good as anybody else's. But the centrist Democratic legislative caucus has now dug in its heels behind the position that we cannot undertake more deficit spending right now because we have a dire structural health-care financing proble afrer 2030. The Republican legislative causes has now dug in its heels behind the position that the fact that unemployment is 10% shows not that policy earlier this year was too cautious but rather that it was ineffective. And the Obama administration has not been able or has not tried to move either of those groups out of their current entrenchments.

Jobs, again. Jobs, jobs, jobs. And what we don't need is to be listening to inflation hawks or deficit hawks. As any credible historian of the Great Depression will tell you. Think 1937.

For an overall perspective, on the political dynamics, Joan Walsh just warned:

So while I'm not worried about President Palin, I remain worried about President Obama. I'm particularly concerned that his increasingly triangulating, anti-deficit administration will do the wrong thing, morally and politically, and move to the right, without understanding that some right-wing rage could be rechanneled by acknowledging its roots: That the economic system seems rigged for the have-a-lots v. the have-a-littles, and despite their promises, the Democrats haven't done enough to change that. Palin can't change any of that, but Obama can. There's still time for him to do so, but the clock is ticking.

It's time for the Democrats to be Democrats.

As things stand now, my earlier optimism about getting a good health care reform bill out of this Congress is now gone. Part of that I blame on the inept leadership Democrats suffer from in each chamber. Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid are exactly the wrong people to be charged with strategic thinking and agenda management, and yet Barack Obama and Rahm Emanuel banked the farm on them, and let the Democratic caucuses in each house translate an electoral mandate into significant losses in 2010.

Part of it I blame on what Bush left behind. Just like he left Texas in a mess, Bush left this country in shambles, and had already started on a course of indebtedness and Wall Street bailouts that poisoned the well for the next president’s agenda.

However, it’s also too easy to blame the problems facing Democrats right now on their leadership and the Republicans. A healthy dose of looking in the mirror would help the White House right about now, not that they ever will. Barack Obama owns the paltry and misguided stimulus package, and the fact that we will not get another shot at one before 2010. Barack Obama owns the lack of financial reform to date, and the fact that his own administration is conspiring to work against real reform and continues to this day to be more interested in helping out Goldman Sachs than they are in holding Wall Street accountable. And Barack Obama owns the blown health care debate and legislative approach, which has evolved to a point where a necessary debate about the morality of letting big insurance companies destroy the lives of everyday Americans has been diverted into a debate about abortion, which should have been foreseen months ago as a red state poison pill.

It’s easy for me and others to second-guess the health care reform strategy now, but it should not have been hard for the brains in the White House to see that letting Congress have the keys to this car in the midst of a bad economy and rising concerns about debt and bailouts would lead to this. The White House has made it excessively easy for the GOP to employ their typical tactics. Partly this is because of a flawed strategy from overrated people at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Partly it is because of the naïve “new kind of politics” delusion from the president himself, which reveals a fundamental lack of understanding of the forces aligned against him from Day One. And partly it is because you cannot ask Main Street to resist the usual right wing misdirection attempts and ignore the fact that they have gotten nothing so far from the bailouts except more debt, and are now being asked to take more on faith. Once Obama let Tim Geithner and Larry Summers talk down the size of the stimulus while holding no one accountable on Wall Street and Washington for past misdeeds, the cake was baked for a Democratic drubbing in 2010.

With this background, an incremental approach on health care reform that focused initially on market reforms and strong cost controls made more sense, as even conservative Republicans in the House support these measures now. And it pays to remember that at a critical time in 1994, the Clintons had the chance to get a compromise as a down payment on health care reform from Tim Penny and other moderates, but passed and never got another chance. We are now at a similar point where a flawed industry-friendly bill that does nothing to deal with the broken reimbursement incentives for costly care has been married with an individual mandate, a ban on abortion, and lack of real choice of health plan options, the worst of all worlds.

Yet there is no White House or DNC action plan ready to activate which would punish wayward DINOs like Bart Stupak for taking industry cash and turning this debate into an evisceration of Roe v. Wade. There could have been a ready-made political strategy here for local protests to spring up in Stupak’s district and all other DINO’s, complaining about why he and others get quality and affordable health care from the government, yet oppose it for everyone else. There could have been a debate about why the Bart Stupak’s of the world care more about leveraging the uninsured middle class for an abortion debate and taking industry money all the while. Unfortunately, the White House’s takeover of the DNC, and neutering of the vast OFA apparatus so as to not hold Democrats accountable makes this impossible. It also misses the point: if the White House really wanted health care to be the signature issue in 2009, which I think was a tragic mistake given the weakened economy and need to focus on reform, accountability, and recovery first, then why didn’t Pelosi and Emanuel see this coming? Why didn’t Obama set the narrative himself before the August recess and define the debate, putting the arguments of his opponents in context well before the tea bagging stupidity that allowed the Stupak’s of the world to throw 11th-hour grenades?

My cat, in sizing up birds and squirrels each morning, is more adept at strategy and long-range thinking than Rahm Emanuel.

Mr. President, a little less focus on your golf game and overseas travels, and a little more laser-like focus on the economy, strategy, and hard-reality politics would have done you and your party well. As it is, your party will now lose seats in 2010, while you will likely be re-elected because of the GOP’s self-destruction. But things could have been much different and better for Main Street, if only you were smarter and more savvy, and if you had listened to different people. The GOP is about to take the populism that Obama left by the roadside, and turn it against the Democrats.

Digby highlights an interview with Rick Perlstein putting the Obama presidency in historical perspective. Definitely a must read.

From Joan Walsh:

So while I'm not worried about President Palin, I remain worried about President Obama. I'm particularly concerned that his increasingly triangulating, anti-deficit administration will do the wrong thing, morally and politically, and move to the right, without understanding that some right-wing rage could be rechanneled by acknowledging its roots: That the economic system seems rigged for the have-a-lots v. the have-a-littles, and despite their promises, the Democrats haven't done enough to change that. Palin can't change any of that, but Obama can. There's still time for him to do so, but the clock is ticking.

Dr Doom declares the green shoots dead. Time to come up with another plan to get Americans working again because bailing out the banks didn't get the job done.