Missing the point

Yeesh! Even MoveOn is buying into establishment Dem logic:

The passage of the bankruptcy bill by the Senate on Thursday was a dark hour for the Democratic Party. No fewer than 18 Democrats voted for the legislation, which vocal opponent Sen. Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts called "a nightmare for the poorest of the poor and the weakest of the weak." Given the bill's consequences for middle-class families, women and elderly folks forced to declare bankruptcy because of insurmountable credit card debt, often due to job loss or big medical bills, we wondered why grassroots bellwether MoveOn.org didn't ask its members to act on the issue. Or even mention it on its Web site, for that matter.

According to Eli Pariser, MoveOn's executive director, it was because they didn't think it would have made a real impact. "Because of the solid Republican support for the bill, terrible though the bill is, it wasn't something that we could make a difference by weighing in on," Pariser told War Room by phone on Friday. He said that MoveOn's members had chosen to focus on two other "critical fights that we can win" -- namely Bush judicial nominations, and the battle over Social Security.

Back in June 2003 MoveOn turned its attention to the FCC media ownership vote, a fairly obscure issue at the time, generating thousands of phone calls and emails to Capitol Hill, and raising national awareness of the issue. Pariser did acknowledge the possibility that a visible effort on the bankruptcy issue this month by MoveOn could have "changed the calculation" of Democrats who voted for the bill in the Senate. But he reiterated that when faced with the choice of diverting resources from other key, winnable issues to one "which was doomed to fail," MoveOn would choose to be "pragmatic."

The point of this is not necessarily to win a particular legislative battle.

The point is to make Republicans feel uncomfortable for supporting abominations like the bankruptcy bill.

The point is to make legislative battles that demonstrate stark differences between Democrats and Republicans.

The point is to create issues which Democrats can use against Republicans in the 2006 election.

Even if the bill were to pass over a united Democratic opposition, that opposition would demonstrate that Democrats can present an alternative to Republican rule.

And then we can have a real election about real issues!

The Democratic Prisoner Dilemma

This post by Markos goes a long way toward explaining the thinking behind Democrats who supported the bankruptcy bill (or at least voted for cloture). Atrios' comment on said post are also interesting (although I think he is incorrect to say that Markos' post is a "defense" of the Democrats).

Markos has it right that, on an individual basis, voting for the bankruptcy bill actually was a no-brainer for a lot of Democrats. There was very little political benefit to opposing it (consumers are not a standard Democratic constituency) and a serious threat if they voted against it (money from the financial sector drying up).

But Atrios has it right that the political benefit to the Democrats would have been enormous if they could have remained united on this. If they had then they would have had a great issue to hammer the Republicans next year ("Democrats: the party that looks out for you!"). But instead the bill has the veneer of bipartisanship support. Few Democrats can risk bringing it up as an issue because to do so would require them to attack their own party as much as the Republicans.

The problem is that Democrats have lost the sense of the commons. They no longer think in terms of what will benefit the party as a whole but instead think only of what will benefit them individually. As a result, the Republicans and their corporate paymasters have learned to play a classic case of The Prisoner's Dilemma against the Democrats. The choices for Democrats are stark: they can stand on principle or they can run after the money. But if they do the former they will benefit politically only if their fellow Democrats also take a stand on principle. They all are aware of this dynamic and few of them want to be the one left standing alone in the field. So a significant number of them go for the bucks because at least the money still gives them a chance of winning.

The Bankruptcy bill proves that the Democrats still have a long way to go before they start acting like a party again. No amount of feeling good about Democratic unity on Social Security can overcome the stench from this failure.

Promoting the Democratic Process

Ed Kilgore admits that he doesn't live in Colorado and thus doesn't know what is going on there, but that doesn't stop him from pronouncing the ouster of State Democratic chair Chris Gates, despite the fact that Colorado was one of the few bright spots for Democrats last year, to be a sign that the state party is a "basket case".

I think the responsible thing for Ed to have done would have been to check in with some of the people on the ground in Colorado and learn a little bit more about the situation before passing judgment from on high.

Unlike Ed, I will not pass judgment on what happened in Colorado because, like Ed, I don't know the details of what happened.

Yes, Colorado Democrats did well last year. But even in victory it is possible that Gates pissed off a lot of the very people who helped make that victory possible. One of the principles of Reform Democrats, as Chris Bowers discusses in a MyDD post on what happened in Colorado, is that the representatives of the party should be selected by the rank and file of the party, not by some select group of backroom dealmakers. If the perception in the Colorado party was that Gates was responsible for a "bossed primary" then it is entirely in line with progressive principals to oust him, even if the party did well under his leadership.

Kilgore suggests that this puts the lie to the argument that the fight within the Democratic party is not about ideology. Well, that is true, if the ideology we are speaking about is promoting an open, democratic process.

I would hope that that is something that we all would support.

(BTW, I highly recommend reading the comments to the MyDD post linked above. They contain a lot more background information on what happened in Colorado.)

Preserving the Promise

At the most recent Democracy For America meetup I got into a lively discussion with another fellow about the Social Security fight. He argued that Democrats were playing it stupidly by defeating Bush to quickly. If the Democrats want to win in 2006, he argued, they need the issue of the Republican's assault on Social Security to be fresh in the voters minds. If Bush's proposal goes down to defeat in the next 60 days then it will be forgotten by the time voters go to the polls in November 2006. My debating partner argued that it would be better for Democrats to lose this battle just so we could use the Republican votes on it as a hammer to hit them next year.

My response was this: losing leads to losing and winning leads to winning. 

When you lose a battle, it makes it that much harder to get up and fight the next battle. Furthermore, continued losses make you look like a loser, and in politics perception is everything. However, if you win the battle, even if that means it won't be ever-present in the voters mind next year, it is still a win. And a win, especially on an issue that Bush has made the center of his 2nd term domestic agenda, makes you look like a winner.

Of course I would love it if Bush's attempt to destroy Social Security were still an active issue going into the 2006 election. But if the choice comes between a potential political boon and preserving the promise of Social Security then the choice for me is clear, we preserve the promise.

Josh Marshall argues the point well:

The hook for some of this second-guessing about Democratic strategy is a memo out a few days ago from James Carville and Stan Greenberg of Democracy Corps. And in that memo they argue that the deeper vulnerability for Democrats (and why they are yet to derive greater political returns on Social Security) is what they call "voters' deeper feelings about the Democrats who appear to lack direction, conviction, values, advocacy or a larger public purpose."

Well, here's the deal. Spin has its limits. You show voters that you have direction and conviction and values principally by having them. And for all the short- and medium-term political handicapping, I believe that's what they are doing right now.

Democrats are standing to preserve the promise because it is the right thing to do.

And, strangely enough, standing up makes a lot of political sense.

Preserving the Promise

At the most recent Democracy For America meetup I got into a lively discussion with another fellow about the Social Security fight. He argued that Democrats were playing it stupidly by defeating Bush to quickly. If the Democrats want to win in 2006, he argued, they need the issue of the Republican's assault on Social Security to be fresh in the voters minds. If Bush's proposal goes down to defeat in the next 60 days then it will be forgotten by the time voters go to the polls in November 2006. My debating partner argued that it would be better for Democrats to lose this battle just so we could use the Republican votes on it as a hammer to hit them next year.

My response was this: losing leads to losing and winning leads to winning. 

When you lose a battle, it makes it that much harder to get up and fight the next battle. Furthermore, continued losses make you look like a loser, and in politics perception is everything. However, if you win the battle, even if that means it won't be ever-present in the voters mind next year, it is still a win. And a win, especially on an issue that Bush has made the center of his 2nd term domestic agenda, makes you look like a winner.

Of course I would love it if Bush's attempt to destroy Social Security were still an active issue going into the 2006 election. But if the choice comes between a potential political boon and preserving the promise of Social Security then the choice for me is clear, we preserve the promise.

Josh Marshall argues the point well:

The hook for some of this second-guessing about Democratic strategy is a memo out a few days ago from James Carville and Stan Greenberg of Democracy Corps. And in that memo they argue that the deeper vulnerability for Democrats (and why they are yet to derive greater political returns on Social Security) is what they call "voters' deeper feelings about the Democrats who appear to lack direction, conviction, values, advocacy or a larger public purpose."

Well, here's the deal. Spin has its limits. You show voters that you have direction and conviction and values principally by having them. And for all the short- and medium-term political handicapping, I believe that's what they are doing right now.

Democrats are standing to preserve the promise because it is the right thing to do.

And, strangely enough, standing up makes a lot of political sense.