Move on to what? I think the Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo has some interesting and perhaps useful things to say about this. One thing he makes clear though is that yelling about it just makes you look weak. Just trying to move public opinion is not enough.
Here's a longish quote from him: "The big thing to understand in terms of t…
Move on to what? I think the Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo has some interesting and perhaps useful things to say about this. One thing he makes clear though is that yelling about it just makes you look weak. Just trying to move public opinion is not enough.
Here's a longish quote from him: "The big thing to understand in terms of the Democratic opposition is that they’re out of power. This really comes down to the Courts and congressional leadership, which is all Republican. This gets to a broader reality. Whatever battles Democrats do with the Trump administration has to be asymmetric. Pretending that anything else is possible is crazy and invites failure and demoralization. That is certainly part of the design here: do all sorts of things all at once that no one can easily stop and let it become a precedent. The best response? This goes back to dominance politics. Find what you can actually do that’s not begging or meaningless and then do it. The clearest lever out there is that the White House needs a debt limit increase sometime this Spring, probably pretty soon. There’s been chatter that Republican leaders are going to try to put together a spending deal with Democratic help that would include a debt limit increase or suspension. That has to be taken off the table. No debt limit increase unless the President renounces illegal and constitutional actions. That’s the clearest place where opposition Democrats can take the initiative and force the President and GOP leadership to come to them. Anything that doesn’t force that is basically meaningless.
You’ve probably heard me say before that no one should ever play chicken with the full faith and credit of the United States. Well, these are extraordinary circumstances. But really you don’t even need to make that argument. The Republicans are in the majority. They can do this themselves if they want. The Democrats aren’t in the majority and holding anything hostage. The Republicans are the majority. It’s the majorities job, literally, to do this stuff. They can’t because they can’t get their own caucus in order. So they’re coming to the Democrats for help. It’s a perfectly reasonable condition. That’s not the only thing they should demand. There are a bunch of additional things Democrats can do that are deeper in the budget process weeds. But it’s the minimum. No cooperation without an agreement to operate only within the law and the constitution. Yelling and begging not only won’t help. It signals powerlessness, which demoralizes supporters and all opposition. There are a slew of angry partisans out there demanding Democrats “do something” when the die was mostly cast in the November elections. The Democrats are out of power. There’s very little they can do accept be the opposition and oppose. But there are these few things, things that aren’t symbolic but rather force the President to come to them. If they don’t do those things they send the signal that there is essentially no functional opposition. There’s power on the table and this is the first and central piece of it as of this moment."
This is really good and the right way to approach the problem.
That being said, i don’t have faith that (1) elected Dems are willing to roll that dice and (2) I’m not sure that even if they did they wouldn’t be blamed.
Look at all the media right now. So you got the rightwing ecosystem that’s 50% plus of the media banging the drum that this is the greatest shit ever. Then you got the msm asking why aren’t Dems doing x, y, and z. Shit that’s what Sam is doing here. It’s a comparison between Trump and dems. It’s a fucking horse race discussion…again
It is a horse race because the demands of editors to get online with click bait headlines makes it an easy sort of reportorial approach. There are no financial incentives to slowing down and researching the context in which these things operate.
BTW I'm a person who has been saying Democrats should do what they can to salvage something out of what Republicans are trying to do because they have an obligation to their constituents. The debt ceiling limit thing that Marshall talks about strikes me as perfectly ok because 1) it is now clear that these royal proclamations are intended to destroy the status quo and 2) the debt ceiling is the only tool they have against that. The government is already somewhat paralyzed (or will be) by these proclamations so the strategy will not make things worse. I suspect the foreign markets and financial industry which is international in character are not going to hold a government shutdown over this against the US too much...unless they decide they'd just rather do all their business with China. In which case we are screwed. But we are anyway.
Oh I like the idea and I’m down for it. I’m for dems maximizing their power, what little they have, constantly. I wasn’t always here but it’s clear to me”win” you need to dominate: your opponents and the media. This is an awful position to be in but the public, not republicans, have forced this on us. They only respond to power politics and that’s going to be bad.
That being said, my point was: I don’t think elected dems will do it (I want them too) and (2) somehow “we” will find a way to blame the governing grownups.
Move on to what? I think the Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo has some interesting and perhaps useful things to say about this. One thing he makes clear though is that yelling about it just makes you look weak. Just trying to move public opinion is not enough.
Here's a longish quote from him: "The big thing to understand in terms of the Democratic opposition is that they’re out of power. This really comes down to the Courts and congressional leadership, which is all Republican. This gets to a broader reality. Whatever battles Democrats do with the Trump administration has to be asymmetric. Pretending that anything else is possible is crazy and invites failure and demoralization. That is certainly part of the design here: do all sorts of things all at once that no one can easily stop and let it become a precedent. The best response? This goes back to dominance politics. Find what you can actually do that’s not begging or meaningless and then do it. The clearest lever out there is that the White House needs a debt limit increase sometime this Spring, probably pretty soon. There’s been chatter that Republican leaders are going to try to put together a spending deal with Democratic help that would include a debt limit increase or suspension. That has to be taken off the table. No debt limit increase unless the President renounces illegal and constitutional actions. That’s the clearest place where opposition Democrats can take the initiative and force the President and GOP leadership to come to them. Anything that doesn’t force that is basically meaningless.
You’ve probably heard me say before that no one should ever play chicken with the full faith and credit of the United States. Well, these are extraordinary circumstances. But really you don’t even need to make that argument. The Republicans are in the majority. They can do this themselves if they want. The Democrats aren’t in the majority and holding anything hostage. The Republicans are the majority. It’s the majorities job, literally, to do this stuff. They can’t because they can’t get their own caucus in order. So they’re coming to the Democrats for help. It’s a perfectly reasonable condition. That’s not the only thing they should demand. There are a bunch of additional things Democrats can do that are deeper in the budget process weeds. But it’s the minimum. No cooperation without an agreement to operate only within the law and the constitution. Yelling and begging not only won’t help. It signals powerlessness, which demoralizes supporters and all opposition. There are a slew of angry partisans out there demanding Democrats “do something” when the die was mostly cast in the November elections. The Democrats are out of power. There’s very little they can do accept be the opposition and oppose. But there are these few things, things that aren’t symbolic but rather force the President to come to them. If they don’t do those things they send the signal that there is essentially no functional opposition. There’s power on the table and this is the first and central piece of it as of this moment."
This is really good and the right way to approach the problem.
That being said, i don’t have faith that (1) elected Dems are willing to roll that dice and (2) I’m not sure that even if they did they wouldn’t be blamed.
Look at all the media right now. So you got the rightwing ecosystem that’s 50% plus of the media banging the drum that this is the greatest shit ever. Then you got the msm asking why aren’t Dems doing x, y, and z. Shit that’s what Sam is doing here. It’s a comparison between Trump and dems. It’s a fucking horse race discussion…again
It is a horse race because the demands of editors to get online with click bait headlines makes it an easy sort of reportorial approach. There are no financial incentives to slowing down and researching the context in which these things operate.
BTW I'm a person who has been saying Democrats should do what they can to salvage something out of what Republicans are trying to do because they have an obligation to their constituents. The debt ceiling limit thing that Marshall talks about strikes me as perfectly ok because 1) it is now clear that these royal proclamations are intended to destroy the status quo and 2) the debt ceiling is the only tool they have against that. The government is already somewhat paralyzed (or will be) by these proclamations so the strategy will not make things worse. I suspect the foreign markets and financial industry which is international in character are not going to hold a government shutdown over this against the US too much...unless they decide they'd just rather do all their business with China. In which case we are screwed. But we are anyway.
Oh I like the idea and I’m down for it. I’m for dems maximizing their power, what little they have, constantly. I wasn’t always here but it’s clear to me”win” you need to dominate: your opponents and the media. This is an awful position to be in but the public, not republicans, have forced this on us. They only respond to power politics and that’s going to be bad.
That being said, my point was: I don’t think elected dems will do it (I want them too) and (2) somehow “we” will find a way to blame the governing grownups.
I hope im wrong