... (0 comments)Just one more reason why I continue to find Harry Reid to be a poor leader for the Democrats in the Senate:
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, the Democrats’ biggest enemy right now is themselves. Comments like this from Reid and theSenate Majority Leader Harry Reid said Friday that liberal groups targeting moderate Democrats with ads should back off, saying pressure from the left wing of his party won’t be helpful to enacting legislation.
“I think it’s very unwise and not helpful,” Reid said Friday morning. “These groups should leave them alone. It’s not helpful to me. It’s not helpful to the Democratic Caucus.”
Reid, who said he hadn’t seen or heard the ads, added that “most of [the groups] run very few ads — they only to do it to get a little press on it.”
Update: Take action now by going here to send a message to your Congressmen to support Obama’s budget.
* – Thanks to reader Gherald L. Upon further reflection, I realized the formation of the Conservadems was totally explicable (yes, that’s a word).
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(DOWN THE VINE
Syndication
Reid is right. These conservadems want to get re-elected and if they swing so much to the left on the budget, they wont be. Right now the person helping Republicans is Pelosi, with this budget that will give them their talking points for next elections…
my sense is that the conservadems have gotten too used to the politics of the last few decades, where when republicans were in power, they grabbed their ankles in order to squeeze out minor incrementalist improvements and sell out their ideals in the process. remember health care in 1993? it wasn't the republicans who sunk it, it was the conservadems. remember don't ask don't tell? that was the conservadem "compromise". that worked out well…
> inexplicable formation of the Conservadem Caucus
Inexplicable? As an independent who's recently voted Dem and is closer to being a blue dog than a Republican at the moment, I'm wondering what's so inexplicable. Please explain.
> Take action now by going here to send a message to your Congressmen to support Obama's budget.
You are of course free to do so, but some of us don't support the president's budget over more modest alternatives that do not balloon the deficit post 2012, and we're entitled to our representation too.
As HRC put it at the convention, I thought Democrats were supposed to not be the "fall in line party" these days. Isn't the fact that Republicans always voted in lockstep widely considered a bad thing? Does the Left also have no tolerance for differing views now?
Reid is a not a tool. Reid is the Democratic Majority leader of the U.S. Senate and understands the art of the possible and how to manage a Big Tent party. A day you target your moderates from the left is a day the GOP regains some ground. Given the practical realities of our two-party system it will happen eventually, but given the rancid state of the Right these days I see no cause to hasten that development.
good enough point although i wonder how you view the conservative Blitzkreig of the last 8 years. was it OK to rape and pillage the conservative agenda along over the last cabal of privilege and bubbled suffering? to my mind, the dems have a chance to repudiate all the the thoughtless ideology of the last 8 years. is this wrong? is this disproportionate?
To my knowledge the conservative Blitzkreig involved them all voting in unison and suppressing dissent.
There are quite a few things I want Democrats to fix, but also other things I know they will be worse at. To anyone with moderate or libertarian sensibilities, unchecked leftism will be similarly bad for the country as the right wing gone wild, just in different areas.
Obama's budget is basically LBJ's Great Society 2.0, and I don't think that worked out as well as, say, Reaganism and Clintonism did, so personally I would very much like moderates to use their brakes.
Now Harry Reid's agenda is different, his job is to keep the Senate conciliatory because it operates on consensus. Getting pissed at Senate Majority and Minority leaders is a favorite pastime of those on the left and right side of their camps, but these agenda-driven folk don't have a good grasp of how the Senate works. Everything Jon Henke wrote in defense of minority leader Mitch McConnell could be applied in some way to Harry Reid as well, especially during his Minority Leader days.
The bottom line is it's not wise to expect Senate Leaders — even the Majority one — to be tough fighters and firebrands. You get less of your agenda passed through the Senate that way, not more, because it locks up.
In terms of what I would have suggested as an alternative, I think Harry Reid could simply have made some diplomatic type of statement without dissing the base. I don't think its good politics, when so many in the base appear to be scared that the leadership in Congress is looking for a way to sell out cap-and-trade and health care reform
P.S. My view is that it is way too early to be worried about unchecked leftism. Obama and the large majorities in Congress were elected to implement a progressive agenda. For at least the next year or so, I think they should have a free hand to push through all of Obama's campaign promises. This does not imply no dissent. Quite the contrary. Each policy proposal must be examined and crafted to properly do what it's designed to do. I do not countenance, however, what appears to be the current Blue Dog approach, which is to take whatever Obama proposes, shave off 10-20% and declare victory.
P.S. Thanks for posting a reaction on your blog ( http://dlareh.blogspot.com/2009/03/dept-of-biting… ). Here's my response for the edification of those here:
You make a good point. I too have historically been an independent up until the recent election. I generally fall on the libertarian side of the spectrum.
I don't disagree with the general principles underpinning so-called "blue dogs" and even conservatism. Read my post on the state of today's GOP ( http://www.librarygrape.com/2009/03/intellectual-… ) and you'll see I wrote this: "Even though my views on policy matters have changed over the years, I still have a good amount of empathy for various classic conservative dispositions like fiscal restraint, individual liberty, resistance to statism, etc. Although there is still a great deal of wisdom locked up in conservatism, its current incarnation is as intellectually bankrupt as anything I could imagine."
The problem I have is that these generally good principles have calcified (in the right/right of center political leadership in washington) into unyielding dogma. We are in the midst of a serious recession right now and the ideology of "TAX CUTS!" and "LESS SPENDING!" is exactly wrong from a macroeconomic perspective.
So, with this in mind, I believe the GOP and the "Blue Dogs" in Congress are either: (1) shamelessly beholden to the energy/health care/etc. companies that line their campaign coffers and are taking their current positions based on their stated desire to "protect corporate interests; or (2) have been blinded by a calcified ideology to the point that they are unable to craft practical solutions in a time of great economic upheaval. Either solution is wrong in my view.