Waiting for Presidential Jujitsu

Well, Obama managed to pull it off and get himself elected despite having to run against a clearly mentally inferior Republican, a disadvantage which defeated both Gore and Kerry. Hooray USA. It seems that a small group of Democrats decided to actually pay attention to how campaigns could be won and lost, used a lot of very smart media buys, innovated in fundraising, followed Howard Dean's gameplan for competing in all fifty states, and had an incredibly disciplined candidate who was excellent at framing - something that Republicans have traditionally been very good at and Democrats not so much. Obama's team was incredibly savvy about the media. Here, for example, is a great analysis of a truly inspired move by our new WhiteHouse spokesman against raging idiot Sean Hannity.

So, ok, Obama's people know how to campaign, which is totally great and unexpected in a group of Democrats. But what about governing? As George W. Bush tragically demonstrated, winning elections and governing competently are two entirely different things. And the track record of Democrats in fighting evil and incompetence is not reassuring. The Democratic leaders in the Congress are terrible, full of the most cowardly, unprincipled, puling wretches who couldn’t be bothered to defend the law, the Constitution, or our freedoms if their livelihoods depended on it. They continually make choices that are not only bad policy but bad politics. The way they act is a continual source of shock, outrage, and disappointment to their base. It’s like trying to fight Darth Vader with a limp lasagna noodle. There are only a few, such as Marcy Kaptur, Dennis Kucinich, Russ Feingold, and Bernie Sanders (who isn’t a Democrat, of course) who break through the nod-and-wink charade of pretending free market capitalists are not the lying thieves they have proved themselves to be.

Any student of recent politics knows that the GOP excels at being very effective in opposition. Here's what they do: they demand and demand and demand compromise on legislation, which the Democrats always give in to, always too much and too early. Then, when the legislation has been made completely ineffective, they vote against it anyway. This is exactly what they are doing with the stimulus bill. A recent piece by the Rude Pundit puts it this way:



Now, long after the thieving horses have left the barn, they are closing the barn door. In a pattern repeated many times in history, a regime that tortured people and spied on their own citizens has left, leaving a popular new regime saddled with debt and a bunch of Chicago School economic advisors to forbid them from doing anything useful about it. This happened in Poland, in South Africa, in Russia, in country after country in South America . . . and now it is happening here, right on schedule. Read “The Shock Doctrine” by Naomi Klein, if you haven’t already.

We await evidence that the Obama team is just as smart about governing the GOP as they were at campaigning against them. The only effective way to approach this stimulus bill is to devise it with no compromises, to make it an actually effective bill, to reject yet more tax breaks, and to pass it without the GOP. Obama doesn’t need them.