Pundit Country

from the Northwest Progressive Institute Advocate (via BarbinMD at Daily Kos)

Today on MSNBC’s Hardball with host Chris Matthews and his guest Howard Fineman (emphasis mine):

MATTHEWS: Uh, let’s talk about this thing with Harry Reid and Lieberman. I call him “Joe the bummer” as in “Joe the plumber,” because he’s brilliantly timing this thing. ‘I’m not for this, I’m not for the public option, now I’m not for the buy-in on Medicare,’ the H-55. He’s just killing these guys.

FINEMAN: Well, I talked to his spokesman today, I said, look, I’m going on Hardball, give me your side of the story. Okay, their side of the story is, it’s a principled thing, there’s many parts of the bill he believes in, the Medicare buy-in is an add-on because there’s already subsidies. And the guy gave me a lot of plausible stuff. Okay. And I half believe it. I’m sorry …

MATTHEWS: What’s the other half of your beliefs?

FINEMAN: The other half is it’s personal with Joe, not with Obama, ’cause don’t forget that Obama, the President, supported Lieberman in the fight in the party in Connecticut. It’s the grassroots left of the Democratic Party …

MATTHEWS: That enjoyed his torture.

FINEMAN: That enjoyed his torture and this is payback to them. Obama, excuse me, the President’s caught in the middle here. That’s my take on it.

MATTHEWS: So he wants Markos Moulitsas [founder of Daily Kos] to take a hit.

FINEMAN: He wants Moulitsas, he wants [the blog] Firedoglake, he wants all those people who rode around on the bus of the challenger, who defeated him in the Democratic primary.

If the aide Fineman spoke with is correct, then Connecticut voters did not place an adult in office. They sent a bitter, petulant child to the United States Senate who feels that his personal vendetta outweighs any obligation to people in desperate straights where both their health and their financial well being are concerned.

And the White House (or more specifically Cheif of Staff Rahm Emanuel) is letting him get away with it.

I might add that Lieberman (who has a history of flip-flopping on this issue) is the same guy who actively campaigned for McCain and has no love for Obama, even after the President intervened when grassroots progressives were trying to get Senate Democrats to kick him out of their caucus. More than most Senators, Joe Lieberman is in it for himself and has been for years. Why the Democrats continually insist on watching his backside is beyond me. If Joe can’t support the Democratic party on any of the core issues they should be fighting for (affordable health care, diplomacy over unwarranted military aggression, labor unions over greedy corporations), then it’s time to dump his self-important little butt. He’s doing nothing for them and everything to hurt them.

Related articles

• Lieberman Flexes Muscle as Democrats Rethink Health Plan (nytimes.com)
• Calls to drop Medicare change intensify (money.cnn.com)
• Health-Care Bill Reaches Impasse (online.wsj.com)
• Lieberman a big problem for Democrats (cnn.com)
• The Ben and Joe Pony Show (mydd.com)
• Rahm is Making the White House Look Terrible (emptywheel.firedoglake.com)
• Politico: White House Pressuring Reid to Cut Deal with Lieberman (dailykos.com)

Is Tarryl Comfortable As the Left’s Candidate?

When was the last time you saw or heard a right-wing candidate asked of they were comfortable being the candidate for Limbaugh, Beck, Hannity, and Steele?

Tarryl, by the way refers to Tarryl Clark, one of two Democrats who may face off against Minnesota’s 6th District against right-wing loon Michele Bachmann. Be prepared to see this race turn on pure ideology considering Bachmann has done little in terms of pork or policy for her district.

Related articles by Zemanta

• An Expensive Race Brewing in the MN-06 (mydd.com)

Nice little hat tip to the Ned Lamont CT Senate race from 2006 here too. Well done.

I never promised it made sense, just that it was explained.

I realize I’m generalizing here, but if you think about the main pillars of support for Democratic candidates in this country (at least the liberal and progressive ones; I’m not sure this really qualifies for the Blue Dogs, or conservative Democrats) the LGBT community, civil rights/law community, labor community, and the environmental communities constitute most of the  who tend to skew to the Democratic Party with either electoral or financial support (or both).

In the eight or so months since Obama came into office, his administration has disappointed or outright angered some of his most core supporters in almost every group. What I’m talking about here isn’t the leaders of each of these important constituent groups, I’m talking about the grassroots supporters, the ones who campaigned the hardest for him, the ones who knocked on doors, who traveled across the country to champion his cause, the ones who called people for hours or donated what little money they had to his campaign.

In what way he disappointed them?

• His administration backed a watered down climate bill, rather than pushing for a better, more comprehensive one, cliaming the goal was bipartisanship
• Actively trying to avoid torture prosecutions or even investigations into them, preferring instead to “look forward”
• completely avoided addressing the highly controversial DADT/DOMA issues
• Not pushing all that hard for EFCA, leaving the card check provision to a Senate, which is hardly in favor of it.

Now there have been many reports written claiming that Obama genuinely believes in the post-partisan ideas that he touted during the campaign, the idea that elected leaders can rise to statesmen when the issues are this serious and contentious. However, this rings a bit too West Wing-y to me.

My own guess is that he wants Congress to work this out amongst themselves with the President indicating what he likes and what he doesn’t (or what he’d veto if presented), the way Congress used to function before Bush and his team got ahold of it. But I’m afraid that it doesn’t work like that now, and may not for quite some time.

It also should go without saying that this is most certainly not the issue he should be trying it with. Health insurance reform is simply a far too important issue  to leave to a group of people who are too close with the lobbyists of Big Pharma and Big Insurance to address. They have been letting the lobbyists write legislation for so long, that I honestly don’t think they (or at least a majority of them) know how to anymore.

The big difference is that with a public option win, Obama could turn the tables on this and start scoring some serious win. I fear that he abandons the option in favor or co-ops or triggers or some other form of “reform” that amounts to nothing, he will have wasted a great deal of political capital on an issue that he didn’t solve, embolden conservatives on both sides of both parties who seek to control the debate and dishearten the final pillar  of support that he has. While this may be salvaged by the progressive movement in the long haul, it will be disastrous come 2010 when Democrats will be asking the voters they betrayed for another shot.