Republicans gained by obstructing, Democrats lost by reaching out
by: Chris Bowers
Mon Feb 22, 2010 at 12:53\
The theory is that if Democrats make a show out of reaching out to Republicans, but Republicans slap Democrats down every time and obstruct for the sake of obstructing, then Democrats will gain politically.
The reality is that Republicans gain in the polls if Democrats fail to pass legislation that improves people's lives, no matter the political theater of obstruction.This is demonstrative not of bad execution of the Democratic plan to reach out to Republicans and make them look like obstructionists, but rather of a faulty theory behind that plan. The problem isn't that Democrats haven't done enough to reach out to Republicans, or to get out the message about Republican obstruction. The problem is that the public doesn't care about political process, which makes attempts to publically reach out to Republicans useless political theater that does nothing except delay important legislation. The public wants their lives to improve, and doesn't care about process stories or the 24-hour news cycle.
Health care reform is an excellent example of this. Senate Finance Committee Chair Max Baucus passed his health reform legislation on October 13, 2009, 74 days later than any other committee chair (July 31st, 2009). The reason for this 74 day delay was that Max Baucus decided to negotiate with a six-person bipartisan group consisting of three Republicans and three Democrats. Even though the chief Republican negotiator in that group, Charles Grassley, said he was always opposed to the health care bill, that he wouldn't vote for it even if he received every concession he wanted, and said the health care bill would kill your grandmother, Bacuus kept reaching out to Republicans. Further, another of the chief negotiators, Mike Enzi, said he was talking to Democrats only to delay the bill.
Instead of this political obstruction hurting Republicans, it hurt Democrats. And badly. The 74 days that Baucus wasted would have easily been enough to pass health reform before the January 19th special election in Massachusetts. Democrats looked ineffective in passing legislation, and kept an unpopular bill in the headlines for much, much longer than it needed to be.
The reason this didn't hurt Republicans is because the country ultimately does not care about political process. In an open-ended CBS poll taken just before President Obama's inauguration, only 2% of the country cited fixing partisanship as the task they would most like to see President Obama accomplish. Further, that poll is the only time that "partisanship" has ever registered as the top problem facing the country for more than 1% of the population.
The country doesn't tune into process stories in the news, either. Five years ago, during the ultimate process fight in the Senate--the Republican attempt to get rid of the filibuster--only 34% of the country said they followed the story "very closely" or "somewhat closely." This helps to explain why only 26% of the country knows that it takes 60 votes to overcome a filibuster in the Senate. Most of the country has no idea why Democrats don't just pass whatever they want.
The problem with the theory of change employed by Democrats, and articulated by Mark Schmidt, is that it assumes everyone in the country is a political junkie familiar with congressional process and glued to the daily news cycle. In realty, the public never lists process issues among the top issues facing the country, and wants the party in charge of the government to help fix (or at least not exacerbate) the problems they face in their everyday lives.
The country never cared about political theater. As such, putting political theater--aka, making a show of reaching out to Republicans because you know they will reject you--at the center of your strategy was bound to fail. All it did was delay, water down, and block important legislation that could have made people's lives better. Had Democrats instead made using whatever political process they could to make people's lives better the center of their strategy, they would be a lot better off politically right now.
More with charts and figures/links at........
http://www.openleft.com/diary/17516/republicans-gained-by-obstructing-democrats-lost-by-reaching-out