Rachel Maddow: "Legislative Achievement of Last 21 Months Was Policy Not Politics" - PART 2

[Hissyspit]

Run time: 07:54 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tBHK7zsz7xU   Posted on YouTube: November 02, 2010 By YouTube Member: StartLoving3 Views on YouTube: 302   Posted on DU: November 02, 2010 By DU Member: Hissyspit Views on DU: 941

 
MSNBC The RACHEL MADDOW Show - Nov. 1, 2010: "Democrats got a lot done, a lot of hard stuff done on hard problems, in a short amount of time. The price they may end up paying for that is losing mid-term election."

PART 1: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=385&topic_id=521370&mesg_id=521370

[aquart]

1. I'm so pleased she did this.

Grousers like me need to hear it.

[regnaD kciN]

2. But did they have a choice...???

Rachel is dead-on in that Obama and the congressional Dems (well, most of them, except for the Blue Dogs and Unholy Joe's Gang) chose to make changes that would have a long-term positive effect ("policy"), as opposed to a lesser agenda that would position them better to hold onto power for the next few election cycles ("politics").

But did they have a choice? As far as I can tell, choosing "politics" would have meant foregoing controversial matters like health-care reform (easily spinnable by Republicans into "death panel" scare tactics), and concentrating solely on "getting the economy going again." But I would argue that this would have been futile as well. Republicans were determined to block the President on as many avenues as possible. We already saw what happened any time the President moved in a "jobs, jobs, jobs" direction: Republicans held up unemployment benefits, stalled on job-creation bills of all kinds, refused to support and even came close to killing a stimulus plan that was already crafted to be "centrist" and include many of the tax breaks the G.O.P. had desired...and, after doing all they could to prevent any job-creation measures from becoming law, turned around and claimed that Obama was singlehandedly responsible for high unemployment, with Boehner whining "where are the joooooooooooooooooobs?" as early as three months into Obama's presidency.

Against such an opposition (and the ready spreading of that opposition's meme through Faux Noise and the Teabagger rallies), would even the most pragmatic strategy of seeking purely political gain have had much of a chance? I get the sense that Rachel thinks this administration and its congressional leaders deserve a lot of credit for the political courage of putting long-term benefit ahead of short-term preservation of power. But, maybe, it's less a matter of political courage than of political intelligence -- of figuring that, based on the slim prospects for a rapid economic recovery, the odds were great that they only had two years to implement major, positive change before the swing of the pendulum would make such things impossible, and so that they had better get everything major done right away?

[herbm]

3. We needed to be hearing this all last month.