Mr. Crookletide’s Tiger

That a, a member of class b has prejudice c does not mean that all members of class b have prejudice c.

It’s worse than that. Crook isn’t even a genuinely gettable independent himself — his continuing desire to see the left kicked is a pretty big tell. He is a nominally independent Republican partisan. Now, there’s nothing wrong with that per se (except, IMO, all the things that are wrong with supporting the Republican party as presently constituted, but Crook certainly has a right to be wrongheaded), but it does mean he can’t use himself as an example of the voter Obama should be appealing to. It would be futile for Obama to attempt to appeal to Clive Crook because no matter what he does, Clive Crook will dislike him anyway. Well, maybe except for a reverse Jeffords/Specter.

Truly an inexhaustible subject: the ineffable smugness of Crook.

If only this Democratic president would act like a moderate Republican I could support him!

I only read him through Henry’s campaigns against him, but he always makes me wonder if he was once a member of a sect (SWP, etc). Anyone know?

he always makes me wonder if he was once a member of a sect

Yes, he went to Magdalen College

He should have chosen centrism unreservedly – as many voters believed he had promised during his election campaign.

Well, here’s the thing: Obama did campaign as an unreserved centrist . . . if you take the policies that a majority of Americans support. The majority wanted a public option. The majority wanted something done about the depredations of the FIRE sector of the economy – financial reform with real teeth in it, health care reform that actually reformed the system, etc. The majority wanted the U.S. to pull out of Iraq. The majority wanted some sort of cramdown procedure for homeowners deeply in debt and unable to make their mortgage payments through no fault of their own. And so on and so forth. The problem here is that Crook is confusing identifications and issues, because what he really wants is for most Americans to support his policy preferences by hook or by crook.

Of course, that one is also out of Obama’s playbook. Ever notice that the only time this supposedly calm, cool, and collected man exhibits emotion is when he is peeved at the DFH’s for not getting with the program? Somehow Republicans and their hijinks never seem to earn his ire.

1) independents who are consistently MORE partisan the identified voters, primarily because these voters have actual positions on policy that drive their decisions and in the U.S. policy positions tend to cohere ideologically

This seems to be a very bad definition of independents then. I’m an independent who votes more often Democratic than Republican (note that I did vote for George Bush rather than Walter Mondale, and I voted against him – not for Clinton – in large part of the first Gulf war.) And I vote on the issues, not the party.

To say that someone can’t be independent because they have various policy preferences doesn’t seem to me to leave a lot of room to be an independent, in fact, it strikes me that you would have to be pathetically uninformed and monumentally disinterested in such issues as employment, the state of belligerence, etc. before you could qualify under this definition of “independent”.

The weasel words in the qualifiers are doing all the work here. Obama (and/or Congress) clearly delivered something on each of these issues; whether you consider the something adequate is very much a glass-half-full question.

This makes no sense. If you campaign on health care reform, for example, and people are angry because they don’t think you followed through on your promise, smarmily pointing out that you really did deliver on your promise and it’s not their fault these people misunderstood what you said isn’t going to mollify anyone. In fact, I’d imagine that most people would become even angrier at such sanctimony.

There certainly are plenty of people upset at people who attack Obama for being insufficiently liberal, especially when those people then go on to say “so I’m voting for a third party/not at all”, since that attitude is (correctly, IMO) perceived as increasing the risk of more Republicans being elected in the future.

Again, this doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense. What who’s talking about “Obama being insufficiently liberal”? Certainly not me or a lot of other people I know. The people I know who are unhappy with him (not a few of who voted for George the Lesser, twice), are unhappy because he hasn’t delivered on his campaign promises. Not because he is “insufficiently liberal”.

Please tell me you’re not defining people who are angry that Obama has gone back on his campaign promises as being ipso facto “liberals”.

it strikes me that you would have to be pathetically uninformed and monumentally disinterested in such issues as employment, the state of belligerence, etc. before you could qualify under this definition of “independent”.

why is it implausible that 10% of voters, the “pure independents”, would be like this?

it strikes me that you would have to be pathetically uninformed and monumentally disinterested in such issues as employment, the state of belligerence, etc. before you could qualify under this definition of “independent”.

why is it implausible that 10% of voters, the “pure independents”, would be like this?

I have no idea whether that figure is implausible or not. I’m merely saying that if having opinions on the issues of the day automatically disqualifies you from being a “real” independent, well then, it’s not a very good definition you’re using. In fact, it’s almost as if you’re using an idiosyncratic definition in order to get the results you want, and then passing this bit of received wisdom out into the MSM without mentioning the fact that you’re using a nonstandard definition of the term.

Oh lordly, lordy, give me strength.

It is a mode of argument common on fan forums, take Nikon Rumors for example. Filled with folk who threaten to defect to Canon if Nikon does not release a 35mm f/1.4 in the next five minutes.

Basically what this comes down to is that some people know that their fundamental arguments for their case are so poor that the only way they can get traction is to predict bad things will happen if their advice is not followed.

Obama has shown himself to be vastly more capable as a campaigner and political strategist than any of the pundits. While traditionally the President’s party does less well in the mid-terms, traditionally the opposition does not nominate a bunch of kooks, sad cases and wierdos to fight the key seats. At this point the GOP must be seriously questioning the wisdom of forcing Bunning to step down so that Rand Paul could run in his place. It also looks like they have blown their pickup chances in Florida and Nevada.

Taking the House is much harder than the Senate, incumbency has advantages. The only reason the House is more winnable for the GOP is that every seat is up for grabs while taking the Senate requires the GOP to pretty much run the board and win everything as they are 9 seats behind going in.

I would not be at all surprised if the GOP actually looses seats in the fall. People are depressed about the economy, but the GOP has made no effort to put an alternative proposal on the table. Some people can be persuaded to worry about the debt, but the GOP is proposing to spend $700 billion on extending the Bush tax cuts for the ultra-wealthy.

Henry,
I’m not saying academics make their decisions based on arguments from authority, I was trying to begin to contrast the way, say, John Sides thinks about his own arguments from the way non-academics do (and, further, the way journalists think about them from the way political partisans and other non-journalists do).

As for what you say about polling, all that makes perfect sense. I’ve always thought carefully designed data- and statistics-based social science was more promising than the subjective kind, but that means the definitions used are not necessarily the same as what anyone would think based on their experiences talking to their own friends. If someone’s going to draw broader conclusions, however, or describe specific people, getting the definitions to match seems important, and so does understanding what statistics is (and isn’t).

As I understand what John Sides has posted of the research, among the large number of people who say they are independents (about 1/3 of those polled), only a view actually behave as an independent ought to behave when it comes to voting. The rest are said to be “really” Republicans or Democrats. The conclusion is that only 10% of voters don’t fall cleanly on one side of the Republican/Democrat split. There is thus a discrepancy that has to be interpreted.

(Brooks is still wrong because he usually assumes independents all generally lean Republican.)

Personally, I think it is useful to be reminded that people who call themselves independents may only think politicians are corrupt, and share all the ideas attributed to “the base,” just as some are antiwar, prochoice, prowelfare, pro-same sex marriage, pro-immigration, atheist libertarians who think repealing the income tax is ridiculous. It is also useful to be reminded that research based on these polls probably does not speak to this level of detail w/r/t definitions.

I’m entirely ignorant of the studies of independent voters other than what’s written above, but I guess I have a methodological question: How do we decide which poll responses are creditable? In other words, if a respondent says “1. I’m independent” and “2. I have a consistent political leaning,” I understand that those responses are at odds. But how do we decide that this makes them actual partisans who are mistaken in their perception of their independence, as opposed to actual independents who are mistaken in their perception of their consistent political leaning? There’s their voting record, but that is self-reported as well, presumably.

Of course, that one is also out of Obama’s playbook. Ever notice that the only time this supposedly calm, cool, and collected man exhibits emotion is when he is peeved at the DFH’s for not getting with the program? Somehow Republicans and their hijinks never seem to earn his ire.

come on, Obama slams Republicans plenty. It’s precisely because he’s more comfortable attacking Rs that he blows his cool a little more with liberals.

I think that Clive Crook is completely correct–for 1988. Back then, the Democratic Party turned off a lot of people who had some sympathy for its policies. It appeared to be in thrall to its crazy wing and its more hidebound and parochial interest-group factions.

But that was over 20 years ago. Democratic hippie-bashing had a point back then. (Heck, I bashed a few of them in my time.) Such hippies really don’t matter much any more. No sane person is worried that the Democrats are in thrall to Earth First! or the New Black Panther Party, or Andrea Dworkin. The current DFH wing of the Democratic Party is pretty wonkish in its choice of policies, if not its choice of expletives.

It’s okay for geezers like me and Clive Crook to look with longing at the good old days of hippie-bashing. It is a form of dementia to think that today’s hippies are the same as those of yore.

@SoV

So because Obama didn’t deliver quite the health care bill you really wanted you are going to vote for Sarah and the Wingnuts?

I really don’t get the GOP strategy here. When your opponent is having a tricky economic situation through no particular fault of his own the logical approach is to swing into the breach looking more competent and more sensible than the incumbents.

Instead they are pulling out every last bizarro idea they can think up to improve their standing with their own base.

(“Vote for us or the Republicans win!” doesn’t seem to be very inspiring, especially to those who’ve voted for Republicans in previous elections.)

I don’t understand why people always say this. Personally, “Vote for us or the Republicans win!” is incredibably motivating. Bush v Gore actually happened and we saw the result of 8 years of republican rule. How can people’s memories be so short?

Because they’re people, a.k.a. stupid. Next question?

You need to publish this somewhere where Clive Crook will READ it.

@SoV

My point being that everyone is worried about how other people are going to vote. When you ask individual people the GOP is no more electable now than it was in 2008.

These tea party folk are scary even when they are not marching about with automatic weapons in hand. The GOP attempt to play the racist card against latinos my gain them some votes from their base, but they are permanently alienating the people they are targeting with their hate.

Statements of enthusiasm in polls mean absolutely nothing. When someone is being asked to respond to a poll they are being given an opportunity to send a message. Republicans take the opportunity to send the message that they are fully behind whatever Fox News tells then to think. Liberal Democrats take the opportunity to tell Obama to make fewer compromises with the blue dogs and the Republicans. Neither is any indication of likely voting intention.

If you campaign on health care reform, for example, and people are angry because they don’t think you followed through on your promise, smarmily pointing out that you really did deliver on your promise and it’s not their fault these people misunderstood what you said isn’t going to mollify anyone. In fact, I’d imagine that most people would become even angrier at such sanctimony.

I’d imagine that most people would accept that most campaign promises are about issues that aren’t completely in the candidate’s control after election and that the outcome of political processes rarely *completely* satisfies anyone; and therefore when the candidate does deliver health care reform, the fact that it doesn’t have every detail that particular voter might have wanted it to have is not a justification for saying it doesn’t exist or that the candidate “didn’t deliver” on the promise.

But then, I’m kind of an optimist when it comes to democracy. If most people really do abandon an officeholder who delivers partial or equivocal achievements, without examining the realistic alternatives first, then they’re just going to bounce from one ambitious promiser to the next, perpetually disappointed by the grubbiness of reality. I’d be much more willing to simply say “have fun with that” and leave it at that if there weren’t a realistic prospect of the election of people I consider very dangerous to the public interest, which makes stopping them an overriding imperative even if I judged Obama much more harshly than I do.

And yes, I do think that if you think that the PPACA “isn’t real reform” and therefore Obama has failed to deliver on his promises, then you mean that it isn’t as liberal as you would have liked it to be and that you blame Obama for that outcome. The first part is a subjective judgment (based on which reforms you personally consider “real”) and I’ve already explained why I think the second is misguided. I think he’s done okay — not great, but okay — at encouraging some action from a legislature that is biased both toward conservatism (rural states are overrepresented in the chamber that is the more common limit on action) and inaction (the filibuster) even relative to the rest of a political system already biased toward moneyed interests, let alone actual national opinion or interests.

And I have little doubt that his opponent would have vetoed PPACA, if it had even managed to pass with a presidential thumb on the scale against it rather than in favor (and whatever compromise-brokering actually took place). His next opponent will most likely run on a repeal platform. Under those circumstances it seems to me to be little short of insanity to say that “this isn’t real reform, he hasn’t lived up to his promises, I’m looking for someone else to support”. Politics is the art of the possible and *out of the possible outcomes*, what we got was not so bad and better than most.

chris, I’m with you more-or-less on the Affordable Care Act, though I’d suggest that agreeing to abandon talk of single-payer in pre-emptive private talks with insurers severely degraded the quality of “the possible outcomes” in play. Anyway, sure, it’s something positive.

But I can’t sustain any optimism when I look at foreign policy, where [1] Obama has much greater leeway to act, independent of Congress, and [2] Obama has unilaterally continued, intensified, and worsened the abuses of power initiated by Bush, with the possible (and as yet unconfirmed) exception of explicitly abandoning a particular subset of torture practices (which may be continuing unabated at the Bagram Theater Internment Facility and elsewhere).

@28
In addition to Jamey’s first paragraph, there are people who consider themselves socially liberal (and opposed to neoliberalism even if they don’t know the name) but in practice dislike people they identify as liberals and/or feminists (their place on the emotional divide between labor and management varies)–at least that’s what they tell me. It would take some thought to figure out what all these groups have in common, and I’m not sure I’m up to it.

P.S.: I think most of the criticisms boil down to “If he had just been determined enough, he could have done it”, IOW the ever-resilient idea that nothing is truly impossible and all failures are ultimately failures of will. Even when people explicitly disclaim the idea that they would blame him for trying and failing, somehow, the failure itself becomes irrefutable evidence that he wasn’t really trying hard enough. It’s comforting, even inspiring, to think this because it gives the illusion of control — if *you* do things right, if you try hard enough, then you will succeed, because hard work will make you succeed, regardless of the obstacles against you. You’re not like that loser who gave up and failed.

I don’t subscribe to this idea. Sometimes your capabilities really are finite and your goals are beyond them. Even if you are the president of the United States. Sometimes you do everything right, and still lose. Which means that the loss itself is not necessarily a judgment; some people lose because they screwed up, and others lose because events were against them and they couldn’t have done anything about it. Knowing which is which is important, of course; but before you criticize a loser for losing, first point out what they could have done to win, and prove that it would have worked.

My standard for “not even attempting” definitely includes giving public lip service while Rahm Emanuel was working behind the scenes to kill it- to the accompaniment of imprecations against the “retarded” liberals who were actually fighting for it. (Indeed, that’s more akin to “lying” than to merely “not even attempting”. ) Evidently chris’s standards are a good deal lower.

Steve beat me to it.

And if it could also have been better, it’s not because of what Obama did or didn’t do, but because of what the Senate did or didn’t do.

Then why would you even give him credit for half a loaf? By your reasoning, he was structurally powerless over the final result. So why pretend that he achieved anything at all, when it was all the legislature’s doing?

But what you can’t do, if you want to engage with people, is call them O-bots.

Touche. Chris phrased his points- wildly inaccurate though I believe them to be- in a non-confrontational way, and I shouldn’t have let my irritation get the better of me.

If you campaign on health care reform, for example, and people are angry because they don’t think you followed through on your promise, smarmily pointing out that you really did deliver on your promise and it’s not their fault these people misunderstood what you said isn’t going to mollify anyone. In fact, I’d imagine that most people would become even angrier at such sanctimony.

I’d imagine that most people would accept that most campaign promises are about issues that aren’t completely in the candidate’s control after election and that the outcome of political processes rarely completely satisfies anyone; and therefore when the candidate does deliver health care reform, the fact that it doesn’t have every detail that particular voter might have wanted it to have is not a justification for saying it doesn’t exist or that the candidate “didn’t deliver” on the promise.

But then, I’m kind of an optimist when it comes to democracy. If most people really do abandon an officeholder who delivers partial or equivocal achievements, without examining the realistic alternatives first, then they’re just going to bounce from one ambitious promiser to the next, perpetually disappointed by the grubbiness of reality.

Going back to civility standards as well as the facts on the ground: You do realize that you’ve just called substantial numbers of people naive rubes for actually believing those campaign promises instead of dismissing them as overheated rhetoric. You are being at best . . . unpersuasive. And at worst, insulting and off-point.

More on this in a sec.

“Ever notice that the only time this supposedly calm, cool, and collected man exhibits emotion is when he is peeved at the DFH’s for not getting with the program?”

I don’t know if anyone else has posted this, but I’m thinking of the time he was talking about gay rights out in California and got heckled.

But what you can’t do, if you want to engage with people, is call them O-bots. That just stops conversation dead. And if you don’t want to engage with them, why bother commenting?

I think his reference to himself as one of the O-bots’ “betters” answers that question.

P.S.: I think most of the criticisms boil down to “If he had just been determined enough, he could have done it”, IOW the ever-resilient idea that nothing is truly impossible and all failures are ultimately failures of will. Even when people explicitly disclaim the idea that they would blame him for trying and failing, somehow, the failure itself becomes irrefutable evidence that he wasn’t really trying hard enough.

Funny how you don’t give any explicit examples of this behaviour. The people I know who criticize him for not trying hard enough have no problems pointing out where Obama did twist a few arms to get what he wanted. And about that public option? You know, the one you’re giving people grief about, calling them unrealistic because of ‘political realities’? You do know that he bargained the public option away in a backroom deal in July . . . and then lied through his teeth and pretended he was still for it in Septemeber and beyond, right? Here’s a link:

For months I’ve been reporting in The Huffington Post that President Obama made a backroom deal last summer with the for-profit hospital lobby that he would make sure there would be no national public option in the final health reform legislation. (See here, here and here). I’ve been increasingly frustrated that except for an initial story last August in the New York Times, no major media outlet has picked up this important story and investigated further.

Hopefully, that’s changing. On Monday, Ed Shultz interviewed New York Times Washington reporter David Kirkpatrick on his MSNBC TV show, and Kirkpatrick confirmed the existence of the deal. Shultz quoted Chip Kahn, chief lobbyist for the for-profit hospital industry on Kahn’s confidence that the White House would honor the no public option deal, and Kirkpatrick responded:

“That’s a lobbyist for the hospital industry and he’s talking about the hospital industry’s specific deal with the White House and the Senate Finance Committee and, yeah, I think the hospital industry’s got a deal here. There really were only two deals, meaning quid pro quo handshake deals on both sides, one with the hospitals and the other with the drug industry. And I think what you’re interested in is that in the background of these deals was the presumption, shared on behalf of the lobbyists on the one side and the White House on the other, that the public option was not going to be in the final product.”

Kirkpatrick also reported in his original New York Times article that White House was standing behind the deal with the for-profit hospitals: “Not to worry, Jim Messina, the deputy White House chief of staff, told the hospital lobbyists, according to White House officials and lobbyists briefed on the call. The White House was standing behind the deal”.

This should be big news. Even while President Obama was saying that he thought a public option was a good idea and encouraging supporters to believe his healthcare plan would include one, he had promised for-profit hospital lobbyists that there would be no public option in the final bill.

So even while people like you were going around and making excuses, saying ‘the votes just aren’t there’, ‘the President can only do so much’, etc., he’d already traded it away . . . and then lied about it to people who had worked very hard for him on his campaign – and for most of them, for no pay at that.

How about you doing your part now, and accepting some legitimate criticism to the effect that on this particular (I do like specifics) issue you were being incredibly naive, and that the people you like to uniformly style as DFH’s were dead right, and you were emphatically wrong?

Think you can do that? In the interest of having an honest discussion? Assuming that’s what you want, of course, rather than simply wanting to browbeat people you disagree with and call them names.

worsened?

Not sure if you’re getting on me for grammar or for substance, so I’ll assume substance, since “worsened” doesn’t fairly apply across the board. I was thinking specifically of drone remote-assassination attacks in Pakistan when I used that word.

(As a criticism of grammar you’d be spot on; ‘worsened’ is intransitive. Ah well.)

Also, withdrawing large numbers of troops from Iraq is a good thing, surely?

Sure; redeploying large numbers of troops from Iraq to Afghanistan, less so.

I and many other people I know don’t consider this real reform because it’s simply a bad law, in part because it doesn’t do a lot to contain costs, in part because it mandates that citizens are required to pay over monies to private (rather than public) organizations, in part because enforcement provisions are lax to nonexistent and easily gamed.

All of those are liberal criticisms, as I understand the term “liberal” as it is used in the US. Are you working with some other definition I’m not aware of? (In particular, do you consider it an insult to be called a liberal or more liberal than Obama, and if so, why?)

As for the main issue, how exactly does the presumption, shared on behalf of the lobbyists on the one side and the White House on the other, that the public option was not going to be in the final product turn into he would make sure there would be no national public option in the final health reform legislation? Because to me the former looks perfectly consistent with “he thinks the Senate is going to kill the PO whatever he does” and the latter, well, technically it’s still consistent with that (in which case he’s deliberately making a promise he doesn’t have to do anything to keep) but it sure looks different.

The people I know who criticize him for not trying hard enough have no problems pointing out where Obama did twist a few arms to get what he wanted.

Interesting that I’ve seen precisely zero examples in this thread. For example, if Obama did make a deal to kill the PO, do you think he actually delivered? That the PO would have been passed without Obama’s interference? Because I’d *really* like to see evidence of *that*. Without that, the whole betrayal argument falls apart — you can’t murder a corpse. And that’s where the conspiracy theory is weakest, because so many senators are on record against the PO, starting — but not ending — with the whole Republican caucus.

Further, some of the people who are criticizing healthcare “reform” are not by any stretch of the imagination “liberals” and in fact voted for George Bush.

Oh, come on. People saying “this is a failure of his campaign promises because it isn’t REAL reform” (e.g. because it doesn’t have the public option) are not the same people saying “this is a socialist big government takeover of the health care system” (and the public option would be an even bigger government takeover) simply because they both criticize Obama. Multiple camps critical of Obama certainly exist, but I was addressing a specific one of them. Was that not sufficiently clear? (I don’t ask that to be snide, but to find out if our disagreement really is rooted in misunderstanding.)

Finally: if it seems like I think some people are interpreting campaign promises as unqualified promises about outcomes and constructing unrealistic expectations on that basis, or spinning conspiracy theories on very little evidence, well, I do think that. I don’t intend that to be gratuitously insulting, but when I see apparently unreasonable behavior it’s hard to discuss its substance without giving the impression that I consider it unreasonable, and if that’s all it takes for some people to feel insulted, I don’t see any way to avoid that other than to have no discussion at all.

I and many other people I know don’t consider this real reform because it’s simply a bad law, in part because it doesn’t do a lot to contain costs, in part because it mandates that citizens are required to pay over monies to private (rather than public) organizations, in part because enforcement provisions are lax to nonexistent and easily gamed.

All of those are liberal criticisms, as I understand the term “liberal” as it is used in the US. Are you working with some other definition I’m not aware of? (In particular, do you consider it an insult to be called a liberal or more liberal than Obama, and if so, why?)

Sigh. Now you’re just being obstinate. Just about every liberal I know says that Elvis is really, truly dead. Does that make this a “liberal” opinion, or is this a totally mainstream opinion that liberals are in accordance with? Iow, just because someone you call a “liberal” happens to agree with you doesn’t necessarily mean your opinion is a liberal one.

And no, the sobriquet “liberal” does not bother me. I merely object to it’s inappropriate application. You can’t call anyone some sort of “liberal” merely because they wanted a public option, especially sense clear majorities favored it. As I pointed out above, it looks as if you are using this as a rather idiosyncratic definition of liberal.

Oh, and btw – I really liked how you were big enough to apologize for being incivil, insulting, and dismissive. And I really liked how you acknowledged how Obama really did do a backroom deal to get rid of the public option.

Do you think maybe you could tone it down a bit, maybe apologize for your behaviour thus far?

Further, some of the people who are criticizing healthcare “reform” are not by any stretch of the imagination “liberals” and in fact voted for George Bush.

Oh, come on. People saying “this is a failure of his campaign promises because it isn’t REAL reform” (e.g. because it doesn’t have the public option) are not the same people saying “this is a socialist big government takeover of the health care system” (and the public option would be an even bigger government takeover) simply because they both criticize Obama.

You do realize that your making caricatures of the people I’m describing, right? And that this isn’t doing anyone’s opinion of you any good?

But no, there are large numbers of reasonable people who voted for Bush and who happen not to believe that the government is some sort of scary socialist menace. In fact, there are large numbers of people who vote Democratic or Republican only because of some sort of brainless tradition in their family, and who in fact don’t think about politics a lot. They aren’t all redneck hillbillies who prefer “Roundup” caps and “Red Man” tobacco, or long-haired hippies presenting oversized peace medallions and stinking of patchouli.

Henry, I’d prefer to make nice, but I think that you’ll have to speak to Chris personally on this one. When he says things like “I don’t intend that to be gratuitously insulting, but when I see apparently unreasonable behavior it’s hard to discuss its substance without giving the impression that I consider it unreasonable, and if that’s all it takes for some people to feel insulted, I don’t see any way to avoid that other than to have no discussion at all.”, that pretty much tells me he’s going to keep on doing what he’s doing. The old “I’m not being insulting, I’m just telling it like it is” gets kind of old after a while.

There’s another talking point that gets batted around a lot, about how “the votes just aren’t there” and “the President can only do so much”. Here’s the thing: Saying “the votes just aren’t there” doesn’t mean that Pelosi or Reid or Obama went around politely asking their peeps to vote a certain way and if the answer is no, then moving on to the next congresscritter.

You can’t say “the votes just aren’t there” until after you’ve done all you can to get the people on your side of the aisle to vote a certain way, whether it’s by using the carrot or the stick. Otherwise, again, the President can take no credit for any kind of legislation he desires – obviously, there wasn’t anything he could do about it!

So yes, Obama is given credit for the final passage of his health care “reform” bill in part because he used a certain amount of muscle to get it passed. And this is by no means unusual. Let’s look at another bit, the war supplemental:

White House Browbeats Dem Freshmen On War Money: “You’ll Never Hear From Us Again”

The White House is playing hardball with Democrats who intend to vote against the supplemental war spending bill, threatening freshmen who oppose it that they won’t get help with reelection and will be cut off from the White House, Rep. Lynn Woolsey (D-Calif.) said Friday.

“We’re not going to help you. You’ll never hear from us again,” Woolsey said the White House is telling freshmen. She wouldn’t say who is issuing the threats, and the White House didn’t immediately return a call. [UPDATE: White House spokesman Nick Shapiro says Woolsey’s charge is not true.]

In fact, I’m astonished that anyone who follows American politics for any length of time at all can make this sort of assertion; there are many ways to keep errant Congressman in line, everything from passing over them for plum committees or chairmanships (or outright revoking them), to denying any pork for their constituents, to – in the case I linked above – denying them any national assistance in their bids for reelection or else outright throwing their weight behind a challenger in the primaries.

So when people use the excuse “the votes just weren’t there”, they’ve got actually demonstrate that some sort of leverage was applied and which failed to work. Iow, as usual for a lot of people in indefensible positions in whatever situation, they’re trying to evade their burden of proof responsibilities and shift it on to the other party. This is particularly difficult if the counterclaim that has to be actively refuted is of the “proof of a negative sort”. In this particular example, rather than actually prove that Obama went to some effort to get those contrary votes for the public option, these people will try to demand that folks like me prove that Obama “didn’t do enough”, a rather impossible standard I think most will agree in the abstract.

To be still more concrete, If Lieberman was threatened with the loss of his committee chairs, still said no, had his chairmanship revoked, and still voted no, then yeah, I’d agree that the President had “done all he could” and that “the votes just weren’t there”.

As it is, of course, Lieberman says that the President never talked to him about his support for the public option, ever. Make of that what you will.

First of all, I confess, the urge to be uncivil is very strong, but was not the HCR debate one of the most toxic non-war related political left vs. right debates in recent memory? In that environment, my urge is, to suggest that maybe others need to try on the shoes of Obama.

They did have phones, e-mail contacts, and noisy town halls to deal with. It wasn’t business as usual at least as far as an apathetic electorate. I’d suggest, that more than usual, two Senators in a room were representing a lot of noisy conflicting interests.

What is considered real success in that environment?

You do realize that you’ve just called substantial numbers of people naive rubes

For the record, that was the first appearance of the phrase “naive rubes” in the thread; in other words, this is a strawman attack.

you were being incredibly naive

Now you’re just being obstinate

being incivil, insulting, and dismissive

Accusing people who disagree with Obama’s actions as just being a bunch of leftist hippies who can’t possibly have any real substance to their complaints

Another strawman. I haven’t necessarily chosen my words with extreme care, but I certainly didn’t say *that*.

Res ipsa loquitur.

I do apologize for contributing to threadjacking this into something about blaming Obama, though. In retrospect it would clearly have been wiser to let #13 pass without taking a shot at it, and I now wish I had done so. Nothing useful came of it, and a lot of grief was had by all.

And it does seem to me that this thread would probably be better off dead at this point: SoV very firmly (trying extra-hard to avoid anything that could possibly be construed as insulting) believes that Obama could have swayed a sufficient number of Senators to his will if he had chosen to do so, and I don’t, and apparently neither of us is going to produce evidence that will convince the other. (We apparently don’t even agree on which of those positions is a claim that needs to be proved.) Therefore we’re at an impasse and can’t possibly meaningfully discuss what to credit/blame Obama for when we can’t even agree on what he *could* have done, or the set of possible outcomes of his actions.