Matt Yglesias

Funny, I find the Beltway bloggers delusional about this. myself in their thinking that since they like the “achievements” then everyone else must too.

Not to mention, if you’re just talking about the House (per your pic of Pelosi), there are the hundreds of bills they passed that died in the Senate.

So you could make an argument for a “do-nothing” Senate, but absolutely not on the House side.

a great insight when Sargent made it, then next found a soft rebutal from Ezra Klein, but I guess the 3rd times the charm in the blogosphere?

OK, but there’s still a few hours left for Matt cite a “White Like Us” writer from The New Racist.

[2]

Susie Madrak has a nice takedown of this kind of claptrap thinking over at Suburban Guerilla: (http://susiemadrak.com/?p=7912)

You all kept explaining to us how what we wanted “couldn’t get done,” and you traded it away without even trying. You didn’t even bother to show us the work.

That’s the problem with the Beltway. You have no idea how difficult, how scary it is for the rest of us out here. That’s why these incremental, kick-the-can-down-the-road bills you pass seem like such a big deal to you, and such a small deal to us. They don’t help us with the problems we face right this minute — you know, like 21% unemployment?

This is sort of nuts.

You beltway sweettalker, yo. Politicians are terrific, and voters are damn crazed ingrates. That’s the way to guarantee my walking to the polls.

What’s a good acronym to help voters remember all the legislative accomplishments this session?

THAT should have been written out months ago, and set to music perhaps.

Dang it!

No immigration reform, no DADT repeal, no EFCA with or without ‘card check’.

I don’t know about Mr. and Mrs. Media Voter, but large swaths of the Democratic base got nothing of substance.

With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in mandate calorie labeling on chain restaurant menus nationwide

Yeah, too bad Lincoln wasn’t as kickass as this Congress.

Sorry Matt, that cheerleader outfit makes you look fat.

Calorie labeling on chain restaurant menus – that’s setting some priorities people. Now if only that applied to soup kitchens…

LOL! Even if I think what the previous Congresses passed sucks big, on the relative magnitude they make this bunch look like buffoons.

The Democrats managed to do a number of things without really doing anything at all that affects ordinary people’s lives in notable ways right now.

Health Care implementation got put off for political reasons, so there’s nothing there for anyone to notice.

The stimulus was far too small, for political reasons, so there’s no stimulus-related (or monetary-policy-related) recovery for people to notice.

The financial services regulation ended up doing very little to stop actually-ongoing abuses (payday lenders didn’t get dealt with, for instance), and it’s wider-reaching technocratic reforms may or may not actually do anything. If they do, it’ll be a while before we see the effects.

Very few of the party’s natural constituencies (unions, racial and sexual minorities) got their pet legislation issues passed. That would be fine with most of us if the administration had overseen a rising tide for all boats, but that obviously hasn’t happened yet.

Basically, this congress’ accomplishments are a (good) health care bill that won’t help almost anyone for another three years yes, a (probably good) financial reform package that again won’t have immediate effects, and a stimulus package that was half again too small to actually bridge the employment gap in this recession.

I can see the case that a fair review of this congress holds that they’ve done more than they seem to. But what they’ve done has had hardly any noticeable effect on the actual lives of actual Americans, and that’s because of issues in the legislation for which, again, the Democratic party is entirely responsible.

Every time I walk into a Dunkin’ Donuts for coffee and see all those calorie labels next to the various menu options I think to myself, “when does the phone banking begin? I can’t wait to volunteer! Hot damn, I knew Democrats were awesome, but I never figured them to be this awesome.”

Matt:
Before the Republicans left, they drove the country into the proverbial ditch. 3/4 of Democrats efforts have been squandered trying to get the car out of the ditch. Of our actual agenda, we got: Troops out of Iraq (partly, in essentially the way Bush promised, with 50,000 left behind, and that was the executive anyhow), Healthcare Reform (sorta, in a way that we felt totally let-down), and equal pay for equal work (which we thought we’d had for decades).

We failed to get: Immigration reform, DADT repeal, Cap-and-trade (or any action on global warming), EFCA, national energy strategy.

The courts took away from us: fair election funding (Citizens’ United) and net neutrality (Comcast v FCC).

Plus, now the country hates us because we’re stuck in this stupid ditch, so everything we didn’t get seems much further away than it ever has before.

You’ll forgive me if I don’t cheer overmuch because some chain restaurants might put calorie counts on the menu.

Political obsessives aside — and you people know who you are — most people in the country don’t follow this stuff closely, and when the economy is in the toilet, that’s what they think about. Hence, they don’t pay as much attention to the Dems’ and Obama’s achievements as they might if times were good. And, of course, there are those who think that since Obama didn’t get single-payer health care, that he accomplished nothing. A shrug is the only proper response to that.

Re Francois at 7: “I don’t know about Mr. and Mrs. Media Voter, but large swaths of the Democratic base got nothing of substance.”
————–
Well, the part of the base that wrote $100,000 campaign donations got a LOT.

Just look at Goldman Sachs’ rate of return
on their $1 million investment in Obama’s Presidential campaign.

Of course, the 8 million people who are unemployed and the 1.5 million who have declared bankruptcy in the past year –due in part to Goldman Sachs’ financial games — ain’t doing
so hot.

You all kept explaining to us how what we wanted “couldn’t get done,” and you traded it away without even trying. You didn’t even bother to show us the work.

This is why I can’t read the activist left anymore. It’s all about the president as the Decider. If it doesn’t happen , it’s because Obama either doesn’t want it to happen, or it’s because he didn’t want it hard enough. It’s as if they’ve internalized the whole “Unitary Executive” theory of government.

See “The Decadence of Election 2010″ by Peter Morici at

http://www.upi.com/Top_News/Analysis/2010/09/21/Outside-View-The-Decadence-of-Election-2010/UPI-45851285064940/

(Morici is the former chief economist at the US International Trade Commission.)

An excerpt:
——————-
“Whichever bunch of second rate incompetents you favor — the Clinton or Bush White Houses — one thing is clear, Obama ratcheting up government spending and taxes won’t fix what’s broke and neither will the GOP prescription of tax cuts and deregulation.

Obama’s two signature initiatives — healthcare reform and financial services re-regulation — simply don’t work. The former fails to address the root problem — Americans pay 50 percent more for doctors, hospitals and drugs — than subscribers to national health plans in Germany, France and other decadent socialist European countries and the banks are back to their old tricks.

Wall Street is hustling municipal governments into the kind of quick-fix budget schemes — like selling parking meters and airports fees — that made Greece the most historically elegant insolvent entity since bankruptcies were invented in the courts of ancient Athens. Now bankers are shoring up 2011 bonuses by hustling shoddy corporate bonds that lack adequate collateral and may never be repaid. …

….Republicans don’t believe in effective government solutions to healthcare, Wall Street, fixing trade with China and dependence on foreign oil.

Enter the Tea Party. It really only offers a purer form of failed Republicanism. Tax and spend less and turn the country over to the robber barons.”

Matt makes a funny!

I thought this post of Matthew’s was hilariously funny — but then I had assumed he was being sarcastic.

I mean, when you start listing the Democrats’ top ten major achievements this session with the following:

“Among other things, this congress passes a comprehensive overhaul of student loans. It also mandated calorie labeling on chain restaurant menus nationwide. “

I mean, when you start listing the Democrats’ top ten major achievements this session with the following:

“Among other things, this congress passes a comprehensive overhaul of student loans. It also mandated calorie labeling on chain restaurant menus nationwide. “

You have no idea what the student loan bill was about, do you?

2

Two great failings for the Democrats.

First, as noted above, they only got half-way, at best, towards the goals they campaigned on, deferring the hard fixes because they were too corrupt to do so or too spineless to upset the Beltway Social Club.

Second, they failed, for about the sixteenth election cycle in a row, to realize they are not just running a government, they are producing a TV series about government.

Michael Deaver, Roger Ailes, Newt Gingrich, and Karl Rove had that second bit figured out years ago. You cannot ignore appearances in the age of television. However virtuous you might be, or how virtuous you think you are, you have to look both virtuous and strong on television while you are doing it.

At this point, the entire Republican national operation is a gigantic scam to con voters who hate the establishment into voting the establishment’s most dedicated tools back into office. They are disaster at governing, but they stay competitive by making themselves look strong on television and by making the Democrats–with plenty of help from the Democrats–look like failures and weaklings.

Midland at 21 is right but there is more to it. The Democrats will get creamed in the upcoming election not because Obama lost the bipartisan Republicans. He never had them. They don’t exist.

The Democratic Party will lost because it is losing independents and Democrats.

The only fix for our nation’s problems is a new party — dedicated from day one to the relentless extermination of the plutocracy and their corrupt tools — the current two parties.

The Congresses that implemented the Bush tax cuts, appropriated money for Iraq, and confirmed hack nominees like Scalito and Michael “Heck of a Job” Brown more did far more than the current Congress. I think a lot of Democrats were expecting Obama and Congress to largely undo the Bush years.

Also, when people are responding to that poll, they’re probably not actually cataloguing past Congress’s achievements and comparing the current Congress’s to some average of their recollection of past Congress’s work. That’s far too cognition-intensive for a poll respondent. Rather, they’re more likely using the most available standard for how much this Congress ought to do, and that is their expectations of what it would do.

You may think these expectations were higher than would be reasonable by historical standards, but rather than having opinionista Democrats criticize poll respondents for unreasonably high expectations a month before the election, we’d be better served by the same opinionistas having the foresight to try their damnedest to get Congress to come closer to meeting those expectations a year or two before the election.

To be fair to Matt, he has railed consistency on the sclerosis of the Senate and the lack of seriousness on the part of Senate Democrats in getting their mandated agenda passed, so my criticism is reserved mainly for general fecklessness on the part of left-of-center media folks who have failed miserably in creating the public opinion climate that could have helped get better results from Congress.

Also, what Midland said.

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For the Nth time, the House was incredibly productive and passed excellent legislation. This legislation then either died in the Senate or was watered down to become tepid moderate legislation.

Compared to three rounds of tax cuts, an unnecessary war, unprecedented expansion of the security state, the Patriot Act and FISA, student loans and calorie labeling don’t really stack up. The beltway bloggers appear to be keeping scored based on singles instead of runs.

Labels stick. The original Congress that Harry Truman created the term “Do-Nothing” for, the 80th (1947-1949–also one of only two the GOP had the majority for from 1930 to 1994), also actually did lots: Taft-Hartley (in the teeth of a veto, and while Matt and other progressives probably accept without argument that T-H was Evil, it is probably nevertheless true that if the undistilled Wagner Act regime had remained after 1947 it could have choked off a great deal of postwar economic growth that happened), enacting sensible federal housing subsidies, passing hospital construction
laws, re-prioritizing Truman’s post-war military spending towards more effective channels (e.g. SAC and the USMC), supporting the Marshall Plan, vigorously investigating corruption, all sorts of things. The fact that they repeatedly shot down legislation Truman repeatedly proposed in one stunt special session after another didn’t mean it wasn’t busy passing laws.

But Truman’s libel on the 80th stuck. There is no reason to think the emerging legend of the 111th won’t either.

The two most productive and beneficial congresses in the last thirty years were the one sworn in in 1993, and the one sworn in in 2009.

Both will suffer from the same image problem. They both were ashamed of their achievemants. It is electoral suicide. Whatever you’ve done, you have to act like you’re proud of it.

There are two incorrect theories on how to win elections – be moderate to attract independents, or be extreme to turn out your base. The latter is closer. The real way to win is to make your base enthusiastic, so that independents – who tend to be unable or unwilling to comprehend any issues at all – vote along with the people who are enthusiastic.

Both the mealy-mouthed moderates and the hypercritical far left are killing us. We’ve got to learn to get the most we can get, and declare total victory.

1

Among other things, this congress passes a comprehensive overhaul of student loans.

Which has zero impact on the 90%+ of the electorate that either never pursued post-secondary education at all or already finished it (and thus are locked into existing loans).

It also mandated calorie labeling on chain restaurant menus nationwide.

Which 90%+ of Americans don’t care about because they already know that a Double Whopper with cheese is less healthy than eating celery sticks. I mean, really, other than Morgan Spurlock is this a “hot button issue” for anyone?

It created a pool of community transformation grants to help municipalities reconfigure their infrastructure in a more public health-friendly way.

Great, but that’s going to take years to implement, so no one is really seeing the results yet and the results are almost certainly going to be so diluted that 95%+ of the public won’t associate any given improvement with this program.

Fourth try. Fix the effin’ comments!

[...] one-third of Democrats believe that this Congress has done more than recent Congresses. However, as Yglesias notes: This is sort of nuts. Among other things, this congress passes a comprehensive overhaul of student [...]

njorl is talking sense.

Jason L seems to be comparing three congresses (2001 – 2006) with one (2011 – 2010).

Obviously, calorie counts on restaurant menus is not a major policy breakthrough. The point is that the ACA WAS a major policy breakthrough that included lots of smaller measures that are meritorious in their own right.

It’s also not clear to me, from reading some of these responses, that people understand that a Congress lasts for two years, not eight.

“the incumbents responsible for a lot of this sweeping change to come seem almost embarrassed to talk about it at times.”

Not embarrassed, Mr. Yglesias, and not “at times.” Scared, constantly, and rightly so. Most of what they “accomplished” was over the clear and sustained objection of a mojority of voters.

GRYAGAAAAAAAAAAAAARRGGH!!! WHY ME NOT KING??!!

Both the mealy-mouthed moderates and the hypercritical far left are killing us. We’ve got to learn to get the most we can get, and declare total victory.

I would like to subscribe to your newsletter.

As he (or she) has so many times, njorl wins the thread with #27.

Though reheiler @ 32 gets honorable mention for creation of the word “mojority,” which I take to mean something like “a large and charismatic group of people.”

Try 3: I AM DISAPPOINT

“hat said, I’m not really sure how people are supposed to know about all this since the incumbents responsible for a lot of this sweeping change to come seem almost embarrassed to talk about it at times.”

That may be because if they talk about it they will be fired by their constituents who didn’t want them to pass it in the first place.

Seriously … think about this. When Congressmen/women are looking for “cover” for their votes, or are being told to “Vote the good of the party” or “party-line” or “party unity” what they are being told is “ignore your constituents”.
A politician called “out of touch” means a politician who does not want to vote the way their constituents TELL them to vote.
A politician afraid that a vote will lose them an election is ADMITTING that the way they want to vote is not the way their constituents want them to vote.

A lot of the anger honestly in the US is on that.
Too many people feel their representatives are representing the party to them and not them to the party.

How did Scott Brown win the election? Was it a referendum on the HCR? Nope. People understood the consequences and were willing to accept that.
Scott Brown won the election at the very end of the Debate when he replied “Excuse me. This is not the Kennedy seat, nor the Democrats seat. This seat belongs to the people of Massachusetts.”

The anger in the polls going around and the confusion is mostly over who is the biggest threat to our elected representatives representing US to Washington.
In some places it is the usual populist groups. In others it is the Base groups ( i.e. MoveOn or tea Party ) in others ( most others ) the outside groups considered the biggest threats are not the insurance companies, or big business or wall street … the biggest threat to our representatives representing US is … the PARTIES.

And if you think about it. what is the modern political party nowadays?
They gather donations to fund the campaigns of people they believe will vote how the donors tell them to vote.
And they use Earmarks and Party leadership positions and committee memberships, etc. as incentives ( or loss of such as threats ).
*coughs*
Now why does that sound like legalized bribery and blackmail?

This Congress has done much more than most. That’s its problem since most of what it did is pretty bad. That’s also why we’re on the verge of a wave election. Go gridlock! Stop government from all the harm it has been doing for the past ten years.

Midland and njorl FTW in this thread. Blue Dog concern trolling and fear of teahadists has made the majority of Congressional Dems afraid to go after audacious achievements, and afraid to sell the ones they achieved.

If the Democrats had pushed hard and passed Tier 5 unemployment benefits, passed mortgage cramdown and allowed Medicare buy-in for the 55+ group, we wouldn’t be having this problem right now.

All those other pieces of legislation are positive, but get real. It’s like someone wanting praise for the new area rugs when the goddamned house is on fire.

Hey Njorl, if you don’t mind, I’m going to copy what you said and use it as the basis for political arguments in other forums. I’ll try to make it clear that I’m quoting some other guy and not coming up with it myself.

2

Forcing people to buy insurance that will never actually be honored isn’t terribly helpful. Especially when most people didn’t want to get forced to buy insurance. Stop asking for credit for passing things the majority of Americans opposed, including the vast majority of your leaners.

your tiny, schizo base may be happy but nobody else is.

If the Democrats had pushed hard and passed Tier 5 unemployment benefits, passed mortgage cramdown and allowed Medicare buy-in for the 55+ group, we wouldn’t be having this problem right now.

95% of the country has no idea what any of this means. The extent to which people conflate their own policy priorities with political success is incredible.

Midland @21, excellent points. Totally agree.

3

Both the mealy-mouthed moderates and the hypercritical far left are killing us. We’ve got to learn to get the most we can get, and declare total victory.

Uh-huh. So then you’ve admitted you were wrong about Obama doing “the best he could” to get the public option included in health care reform? I must’ve missed that one.

Because in the light of recent revelations by Daschle, you’ve lost all credibility until you manage to choke out a mea culpa. And why should anyone listen to what you have to say if you can’t admit you were wrong, other than to note that you’re operating in obvious bad faith?

No, SoV. You are being intentionally illiterate again.

2

No, you’re being a dishonest little weasel, you had no intention, ever, of being open to the possibility you were wrong, and now you’re into deep into the classic end-game, “If you can’t make me say I’m wrong I win”:

In his book, Daschle reveals that after the Senate Finance Committee and the White House convinced hospitals to accept $155 billion in payment reductions over ten years on July 8, the hospitals and Democrats operated under two “working assumptions.” “One was that the Senate would aim for health coverage of at least 94 percent of Americans,” Daschle writes. “The other was that it would contain no public health plan,” which would have reimbursed hospitals at a lower rate than private insurers.

And also:

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.

And no, you can’t make any noises about “the votes just weren’t there”; Obama was making noises in September about the public option, long after the deal was done (and which was before the Baucus “fiasco” as matter of fact.

You’ve been busted wide open, and no one has any reason to trust you . . . or Obama.

The Republicans trashed the country, the Democrats didn’t completely fix it, so let’s hand the government back to the Republicans!

It makes perfect sense.

The article indicated that many of those who said less was accomplished did so because they thought Congress had “done the wrong things.”

They’re right.

The rules in the Senate this session held the Obama administration back from making the changes we need. Obama doesn’t have a “supermajority” – he barely has a majority! of Democrats willing to risk re-election. And I salute Nancy Pelosi for keeping her caucus together.

Look at what’s happening to Senator Russ Feingold, one of the most stalwart defenders of democracy: he’s getting buried in a lot of 501(c)4 money from the Republicans who want to regain power. This TRUE maverick is about to lose his job… which, as he’s seen it, is to represent the best interests of the People… to a Republican who will vote as his party tells him, whether it’s in our national interests or not.

You are not incorrect, Matt. But you’re not correct either. Sure, people are myopic for not knowing that Congress has passed a lot of cool shit. But as you regularly point out, people have lives: we are strange creatures, we who dwell on politics daily. The onus is on party leaders and public figures to make the case, to explain to people what the party has done. They have done a colossally shitty job of that. We do not point this out because we like to whine, we point it out because it’s true.