Reactions After the State of the Union - Ragoth

In thinking of the state of politics after the State of the Union Address, I believe I have settled on one of the pillars of my discontent with Obama's strategy - the eventual ramifications of his tact and attempts at bi-partisanship. By following the course that he has set so far, there is absolutely no way in which the Republicans cannot frame everything that happens as a win for them. Imagine - through constant compromise with basically everything the conservatives want, Obama and Congress have set up a situation in which they cannot appear to be the good guys - whatever policies end up working can be framed as working only because the conservatives compromised the proposal down to its essential and workable parts. Any proposal that fails they will still claim victory from because, to be honest, it's not like they voted for it anyway.

Even more sickening is the rush that Democrats seem to be in to push Bernanke through confirmation again. This is a political time bomb waiting to go off. There are a few Senators on both sides who are opposed to it, but this is definitely a case where the majority of the Democrats are for his confirmation and the majority of the Republicans are against it. Meanwhile, Republican Senators have requested and obtained several documents that purport to show that Bernanke was aware of the consequences of the bailout and ignored the advice of his staff to give 100 cents on the dollar in the CDS bailout. If the Democrats push Bernanke through quickly, the Republicans can merely hold out and release their documents after the confirmation and point the finger at the Democrats and say "See, these guys are in league with the bankers!"...and they wouldn't be entirely wrong. The Republicans would begin to seize the mantle of populism, even when they have all been hand-in-hand with the banks and other corporate interests. Bernanke should be pulled from the nomination, and hopefully someone will get Geithner out as well. Hell, I'd love to have Spitzer back. Honestly, I could give a damn who he had sex with - what matters to me is whether or not he was doing his job, and, to a large extent, indeed he was doing a great job of policing Wall Street. When you have champagne parties on Wall Street to celebrate the resignation of Spitzer...well, maybe he was doing something right.

A bit more after the fold...


It seems telling, also, that all of a sudden the Dems don't actually need 60 senators to get something passed. They can confirm Bernanke with 50 senators, just fine. I'm not one for conspiracy theories, and I don't think this requires some real conspiracy...but it's interesting at the least that whenever a proposal comes up that favors corporate or financial interests, we only need 50 votes. Whenever it's a progressive measure, all of a sudden we can't do a damn thing without 60 votes (and probably not even then). Conspiracy? No. Politicians being politicians and voting for those who really support and pay for them...yes, exactly. It's even more disheartening looking into the face of a ruling on unlimited corporate spending...

So, I continue to question Obama's continued insistence on bi-partisanship. The Republicans have made it overly clear that they will never be satisfied with any compromise and will never vote for any of his policies. Likewise, in the past eight years, we saw how the Republicans got bi-partisan support. I'm not saying that I approve of this approach, but at least it was effective. Through threats and rhetoric, they demanded bipartisanship and largely got it. At the very least, the Republicans won the rhetoric battle - "Those who oppose this legislation are against the American people," or are "supporting terrorists," etc.

On a slightly more positive note - Obama has proposed to repeal "Don't Ask - Don't Tell." This is a good step, I feel. I have yet to hear a good argument for discriminating against sexual orientation in the military, and more than discriminating against race or gender. If someone feels like they have one, I'm all ears, but so far I've been rather unimpressed.

Anyway, I'm sure Jason has a much more in-depth analysis and reaction to the whole thing, and I'd certainly love to hear it.

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