Bernie Michalik's posterous site

Progressives are in a state of despair over the negotiations happening
right now with regards to raising of the debt ceiling. I can understand
that, but what I don't see is a lot of perspective. Indeed, I see a lot of
people saying Obama is weak and the GOP is all powerful. This is nonsense.

First off, regardless of what legislation Obama wants to support, it has to
come from the House first. It is not going to be progressive as long as
Republicans lead the House. Period. End of story. If progressives want
progressive legislation out of the house, make sure you work tirelessly to
get them elected in 2012. Otherwise expect this to continue. Likewise,
unless there are 60 Dems in the Senate, expect delays there too.

Now, the legislation will be conservative, but not as conservative as it
could be. Speaker Boehner is in a tough spot. His right flank is not going
to vote on anything remotely progressive. Therefore we are going to see the
following occur again and again: he passes some legislation that is DOA,
the Senate crafts some legislation that will pass the Senate and some Dems
in the House, and Boehner takes that and runs with it. I expect he will be
doing this constantly until at least 2012. He is the weakest speaker in
years. I expect either Cantor or Pelosi will be the next speaker.

Ironically, the Dems can thank the tea party for any strength they
currently have. By all rights, the GOP should control the Senate. But
instead the GOP ran some terrible tea party candidates for the Senate and
they ended up with the Dems in control. Remember how Harry Reid was going
to be defeated? Now he is crafting legislation that gets passed.
Progressives might hate his legislation, but they would really hate
legislation being lead by Mitch McConnell.

So why aren't the Dems passing more progressive legislation? It won't get
passed in the House. Reid can support the most progressive legislation he
wants, and even if by some chance McConnell let him, Boehner and company
would not. He can start that way, but it is a waste of time and in the US
Senate, time is short.

So why isn't Obama promoting more progressive legislation? Well, first off,
all he can do legally is veto legislation, not propose it. Even when he
does, it still needs to be something that the leaders in the House and
Senate need to agree to take up. Otherwise he is grandstanding for nothing.

Should he do that anyway? I suspect he will closer to the election in 2012,
when he and the Dems will propose grandstanding legislation in order to run
on it as a platform. Right now he is being responsible by trying to support
something, even if progressives hate it all. The alternative is the GOP
sends him really bad legislation, he vetoes it all, and he loses the next
election for not doing anything.

The U.S. Legislature promotes small c conservatism. Remember when Bush was
going to revamp social security? Or Clinton was going to pass Health Care
reform? It's not easy to get much done in the U.S. Government. The
exception seems to be tax cuts and military expenditures. I don't know why
progressives are constantly surprised by this.

The US collects too little taxes for the size of the military they want and
the amount of social assistance they want to provide. Progressives think
they are doomed, but eventually the GOP is going to go after the third rail
of American politics and that will hurt them.

As for Obama, the only other person that could have beat him and be more
progressive than him was Hillary Clinton. But she was more hawkish than him
on the war and otherwise their platforms were identical. And so she lost.
Anyone else would be less progressive than Obama, then and now. Anyone more
progressive would lose, I believe. That's just the country you live in.

Obama has a chance of winning the next election if progressive show up this
time and not only reelect him but also elect more Dems in Congress. Then
they will have a better chance of getting more progressive legislation
through. Otherwise what they are getting now will be nothing compared to
what they will be getting then.

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Sent from my BlackBerry Handheld.