(2 pm. – promoted by ek hornbeck)
This diary is nothing more than my opinion. If you are looking for links to follow, you might as well stop reading now.
We’ve all seen opinions expressed by those who are convinced that by electing more Democrats, the problem with advancing liberal (or ‘progressive’) legislation would be solved. Those opinions are typically based upon the procedural hurdle in Congress: 60 votes in the Senate to enact cloture and 218 votes in the House for a majority. I’ll call these folks the majority-first group. I suppose that if it were simply a matter of achieving said majority, their premise might be valid. The passage of PPACA (health insurance reform) is often cited as an example of ‘landmark’ legislation under this scenario, although it would be disingenuous to label the legislation as liberal or even progressive. How many times were we led to believe by the President, the Speaker of the House, and the Majority Leader in the senate that the PPACA legislation would include a hugely popular public option, only to see it stripped so that we could get a ‘majority’ to vote for the bill?
The first mistake that the majority-first group make is their priority of electing any Democrat, justified by the mission to control Congress. It goes without saying that Nancy Pelosi is immensely more preferable to the likes of John Boehner, but at what long term expense? Should the Blue Dog coalition grow in number, stay the same, or shrink? How much more legislation can we expect to be watered down to the point of being just a tad better than useless? I don’t believe that by electing more of the same we will see any marked improvement.
The same majority-first group typically identifies themselves as ‘pragmatists’ and see incremental steps as the only method for ultimate success. While many in this group are quick to tout the major legislative achievements passed by this congress, they also begrudgingly admit that the legislation will need to be revisited down the road for corrections (and major corrections in some instances). How they plan to do that by electing the same center-right politicians over and over again is baffling to me. Welcome to the hamster wheel.
Another mistake that the self described pragmatists make is assuming that by reforming the Senate rules to allow for cloture with less than 60 senators, a liberal/progressive agenda will be advanced. This is nothing but a canard. While it is true that the 60 vote cloture rule is an obstacle to bringing a bill to the floor given the partisan makeup of Republicans in the current Senate, it is wishful thinking to believe that in a future senate more evenly divided, center-right senators (or bonafide liberals, depending on the issue) will suddenly feel the need to vote with their party. In a more traditional senate makeup, and one that may soon be forthcoming, it could potentially backfire and provide the Republicans with the votes necessary to derail pending liberal legislation. One only needs to reflect upon relatively recent legislation passed under a Republican controlled congress, and operating under the current rule, to see that it isn’t the rule that is the problem: it is the centrist Democrat senators that are the problem.
I would posit that electing a center-right Democrat is not advancing the liberal ideology any better than if a Republican were elected: in fact, it actually stymies the cause because the liberal message is stifled and credence is afforded to Republican-lite rhetoric. As a resident of a purple state, I can attest to this in watching the local Democrats dance to the conservative talking points. The average voter (not to mention the current president) assumes the liberal position to be out of the mainstream. In my opinion, the left would be better served by running very liberal candidates in red/purple states speaking to the virtues of the liberal position on all of the issues over and over again. It doesn’t matter if they lose contest after contest, and I would predict that the vote count would improve in each successive attempt. It’s called getting the message out; and that is an incremental strategy that I do support and believe will ultimately prove successful. I find it boggling that the people who advocate for immediate electoral gain are the same people that chastise the left for not being patient.
The majority-first crowd has come to label people like me as a purist. They have subscribed to the ‘perfect is the enemy of the good’ meme. I have no problem with their label, if they have no problem with me labeling them as the enemy of what could be perfect.
In conclusion, it is clear to me that simply voting for a Democrat does not constitute a movement toward liberal legislation. Sadly, there are those that put liberal policy gains aside and are solely concerned with seeing that the Democratic Party prevails in the election contests, hoping for the best, but then justifying their position if it turns out that the legislation produced is less than mediocre.
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