It Will Make You Want to Cry: Up Date

(2 pm. – promoted by ek hornbeck)

Peter Daou points out that the White House is bringing Paul Krugman to tears with its political strategy that has been a failure:

Look: early on the administration had a political theory: it would win bipartisan legislative victories, and each success would make Republicans who voted no feel left out, so that they would vote for the next initiative, and so on. (By the way, read that article and weep: “The massive resistance Republicans posed to Clinton in 1993 is impossible to imagine today.” They really believed that.)

This theory led to a strategy of playing it safe: never put forward proposals that might fail to pass, avoid highlighting the philosophical differences between the parties. There was never an appreciation of the risks of having policies too weak to do the job.

And then it led the administration to keep claiming that the legislation it had gotten through was just right, long past the point when it was obvious that the policies were inadequate.

(emphasis mine)

Keeping the same failed strategy and repeating the same mistake is just absurd. It is a given that when you are so far down in the polls that it time for something daring, yet, as Jonathan Cohn points out, “it depends on who’s talking”:

Is the Obama Administration planning another major initiative to boost the economy? That depends on who is talking. And when.

On Thursday afternoon, press secretary Robert Gibbs announced at his daily briefing that “a big, new stimulus plan is not in the offing.”

A few hours later, the Washington Post reported that administration officials were talking about a second stimulus after all–that it would might include a payroll tax holiday and some sort of tax break for business, and that it might be in the “hundreds of billions” of dollars.

The White House Press Office quickly issued a quasi-denial: “There have been a lot of reports and rumors on different options being considered–many of which are incorrect. The options under consideration build on measures the President has previously proposed, and we are not considering a second stimulus package. The President and his team are discussing several options, as they have been for months.”

Meanwhile, at around the same time, Politico posted its own story on internal deliberations: “The Obama administration is mulling a raft of emergency fixes to stimulate the economy before the midterms, including an extension of the research and development tax credit and new infrastructure spending, according to several people familiar with the situation.”

Finally, following this morning’s jobs report, President Obama announced that “I will be addressing a broader package of ideas next week. We are confident that we are moving in the right direction, but we want to keep this recovery moving stronger and accelerate the job growth that’s needed so desperately all across the country.”

Confused, you bet. Wanna cry, absolutely. These guys sound like political amateurs making you wonder how they even got elected.

Obama was handed an opportunity and the “political capital” to accomplish it. After two years, with inadequate legislation and the prospects of an electoral debacle in November, it is time for some really bold proposals and getting everyone on the same page. I’m not optimistic.

Up Date: Cenk Uygur puts it bluntly:

President Obama spent the first two years of his administration practicing political unilateral disarmament. He laid down his arms to reach out to Republicans, and they ripped his arms off and clubbed him over the head with them.

This idea of playing patty-cakes with the Republicans is enormously naïve. When is this administration going to get it through their thick skulls that they will never work with you?!

Now, if attempts at bipartisanship had no downside, then of course I’d be in favor of it. As a theoretical matter, trying to reach out to the other side and reach consensus sounds lovely. But it does have a downside. You don’t get to make your own case as you’re playing nice with the other side. They’re hammering you day in and day out, and you keep your powder dry. You know what that ends up in — a massacre.