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A Public Confession of Buyer’s Remorse

by Scott H. Payne

I’m not going to pretend to know what the outcome of the special election in Massachusetts last night “meant”, I’ve got too much on my plate trying to organize a rally to keep my own government accountable. But there were two thoughts that occurred to me last night as I finished up the night’s activities that involved me questioning assumptions and beliefs I had previously held.

The first thought arose from reading the following quote by Andrew Sprung, linked to by Andrew Sullivan, about Webb’s comments around health care reform following Scott Brown’s win,

We have one party that has not got the brains to govern. Will we now learn for certain that we have another party that hasn’t got the guts?

It doesn’t strike me as entirely fair to suggest that this failure to recapture Kennedy’s seat and the potential failure of health care reform is due to Democrats being “gutless”. Rather, I think what it points to is the fact that the Democratic Party is a deeply divided institution and those divisions lie along significant fault lines of principle about what it means to be a “liberal” today.

To some degree, it seems like the country was waiting for the great liberal wave to sweep over it, bringing with it reform and goodness and prosperity from the wretched ways of Bush and Cheney. And, in fact and contra to what I have argued in the past, I think that is what the country probably needed. People like Paul Krugman and the League’s own former Freddie deBoer were right in suggesting that the stimulus actually didn’t go far enough, Erik was right in suggesting that the tepid approach to the banks and financial institutions didn’t cut deep enough, and Mark was right that health care reform wasn’t spearheaded strongly enough.

But I find it hard to escape the fact that Democrats were never poised to offer that sweeping change. The Democratic Party of 2009 is simply not the same as FDR’s Democratic Party of 1933, no matter how many analogies to The Great Depression the political chattering class made. There is a not significant proportion of the Party that fundamentally disagrees with the idea of sweeping liberal reforms that might have shored up increased confidence and strength in the Party. Ben Nelson and Jay Rockefeller are very different liberals and to think that they would be able to come together to offer a strong and united front of reform for the country just doesn’t seem particularly realistic. In fact, realistically speaking, they belong in different parties, but that’s not the state of play on the ground.

It seems to me, as has been noted, that those systemic divisions, aggravated by the dust kicking, fist shaking, garment rending of Republicans and conservatives, that hampered the Democrats from truly reforming the country, not gutlessness.

My second thought wends its way back to Barack Obama. I know that Andrew himself doesn’t want to lay any blame on the President’s door step and believes that the hopes of country rest upon Obama’s shoulders,

I know now more than ever before why I could never be a Democrat and feel it vital to defeat the current Republican nihilism. Which leaves me with Obama. This is a critical moment. How he responds will be everything. I think there is a response and that, oddly enough, his chances of re-election in 2012 just rose. He must not return to Clintonism. He must reignite the center around him. More thoughts on how he can forthcoming.

I’m having a harder time with both those issues. Following from the thought above, it is precisely because Obama isn’t what Republicans and conservatives have endeavored to label him — an unabashed liberal — that he has, from the outset, not been the guy to lead the kind of sweeping reform that I am increasingly coming around to the idea that the country needed. Campaign slogans aside, Obama is and always has been a cautious pragmatist, sweeping and passionate reform isn’t his bailiwick, it doesn’t wear well on him.

My own abiding support for Obama was based in no small measure on precisely the kind of unifying, consensus building, beyond the politics of yore messaging that underwrites Andrew’s continued beliefs. I continue to deeply admire all of those traits in Obama, but I’m no longer sure they were the right traits for this time in American politics.

I’m increasingly of the opinion that that, given the substantial divisions in the Party and the seeming kamikaze trajectory of Republicans, that Democrats needed a very hard nosed President, someone who was ruthless, would take no guff, could rally the troops, and was prepared to come in and do some heavy lifting from day one. I think a quick gut check will tell you that Barack Obama is not that kind of President.

In terms of the reform analysis above, the obvious candidate would have been John Edwards and while I don’t know how hard nosed and heavy lifting John Edwards is or would have been, I do know that he never stood a chance in the primaries. The candidate who did stand a chance, who is unfailingly hard nosed, can be utterly  ruthless, does not take any guff, is capable of rallying the troops,  and, I think, would have done some heavy lifting from day one was Hillary Clinton — who is, it is worth noting, doing an almost textbook perfect job in Secretary of State right now.

Am I throwing Obama under the bus by saying that? I don’t think so.

Barack Obama is an incredibly smart and talented politician, he has a nuance and analysis to him that is almost unmatched, he is, in many regards, the President of the future. But what I am saying is that I’m beginning to consider the idea that being the President of the future, doesn’t make you the President of the present. The current state of Democrats is causing me to consider how that is the case and how Hillary Clinton, someone I made a conscious and active (as active as a Canadian can get with US politics) decision not to support, might have resulted in a different and better outcome all around.

Part of the heavy lifting and hard nosed approach that I think this point in US politics requires is a clearing of debris, of hammering through issues, of making some gains in some key areas no matter the fervor so that someone like Barack Obama can emerge out of the rubble. But Obama can’t be the guy that both shakes things up and puts them back together. It isn’t practical strtegically speaking and he isn’t a shaker tempermentally speaking. And so the message that it wasn’t the right time for a Barack Obama presidency may well have been spot on, not in terms of whether Obama himself was ready — I believe he is and was — but in whether the country was ready, which it increasingly appears it wasn’t.

None of this is definitive and so should not be taken as such, it is as much me thinking out loud as anything. And it feels weird to say, but as a die-hard Obama supporter in the election to the Clinton supporters out there: you might have been right and we might have been wrong.

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All atonements are accepted here.  LOL

Some of the comments are just delicious!  LOL.  Let me quote one.

North { 01.20.10 at 3:05 pm }

Well Thanks Scott me lad. I almost sprayed water all over my screen when you mentioned John Edwards but once you actually moved away from the party destroying thought your points on ol Hill-Dawg seemed fair to me.

I don’t think that Hillary would have let the Republicans lead her around the yard quite like Obama did. Considering his oratory I suppose it was inevitable he was going to be played for a chump by someone. It’s probably a good thing that it was merely his own opposition party rather than say a foreign actor who actually meant the country harm. Hillary also, it is safe to say, would not likely have left the authoring of the HCR bill entirely in the hands of Congressional and Senate leaders so it is possible that the resulting legislation would not have been quite so ugly and the process would have moved quicker. Now doubtlessly we’d have different complaints about her and my faith was a bit shaken by how poorly her staff were managed in her campaign but her stint as Sec. Of State has reassured me. But it would be fascinating to imagine where Hillary would be at now (especially if she had Obama as Veep).

and this one

Jaybird
January 20th, 2010 at 7:04 pm

2001-2008 made me fairly nostalgic for having a Clinton in the White House, truth be told.

I hate to lose street cred but I have to say that I would have seriously thought about not voting for a third party if I could have voted for Hillary.

I really liked reading how the Obama supporters are playing "what if it was Hillary".. they even play out strategies she would have adopted.. and some of the comments are quite on the mark. Very interesting read.


Oh, I am totally relishing this post and all the comments.   Sweet heavens! LOL. Let me get a cup of tea. This is delicious!


-- Edited by Sanders on Monday 25th of January 2010 01:23:24 AM