Does Barack Obama have a Plan B to fall back on after Plan A--having us all get together and rise above partisanship--doesn't work?

"Anyone who thinks that the next president can achieve real change without bitter confrontation is living in a fantasy world. Which brings me to a big worry about Mr. Obama: in an important sense, he has in effect become the anti-change candidate."
--Paul Krugman, in his Dec. 17 NYT column (see below)

We're coming up on a year since David Sirota wrote about his problem with the premise of Barack Obama's candidacy. The old link to the column now gets you only to the current repository of Sirotablog columns, but perhaps you can figure out how to access pre-2008 columns. (We're looking for the one from Feb. 10, 2007.) I think, though, that the two chunks I extracted at the time will make the point. We'll come back to them in a moment. [Thanks to commenter Leslie for cunningly digging up a link to the HuffPost version of the column, "I Want to Believe."]

It appears that Senator Obama is striking a chord with his appeal to "post-partisanship." Who wouldn't like to see an end to the vicious, violent partisanship of our times? (I'll tell you who: the ignorance-worshipping sociopaths of the Far-to-the-Nth-Degree Right who created that violent partisanship--utterly deliberately, I believe, for the express purpose of taking over the government and imposing their wingnut sociopathology on the rest of the country. Which come to think of it, they've done.)

It sounds lovely. Who doesn't like to feel good? My problem with most "feel good" movements is that they aren't based on anything real to feel good about.

It's hard to see how Senator Obama's stratospheric soar above partisanship can work. It's based on the assumption that the reason we haven't all gotten together and worked all this stuff out together in a spirit of harmony is because nobody ever thought of it. Does anyone really believe this?

Apparently so. But while there are certainly narrow issues--important ones, but narrow ones--where such compromises might be thrashed out in a dialogue unpolluted by the demagoguery of the Far Right, there aren't all that many such issues, and hardly any of the really crucial issues qualify.

As David Sirota wrote back in February 2007:

There is no "third way" or "consensus" way out of many of our most pressing problems, as Obama seems to believe. Why? Because many of our most pressing problems are zero-sum: someone is benefiting from the status quo, and to change the status quo means someone may lose something. And if you don't believe me, just take a quick look at history. . . . [Emphasis in the original]

In the Beltway, [Obama] is surrounded by old political hands who, like most people there, likely try to tamp down any of his confrontational, power-challenging instincts for fear they might offend ruling class sensibilities.

More recently Paul Krugman wrote in a similar vein. I thought we could excerpt a few pithy moments from this column, but looking at it again after these several weeks, I find it even more incisive than I remembered--all pith, nothing skippable:

December 17, 2007
Big Table Fantasies
By PAUL KRUGMAN

Broadly speaking, the serious contenders for the Democratic nomination are offering similar policy proposals--the dispute over health care mandates notwithstanding. But there are large differences among the candidates in their beliefs about what it will take to turn a progressive agenda into reality.

At one extreme, Barack Obama insists that the problem with America is that our politics are so "bitter and partisan," and insists that he can get things done by ushering in a "different kind of politics."

At the opposite extreme, John Edwards blames the power of the wealthy and corporate interests for our problems, and says, in effect, that America needs another F.D.R.--a polarizing figure, the object of much hatred from the right, who nonetheless succeeded in making big changes.

Over the last few days Mr. Obama and Mr. Edwards have been conducting a long-range argument over health care that gets right to this issue. And I have to say that Mr. Obama comes off looking, well, naive.

The argument began during the Democratic debate, when the moderator--Carolyn Washburn, the editor of The Des Moines Register--suggested that Mr. Edwards shouldn't be so harsh on the wealthy and special interests, because "the same groups are often responsible for getting things done in Washington."

Mr. Edwards replied, "Some people argue that we're going to sit at a table with these people and they're going to voluntarily give their power away. I think it is a complete fantasy; it will never happen."

This was pretty clearly a swipe at Mr. Obama, who has repeatedly said that health reform should be negotiated at a "big table" that would include insurance companies and drug companies.

On Saturday Mr. Obama responded, this time criticizing Mr. Edwards by name. He declared that "We want to reduce the power of drug companies and insurance companies and so forth, but the notion that they will have no say-so at all in anything is just not realistic."

Hmm. Do Obama supporters who celebrate his hoped-for ability to bring us together realize that "us" includes the insurance and drug lobbies?

O.K., more seriously, it's actually Mr. Obama who's being unrealistic here, believing that the insurance and drug industries--which are, in large part, the cause of our health care problems--will be willing to play a constructive role in health reform. The fact is that there's no way to reduce the gross wastefulness of our health system without also reducing the profits of the industries that generate the waste.

As a result, drug and insurance companies--backed by the conservative movement as a whole--will be implacably opposed to any significant reforms. And what would Mr. Obama do then? "I'll get on television and say Harry and Louise are lying," he says. I'm sure the lobbyists are terrified.

As health care goes, so goes the rest of the progressive agenda. Anyone who thinks that the next president can achieve real change without bitter confrontation is living in a fantasy world.

Which brings me to a big worry about Mr. Obama: in an important sense, he has in effect become the anti-change candidate.

There's a strong populist tide running in America right now. For example, a recent Democracy Corps survey of voter discontent found that the most commonly chosen phrase explaining what's wrong with the country was "Big businesses get whatever they want in Washington."

And there's every reason to believe that the Democrats can win big next year if they run with that populist tide. The latest evidence came from focus groups run by both Fox News and CNN during last week's Democratic debate: both declared Mr. Edwards the clear winner.

But the news media recoil from populist appeals. The Des Moines Register, which endorsed Mr. Edwards in 2004, rejected him this time on the grounds that his "harsh anti-corporate rhetoric would make it difficult to work with the business community to forge change."

And while The Register endorsed Hillary Clinton, the prime beneficiary of media distaste for populism has clearly been Mr. Obama, with his message of reconciliation. According to a recent survey by the Project for Excellence in Journalism, Mr. Obama's coverage has been far more favorable than that of any other candidate.

So what happens if Mr. Obama is the nominee?

He will probably win--but not as big as a candidate who ran on a more populist platform. Let's be blunt: pundits who say that what voters really want is a candidate who makes them feel good, that they want an end to harsh partisanship, are projecting their own desires onto the public.

And nothing Mr. Obama has said suggests that he appreciates the bitterness of the battles he will have to fight if he does become president, and tries to get anything done.

As it happens, Krugman returned to this theme just today, in what I think is going to be one of his most-quoted columns, called "From Hype to Fear." After taking note of Friday's "brutally bad" unemployment report, and sketching the nasty economic outlook, he writes:

The November election will take place against that background of economic distress, which ought to be good news for candidates running on a platform of change.

But the opponents of change, those who want to keep the Bush legacy intact, are not without resources. In fact, they've already made their standard pivot when things turn bad--the pivot from hype to fear. And in case you haven't noticed, they're very, very good at the fear thing.

You see, for 30 years American politics has been dominated by a political movement practicing Robin-Hood-in-reverse, giving unto those that hath while taking from those who don't. And one secret of that long domination has been a remarkable flexibility in economic debate. The policies never change--but the arguments for these policies turn on a dime.

When the economy is doing reasonably well, the debate is dominated by hype--by the claim that America's prosperity is truly wondrous, and that conservative economic policies deserve all the credit.

But when things turn down, there is a seamless transition from "It's morning in America! Hurray for tax cuts!" to "The economy is slumping! Raising taxes would be a disaster!"

Thus, until just the other day Bush administration officials were in denial about the economy's problems. They were still insisting that the economy was strong, and touting the "Bush boom"--the improvement in the job situation that took place between the summer of 2003 and the end of 2006--as proof of the efficacy of tax cuts.

But now, without ever acknowledging that maybe things weren't that great after all, President Bush is warning that given the economy's problems, "the worst thing the Congress could do is raise taxes on the American people and on American businesses."

And even more dire warnings are coming from some of the Republican presidential candidates. For example, John McCain's campaign Web site cautions darkly that "Entrepreneurs should not be taxed into submission. John McCain will make the Bush income and investment tax cuts permanent, keeping income tax rates at their current level and fighting the Democrats' plans for a crippling tax increase in 2011."

What "crippling" tax increase, which would tax entrepreneurs into submission, is Mr. McCain talking about? The answer is, proposals by Democrats to let the Bush tax cuts for people making more than $250,000 a year expire, returning upper-income tax rates to the levels that prevailed in the Clinton years.

And we all remember how little entrepreneurship there was, how weakly the economy performed, during the Clinton years, right? Oh, wait. (I've put some charts comparing job performance during the Clinton and Bush years on my Times blog, krugman.blogs.nytimes.com. It's pretty startling how comparatively weak the Bush era looks.)

Never mind. The whole point of scare tactics is that they can work even in the face of inconvenient facts.

And what I'm not sure about is whether the Democrats are ready for the fight they're about to face.

Not to put too fine a point on it, Barack Obama won his impressive victory in Iowa with a sunny, upbeat message of change.

But there's a powerful political faction in this country that understands very well that any real change will create losers as well as winners. In particular, any serious progressive reform of health care, let alone a broader attempt to reduce middle-class insecurity and inequality, will have to mean higher taxes on the affluent. And members of that faction will do whatever it takes to scare people into believing that change means disaster for the economy.

I don't think they'll succeed. But it would be a big mistake to assume that they won't.

WHILE WE'RE TALKING ABOUT THE THE RIGHT-WING
ESTABLISHMENT'S TRAP FOR THE NEW DEM PRESIDENT--

Digby has been thinking about this too, and today's Krugman column seems to have served as a sort of final piece of the puzzle. The result is what she describes as "a long and very wonky post, but for those of you who are in the middle of election fatigue, it might be a nice diversion." Don't be fooled. This is prime Digby, which means that it doesn't get smarter or more elegant. I expect we'll be coming back to this piece. Treat yourself and read it now.

Here's where the piece winds up:

The CW is emerging on all fronts. The conservative political establishment is obviously very worried about a rejection of the status quo of earthquake proportions.

I do not believe that it is impossible to beat it back, but we have to be clear eyed about the forces that are being gathered to defeat this. They will not go quietly, and once a Democrat is in office, they will use all of their formidable powers to keep them constricted within a narrow range of acceptable policy options.

I'm not trying to rain on anyone's parade. I've long extolled the virtue and necessity of inspiration and participation in politics and real democratic mandate would be a powerful weapon. But real change isn't going to be simple and it isn't going to be easy, no matter how big a mandate for a strong progressive agenda the Democrats are able to achieve. This is a massive ship we're trying to turn and while it's necessary to have a talented captain at the helm, it takes more than that to counter momentum. We're just beginning to see the movement that's necessary to change course.

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