So Obama Won't Give In To Terrorists, Extortionists And Blackmailers… Right?

A number of Republican congressmembers have referred to their own colleagues as terrorists, not just privately, but for attribution. Devin Nunes famously called the teabaggers driving the GOP crazy train as "lemmings with suicide vests... They have to be more than just a lemming. Because jumping to your death is not enough," he said. Peter King has been even more vituperative, especially when Texas Tea Party Senator Ted Cruz comes up in the conversation. So far, supposedly, there are at least 21 Republican House Members-- most, but not all, in swing districts-- who are on record saying something that could be interpreted as backing for a Clean CR that would negate Cruz's shut-down-the-government strategy and his unique vision for America's future. So far only one-- Peter King-- has acted on that and voted on one of the procedural roll calls that would allow a Clean CR to be brought to the floor. So the terrorism and hostage-holding continues. And they want to "negotiate," which in Reopublicanese means extort. Yesterday you saw that horrifying list of what they want in return for not sending America into default. Michael Cohen made the case for why Obama cannot give in to their demands, for the sake of the country.



Before you regard Cohen's arguments, keep in mind that an Obama-Boehner Grand Bargain is lurking in the background, one that will gratuitously cut Social Security through a Chained CPI, something both men want-- and which the American people do not. All this terror is supposed to set us up to accept the Chained CPI as a compromise. Now, as Cohen pointed out yesterday, "the psychodrama playing out in Washington is about the future of democracy in America. And no," he insists, "I'm not exaggerating."

Unless the GOP's brand of extortion politics is thwarted, America's democratic institutions will be so badly subverted that the nation will simply find itself in the position of staggering from one manufactured crisis to another with potentially both political parties threatening economic and political Armageddon if they don't get their way. That is, quite simply, no way to run a democracy and it's why the only option facing President Obama and the Democratic party is to win this showdown and force the GOP to concede defeat

. It's important to understand at the outset that US democracy, for all of it many flaws, is one based on the idea of political compromise. In a system with so many obstacles to legislative outcomes-- two houses of Congress, a separate executive branch and tons of minor obstruction points in each institution-- there really is no other way to get things done.

That has dramatically changed in just the past few years. It's not that compromise was always achievable in the past (the failure to break the Southern block on civil rights legislation is an obvious example), it's that the search for common ground has simply been thrown asunder, replaced instead by extortion politics.

For example, traditionally, raising the debt limit has been something of a pro forma exercise in Congress, done multiple times (sometimes begrudgingly) to ensure that the federal government can continue to issue debt and thus pay its obligations. But beginning in 2011, the Republican party came to see the debt limit as a tool for what they could not accomplish either at the ballot box or through the legislative process-- namely an instrument for political blackmail.

The result was a set of protracted negotiations between Congress and the White House in the summer of 2011, all conducted with the prospect of debt default (which would occur if the debt limit was not raised) hanging over the head of official Washington.

The result was the Budget Control Act, a pernicious piece of legislation that trimmed the federal budget by billions of dollars and led to sequestration-- a set of mandatory spending cuts that has hamstrung the economic recovery and caused untold and unnecessary distress for millions of Americans. Unsatisfied with just that policy outcome, Republicans are now upping the ante-- and using not just the debt limit but also the budget to get their way.

Once upon a time, government shutdowns occurred because both parties could not agree on budgetary priorities. Ironically, that isn't even the issue today as both sides have agreed on the basic parameters of a continuing resolution to fund the US government. Rather this is about Obamacare, which Republicans have been unable to thwart though the legal, elective or legislative process (and satisfy their goal of denying healthcare coverage to millions of Americans). So now Republicans are holding the federal government as a hostage to get Democrats to agree to any possible concession that would weaken Obamacare.

First their goal was fully defunding the legislation; then it was delaying it a year; now it appears to be repealing certain parts of the bill, including the employer subsidies for their own congressional employees' health care coverage (because nothing says compassionate conservatism like screwing over your own employees to make a political point).

But the GOP brinkmanship over Obamacare is nothing compared to what they are asking for this year in return for raising the debt limit. Unlike 2011, when they were demanding a dramatic reduction in government spending, they are now insisting on the full implementation of their policy agenda.

No, I'm not exaggerating.

…What Republicans are doing here is basically saying to the president (the guy who won by 5 million votes) "implement our policy agenda or we will cause a catastrophic debt default." That isn't governing. It isn't democracy. It's a shakedown.

That Republicans would even risk the possibility of default to get their way should, in an ideal world (or at least one in which Americans paid more than passing attention to their government), invalidate their credentials as a political party.


Since that's unlikely to happen, the only appropriate course of action for President Obama and the Democrats to take is not simply to resist the Republican's ransom demands, but, in fact, to force them to cave in and pass a clean debt limit extension.

If they don't, Republicans will do it over and over and over again. Just as they are doing it again right now after they got a quarter loaf from the president in 2011. Moreover, what reason would there be for Republicans to ever moderate their politics? They wouldn't even need to win presidential elections. As long as they could hold on to their majority in the House (a majority lubricated by gerrymandered and polarized districts that encourage Republicans to take even more radical positions to appeal to their conservative supporters), they could simply hold the country hostage every couple of years to get their way.

This debate is not your garden-variety political crisis. It's the battle for the long-term viability of American democracy, and it's a battle that the Democrats simply must win even if it means risking default. And no, I'm not exaggerating.

The much ballyhooed PPP survey of 24 districts was guided by self-serving DCCC parameters and left off over a dozen winnable seats that Steve Israel and Debbie Wasserman Schultz are desperate to keep below the national radar. A few examples are these seats, each of which Obama won in 2008 and/or 2012:

• FL-27- Ileana Ros-Lehtinen
• MI-07- Fred Upton
• NY-02- Peter King
• CA-25- Buck McKeon
• WA-03- Jaime Hererra Buetler
• WA-08- Dave Reichert
• WI-01- Paul Ryan
• MN-02- John Kline
• PA-06- Jim Gerlach
• MN-03- Erik Paulsen
• MI-08- Mike Rogers

And each would be far more likely to be won by a Democrat than OH-06, where Steve Israel has recruited an anti-Choice, gay-hating, anti-union, pro-NRA reactionary, Jennifer Garrison, in a red district with a PVI of R+8. That district was polled for obvious and unfortunate reasons while all the districts listed above are much, much bluer but are not districts Israel will allow the DCCC to fight in (unless we pressure Pelosi to force him to). Israel and Wasserman Schultz are desperate to keep these districts off the media's radar-- and the media is too lazy and incompetent to find them themselves-- and Cook, who they pay a great deal of money, gives them cover. But the poll shows that GOP incumbent Bill Johnson would beat his Democratic opponent 48-38%. Once voters figure out that it's Garrison, I'll bet the Democratic performance plummets. Here's why.

Tony Burman, writing for the Toronto Star, makes it clear just how important this battle is and, again, why Obama can't fold and why Pelosi must fore Israel and get a DCCC chairman who is capable of winning back the House next year, instead of guaranteeing that the GOP hold the majority again.

What Al Qaeda didn’t quite accomplish on Sept. 11, 2001, the Tea Party insurgency in the United States Congress appears determined to complete. By shutting down the U.S government this week and threatening to plunge its economy into default later this month, America’s band of political suicide bombers-- aided and abetted by the wider Republican Party-- has exposed that country’s democracy to incalculable international ridicule and damage. If Osama bin Laden were still alive, his head would be spinning.

Former president Bill Clinton said it right in an interview he gave last weekend: “Can you remember a time... when a major political party was just sitting around, begging for Americans to fail?”

As this week’s shutdown approached, there was something utterly surreal about Republican complaints that the White House was able to open a dialogue with Iran but not with them. As satirist Jon Stewart, host of The Daily Show, replied: “If it turns out that President Barack Obama can make a deal with the most intransigent, hardline, unreasonable, totalitarian mullahs in the world, but not with the Republicans, maybe he’s not the problem.”

So far, it appears the American people agree. A Quinnipiac University poll released on Tuesday showed that Americans overwhelmingly oppose efforts by congressional Republicans to shut down the federal government as a way of stopping Obama’s signature health-care law from being implemented. The margin was 72 to 22 per cent.

Even though Obama’s Affordable Care Act was voted in by Congress, signed into law by the president and endorsed as constitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court, the Tea Party rebellion against it has intensified. And their opposition has been lavishly bankrolled by the billionaires who want to turn government into a very small, powerless presence in American society.

In U.S. media coverage this week, a common narrative was the public’s growing exasperation with Washington and its apparent inability to “get along.” But there is actually no mystery to this. This is not about politicians acting like “children” or “crazy” political forces careening out of control.

Not children? This is from last weekend's GOP state convention-- in California!

To the warring factions, this is very serious business. The battle not only affects the integrity of America’s government: with today’s polarized politics, how is the popular will expressed and protected? But it may well shape its future.

The Tea Party claims, dishonestly, that its opposition to Obamacare reflects widespread public anxiety about the program. In fact, the American public has been largely split about the merits of the new health-care law, and woefully uninformed.

The Tea Party actually has a larger worry. Texas Senator Ted Cruz, who has emerged as one of its most important leaders, confessed that last July in an intimate interview with a fellow conservative on Fox News.

Rather than believing that Obamacare will prove to be a failure, his worry is that it will be a success: “If we don’t (defund Obamacare) now, in all likelihood, Obamacare will never, ever be repealed. Why is that? Because on Jan. 1... the subsidies kick in... Their plan is to get the American people addicted to the sugar, addicted to the subsidies, and once that happens, in all likelihood, it never gets (repealed).”

This is the Tea Party’s worst nightmare, which could also prove fatal to the future of the Republican party: Will Obamacare become such a popular government program that it reinforces the often tenuous link between the American people and their government?

In a more immediate political sense, the Democrats are now thinking what was once unthinkable. If the U.S. can emerge from these crises relatively intact, will Americans turn against the Republicans in the elections next year and bring back the Democrats as the majority party in the House of Representatives?

The odds are still against such a dramatic shakeup in the U.S. Congress, but this chapter is still being written. And the Democrats’ biggest asset is the array of inept and extreme forces they have as their political opponents.

The odds would be a lot better-- almost a guarantee-- if Pelosi fired Steve Israel today and persuaded Alan Grayson to take the job. That would instantly take unwinnable seats like OH-06 off the table and use DCCC resources to battle seats where Democrats can and should win but where Israel and Wasserman Schultz are protecting their GOP cronies. It's all up to Pelosi… she either wants to win or she wants to lose. If she wants to lose, she'll stick with Steve Israel.