Not much interesting there.
But Joan Walsh does identify a tension that I believe is going to plague any incoming Democratic administration. That's because she's on both sides of the tension.
On the one hand, Walsh believes that any Democratic administration is going to have to come up with "big ideas" on important issues like health care to be successful.
Let me be clear: Like Bai, I would like to see more political will (the ideas are there; it's a mobilized constituency behind a few key ideas that's missing) to do something about the healthcare nightmare, the public education crisis, persistent inner-city poverty, the shock waves of globalization ... I could go on and on. I think the 2008 Democratic nominee will need to articulate and build a constituency behind a compelling vision of post-Bush America that reckons with terrorism, security and a new U.S. role in the volatile global economy. He or she may not need it to get elected, the way the Republicans are going, but they'll need it to govern and to solve the problems voters elect them to address -- as well as to get reelected.
Walsh's vision about a possible Democratic agenda is so expansive here that it would take a combination of the New Deal and Great Society to get it all done. Edwards and Obama (at least to a certain extent) are campaigning on this decisive separation from the Bush era, but neither of them asks how they're going to get big popular majorities and various elites to support such an agenda let alone how they would administer programs and pay for them. It's all pie in the sky and here Walsh is being as naively idealistic as Bai himself.
But Walsh also seems to recognize the insanity of trying to do that much and soon pulls back into a minimalist mode.
But unlike Matt Bai, I think undoing the disasters of the Bush administration makes for good policy as well as good politics, and I think most Americans agree.In other words, Walsh believes that an incoming Democratic administration is going to have to clean up a lot of the Bush administration's messes before it embarks on a any ambitious new plans. In my opinion, this is the right track. In fact, undoing the damage of the Bush administration is a pretty big ambition in itself. The Bush administration has made an enormous mess of the war in Iraq, international institutions like the UN and the World Bank, terrorist detention, interrogation policies, the Justice Department, federal agencies like FEMA, and the federal budget.
And that's just the well-known disasters. It may turn out that a big chunk of the federal government is as dysfunctional as FEMA.
Cleaning up the federal government and repairing our relationships with other countries is going to be a full time job for incoming Democrats. That's especially because a Democratic administration will be under a lot of pressure from the right-wing attack media. Unlike Obama and Edwards, Hillary seems to have a sense of how tough the environment is going to be for the next Democratic president. That sense of hard-headed practicality is one of the reasons I support her candidacy even though my own views are closer to those of Edwards.
But there's one thing for sure, the moderate Democratic--DLC--Lieberman era that Bai so much embraces really is over in the Democratic Party. In that sense, the liberal bloggers have won the war even if they continue to lose a lot of battles.
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Bai is especially favorable to Democrats who embrace a lot of Republican positions like Joe Lieberman
I know this is dogma for the Left, but outside of the war, Joe Lieberman is about as consistent of a liberal as there is.
For all intents and purposes, Lieberman is a moderate-to-conservative Republican.
I love the idea of reviving the New Deal/Great Society battle for social and economic justice. However, as you say, Hillary…or whichever Democrat is elected will have to clean up GW’s enormous messes. That which will, by then, have taken Bush and Co. 8 years to destroy, Democrats will have to rebuild. In much the same way that the first President Clinton had to clean up the fiscal disasters and the stagnation of both the economy and the very souls of the American people. It took him 8 years and a lot was accomplished but much remains to be done as well as undone.
Americans are being terrorized by inadequate levees in New Orleans, by collapsing bridges in Minneapolis, by an aged water valve in Manhattan. Schools are aged and overcrowded; roads are gridlocked; airports overwhelmed; mass transit outmoded. Our parks are in disrepair. Millions of children go without health care or pre-school. The costs of college are soaring, even as they are being privatized, with parents and kids forced to take out staggering levels of loans.
Our people labor under record inequality not seen since the period between the 1890s and the Great Depression. Virtually all of the rewards of this economy have been reaped by the wealthiest 10%. The remaining 90% of us have been losing ground. A CEO now makes some 500 times more than an average worker. (AFLCIO.ORG)
We’ve witnessed the worst corporate crime wave in modern history, CEOs plundering their companies as employees lose their life savings. We have watched, passively mute for the most part, wholesale looting of public funds, no bid contracts to Halliburton and others, billions in cash and equipment lost in the deserts of Iraq with no records, the worst forms of crony capitalism squandering scarce public resources.
We now have a $250 billion annual deficit with China. (house budget committee; senate budget committee) We’re now borrowing or selling off assets at a rate nearing $2.5 billion a day. (house budget committee; senate budget committee)
Companies have used this globalization to drive down wages, and break promises on health care and pensions. And every Republican Presidential candidate, without exception, is/are cheerleaders for this situation equating freedom of business to do whatever it chooses with Democracy all the while knowing full well that the two are not synonymous.
America was once an example to the world of a democracy with a broad and growing middle class. A result of The New Deal, The Great Society, rules to insure that the wealth was widely shared ever-broadening access to college, powerful unions, regulated capital markets, and national investment in modern infrastructure. Now even when it is at its “best,” this economy isn’t working well for most Americans. We need a strong debate about our strategy in the global economy. We don’t have to wait for the recession; most people think we’re already in one. And while I completely agree with the old battle cries of populism from Edwards, Kucinich, and Obama, I would feel a lot more comfortable with Hillary’s pragmatism. She has the same goals as all the other Presidential candidates but she understands that before we can “heal and build”, we have cleaning up to do. AND, she can win.
I was reading the comments over at Balloon Juice the other day and they had this idea: the new Dem Prez should keep Bush on a policy adviser. Ask his opinion on almost everything and then do the exact opposite.
If Barrack or John Edwards would stand up and just say "I want to President so I can fix everything George Bush broke," then he would shoot ahead of Hillary by ten points.
Just saying.
For all intents and purposes, Lieberman is a moderate-to-conservative Republican.
This is remarkable, and objectively false. He scores high in practically every measure of liberal policies based on his voting record, and due to his position on one issue, you consider him impure, and not a true Dem.
stagnation of both the economy and the very souls of the American people
Do you believe this stuff when you write it? Isn't that more than a bit hyperbolic?
I was going to go through the rest, but it makes Andrew Sullivan and the Gleens seem level headed. If that is how you view America, how do you make it through a day?
JD, Lieberman cares far more about foreign policy than he does domestic policy. He constantly talks about bombing Iran or Syria and our need to stay in Iraq, whereas you never really hear address health care, a trade deficit, taxation. Further, like other mealy mouth folks, he opposes gay marriage in favor of civil unions.
Taken as a large picture he is much more annoying to lefties than he is righties.
He's the essence of moderate!
He may be more annoying on a particular issue for the Left, but single issues do not define the person. Take a look at his voting record for any year, and for his career as a whole, and he is most certainly not a Republican.
Lieberman may settle the question by becoming a Republican in the future. He's hinted at it often enough.
What's interesting to me is that the left and right perspectives on Lieberman are mutually reinforcing. The popular right doesn't seem to realize that the Lieberman types in the Democratic Party defined "liberals" as their main opponents rather than the Republicans. As a result, the Tom DeLay's of the world continued to demonize the Bill Clinton/ Lieberman/DLC types as "liberals" or socialists and refused to negotiate or compromise with them.
That left the Liebermans of the world with little ground to stand on. The Lieberman types sympathized with the Republicans but the Republicans refused to deal with them and the Republicans were able to pick off a lot of moderate Democrats in the South from 1994-2004. When the left became resurgent with the failure of the Iraq War, the Lieberman types found themselves a lot less influential within the Democratic Party. When Lieberman himself continued to be a high profile spokesman for the war, he drew the same kind of strong primary opposition that moderate Republicans like Arlen Spector draw.
But it's not just Lieberman himself. The whole Republican-friendly sector of the Democratic Party has either turned left or lost influence over the last three years.
The Democrats are a better party as a result and we really should thank the right-wing for helping us out.
Your analysis ignores who the Dems won with. The people who won seats ran as Republican-lite.
Despite your Caricterization of Lieberman, a review of his voting record places him squarely in the liberal camp. That you would kick him out of your tent over one issue says more about you than it does him.
Democrats and their 2 visions? Apparently they have only talked to 2 of their core constituencies so far then. Give them time, they will get around to the rest of the unions, race-baiters, pro-choice groups, et al. They will have a different vision for each one of them, and you will accept each one lock, stock, and barrel.
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