Hullabaloo

Sunday, July 05, 2009

 
The New Deaniacs

by digby


David Broder is so wedded to the idea of bipartisanship that he's reduced to asserting that begging and borrowing to get eight House Republicans to vote for the cap and trade bill and compromising the economic recovery to get two Republican Senators to vote for the stimulus is a sign that reaching out to the other party is the best way to ensure that legislation is juuust right.

We don't know yet just how much watering down the cap and trade bill will affect its efficacy, but we are already seeing what those compromises with the ladies from Maine have added up to on the stimulus: the money they insisted be cut was mostly money that would have gone to the states to mitigate much of the disasters that are about to hit. As many people said at the time, the stimulus was too small and they will probably need to try to take another bite of the apple, a most daunting task --- all because President Collins decided on some arbitrary number for no good reason other than to please David Broder.

But in fairness, these compromises weren't actually with the ladies from Maine or indeed anyone who is formally affiliated with the Republican party. The true "leadership" on this came from Presidents Nelson and Lieberman and their Democratic cohorts in the Broder Fan Club. Bipartisanship in 2009 has absolutely nothing to do with the political sideshow formerly known as the Republican party. I don't know why he's even talking about them. But he needn't fear that the DFHs have come to town and are trashing the place: there are more than a handful of timorous, corporate owned Democrats who will make sure that things don't get out of hand.

The congress has moved a tiny bit to the left from where it was, which is to say that it is still a deeply conservative institution, by tradition, process, class and ideology. The Dean can sleep well at night knowing that his precious bipartisanship is safe in the hands of the New Deaniacs of the Democratic Party.


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digby 7/05/2009 11:00:00 AM |