I kind of think the vote was “suppressed” by lack of enthusiasm from dem voters rather than anything the pubs did. But it wouldn’t be a bad idea for the dems to look for new leadership.
Sure. You don’t understand the complaints about obstruction, I think. The complaint isn’t that the GOP opposes certain legislation for ideological reasons. That’s called being an opposition party. The complaint is that they do things like oppose judges or executive appointments that they don’t actually oppose in order to get concessions elsewhere; or refuse to even allow a vote by blue-slipping or engaging in other procedural tactics; or opposing legislation because they don’t want to see Obama get any credit for signing something, even if they agree with the content of the legislation; or refuse to offer a compromise solution on things like budget talks because they do not have the caucus discipline to do it.
The inclusion of more tax cuts in a smaller Stimulus package than his economic advisers thought appropriate is the first example that comes to mind. Another is including medical malpractice reform provisions in PPACA. Another is extending the Bush tax cuts in exchange for other things in the 2010 budget showdown. Another is pushing back DOD sequestration (but not some pushing back cuts to Dem-preffered programs) and raising the tax increase thresholds in the 2013 fiscal deal.
That’s all off the top of my head. With a little googling, I could easily come up with a half-dozen more, but I suspect the problem here is not that you’re genuinely unaware of these compromises, but that you have some idiosyncratic definition of compromise that causes you to rule out all of the well-known and obvious ones.
The one I had in mind was the sit-down on healthcare reform in February 2010. The final bill reflected some of the points raised by Republicans, and in general the exchanges were the kind of good faith back-and-forth over ideas and objections that most people say they want.
Perhaps you can explain and support your rock-solid certainty. Facts would be good, if you have any.
What did you think of the conservative pundits that argued the last couple of ( failed, by Republican standards ) elections that Republican candidates failed because they ran too moderate of campaigns, basically Democrat-lite? If only they had embraced true conservative values they would have energized the base and handily won?
I don’t believe the Republicans are opposing judges they actually don’t oppose in order to get concessions elsewhere. What I would guess you’re confusing this with is the Republicans blocking judges that they would not block in against in order to get concessions elsewhere. These are not remotely the same thing. The vast majority of judges and other appointments that Obama makes are going to be people that the Republicans will oppose, in the sense that they would not be appointed under a Republican administration. But past practice has been that the Senate approves such people and cuts the president some slack to get his own people as long as they’re not completely out of the mainstream. Of late, with the hostility in Washington (mostly emanating from Democrats, IMO) things have tightened up considerably, on both sides.
Similar for “procedural tactics”. The Democrats are currently led by Harry Reid, a past master of the art of procedural tactics, and some of the procedural tactics that the Democrats are opposed to are ones that he himself pioneered (e.g. the perpetual session). No kick there.
I am not aware of Republicans “opposing legislation because they don’t want to see Obama get any credit for signing something, even if they agree with the content of the legislation”. I imagine this is just bogus claims from liberal circles (similar to the claims about the ACA) but if you have any specific instances, please cite them.
I agree that caucus discipline has been a problem for Republicans. Interestingly, caucus discipline problems are widely thought to be associated with Democrats, historically. (On this board, you see liberals criticizing Republicans both for having too much caucus discipline (“mindless robots”) and for having too little of it.) But that’s the nature of the system. People get elected on their own merits, and the parties can’t always control them.
I’m not aware of some of this. (What medical malpractice reform provisions were included in ACA? A cite would be helpful.)
Some of the other stuff were forced by Republicans holding out and him absolutely needing to make a deal. I don’t think that counts. But if it does count then you need to include the Republicans as being bipartisan too. ISTM that you’re being very inconsistent here, at best.
I don’t think so. Obama made clear going in to that meeting that he was not open to any substantive changes to the bill as he wanted. It was exactly the type of “bipartisanship” that Obama has engaged in. Here’s PBS’ take on it at the time.
You go on to disagree that those complaints about obstruction have merit, which is entirely irrelevant. You tried to identify some hypocrisy in believing that Obama has done bipartisan things while also believing that the GOP has engaged in obstruction. The point was that the two complaints do not contradict, which I assume you concede since you did not address that point at all.
It authorizes $50 million over a five-year period to support demonstration grants to states for the “development, implementation, and evaluation of alternatives to current tort litigation for resolving disputes over injuries allegedly caused by health care providers or health care organizations.”
I haven’t made any claims about Republicans bipartisanship or lack thereof. Your claim is that Obama has not done anything bipartisan. As I anticipated, you’re now re-defining bipartisanship. Apparently, doing something the Republicans want but the Democrats don’t want doesn’t count unless you offer it before negotiations. That definition will indeed eliminate some of the bipartisan things Obama has done, though by no means all of them. Indeed, one of the Left’s biggest criticisms of Obama is that his opening offers have often incorporated Republican demands, as on the Stimulus.
Your claim that he was “not open to any substantive changes” is false. He said and followed through on the opposite. And there’s no need to look to second-hand accounts. You can read the transcripts yourself. I watched it when it happened. There were indeed big philosophical divides between the sides. I am not at all suggesting that they came out of the meeting singing Kumbayah. My claim was solely that Obama had a good faith back-and-forth and that the ultimate bill reflected some of the GOP demands.
Well the backdrop to all this is the narrative - heard here and elsewhere - that Obama has reached out to the Republicans and been met with unyielding (politically-driven) opposition, and more than that, that he and/or his advisors have come to realize that it’s futile to try to govern in a genuinely bipartisan manner because of the manner of Republican obstructionism. I’m contrasting Republican actions with Obama’s in the context of disputing this narrative.
You’re technically correct that the two complaints do not contradict, however my point is that since one of those points is incorrect, the broader picture does not show this disparity.
I’m not sure you’re making this claim, but I assumed this would be your position, which is why I began post #418 in such a tentative manner.
In any event, I think this is the context of discussions about bipartisanship.
$50M for demonstration grants in the context of a bill of this scope is not serious.
See above.
That’s not my claim. What I’m saying is that giving something in a situation when your back is absolutely to the wall in a crisis situation is not bipartisanship.
By that same token I would not say the Republicans were showing any sort of bipartisanship in caving on the fiscal cliff and the like.
I looked around a bit in response to your earlier claim along these lines, but the only thing I found was a claim from Krugman, cited in Wiki. What’s the actual evidence that Obama tailored his stimulus package to obtain Republican votes? (And if so, did he work with Republicans in doing so, or just decide for himself what Republicans should support? And why would he not have taken it out when it became apparent that Republicans weren’t going to support it anyway?)
I am not going to read through transcripts of an all-day meeting. Most or all of the reporting at the time is in line with what I cited from PBS, and I suspect you may have seen what you were predisposed to see (in general, people tend to see concessions by their own side as very significant).
I’m not aware of any significant changes in the bill to reflect GOP demands. And I don’t know how there could have been. That meeting followed the election of Scott Brown and after that point the only changes to the bill were to reconcile the demands of Democrats in the House, passed in the Senate via reconciliation. Perhaps you can cite to what you’re referring to.
What does the scope of the bill have to do with whether $50,000,000 spent on a GOP priority that is generally opposed by Democrats is an example of bipartisanship?
I don’t think there’s a meaningful difference between your metaphorical language about “back against the wall” and my language about “as a result of negotiations.” The upshot is the same. Obama opted to give the Republicans something they wanted in exchange for something he wanted. Almost everyone believes that is the definition of bipartisanship.
I’m not basing this on Krugman. There was a series of articles in the New Yorker and elsewhere describing internal memoranda about the Stimulus, and demonstrating that it was both scaled down and weighted more toward tax cuts because that’s what the GOP wanted.
I don’t recall whether this was in response to actual Republican demands or not, but the eventual actual negotiations went in the same direction and won over three Republican Senators by doing so.
Even your cited article supports my narrative. It says, for example, that “Obama, moderating the meeting, consistently sought to establish common ground. He agreed with assertions by Oklahoma Republican Sen. Tom Coburn that waste and abuse now account for up to a third of the cost of entitlement programs like Medicare and Medicaid, and constitute a major barrier to more widespread insurance coverage.”
Again, you seem to be addressing a straw man that major reforms to the health bill came out of this meeting. That is not my claim.
The bill reflected some of the major policy proposals identified by Republicans in that meeting. It’s true that none of them voted for it. But that is nevertheless evidence that the bill was bipartisan in the limited sense of containing policies that Republicans–and not just past Republicans–agree with. And, again, my point about PPACA was not that it was the crown jewel in Obama’s bipartisanship, but that even this bill which is claimed by the GOP to be Exhibit A of Obama’s refusal to reach across the aisle was not that.
It determines the extent to which the overall bill reflects their respective priorities.
I disagree. It’s technically bipartisan, but being bipartisan in that specific type of situation is not valid as an indicator of or reflection on the overall approach.
The fact that you’re willing to bend a bit when it’s absolutely necessary to get something that you personally want and need does not constitute governing in a bipartisan manner, even if that specific instance can technically be described as bipartisan.
From looking around a bit, it seems that this was not just Republican demands, it was also “at least half a dozen centrist Democrats” (according to a big supporter of the bill. Plus, he needed to peel off a couple of Republican votes to overcome the overall Republican opposition, or it wouldn’t have happened altogether.
That was not substantive.
Again, which policies favored by Republicans were added to the bill in response to that meeting?
As I see it, that meeting was in response to the Scott Brown election, when the reconciliation route was thought to be a bold step that was preferably avoided, and also not flexible enough. Obama was clear he would make some token changes to have bipartisan support, which would have allowed him to avoid that route - and would also have shielded the program to an extent from subsequent criticism. But faced with a choice of substantive change to his priorities or ramming the bill down the Republicans’ throat, he chose the latter. Which is fair game, of course, but not exactly bipartisan.
ETA: I should add that it’s not always easy to sort out the actions of Obama from those of other actors. In the case of the ACA specifically, there was originally a working group of some centrist Republicans and Democrats - led by Baucus, IRC - but their work was eventually shot down by Reid at the behest of liberal legislators who were not going to concede any more than they had to. I don’t know if Obama himself might have supported some sort of compromise in the interests of bipartisanship. But at any rate, it’s a moot point because other Democrats weren’t going to go along in any event, and as a practical matter the way it played out was not in a bipartisan manner.
You’re measuring bipartisanship in non-standard ways. It doesn’t count if the bipartisan measure is inserted into a much larger bill. It doesn’t count if the bipartisan measure was necessary to get something else the President wanted. It doesn’t count if the bipartisan measure also appeased some conservative Democrats. It doesn’t count if the bipartisan measure reflected concerns raised by currently-in-office Republicans if those Republicans didn’t ultimately vote for the bill.
If bipartisanship is just offering to enact major Republican policies opposed by Democrats out of the goodness of his heart, then I guess I agree that Obama has not been especially bipartisan. But I think that definition is unduly narrow.
Bipartisanship is building a bill with input from both parties. Building a bill in a private meeting with Democratic leadership, including stuff Republicans supposedly like without asking them, presenting it to the floor as a take it or leave it affair because the Senate Majority Leader isn’t allowing amendments, that’s not bipartisanship.
That’s not how any legislation works, adaher. In the federal government, bills start out in committees composed of members from both sides. They debate and amend those bills before they make it to floor votes. An absence of amendments allowed on the floor vote is not the same thing as an absence of amendments.
To take the case of PPACA, hundreds of GOP amendments were included in the bill.
This is a false dichotomy.
It’s not about “major Republican policies opposed by Democrats” or about “the goodness of his heart”. It’s about partially reflecting (but in non-diminimus ways) opposition priorities, and in an effort to ensure that policies have as much support as possible from the political establishment and the people, and in an effort to keep relationships between different parts of the political establishment amicable to better enable them to work together when necessary.
Note that I’m not the guy making a big deal about bipartisanship. But to the extent that someone is, I think this is what they’re talking about, and it’s not the road Obama has taken. Worked for him in passing ACA. Not sure otherwise.
That strikes me as a subset of bipartisanship, among other forms. There is indeed intrinsic value in crafting legislation that garners wide support in both parties. But I think bipartisanship is more than just watering down your policies in order to lube the wheels of government and ensure lasting support for changes. It also includes seeing where there is common ground in priorities and pursuing some of that common ground instead of exclusively pursuing whatever is at the top of their ideological agenda; adopting ideas put forward by opposition if they are good ones, even if they do not have support in your party; listening to opposition criticism of potential policy decisions, and amending those policies in response to some of that criticism; and pursuing policies that a vast majority of the country supports in public polling and not just bare majorities.
So I would agree that Obama has not been especially bipartisan in the sense of limiting his legislative agenda to items that garner wide support in both parties. Indeed, I think to do so would have been disastrous in the current political environment because it would have meant passing almost nothing. But I do not agree that he has failed on those other measures of bipartisanship.
I think this is a lot of what is meant when people talk about wanting bipartisanship.
I don’t think Obama has been bipartisan by these measures, and I don’t think the examples of bipartisanship that you put forth support a contrary claim.
A lot depends on scale, though. I say much of Obama’s reaching out to Republicans amounted to meaningless photo-ops and invitations for them to join him in passing his priorities, and his amending his policies was in insignficant ways and/or when absolutely necessary and the alternative was to lose his own priorities, and not “in response to some of that criticism”.
I’m surprised you included the last item. Hard to imagine you’re claiming that Obama has done this?
I’m personally not someone who thinks you always need to pass things; I think it’s frequently better to pass fewer laws. (The really crucial laws will get done in any event.)
And I think Obama’s divisive approach - both in his focus on narrowly supported laws and in his tendency to seize legislative powers for himself via executive order and waivers of laws - has itself been a big contributor to the “current political environment”. (And he is about to contribute a bit more, with his stated intention to enact some form of amnesty for illegal immigrants by executive order.)
That said, I’m not a guy who is clamoring for bipartisanship. I just think that he hasn’t been bipartisan by the definition of those who do call for it, and I think he bears a good chunk of the responsibility for the present hostile situation. (His erosion of the separation of powers is a more serious long term concern, IMO, but that’s a different matter.)
Supported policies that large majorities of the American public support? No, I think that fairly describes the Obama Presidency. Obviously, there’s lots of room for partisan manipulation of what polls we choose, how the questions are asked, etc. But his principal legislative achievements have all been very popular. His tax policy has always polled very well. The Stimulus polled in the 60s. Ending DADT, the Fair Pay Act, CARD Act, and many others polled even higher. Ditto most of the stuff that didn’t pass, like immigration reform, DREAM Act, cap and trade.
And those are just the major things, which are inevitably more divisive. The smaller wins were also publicly popular. Stuff like student loan reform and extending unemployment benefits.
PPACA is the most obvious exception, but even there the polling is complicated. If you count people who think PPACA is good but didn’t go far enough, then it usually gets a majority. And if you ask voters about the actual things it does–i.e., requiring insurance but subsidizing it and ending pre-existing conditions, etc. etc. they usually support it by wide margins.
Yeah, I don’t buy that even a little bit, but also find it very tedious to argue over.
I agree about the partisan manipulation etc. angle, which is one reason I’m not going to look up polls about all these things to see if your claim is accurate correct. (Also, when you said “overwhelming majority”, I thought you meant a higher number.)
I did look up the stimulus package specifically, and according to Gallup, it was supported by 52% (versus 38% opposed), not “in the 60s”.
The major things are what counts.
There are some parts that are popular and some that are not. You have to look at the bottom line. (Especially since many people don’t appreciate that some of the unpopular aspects are linked to the popular ones, e.g. the individual mandate to the pre-ex, or tax increases to the subsidies.)
This Gallup poll has it at 59%. Others had it a little lower. Others a little higher. The point is that a reasonable person could conclude that it garnered more than just a slim majority. When you win over a quarter of Republicans and most independents in addition to 80% of Democrats, you are acting on a bipartisan basis under any reasonable definition.
And you might find it instructive to look up polls for the other things Republicans hated, like DADT, Immigration Reform with a path to citizenship, the DREAM Act, or Obama’s tax policy, if you think those ideas are divisive among Americans as a whole.
I agree. And as I said, much turns on whether you count people who are dissatisfied because PPACA wasn’t liberal enough, or whether you limit yourself to polls that ask about the individual mandate while also explaining the other parts of the legislation. Generally, the more explanation given the more people supported it, suggesting that opposition in simpler polls may be due to political ignorance.
But I’m happy to say PPACA did not meet this test. I think the majority of major policies did poll at 60%+.
If you look at that graph it shows a pretty steady level of support about 52% for a long time, followed by a brief uptick in the wake of a major Obama speech on the subject right before the vote. (After the bill was passed, support seems to have gone back down.)
Gallup has the DREAM Act at 54%. I didn’t look up DADT, but I would guess it had a lot of support. Immigration reform and tax policy are too vague to assess. There are many aspects to these and you have to consider public support for the specific package being advocated, not how they support some goal that you claim is the core of your policy.
I disagree. The acid test is that politicians who opposed it trumpeted their opposition from the rooftops, while those who supported it tended to avoid mention. This suggests a pretty broad consensus that the law was not a popular one, despite an enormous of energy spent “explaining it” (including the Obama administration compelling insurance companies and employers to promote its benefits).
Question for Dems:
Let’s say the new Republican Congress passed a bill to eliminate social security and medicare. Obama opposes this. The GOP then says, “Okay we will only eliminate medicare but keep social security at a 50% reduction of benefits.” Obama says no.
Is Obama now being obstructionist and simply engaging the politics of “no”? If not, why?
When you explain that you will realize why the word “no” is sometimes the best answer.