dday, digby, and jane

dday:

There’s a lot of talk from defenders of the President about how every campaign breaks a promise or two when they get in office, and nobody voted for Barack Obama because he was going to televise health care negotiations on C-SPAN. But if there’s anything Obama ran as, it was as a reformer. He ran explicitly to “change the game” and not “play it better.” Yet everything in this health care deal represents a playing of the game better than past efforts, basically by buying off stakeholders and creating compromises favorable to their bottom lines. Every single thing.

If you want to understand why progressives who have been following the ins and outs of this debate are depressed about the health care bill and about the Obama Presidency in general, watch that ad again. That was the campaign. “I may not know enough about the ways of Washington, but I know that the ways of Washington must change.” He sold himself as an open government, reform-oriented candidate untainted by lobbyist money or influence. He continues to sell himself that way, actually. And the disconnect, as many have called it, is simply staggering.

Here’s what Digby had to say:

Aside from the policy implications, which we already had to swallow, the political problem the Democrats have bought for themselves with this are huge. It would be different if Obama hadn’t explicitly run on a clean government platform and if the Republicans weren’t blatantly hypocritical opportunists. But he did and they are and this is powerful mojo that plays into the hands of the tea partiers and Republicans. I can’t get over the administration’s sheer political malpractice in handling this populist mood in the country. I don’t know if they all convinced themselves that they were political magicians and therefore the rules don’t apply to them or what, but Democrats should have known that after having turned the phrase “culture of corruption” into their mantra, they would be particularly vulnerable to appearances of impropriety (not to mention actual impropriety.) Bad, bad move.

Jane:

(E)very single member of the pro-choice caucus in the House, in addition to all of those who signed Diana DeGette’s letter pledging they would never do so, are all planning to line up behind Rosa DeLauro and say “no big” about sending women’s reproductive rights into the shitter so Joe Lieberman can pass Obama’s Aetna/PhRMA bailout. Because lord knows, those Blue Dogs are gonna need to be able to make the argument to their constituents in Republican-leaning districts that they got something out of this.

LGTB and abortion rights are two of the biggest cash cows of the Democratic Party, and social issues in general tend to attract a bunch of cheap hustlers who are totally willing to demagogue highly emotional issues for fun and profit on both sides of the aisle. Abortion rights are well on their way to becoming the new “hand gun control,” because it should be apparent from all those applauding this health care bill as “progressive” or “something to build on” that nobody is giving choice a second thought any more.

I don’t think Ellen Malcolm is one of those people. Despite mistakes Emily’s List has made in the past, I think she truly was committed to abortion rights. It’s sad to see her walking away from the rubble before the Democratic Party presses the detonator, but totally understandable.