Left/Right Populist Outrage Will Defeat Senate Health Care Bill

Glenn Greenwald and Ed Kilgore both have very good pieces up today on the impoverished left/right dialectic that dominates the media coverage of politics, and its inadequacy when it comes to discussing the dynamics of the health care debate. The sight of pundits yucking it up about the "Democratic circular firing squad" have become as tedious and threadbare as those counseling "don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good." Both of these admonitions have at their heart the notion that "liberals" are being irrational, unreasonable and rigid in refusing to accept the Senate health care bill.

But in the very next breath, they will then promote statistics that say the tea parties are more popular than either the Democratic or the Republican party, and wonder if it's an opportune time for a third party candidate. (From the "right," of course, because who would take the "left" seriously.) At no time do the synapses firing in their brains make the connection that both the "lazy progressive bloggers" and the tea party activists are saying almost the exact same thing about the Senate bill.

Ben Smith printed a letter from a "liberal blog denizen" (who curiously didn't want to use their name) that I think represents the White House/media thinking pretty well:

The trick is to put a package together that some visible element of "the left" is out there opposing, but that actually has the support of everyone who matters on the left. SEIU isn't opposing the bill. NAACP isn't opposing the bill. Important thought-leaders like Paul Krugman aren't opposing the bill. Surf over to MoveOn.org and you'll see they're highlighting some "f*** you Joe Lieberman" stuff, but not seriously trying to push liberal Senators to vote "no" (indeed, during an earlier iteration of the argument they espoused the view that any filibustering Democrat deserve a primary challenge.). But members who want to feel like they're doing some meaningful triangulation get to point to Jane Hamsher on MSNBC denouncing the whole thing and feel like they're getting one over on the left.

This is probably the most useful role that the existence of a large and feisty activist blogosphere can play during a non-election time. Their existence and their passion shift the whole public conversation to the left. They make it possible for governing from the center to be *seen as governing from the center* rather than having a replay of the Clinton years when centrist governance came to define the left-most pole of the possible.

Because blogs/Dean have been needling the White House's health care shell game, they've turned their attention toward discrediting those messengers and trying to use it to their advantage. I understand the impulse -- when you go into a comment thread of a blog post, the person who disagrees with you is the one who is going to get the emotional rise out of you. But it's a huge mistake to overweight that, because you wind up doing what the White House is doing right now: standing with their backs to a tsunami rising over their heads, of which Howard Dean and the blogs are only a small symbol.

And the media, who are eagerly lapping up attacks on Dean and the crumbs being tossed out of the White House press office, only reinforce that blindness.

There is an enormous, rising tide of populism that crosses party lines in objection to the Senate bill. We opposed the bank bailouts, the AIG bonuses, the lack of transparency about the Federal Reserve, "bailout" Ben Bernanke, and the way the Democrats have used their power to sell the country's resources to secure their own personal advantage, just as the libertarians have. In fact, we've worked together with them to oppose these things. What we agree on: both parties are working against the interests of the public, the only difference is in the messaging.

Harry Reid and Dick Durbin put on a nice show for the credulous. As Durbin said when he was trying to build his email list, "The question is no longer if we will have some sort of public option in the final health care reform bill, but instead what form it will take." But the very same day, he was also warning about "60 votes" on MSNBC, and it was Durbin who whipped Lieberman's vote for PhRMA to kill Dorgan's drug reimportation bill (after Harry Reid kept it off the floor for 7 days until PhRMA could twist enough arms to defeat it).

The end is the same as it was when Medicare Part D passed. Remember how Democrats made a big show of passing negotiation for prescription drug prices when they knew George Bush would veto it? We saw how long that lasted. When it comes to true differences in the parties, only the set dressing on the road to capitulation seems to change.

With unemployment at 10%, the idea that you can pass a bill whose only merit is that "liberals hate it" just because the media will eat it up and print your talking points in the process is so cynical and short-sighted it's hard to comprehend anyone would pursue it. It reflects a total insensitivity to the rage that is brewing on the popular front, which is manifest in every single poll out there.

Yet time and again, we're told "Obama retains his popularity with liberals" and that "screeching liberal bloggers" aren't having an impact. Nobody seems to notice that the "screeching liberal bloggers" are reflecting the very same sentiments of the vast majority of the country, whether the very small segment of the population who self-identify as "extremely liberal" holds the President responsible or no.

Rahm Emanuel has convinced himself that Ron Brownstein is a "liberal" and dismisses all of this as "the progressive backlash against the progressive backlash." He's betting that any inadequacies will be forgotten come November 2010 if the Dems can claim a "w" by passing any crap bill and slapping "health care" on it. And that if Congress just spends the next year naming post offices, any objections that Americans might have to paying 8% of their incomes to private corporations who will use the IRS as their collection agency will just disappear.

It's scary to think that people this obscenely stupid are running the country. All the while, the painfully obvious left/right transpartisan consensus that is coalescing against DC insiders of both parties appears to be taking everyone by surprise.