I tend to doubt that Sarah Palin marked up her hands just to attract incoming liberal fire, and I really don’t believe Rich is serious on that point, but the rest of his analysis of the current situation is absolutely spot on.
He makes the point that the Republicans have skillfully, if mendaciously, cast themselves as the opponents of the very interests they serve, while the Democrats have stood by and let them do so.
I’ve tried to make the point here that the Democrats can only win in 2010 by forcing the Republicans to openly defend Wall Street and the corporations, by proposing, and making them vote on, bills that are both right from a policy standpoint and that play into the justifiable resentment the American people have toward the people who have caused, and now profited by, the financial mess we are in. As Rich points out, it ain’t going to happen.
I was amazed by this, which I hadn’t heard about before:
The Obama White House remains its own worst enemy. No sooner did Palin’s Tea Party speech end than we learned of the president’s tone-deaf interview expressing admiration for “very savvy businessmen” like Lloyd Blankfein of Goldman Sachs. With that single remark, Obama ingeniously identified himself with the most despised aspects of both Washington and Wall Street — the bailout and the bonuses. He still doesn’t understand that to most Americans, Blankfein is a savvy businessman only in the outrageous sense that he managed to grab his bonus some 17 months after the taxpayers had the good grace to save him from going out of business altogether.
Somewhere, and I can’t recall where at the present, I read speculation that Obama would actually prefer that we lose our majority in the House (the only chamber that has passed meaningfully progressive legislation) so he could run against them in 2012, like Clinton did in 1996. From a purely selfist, purely political point of view this might be good strategy, but that’s cold comfort for the rest of us. The historical dynamics here are frightening. Right wing presidents get pretty much what they want, while messing up the country and ignoring the real problems. Democratic presidents get almost nothing of what they want, except possibly (e.g., Clinton) cleaning up some of the mess, for which they get no credit, thereby paving the way for a return of the Republicans, who promptly start wreaking destruction. All the while our agencies, courts and system of taxation drift inexorably rightward.
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