BushCo's Matthew Dowd promotes phony Villager theme: Obama must 'Sistah Souljah' his base to be taken seriously
By John Amato Sunday Mar 29, 2009 12:00pm
(h/t Heather)
A typical Villager philosophy is that a Democratic President must always throw his liberal base under the bus as soon as he takes office to be taken seriously. That litmus test is never applied to Republicans, though. Was there an outcry that George Bush must buck conservatives to appear legitimate to the American people? Of course not.
THIS WEEK's roundtable turned their attention to the budget today, and Paul Krugman agreed that health-care reform is incredibly important to the state of the economy and something he hopes President Obama gets done. Matthew Dowd pivots away and evokes the Villager Mantra:
Dowd: At some point, in order for him to demonstrate to the American public, he at some point -- soon -- he has to take on some significant constituency of the Democratic Party. If he believes in change and he wants to do things, which may be the health-care debate, which he may have to take on, at some point, a constituency. As of yet, he has taken on no constituency in the Democratic party...
The panel immediately went into a discussion on Obama's Afghanistan War plan, which the left is not at all singing praises over, so Dowd was immediately proved wrong. But the idea that President Obama has to attack his own base is ridiculous and patently false. I wouldn't mind President Obama taking on the Blue Dogs or Evan Bayh's power hungry group, but that certainly wouldn't count in the minds of the Villagers.
Digby writes about this in her post: Soljah Politics
What, you don't recall the press insisting after both Bush elections that he needed to repudiate his most enthusiastic followers as often as possible to maintain his credibility?
Oh wait. Sorry. I'm mistaken. They didn't. They just celebrated the fact that Real Americans had insisted that there would be no oral sex in the white house and that the president would throw strikes at Yankee stadium. Even after the Terry Schiavo circus, they didn't say anything about Sistah Soljahing the Republican base. (I suppose they couldn't --- after all, the Republican base are Real Americans unlike the crazy hippies on the left.)
Dowd has no credibility on this since he helped elect Bush for two terms before he "soured on George." Isn't it interesting when the rats jump off a sinking ship?
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Mattew Dowd's, "It Takes A Village?
is missing its idiot. Whilst most of the idiots went back to their villages after Bushco ended, some, like Dowd, can't find a village that will take them in.
Pity the village that gets this idiot.
The press largely ignores this, but republicans do regularly throw their conservative base under the bus, don't they?
They get the "family values" vote based on their stance on abortion and other hot-button issues, and then make no attempt, or token attempts at best, to fight for those issues.
I think there IS a current fear among politicians that voters and constituents will reject "liberalism" much more vigorously than "conservatism".
Many of Obama's choices and decisions seem to reflect this "fear", so in some ways, Dowd is right about the failure to embrace liberalism by Democratic leaders. Some, of course, are not afraid of the label, liberal.
What's odd is that by all lights, GW was NOT a conservative but a corporatist. I think conservatism as a political set of principles is dead. It was not until the very end when GW's ratings were in the toilet did even some Republican leaders pull away from him. It may have been because they believed their elections were at stake. But "stand by your man" seems to be the theme song of the Republican party, even if he's a liar, a war-criminal, and a Constitution-destroyer, at least in GW's case.
Let's say it's just more rare for Republicans to throw their own under the bus. David Vitter and Larry Craig still have their being in the party.
“I think there IS a current fear among politicians that voters and constituents will reject "liberalism" much more vigorously than "conservatism".”
What we're going to see from the media is a false dichotomy. "Liberal" versus "Conservative" is one.
It's all in the framing. We can't leave it to the corporate media to do the framing. How 'bout this? If single-payer health insurance would cost 11% of GDP while our current system costs 16% of GDP and leaves 16% uncovered, what is the fiscally conservative choice? Do we really want to pay a $600B (5% GDP) corporate welfare tax to keep the current system? How 'bout raising health care costs a bit so that we can increase insurance companies executive bonuses?
When one choice is for corporate welfare, the alternative is fiscal conservatism. These days, money talks and ideology walks. We all need to become fiscal conservatives ;-)
... that it was rather disingenuous for Digby (and others) to keep refering to the Tali-Born Again as the GOP's base when they're more of the GOP's mainstream. They're the party of Sheik Rush Al-Oxycontin, Blondie Bin Coulter, and Joe The Pretend Plumber Guy than they are the party of Lincoln, Eisenhower, and Goldwater ...
He's trying to set us up on Obama's refusal to consider single payer national health care, which would certainly be taking on a huge constituency, conveniently omitting that the financial industry have made campaign donations (bribes) to Obama to have him shelf single payer.
Obama wants to reduce costs, but he declines to have single-payer considered in the cost analysis. He said during the campaign that he would spend federal money to cover the poor.
News bulletin to Obama: The nation is broke. When you take on extra spending and your budget isn't balanced, that requires borrowing. Needed borrowing is one thing, needless borrowing is another thing.
While Europe and Japan spend 11% of GDP on health care and cover everyone, we spend 16% and leave around 16% uncovered.
11% of GDP versus 16% of GDP - look at the difference as the corporate oligarchy tax - courtesy of our corporate owned government.
And don't listen to this malarkey about single payer eliminating choice. All that would really happen is that people would switch their insurer to Medicare. My current policy has a $15,000 deductible for going out of network - not a real abundance of choice there.
I think President Obama is much smarter than you.
I'm sure he's smarter. The question is, are the campaign donations causing him to use his intelligence to enrich the insurance companies at the expense of the people? Smarter doesn't necessarily translate into being more benevolent.
I hope to hear from Obama a smart answer why our economy should continue to have a health care system that cost 16% of GDP versus a system that costs 11%
Obama may be smarter than me, but the 16% versus 11% figure didn't come from me. Those figures came from Bill Clinton, who appeared on the Letterman show Sep 22, 2008. At the same time Bill Clinton said that we didn't need to spend any more money to cover the uninsured, instead, we need to spend differently. More recently, Governor Dean said the same thing.
Obama may be smarter than me, but he isn't smarter than Clinton or Dean.
Matthew Dowd doesn't need to tell Obama to take it to the working class. Obama's been planning it all along. All his chatter about "shared sacrifice" means only one thing -- working people pay, the bosses get bailed out. And we know what "reform" means when he talks about Social Security -- LESS of it. Meanwhile, the interest payments to government bondholders remain sacrosanct, military wars to defend "vital" [read US capitalist] interests in Central Asia are expanded, while management of the banks is secured for the same crooks who looted them to start with. Republicans are apoplectic NOT because of the spending, but because they can't find daylight to pitch an alternative perspective -- it's all been coopted. Welcome to the convergence of the two parties, and the advancing collapse of modern capitalism.
I think Obama is not part of the Villager mentality. Remember how the corporate media complained about him taking questions from alternative media and not their DC buddies. I expect the president to bitterly disappoint the center-right bunch of lamos.
He's aready took on the teachers unions too
was really speaking of "The Blacks"
How can any black man be taken seriously if he doesn't first turn on black people?
All this so-called advice from pundits is nothing more than the ranting of racists that either make no bones about their racism or closet themselves and hide behind humor or their love of "traditional "American" values.
What they seem to forget is some of us know all about their value system and how many others just don't matter.
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