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On Monday, when the news of Obama’s apparently asinine decision to call for a three-year spending freeze on all nonsecurity federal discretionary spending first broke, I wrote that Obama was throwing Neoconservatives a bone in the wake of the Massachusetts special election last week.
But as we look forward to tonight’s State of the Union address, it’s become clearer that the real purpose of announcing a nonsensical spending freeze was to distract the Democratic Party’s base and to get them unified around a new issue. Certainly, the White House didn’t want the President to have to focus tonight on the Democrats’ failure to reform health care. Going forward, having the President make a new set of promises about jobs and the economy will be far better.
The announcement 48 hours ago leading up to tonight’s address was just a pivot, an effort to shift progressives’ and liberals’ attention away from health care.
Seen in this light, Paul Krugman’s harsh words about the freeze proposal – “it’s appalling on every level,” he wrote – was part of the calculation. Nate Silver calling it “a mistake on par with John McCain’s ‘suspending my campaign’ gaffe” – serves the White House’s purpose, too. And Robert Cruickshank initially called it “a massive mistake” that smacked of Hooverism and went on the next day to insist that efforts to put the freeze proposal in perspective were wrong: “The freeze could be worse. But it is still a bad idea.” Even Kossaks seem to be getting on board. The spending freeze proposal “seems to be the last straw for a large number of Daily Kos readers,” one FDL diarist noted.
The real purpose of the announcement, in fact, was to get progressives and liberals back on the same page after the Democrats’ failure to reform our broken health care system, not to throw neoconservatives a bone.
Seeing the advantage of changing the subject, Harry Reid yesterday tried to jump on the White House’s train to anywhere other than discussing the failure to reform health care. As reported by the NY times, “with no clear path forward on major health care legislation,” Harry Reid said:
We’re not on health care now. We’ve talked a lot about it in the past. There’s no rush.
It’s in the past, Reid says. “Fierce urgency of now” is yesterday’s news. Get it?
There’s just one problem with what Democrats are trying doing: it’s insulting.
And, because it’s insulting, it won’t work.
Nothing has been accomplished that will fix our broken health care system. The Senate bill, which amounts to massive gifts and giveaways to the industries that created the problems, is a very bad joke on the American people. As the only remaining comprehensive approach to dealing with the health care system, it’s a total failure.
Meanwhile, progressives and liberals are supposed to be uniting around opposition to the announcement of a spending freeze. Well, once again the voters who make up the base of the Democratic Party are proving to be able to spot bullshit far quicker than those who are the most reliable voters for Republicans.
Progressives and liberals hear James K. Galbraith say, as he did on TRMS last night, that Obama’s proposal of a spending freeze is a “symbolic gesture” that will have no real impact, and they know that he’s right. Galbraith concluded that there is no serious economic argument for this gesture. Indeed.
Progressives and liberals read articles at HuffPost, CNN, and elsewhere raising the question about whether Obama’s proposal is a “gimmick.”
It’s a gimmick.
Don’t fall for distractions.
The economy, unemployment and underemployment, as well as health care, are far too important to waste time focusing on nonsense.
The focus must remain on the underlying fact that the Obama administration and congressional Democrats have not demonstrated that they’re willing and/or able to take on special interests or to rein in the worse actors in the health care and financial services industries.
Do they really think that empty gestures and lame efforts to distract Americans’ attention will save them from their own failures to deliver on the promises of change?
I hope Obama and congressional Democrats to get their heads out of their asses, because they’re going to lose in Nov if they don’t.
11 Comments
Yeah, it seriously won’t work. What, pivot from one problem to another, and still offer no real solutions? If anything, it’ll just redirect the anger.
If he doesn’t put some major money and muscle into creating more jobs, it won’t matter what else he does or does not do. He can fail on health care and still survive. Continuing the Bernanke model of Wall Street matters, unemployment is just a minor inconvenience will kill them all. I think they are being stupid to push Bernanke’s renomination, but there are plenty of voters who don’t follow closely enough to really understand what that does. You can’t help but have the unemployment problem shoved in your face, though. Unless you are in Congress or an investment banker, if you aren’t out of a job, you’re wondering when you will be. No gimmick is going to fix that.
That’s a good thing because we’ve hobbled along on politics by distraction while being set up for disaster for far too long. I hate the idea of Obama’s failures setting up young voters for cynicism, but I love that we are raising a generation of young people who will really understand how important it is to keep a close eye on what your politicians are up to and especially where their money is coming from. My kids aren’t even old enough to vote yet, but they are more tuned in than most people my age were a couple of years ago.
The Fake Spending Freeze is a brilliant gimmick.
Maybe this is what they truly believe in — government by gimmick.
Knox, in case you didn’t see this, Michael Moore says it all.
“I think that anger and the anger in Michigan, we’re going to end up with a Republican governor this November. I can—I already see it. I can already feel it happening, I think, because people are so upset. I mean, you’ve got an official unemployment rate of over 15 percent. Unofficially—I mean, the county I live in is over 20 percent officially, so you know it’s really over 30 percent, at least. People are very, very upset and can now be easily manipulated now, as people who are hurting have been, I mean, historically.”
“So how do we fight this now? Because their propaganda machine that’s funded now with—will have billions of dollars behind this to manipulate an uneducated American public—when I say “uneducated,” I’m talking about an American public, as you know, where we rank in the world, in math and science and literacy, all these things—we’re so far behind so many other countries. We have 40 million functional illiterates in this country, 40 million adults who can’t read and write above a fourth grade level. If you create a country where the education system sucks so bad, where you make it your lowest priority, and then you want to create some propaganda to easily lead them down the path you want to lead them down, it’s a cakewalk at that point, when you have this enforced ignorance, the illiteracy that’s encouraged, the C-minus president who was so proud of himself and encouraging others that that was cool, it was cool to be dumb.”
The freeze *idea* is beyond stupid. Even if it is a tactic … of, um, *some* sort … it puts the really strong emotions of partisan groups in play which ends up being akin to playing with fire.
One can only wonder when they will stop adding fuel to the fire.
We sure have learned a lot since we *lost* Coakley. Fascinating, huh.
Not the least of which is the dead fish flopping of Reid: first, the House must, must, must pass the Senate Bill and now there is no rush. Is Reid anything but a talking automoton? Apparently not. What will it be tomorrow. He is flopping fast ~ he might even end up swimming in the public option. :-)
It’s beyond belief. They should have worked harder to achieve so much more on health care, and now they’re tossing out nonsense as if it would help create jobs or help the middle class. They’re making it hard to give them a second chance.
I remember a little while back having some hope for a second stimulus. Instead, we get a gimmick that fixes nothing other than the political mess created by Democrats.
Unfortunately, the problem with hobbling “along on politics by distraction” is that eventually the disaster hits, which will happen soon enough if Obama and congressional leaders don’t get it together.
I hadn’t seen Moore’s take. He seems to be as disappointed in Obama and the Democrats as are most of us at FDL. He does appear to come up to the edge of blaming “easily manipulated” voters, though. Is that how you read what he said?
I took him to say our poor educational system has brought about a situation where poorly educated people are easily manipulated by the media and ‘powers that be’.
Think of the assault upon ACORN; most of those who ACORN registers to vote are not well educated and are a counter balance to what I consider what the closet fascists count as their base because they, also, are not well educated.
When I look at high school curriculum(s) nowadays compared to when I was going to high school (early 60′s) I am amazed. Where once civics and social studies were requirements, such either doesn’t exist or is voluntary. Succinctly, what was taught was a sense of responsibility and duty to the commonality of the nation and one’s need to serve that commonality in some way.
A long ways from the ‘what’s in it for me’ mindset that appears to have taken hold in this country,e.g.”why should I pay for someone else’s healthcare”?
Spending freeze huh! They have seldom worked in the past, and this is only a little one.
If they put the people back to work, the taxes they pay and the money they would spend would do more than any freeze ever could.
I am so sick of the bullshit that they can’t do more to create jobs, they just don’t want to.
We need to get this Country self sufficient by getting off foreign oil, building the power plants and dams to get away from burning coal, and instead use that coal to make liquid fuels from it.
So what was the Congress talking about today, “Say David Dryer, ” more trade deals. They just can’t get it that our trade deals always favor the other Countries, and we lose everytime.
The only freeze that might be good in Washington, is a brain freeze for most of the people there. Could we get less done, less spent, and less damage to the Country done, with all their brains frozen, than with them actually thinking.