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Among the finer arts mastered by unprincipled politicians is the art of opposing policies one day, then showing up the next to take credit when their constituents begin to see the benefits of the policies that these unprincipled politicians had opposed.
Earlier this year, for example, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (R) proved that he was all too willing to do this dance.
Last February, Gov. Jindal (R-LA) dazzled us with his first bold step, saying that he wasn’t all that interested in taking the approximately $4 billion allocated to his state as a result of the Stimulus Bill (American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009).
Then, as federal money started flowing into Louisiana, he realy got his groove on, making a victory tour to take credit for the very stimulus money he had said he didn’t want in his state, while simultaneously mocking the stimulus as “stimulus that has not stimulated” in an op-ed entitled ‘A trillion here, a trillion there’ (7/20/09) at Politico.
As Lee Fang put it in “Jindal Tours Louisiana Attacking ‘Washington Spending’ While Handing Out Jumbo-Sized Stimulus Checks” (7/23/09) at Think Progress:
Despite the fact that the checks contain millions of dollars of Recovery Act funds for job training programs, housing assistance programs, homelessness prevention programs, police training, criminal justice technology upgrades, and community development block grants, Jindal has been printing his own name on the checks and taking credit for the money.
Jindal’s dance was insidious, and his ability to bust out these dance moves without ever acknowledging how stupid he looked as he was doing it is kind of impressive.
You would think that this is the kind of thing that only Republicans do, right?
Well, think again.
Rep. Jim Cooper (D-TN-05) likes doing it, too, so much so that he does it again and again.
No, he didn’t make a victory tour, happily handing out stimulus checks with his signature on them while simultaneously mocking the stimulus in an op-ed.
But he did show that he can dance, too. Just as Gov. Jindal made his first move in February, Rep. Cooper made his first step earlier, in January, when he backed up the Republican House Minority leadership by joining with Republicans, who were and remain united in opposing all-things-Obama for no other reason than to oppose Democrats, and voting against the Stimulus Bill (American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009).
That’s right. The Stimulus Bill passed without a single Republican voting in favor of it in the House and despite the fact that Rep. Cooper voted against it, too. But no matter. It’s a Democratic victory nonetheless and, hey, Rep. Cooper has a "D" after his name.
So, as money now flows into Tennessee’s 5th Congressional district, Rep. Cooper got his groove on, too, pulling out his Democratic Party membership card and issuing presses releases like this one that came out of his office a few weeks ago:
At a time when more and more people are turning to food banks for help, I am pleased that Second Harvest Nashville will receive these funds to help continue providing necessary services to our community.
He’s pleased? He’s really pleased? Ok, but maybe he should have told his constituents in his press release that he didn’t want them ever to receive these funds in the first place, that he voted against the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.
And the stimulus that, as Rep. Cooper now proudly states, will “help continue providing necessary services to our community” is by no means limited to Nashville. In “Stimulus to aid Tenn. food banks” (10/16/09), Nashville, Tennessee’s ABC affiliate, WKRN News Channel 2, reports that:
The Second Harvest Food Bank in Knoxville will receive $111,729 in federal funds, the Mid-South Food Bank in Memphis will receive $150,118, the Chattanooga Area Food Bank $55,005 and the Second Harvest Food Bank of Northeast Tennessee $50,994.
So, Rep. Cooper voted against the Stimulus Bill (American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009) and now shamelessly issues press releases saying that he’s pleased that his constituents in TN-05 and Tennesseans across the state are receiving the stimulus money.
A complete list of all the organizations and local communities in Rep. Cooper’s district – indeed, throughout Tennessee and the entire country – that will receive federal stimulus money at a time of great need would be heartening, but too long for this entry.
Perhaps one more example of the benefits of the Recovery Act that Rep. Cooper’s constituents are now seeing will suffice.
The documents at this link (PDF) show the amounts of stimulus money that the Nashville Area Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) applied for and how much of those amounts the Metropolitan Government of Nashville and Davidson County have accepted – millions of dollars – for replacing and upgrading sidewalks, reconstructing approximately seven traffic signals and optimizing traffic signal timing at approximately 300 intersections, resurfacing and marking roads, upgrading ramps and curbs, and other work all intended to improve pedestrian, bicycle and vehicular safety in Rep. Cooper’s district.
Don’t be surprised when Rep. Cooper issues press release after press release locally to let his constituents, some of whom he must be hoping won’t notice that he voted against the stimulus, know how pleased he is now that they, the people of his district, are receiving this stimulus money, which he never wanted them to get in the first place (though this stimulus money will make the projects mentioned above and many other things possible).
Maybe by continuing to call himself a Democrat and issuing such press releases locally, he can continue to work against the interests of his constituents in the Unite States House of Representatives and continue to score political points that he does not deserve back home.
Related Posts and Diaries:
David Dayen’s Jim Cooper Discusses Stupak Amendment Without Revealing He Voted For It (11/9/09).
Knoxville’s Rep. Jim Cooper (D-TN-5): Lessons Not Learned? (11/6/09), about Cooper’s non-position position on health care reform (his attempt to have it both ways for months) and about his rudeness to Nashville physicians in August, concluding with the point that Jane Hamsher made here at Firedoglake on August 24, 2009:
If any primary challengers in TN-05 were waiting for a signal that Jim Cooper was vulnerable, the Daily Kos/Research 2000 poll of his district should be a welcome signal.
Knoxville’s Rep. Cooper’s (D-TN05) Vote on H.R. 3962 (11/7/09), about Cooper’s explanation for why he decided to vote ‘yes’ on H R 3962, by which vote he really meant ‘no’ on H R 3962. I concluded this post saying
Jim Cooper’s modus operandi is painfully obvious. I really hope that a decent challenger comes forward to oppose him in the 2010 primary so that I’ll have the opportunity to help oust this ridiculous character.
12 Comments
HeY Knox, we know the guy’s an ass, but we didn’t vote for Him.
I hope You are sending all this to His home papers, and local media outlets where it might do more good.
iremember54:
Most of us haven’t – couldn’t have – voted for Senator Reid, or Speaker Pelosi, or Chris Van Hollen, et al, either. What’s your point?
If they aren’t representing the interests of the people who do vote for them, then we have every right to organize efforts in order to tell their constituents what they are doing.
In this case, Rep. Cooper is using the “Democrat” label to imply that he deserves credit for the accomplishments of the Democratic Congress when, in fact, he votes against the Democratic leadership and his own Caucus and against the very legislation that he is now saying he’s so happy to see helping the people of his community.
David Dayen pointed out yesterday that Cooper craftily has been taking credit for being one of the few smart guys who knew the real impact of the Stupak Amendment all along, while carefully avoiding any mention of the fact that he voted in favor of it.
I pointed out a couple of days ago that Cooper took a non-position position on health care reform for months in order to avoid saying where he stood on legislation that really mattered.
And, yes, I did use the “Spotlight” feature to send this diary to 10 media outlets in Tennessee.
hey Knox,
did you see this ?
seems some of your kossack friends are puttin’ together a little soiree for the distinguished gentleman :D
but wait, there’s more . . . per the link
Thank you for this!
What I saw at the link:
Looks to me like the plan is to protest his vote in favor of the Stupak Amendment right in his face when he arrives at the airport.
If so, I wonder if his always trying to have it both ways is finally backfiring. He tried to vote in favor of the Stupak Amendment in order to make his friends happy and in favor of H R 3962 in order to the majority of his constituents in TN-05, who want real reform, happy.
But it might just turn out instead that his friends will yell at him for voting in favor of H R 3962 and his constituents in TN-05 will yell at him for voting in favor of the Stupak Amendment.
If that’s the case, awesome! And it also means that what Jane wrote at the end of August would be even more correct now:
Last point: you wrote “your kossack friends.” I only recently – about a week ago – opened my first account at DailyKos and used the name KnoxvilleFDL. Signed up, but haven’t used it at all because there’s a rule over there about not commenting for 24 hours after signing up and because I haven’t had a reason to return since. Part of the reason I chose KnoxvilleFDL over there is that someone else already had “Knoxville.” If the person who already had the name Knoxville at DailyKos is posting stuff over there, he or she isn’t me!
my comment is a mess – part of it disappeared – wth?
anyhoo – there was to be a welcome event, but was cancelled – and I’m thinking that Kos diary had something to do with the cancellation, not “flight plans” tee hee
the other item – OFA/DNC is asking us to “thank” members who voted for Stupak. that aint happenin’
Part of your comment @ 3 just disappeared?
By asking us to “thank” them, you mean they’re asking us to tell him to “thank” him for betraying us, right?
Unless they’re planning on throwing away millions of votes from pro-choice Americans, how could any Democratic leader possibly think that it’s a good idea to tell anyone to thank them for voting in favor of the Stupak Amendment? It obviously ain’t gonna happen, but that they would even ask is just too far beyond belief. Are they trying to commit political suicide?
Re the “welcome” event: honestly, between what’s left of your comment @ 3 above and what I saw at dailykos, I’m a bit confused as to what they were intending to do when they “greeted” Cooper. From what I saw at that comment at dailykos, it looked like they were going there to protest his vote. But it also looks here like the “thank you” was supposed to be sincere. Wtf?
man oh man Knox, there’s a lot to respond to in your comment and I’m on my first cup of coffee, so bear with me
Numero Uno – we did in fact get a PO in the House Bill – and we did it because Field Marshals like Jane surveyed the political realities and saw that our best chance for same was a backstop in the House – solidifying support in the House – Mission Accomplished – or we’d have co-ops/triggers/opt-outs.
a far flung, frankly rag tag group of online activists (despite having their funding cut) got the job done, on a major piece of legistlation, in the face of heavily financed, entrenched opposition, with added pressure from WH and Congr. & Party Leadership.
Stupak:
the sucker punch part came with the conflicting stories about how many votes he had and how many votes Leadership had. although I’ve never been involved in a fight like this, I have been a warrior for Choice my entire adult life and I continued to look for it – it’s what they do Knox – a major piece of legistlation involving Fed HCR dollars ? they’ll be there. and you can bet someone watching as closely as Jane felt the same.
I have seen nothing from Jane since the vote to indicate satisfaction or silence w/Stupak – she was right (as she has been again and again in the past) to call out advocacy groups who failed abysmally on their singular issue.
clearly the fight has shifted, which calls for different tactics going forward – that might be what you are misinterpreting as “silence” from Jane and her team – but I believe they have gone to ground and are readying themselves for the next phase – and the long term (POP).
plus, my personal observation – Jane let her inner strategist fly in this fight – and it won -accomplishing it’s goals against tremendous odds and pressure, with a heartwrenching personal loss along the way – she is far from done.
I also think despite the great unknown immediatley ahead in the Senate and Conference, so much of what we accomplished will serve us down the road – the fruits of this labor will be harvested in future fights.
so glad I qualified this as undercaffeinated – it is a mess, but my thoughts this morning
Hi cbl2,
I agree with all of this, but in the end I think we have to recognize that while the tactics were brilliant and may have saved some sort of PO, I think there was something wrong with the strategy from the beginning.
In my view, much of the hcr reform movement, including Jane, made a great strategic error in this fight. And that error was to make the strategic goal a Public Option solution, rather than to make it a Medicare for All solution. That error has shaped everything else the hcr movement has done for the last year, and is the one thing primarily responsible for the sorry outcome we have on our hands now. I think we have to learn from that and stop boosting the PO, even a very strong PO, as a strategic goal. Medicare for All, should be our standard, and we should evaluate our success or failure in political activity by how far we’ve moved the ball toward this goal, not by how far we’ve moved the ball toward getting a PO. The PO, even a Jacob Hacker-type PO, is at best a tactic relative to the overall strategic goal of getting to SP, and we should never forget that or let other people forget that. Since it is a tactic, we should be treating it as a tactic, something we resort to overcome blocking or resistance, not something we pre-compromise on before even testing the strength of resistance to our efforts.
I think, also, that treating the PO as if it were our strategic goal was a very bad tactic. It did not elicit the limited opposition and pragmatic but useful compromise for our side that many progs anticipated, and talked about as a benefit of going the PO route, and its messaging has been and still is horribly confused and disingenuous and has elicited all kinds of fears from the public that Medicare for All would never have elicited.
Since tactics are not independent of strategy, but are always shaped in the context of it, adopting the PO as a strategic goal has shaped our tactics, by constraining us from doing some things. We could never call on a mass movement to support us in getting hcr, because who can really get excited over a PO that won’t produce universal coverage? We could never develop simple messaging that was honest, because all the simple verities about stopping the fatalities, providing universal coverage, making things really affordable, and really saving money for the country, don’t really apply to the half-baked PO plans we’ve been seeing from the Congress.
These kinds of claims are honest justifications for SP, but dishonest ones for the PO plans we’ve seen. And who can get excited and fight hard while using messages that you know are not true? Maybe conservative apparatchiks can do that, but liberals and progressives find that very hard. They need to believe in what they are doing and what they are saying.
I think we’re at the point now, with this terrible hcr bill, that we have to recognize the strategic error and go back to Medicare for All. We can compromise off that for short term gains. But we must never pre-compromise, and we must never accept any compromise that either 1) doesn’t provide a clear possibility of getting to Medicare for All in a reasonable time, or 2) threatens the political prospects for getting further reforms that will provide that clear possibility.
Hey Knox, I wasn’t knocking your efforts, but Washington doesn’t listen very well. The people who have some power and influence are the people in His district, and I was just hoping you were letting them know about Him.
His voters are the people that can control Him.
I’m thinking Rep Cooper and Bobby did not have a clue just how bad the economy really was when they opposed the Stimulus then they saw some poll numbers.
Knox it takes a lot for a politician to do a 180 on an issue this quick. I think we should confront them and make them admit that they are taking credit for things they said they opposed.
However imagine just how bad the secret internal Dem and GOP polls must be to make Cooper and Bobby both change their minds on this.
Unemployment numbers must be driving Cooper’s and Bobby’s conversion on the Stimulus. The packing store guy in Seattle said this year UPS, Fed Ex, and the Post Office were not hiring extra people to help with the holidays I have never heard of that happening ever in any city or town I have lived in.
If nobody is shipping stuff nobody is buying the Christmas shopping season is toast retail sales will suck. Advertising Dollars TV, Newspapers etc they will suck to Christmas is the biggest Retail and Advertiser season.
I expect retail and media bankruptcies after tax season.
In response to cbl2 @ 8
Sure enough, something insane is going on in the Democratic Party. Honestly, Jane’s quick u-turn on the whole issue of health care reform, which now includes the Stupak Amendment, is odd. Seems like some ultimate power has made a calculation that it’s best to quiet the whole mess, neither to declare victory for passing H R 3962 nor to let angry voices rise in opposition for the passing of the Stupak Amendment. How everyone has been hushed so successfully is truly baffling. Jane is right that she didn’t address abortion or reproductive rights re health care, but that doesn’t change the fact that she and we all got sucker punched and robbed of what should have been victory. I cannot believe that OFA has called on anyone to go thank Rep. Jim Cooper at the airport in Nashville for his “hard work” on health care reform, but I can believe that, once they realized what Cooper would actually be facing because he is a sleazy weasel, they canceled the event. Thank you rally for Rep. Jim Cooper. What a joke. They’re in a deep hole. Health care will get derailed if they can’t work this out in both the House and Senate. And they know it.