Redstate

...It was almost "There's something happening here," but I'm saving that for when the Democratic nominee endorses the War.

By Moe Lane Posted in Congress | Great Netroot Betrayal | Kneel Before Zod | Sloths wearing suits — Comments (2) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »

Heading Right reminds us that tomorrow is the first day of the 2008 Congressional season, and everybody knows what that means. Yes, it's time for the Democrats to kabuki their way across the political landscape again.

Congress Faces War Economy, Election
By JIM ABRAMS Associated Press Writer

Still smarting from the partisan wars of 2007, Congress confronts a sinking economy, a lingering war and election-year politics as it gets back to work for the 2008 session.

The Democratic-led House reconvenes Tuesday with the familiar scenario of having to deal with a President Bush veto. The White House objected to one provision in a massive defense bill that opened the way for lawsuits against the Iraqi government.

The defense bill contains an additional pay raise for the military and Congress is expected to quickly fix the problem, either with a veto override vote that would probably fail or by removing the offending provision.

I'd like to note for the record that only slightly more than half of Congress is "smarting" over 2007. The other half - mine - is... well, let's just say that 'tis better to give than to receive.

Read on.

The major problem for the Democrats, of course, is that while they can try to brag about the following:

Democrats claimed several successes in their first year in power, including raising the minimum wage, boosting fuel mileage standards for cars and small trucks, increasing security at seaports and airports, reducing student loan interest rates and requiring stricter mental health checks for gun purchases.

...that's not why so many members of the progressive movement supported them. They supported them in order to get the US to cut and run in Iraq, impeach the President, and take Karl Rove out to the National Mall and burn him at the stake (I exaggerate*). This is fairly ironic, because if anything 2007 improved the political position of the defense hawks - particularly the neo-conservatives.

How did this happen? Two reasons: first off, both the Speaker of the House and the Senate Majority Leader are rank incompetents at actually running things. Both Pelosi and Reid suffered from the delusion that tactics that would work on them would also work on Republicans - so when it was abruptly made clear to the Democrats that the GOP would not show its collective belly at the first show of force neither politician was really prepared for that, and they never recovered. Specifically, confronted with the choice between passing Democratic policy points by promoting bipartisanship, and achieving gridlock, Ed in Heading Right called it when he said that "Reid himself assured that they would choose the latter in 2007 by deliberately using hard-line tactics rather than splitting the wavering GOP caucuses on the war early in 2007" - but it applies to everything that the Democrats did, not just war policy.

And that leads us to the second reason: the Democrats' own base supporters. For the record: when I call Speaker Nancy Pelosi a "rank incompetent" as a politician it's not because I think that she doesn't know what she did wrong: it's because she has never demonstrated any ability to do something that her own Party loyalists disapprove of, but will forgive her for anyway. Prior to the 110th Congress I would have assumed that this ability is simply a prerequisite for higher office - FDR, LBJ, Nixon, Reagan, Clinton and George W Bush have all demonstrated their abilities in that field - but apparently you can rise in the ranks without it, as witnessed by the current Democratic Congressional leadership.

But now that they're there, they're stuck. While no rational person really expects them to go along with the, ah, enthusiasms of their political base, said political base gives the Democratic Party money. The Democrats understandably don't want to lose any money that they don't have to. There really isn't a good solution to this problem, but the least-bad is apparently to for the Democrats to simulated some sort of demented Red Queen's Race wrt Iraq and hope that the netroots don't revolt too strenuously when the netroots eventually notice. It all means that almost nothing gets done, but as long as Congress has its collective re-election rate remain astronomically high, well, that's life.

Personally, speaking as a hyperpartisan, crypto-fascist, neo-conservative member of the VRWC I think that it's all marvelous. Because, contra this person from the ABC article:

Linda Fowler, a political science professor at Dartmouth College, said Congress could end up defying the low expectations for it this year.

"The Democrats need to make a record to run on but so do the Republicans," she said. "Sometimes Congress gets pretty productive in September and October" before an election, she said, recalling the 1996 law overhauling welfare programs.

...Republicans can run on a record that's mostly "See what we stopped?" Besides, there are something like 15-25 House seats whose long-term possession is, shall we say, at issue. Why give the Democratic holders of them any breaks?

Moe Lane

*Slightly.