I think the biggest mistake the democrats made was deciding that the proper response to the banking crisis that almost brought down the world economy was to try and enact healthcare reform.
I waffle on this. Financial reform would have been easier than health reform, and would have been easier last year than it is now. There were stories coming out that Axelrod, Emanuel, and pretty much the whole inner circle was telling Obama not to take on health reform.
On the other hand, I really believe that health care is far and away the area where reform could do the most tangible good in people's everyday lives. The current system heaps more insecurity and misery on people who are already towards the bottom of society, rather than giving them a reliable backstop. It embodies the basic ideas of empathy and mutual responsibility that make me self-identify as a liberal, and I'd trade several of the other planks of Obama's platform if this could pass.
Hell, give me single-payer and you can put Jesus on our currency. I wouldn't give a fuck.
Sure, that's why Johnson decided not to run in 1968- he was getting primaried and was gonna lose.
I'd say that that's a horrible idea, but after Mr. Harvard Law Review fucked around for a year kissing Republicans' asses in the vain attempt to get them to responsibly govern in lieu of screaming "SOCIALISM" at the top of their lungs and voting no all the time, I'd love to see Howard Dean get in there and spit some fiyah.
This bothers me, cause it's basically a criticism of tone, an inversion of what conservatives and soi-disant "moderates" leveled at Paul Krugman during Bush's first term.
Netroots liberals spent the better part of a decade defending the notion that someone could get angry still make valid points, that someone who cusses but speaks the truth is more worth listening to than a mannered nitwit with a Washington Post op-ed sinecure. Now it's almost morphed to the idea that cussing makes you serious, and being calm makes you David Broder. That's why really smart people defend Matt Taibbi columns which contain half a dozen or so obvious lies.
Obama made two mistakes of judgment that you can arguably file under being too conciliatory:
1) Nominating relatively uncontroversial judges so they would be able to quickly fill vacancies on the court. They've been held up by Republican Senators despite not being objectionable.
2) Proposing too small a stimulus package. They apparently expected the size of the bill to increase as it went through Congress, when in fact it got shaved down. They had reasons for this: a lot of bills in recent history (transportation, education, energy) wound up more expensive than when they were first proposed, but they badly misread how the DLC Dems needed to make a show of cutting costs.
But other than that?
I understand how frustrating it is to see the centrists be allowed to repeatedly blackmail their party and be rewarded for it, but asking for Obama to "fight" rather than "suck up" is an emotional response. Who really thinks he'd could make those guys act productive by snarling at them? Every problem Senator either outpolled Obama by 10 points in their state, or is Joe Lieberman.
You know who's been way more of a force for good than anyone could have expected? Max Baucus. The guy is arguably the most conservative Democrat in the Senate, but he's been a driving force to get a bill done. That happened because Obama co-opted him and made him feel that the administration's cause was his cause as well. He got treated with kid gloves. Yeah, he spent too much time courting the ladies from Maine, but if Obama had tried to strong-arm him? Baucus would have treated Obama like Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Bob Kerrey treated Bill Clinton.
Coalition politics means grovelling and scraping at the feet of people who don't have your respect and don't deserve it. You don't have to like it, but if you care more about helping millions of people whose lives are affected by this more than you care about punishing a few pompous officeholders, then you have to accept the reality of it.
