Legal Commentary

Fighting For Good Policy Is Good Politics

By Big Tent Democrat

Matt Yglesias writes:

I think that where a lot of progressive political junkies go wrong is that they think “blame Republicans for failing to pass plan to fix the economy” is a close substitute for “fix the economy.” In reality, the evidence that fixing the economy would help Democrats politically is overwhelming, while the evidence that the plan/block/blame strategy would work is non-existent.

I don't know what "progressive political junkies" Yglesias is referring to, but most progressives critical of the Obama economic policies argue that Obama should have fought for better policies, because, you know, maybe he would have gotten them. A lot of folks are pretending the inadequate stimulus and the utter failure of a housing/foreclosure policy implemented by the Obama Administration was not what they wanted. In fact, it was. Was it the best they could do? No one knows because they didn't try to do better.

In the bad old days of Clinton Triangulation, the Clinton Administration enacted a policy they thought was best, the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1993. That bill passed in the House by 218-216 and with Vice President Gore casting the tiebreaking vote in the Senate. The Obama Administration, with a less conservative Congress, did not fight as hard for a better economic policy. That is what I criticize.

Speaking for me only

Full post as published by TalkLeft on November 12, 2010 (boomark / email).