Not in practice, mind you, but as a codeword sop to the masses as justification for defending the status quo.

The end result of bipartisanship is paring down a bill until it changes next to nothing of import.  And then selling it as if it were the greatest thing since the last bucket of lukewarm spit to pass this way.

This is nothing new in politics. The money has always been on the side of the status quo, since change can be costly to one’s bottom line. 

And the status quo has perennially been about "I’ve got mine.  Screw you," now hasn’t it? 

One only need watch the FDR Fala speech (Youtube above) to get that. Or read a little history, you can pretty much pick any era.

What is new? That there is no real voice for change and the little guy capitalizing on this moment in our nation’s history.

And it shows.

Jean Edward Smith has a fantastic op-ed in the NYTimes today talking about FDR, the false sop of bipartisanship and the real value of a little more backbone:

. . .this fixation on securing bipartisan support for health care reform suggests that the Democratic Party has forgotten how to govern and the White House has forgotten how to lead.

Roosevelt understood that governing involved choice and that choice engendered dissent. He accepted opposition as part of the process. It is time for the Obama administration to step up to the plate and make some hard choices.

He cites numorous examples of Roosevelt New Deal reforms which were enacted in spite of entrenched interests, and not because they’d been pared down to mere windowdressing to win their support.

Was Glass-Steagall passed in a bi-partisan fashion with entrenched interests on Wall Street given a seat at the negotiating table? Hell no. Social security?  Are you kidding me?!?

Were there membes of Congress consorting with moneyed interests trying to block the bill, much like Max Baucus’ lobbyist-filed anteroom? Undoubtedly.  Although, as Krugman points out, there’s a lot more of that lobbyist payola floating around these days.

But the real difference between then and now?

FDR sold the need for change at the grassroots by making that change actually happen.  And without selling the public’s interest down the river in the process.  Which made his grassroots support all the stronger, and enabled him to fend off opposition by painting them as being against the public, fueling more public support in the process. 

FDR drew his power for change from the people, not just from the people around him inside the Beltway.

Better political leadership in the Democratic party would help.  So would those leaders actually believing in the need for change instead of giving it political lip service and then undercutting it with their actions.

Can the Obama administration still make needed changes? Absolutely.

Will they? Well, that’s the big question, isn’t it?

His legacy of political achievement is long: his constant and continuing fight (YouTube) for the child health insurance program (CHIP), support and legal equality for Americans with disabilities, reforms of mental health programs, national community service, the voting rights act, substantial work for years on civil rights and civil liberties (YouTube) concerns.

His was consistently a fight for the little guy.

But his passion, the one that has not yet been achieved, has been quality health care for all, not just the privileged few.

In the video above, Sen. Kennedy speaks in Montgomery County, PA, about his motivation on health care: watching families in the pediatric cancer ward give up everything they had worked so hard for their entire lives to desperately try to save their children, the same way he and his family were trying to save their own. Except that he had excellent health insurance, and the difference it made was substantial.

Imagine facing the fear that you could lose your child and trying to deal with that?  Now imagine adding the fear that you might have to lose  everything, including that child’s home and place of comfort, to do so at the same time?

Sen. Kennedy wrote a piece for Newsweek last year regarding his passionate work on health care, and the motivations for it. It is a fitting tribute to him that those words resonate just as strongly today:

. . .quality care shouldn’t depend on your financial resources, or the type of job you have, or the medical condition you face. Every American should be able to get the same treatment that U.S. senators are entitled to.

This is the cause of my life. It is a key reason that I defied my illness last summer to speak at the Democratic convention in Denver—to support Barack Obama, but also to make sure, as I said, "that we will break the old gridlock and guarantee that every American…will have decent, quality health care as a fundamental right and not just a privilege." For four decades I have carried this cause—from the floor of the United States Senate to every part of this country. It has never been merely a question of policy; it goes to the heart of my belief in a just society. Now the issue has more meaning for me—and more urgency—than ever before. But it’s always been deeply personal, because the importance of health care has been a recurrent lesson throughout most of my 77 years.

Whatever health care bill comes through the legislative process, if there is any care or concern for the public at large in the bill, it will have been due — in large measure — to the constant fight from Ted Kennedy.

This is a great loss indeed.

Storytime via aye_shamus. Love this!

Listen my children and you shall hear, of the continued obstruction and gooberish fear…

The Grand Obstruction Party and weak-kneed Democratic leadership. Still at it:

Still unconfirmed are three circuit court nominees and four nominees for assistant attorney general positions, including Dawn Johnsen for the Office of Legal Counsel. Democrats need Republican agreement in order to move the nominees forward, unless they want to use days of time on the Senate floor.

And there it is, in a nutshell. 

What I’ve been hearing all along is that Johnsen does have the votes to get past cloture — with both Nelson and Specter intending to vote for cloture, regardless of their ultimate nomination vote.  So, what’s the hold-up in bringing this vote to the floor?

The lack of leadership willpower to expend political capital and Senate floor time to force it through.

In other words, the Democratic leadership will not go to the mattresses for these nominees and the GOP knows they are too weak to do it.

As David Waldman has patiently explained, time and time again, the mere threat of a filibuster-esque thought on a particular nominee or legislative whimsy is enough to send the Democratic leadership in the Senate off with a case of the immobilized vapors:

So do Republicans intend to filibuster the bill? Probably not in the sense that they want to see it killed, which means they’ll deny that they’re engaged in a filibuster, or even threatening one. But make no mistake, there is no reason why anything in the Senate requires 60 votes except to end a filibuster, whether one materializes out in the open or not. If the threat is that the bill’s opponents will force a 60 vote threshold unless they get an opportunity to change the bill, the threat is nothing other than a threat to filibuster.

Will a filibuster materialize? Probably not, at least not one seriously aimed at killing the bill. Instead, concessions will be made that should guarantee forward progress on some amended form of the bill. . . . expect a deal to be struck that should eliminate the possibility of a successful filibuster that would actually prevent the bill from coming to a vote. And that’s what will matter to the Senate leadership.

That was David on the stimulus package showboating.  But the same applies to nearly every other stoppage in the Senate before and since. (more…)

omewhere in the last few weeks, the Beltway stupor has begun to lift on obstructionist tactics.  Sort of. When even Norm Ornstein raises his eyes from the muck and sees a need for finger wagging, you know there’s been some sternly worded chatter over manchego and port in Georgetown.

Digby points to a Catherine Rampel piece at NYTimes. In it, Rampel underscores a universal political truth: According to two recent polls from The New York Times/CBS News and The Wall Street Journal/NBC News, Americans appear very worried about controlling the federal deficit….

Oh, good lord. Save me from this idiocy and self-inflicted wound licking from the bipartisan zombie crew.

First, via Joe Sudbay’s rapier sharp analysis, we have this example of gen-u-whine genius from Sen. Max Baucus:Now, if I was a Republican, I’d be laughing my ass off right now. Max Baucus is basically writing the t.v.

Political pundits, electoral operatives and former elected officials are like the undead: just when you think they’ve been buried, they rise up again from the political graveyard. No matter how craptastic their myriad sins may be — stealing from public coffers, ethical lapses out the wazoo, being a race-baiting bigot, whatever — they continue on your teevee and in print.

Well, this is complete and utter bullshit: [Reid] suggested on Tuesday that he does not have the votes to bring up President Barack Obama’s pick to run the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel….You think Rove and company just sat back and hoped for the best on votes? Hell no. So where’s the leadership, Harry?