We've been in the midst of crass politics for three solid weeks now, so it doesn't seem that unbecoming to engage in some more of the same, here at the end of the shutdown/default crisis. Oh, I know, John Boehner tried to get emotional and proclaim "This is not some damn game!" but we all knew, on a certain level, that is was indeed a damn game. As well as a damn shame.

The game's name is politics, and we've been playing it forever. But that doesn't stop us from proclaiming who came out of the mess a winner, and who now bears the loser label. So while you may disagree with some of these picks, here's how we see the lay of the land as things now stand (as we wait for tonight's late-night voting).

Winners

Harry Reid

The biggest winner in the last three weeks is none other than Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. Reid not only was the chief negotiator for the Democratic side, but he conducted these negotiations from a position of strength (for once). Reid initially compromised on the sequester issue, but after Republicans tried the old "Democrats haven't given anything up!" line, and after poll after poll showed the Republican brand sinking like a lead balloon, Reid returned to the negotiating table with vigor last weekend. "Here is our new deal," Reid told Mitch McConnell. Reid pushed several Democratic demands, and McConnell realized he didn't have a leg to stand on. Rather than continue the destruction of the Republican Party, McConnell realized he had to back off on the Republican issues he was demanding -- which is what made today's deal so neutral. There is no change in the medical device tax, for instance, because of Reid's negotiating tactics. Reid was in a position of strength, and he made McConnell realize it and back off. Which is why Reid is truly the biggest winner.

Continue Reading »

Well, this is going to be not much of anything at all.

I blew off writing a column today, and it sure looks like I picked a dandy day to do so, because while I was ignoring politics, it seems that Congress also did nothing much today. Sigh.

I was too busy to write today because I was doing my taxes. "But Chris," I hear you ask, "isn't April 15th supposed to be Tax Day?" Well, yes... yes it is. But October 15th is the new official "Tax Day For Lazy Procrastinators." It used to be August 15th, but at some point Congress apparently decided that wasn't quite lazy enough for some American taxpayers, so they gave us two extra months.

Continue Reading »

Will Republicans go the way of the Whig Party? Well, we're not really going to answer that question in any meaningful way today, we're going to instead focus on the question itself. Because this question isn't really all that apt a parallel to draw in the first place. Most people today just use "go the way of the Whig Party" as an amusing way to say "disappear as a national political party." But a truer parallel to history would be to ask the question: "Will today's Republicans revert back to being the Whig Party?" Or, perhaps: "Will the Tea Party eventually go the way of the Whig Party?"

Continue Reading »

Now that the budget battle is truly joined, with hourly updates issuing forth from the not-so-hallowed halls of Washington, the cry among the media as I currently write this runs along the lines of: "A deal is in sight -- maybe!"

But because I'm not following the minute-by-minute flow (because I have to write this column, and, you know, that space-time continuum thing...), I will instead focus on the aftermath. This aftermath is coming, although I certainly can't say when. Tonight? Tomorrow? Monday morning? Whenever it happens, the entire political media universe is going to pivot to their old standby: who won and who lost? Because, to the denizens inside the Beltway, everything in politics can be framed as a horserace.

In this particular instance, the storyline will run with one of either two words to describe the perceived loser: "blink" or "cave." We're going with the cave metaphor, today. Call it media-political spelunking, if you will. Which brings us to the most important question imaginable (to the mainstream media): Who will inhabit the cave? Who will cave, and who will enjoy the bright, bright media sunlight of perceived victory?

Continue Reading »

This is the second part of a two-part article. The first installment, which covered January to May of 2013, ran yesterday. Normally I'm not daunted by extended column length, but when I searched on "conference committee" in a database of news articles, there was such a wealth of quotes to choose from that even I was forced to decide it was too much for one day.

Today we start in June and bring the timeline of Republican obstructionism on the budget negotiations they are now loudly demanding right up to the present. Both of these articles are provided as a public service, in the hopes that the mainstream media won't continue to completely ignore what happened previously during 2013, when discussing the current situation in Washington.

Continue Reading »

Republicans are unnervingly adept at convincing large swaths of the public that up is down, or that night is, in fact, day. They are attempting this right now, on a grand scale. "Why won't President Obama and Democrats just negotiate with us?" they bewail. They're hoping that the public (and the media which is supposed to inform the public) has absolutely no memory of what has taken place all year long, as they have blocked -- over and over again -- exactly the budget negotiations they are now screaming for.

So, as a public service, I'd like to trace the history of the Republican Party when it comes to budget negotiations. In a nutshell, if you don't have time to read all the clips below, the Republican Party has been howling for years that Congress should follow the "regular order" when it comes to passing budgets. This regular order is: House passes budget. Senate passes budget. Conference committee hashes out compromise budget. House and Senate pass compromise budget. President signs budget.

That's what they've been demanding. For years. Remember their "clock" showing how long it had been since the Senate passed a budget? This year, however, both the House and the Senate did actually pass budget bills. The Republicans immediately pivoted to demanding that any conference committee would be bound by the chains of Republican demands -- before they even met. In the House, this took the form of demanding certain subjects be put "off the table" so the conference committee couldn't even consider things like tax increases. In the Senate, every time Harry Reid tried to name conference committee members, it was blocked. Alex Seitz-Wald at the National Journal just put all 19 times Senate Republicans did so into a handy list (which is the following timeline's source for Senate data).

Continue Reading »

Today I thought it be a good idea to take a break from the budgetary staredown and run a repeat of a column I wrote all the way back in 2007. Now, sometimes what seems like a bright idea when I write a column winds up sounding pretty silly, even a few months later. But this one has stood the test of time, I think, and it is currently relevant because President Obama actually weighed in on the debate recently, when asked about it in an interview.

The issue of the offensiveness of the Washington Redskins' name brings to mind a very old sketch on Saturday Night Live by the comedy team of Franken and Davis [Note: It's from the show (Season 1, Episode 9) hosted by Elliot Gould with Anne Murray as musical guest, for those who have access to back episodes online -- sorry, but I could not find a free link to it -- and the sketch is named "Powwow With The Press," if that helps.] It's an improv sort of sketch, with the two of them acting out what America would be like if the Native Americans had, in essence, won -- and were now the majority of people in the country. It is a hilarious (but very edgy) take on sports teams' names, from the point of view of sportscasters in their imagined future. The Native American sportscasters talk about sports teams such as "the Kikes" and "the Dagos" and other offensive racial and ethnic slurs (there's an ad for a new "Polack" car model, too), and then delve into the supposed character of such ethnic groups. As I said, it's edgy. So edgy that they'd never get away with it today, even on a show that airs past midnight.

Edginess aside, though, they had a point.

Continue Reading »

I've been saying for approximately a year now that the Republican Party is engaging in an increasingly-escalating civil war amongst themselves. For a long time, this intraparty struggle was really only visible to those who pay very close attention to politics. But now the American public at large is seeing what the wonks have been watching for months, because it really is impossible to ignore the magnitude of the Republican government shutdown and the looming default of the full faith and credit of the United States of America. As we enter the second week of what could be called "The War Between The Republicans," it's going to become more and more evident that Republicans truly have no idea what they want out of their manufactured crisis, and that the voices of sanity within the party (such as they are) are upping the pressure on John Boehner to find a way out -- any way out -- of this mess.

There's no doubt that the people outside the Beltway are angry with Congress right now. But the question within the hallowed halls of Congress is whether the public will even remember this anger one year from now during the midterm elections, and how that anger will translate inside the voting booth. In other words, the same old story for politicians: their own self-interest in keeping their jobs. Democrats are busy polling to bolster their case that the longer the shutdown goes on, the bigger the chances that they'll take over control of the House of Representatives next year. John Boehner himself warned his caucus a few weeks back that a shutdown could indeed hand the House to Democrats, but they didn't listen.

That's all to be expected. Political parties routinely use the fear of what the voters will think in upcoming elections as leverage against their opponents. But Democrats aren't going to convince House Republicans on their own, because many of these Republicans live with such an insulated worldview that they refuse to believe polling until the day after an electoral defeat (see: Karl Rove, election night 2012).

Continue Reading »

Well, I have to admit -- I never thought John Boehner was stupid enough to shut the government down over Obamacare. Shows what I know, right? Sigh.

I think the stupidest thing about a very stupid week for the Republicans, though, was how they stomped all over a news story they've been salivating over for four years now. Because the shutdown coincided with the launch of the Obamacare exchanges, we've heard a whole lot of news stories about the shutdown, but the exchanges (as Salon.com puts it) now have the chance to make a "second first impression." The fracas over the shutdown all but drowned out the stories of glitches on the exchanges. Which, as mentioned, the Republicans have been itching to hear for years. Whoops!

Continue Reading »

Looks like we're going to have a week heavy on talking points. Yesterday, I wrote a column which could easily have been called "Wednesday Talking Points," and tomorrow's Friday, of course. Today, we're reaching all the way back to Friday Talking Points [83], but we're just going to re-run the relevant bits at the end -- the talking points themselves.

The article below was written in June of 2009, when the public option was still fiercely being debated and the outcome of the health reform effort was not in any way guaranteed (or even, really, in sight -- "Obamacare" wouldn't pass until the following year). Somewhere in my research, I stumbled across what can be said to be Ronald Reagan's first foray into the world of politics.

It is fascinating, in a Cold War sort of way, so I encourage everyone to take the ten minutes to hear Ronnie actually delivering this recorded speech (assuming the link still works). The issue at hand was Medicare. Ronnie took the stance that Medicare would not just destroy American medicine, but would in fact destroy our entire nation's freedom.

Which is why it's still relevant. I've been meaning to quote from this all week -- the first week of the Obamacare exchanges -- but had to cut the section out of yesterday's article (because it was running too long, even for me). I had labeled the section "The Chicken Littles will always be with us," which I only mention now because I thought it was an amusing way to put it. I may indeed bring Ronnie's words up in tomorrow's column, just to show how ridiculous the opponents of progress can sound, seen in perfect hindsight. But today, I thought I'd just re-run the original talking points culled from Reagan's rant. Enjoy.

Continue Reading »