Ok, another edition of pointing out the painfully obvious.
Most votes in Congress are Kabuki. There was never any chance that Bush tax cuts weren’t going to be extended, and this was obvious far before the election, for example. Unions were never going to get the Employee Free Choice Act.
Also, stop paying attention to who votes for what. If a Dem votes against an obnoxious bill, it is almost always because leadership has released them to vote against it. Close votes almost never really are.
Dozens of Dems in the House promised not to vote for a health care bill without a public option. Leave aside what you think of it, given that they broke that promise as a group, why would you trust them on anything?
Obama in specific, and the Congressional leadership in general thinks that their problem in 2010 with the base was because they didn’t have enough show votes which failed. So they’re going to have a lot of show votes. But virtually everything that passes is essentially what Obama wants to pass. (For example, the stimulus bill was essentially identical to Obama’s original stimulus bill.)
If Obama wasn’t black, he’d be a “moderate” Republican. He is not a progressive, not a liberal and neither is Harry Reid. Pelosi would be liberal in a different world, but she will do what the President tells her to do, she’s a good soldier. Originally she wasn’t going to pass TARP, for example, unless an equal percentage of Republicans voted for it, but when Obama came out in favor of it, she fell into line.
There is no constituency in Congress for liberal policy. None. Even those who prefer liberal policy, like Sanders and Pelosi, will not do anything to actually make sure it happens, or to stop conservative policy.
This is why I generally don’t write about legislative fights any more. There is no point, the outcome is usually determined long before the actual vote, and everything you see is just theater for the rubes.
We are past the point where legislative actions matter. At this point, assuming the political system can be reformed at all, you require new leadership, capable of holding legislators to principles. You require outside groups who will hold legislators responsible, which means not micro-politics groups. Virtually ever micro-politics group, that is any group which looks after one interest or one constituency, will sell out liberal interests. So you have teachers unions accepting wages paid for by cutting food stamps (ie. starving the children they teach) and you have the auto workers endorsing the Korean-US trade deal which is bad for everyone but them.
A movement of the left made up of self-interested groups is no movement at all. The first, second and last rule of movement politics is solidarity. Any movement made of people or groups which will sell out the rest of the movement is not a movement, and they will be played off against each other to give cover for the worst sort of policy. If you are interested only in your own issue, whether that is environmental, gay rights, women’s rights, immigration, trade, unionization or whatever, then you are part of the problem and your willingness to betray is why the left fails over and over again.
Hang together, or hang separately, as Ben Franklin said.
The left has chosen to hang separately.
