Saturday, February 14, 2009

No Joeke

Via Publius at Obsidian Wings, it appears that Joe Lieberman was helpful in getting the stimulus bill to go through. Which doesn't mean that it was a bad idea for people on the left to call for his head -- if this good behavior continues, it just means it was a good idea for Barack to save his head from them.

11 comments:

corvus said...

Right. In order for Lieberman to continue behaving well, it is important that he remain stuck between Barack and a hard left.

Anonymous said...

It is pretty clear by now that when left blogosphere disagrees with Obama on tactics, Obama usually turns out to be right. This is worth remembering going forward.

The stimulus might have passed with Lieberman, but it would have given the Republican cross-over voters even more bargaining power. None of this means that we shouldn't be working against him in 2012. Just that we have to make the best of things until then.

Neil Sinhababu said...

Well, not always, ikl... for example, by Rahm's admission the lefty blogs were right on the futility of getting bipartisan support for the stimulus, and Obama was wrong.

Anonymous said...

Lieberman is the ultimate suck up. ho ever is in power will always be able to count on Lieberman.

corvus said...

Not necessarily, Neil. If Obama had started off as blaisè about gaining Republican support, it would have made him look kind of callous. Now, it's completely the GOPs doing that he has to drive a harder bargain. Now, I think obviously he could have gotten a better stimulus package if he had started from a different spot, but in the long run it's helpful if he can point back and say "See? I tried." This might pay of dividends later, on things like Energy, Healthcare, and, maybe, EFCA (although honestly I don't see that happening this Congress now).

Neil Sinhababu said...

Okay, Corvus, if Obama was playing that smart a game and Rahm is making a false confession of error, great! If I had more to go on, maybe I wouldn't take these people's words at face value.

corvus said...

I don't think it was a false confession of error, because they are correct that events require a change in course. I just think it might have been an error that it was necessary to make. Like a Queen's gambit, or something.

Neil Sinhababu said...

Queen's Gambit isn't an error, it's a sacrifice. And if this article is accurate, Emanuel is admitting error, not explaining that a pawn was sacrificed for a positional advantage.

Neil Sinhababu said...

(er, I'm assuming that it gets played into Queen's Gambit Accepted, otherwise I lose track of the analogy)

Anonymous said...

At this point, when folks at OpenLeft and the like are right at political tactics, I tend to think of this as being a matter of a stoped clock scenario. Since they seem to always think that Dems should be more confrontational and more hard line, they'll be right whenever this happens to be the correct tactic. But the advise doesn't have much if any relation to the situation in question. It is just a blanket prescription for any situation.

While I agree with Corvus that bipartisanship per se (after all, we needed two Republican votes in the Senate) was not necessarily the problem, the White House did seem to take its eye off the ball at the certain point and start to lose control of the narrative somewhat by not having Obama sell it to the public directly. So I see Rahm's point on that. They did correct course pretty quickly there though.

corvus said...

Ok, bad analogy.