Rahm Not A Tactical Super-Genius

Add to the long list of reasons why the piece of shit health care deform bill is a piece of shit (nevertheless, PASS. THE. DAMN. BILL.) the likelihood that repug enabler and liberal-killer Rahm Emmanuel will get all the credit for it.

As Scott Lemieux at Lawyers, Guns and Money says:

It’s inevitable if the bill passes, and it’s utter nonsense.

SteveM. elaborates:

In terms of living up to its potential, the Democratic Party, which scored a resounding presidential victory and huge majorities in both houses of Congress, then squandered it on more than a year of failure, is like an apparently brilliant, high-achieving kid who gets into Harvard, then never cracks a book or takes a test, fails every course, drops out, and moves back home to live in his parents' basement, where he does nothing but play video games. After a long period of failing at every job he applies for, he finally winds up as a management trainee -- at McDonald's. And by this points the parents are happy. It looks as if he'll stick this out. He may even manage to move out and be self-sufficient. After squandering all his talent and all his opportunities, at least he's doing this.

The Rahm-is-vindicated argument is essentially saying that the brainy, competent kid just should have been a screw-up from the git-go and never even should have tried to accomplish anything, even in high school, because his parents would have loved him anyway, and there was never any reason even to try to do better than Mickey D's.

After a while last year I started to wonder whether comprehensive health care reform would have been a poltical third rail for even a competent party -- but I wanted to see more accomplishments than this. I wanted some sort of real jobs legislation and some sort of real financial reform. I at least wanted Democrats to fight for bills in those areas that had teeth. I'm not on board with HCR now because the Democrats have followed a brilliant strategy. I'm on board with HCR as it is because achieving it might mean my party isn't completely hapless.

If I may stretch that metaphor, liberals are the parents of the post-WWII Democratic Party. We saved the nation with the New Deal and the world with our blood and treasure. Surely there was no harm in letting our creation enjoy the fruits of prosperity and global leadership.

By 1980, a Democratic Party spoiled by half a century in power had no defense against the Reagan-nuts. Its liberal muscles were atrophied, the lessons in how to beat conservatives forgotten. Democrats have crawled back into power behind appeasers like Bill Clinton and Harry Reid and Rahm Emmanuel.

Only the flat-on-its-back condition of the party in January 2005 allowed a fighter like Howard Dean to take over and inject some liberal spine back into Democrats. Note that as soon as he succeeded, he was purged.

But we're still crawling behind Barack Obama, a true heir not of FDR or even JFK, but David just-be-nice-and-do-what-the-repugs-want Broder.

We liberals fucked up and raised a piece-of-shit Democratic Party. Our only hope is in the next generation. Let's start kicking it in the ass and making it work for every last fucking dime right now.

Cross-posted at They Gave Us A Republic ....