Jane Hamsher, Howard Dean and Greg Sargent on Tax Cuts and 2012 (with video)

FiredoglakeTV, video (03:06).

Jane Hamsher says "Obama Primary Challenge Unlikely Though Tax Cut Deal Angered Left."

Howard Dean:

"I don't think he's going to face an opponent in the Democratic primary," Dean said on CBS' "Face the Nation." "I think that would be a bad thing for the country and I think that would be a bad thing for the Democratic Party." MORE...

Greg Sargent:

Democrats acknowledge the inevitable: The tax deal will pass. House Dems will be forced to swallow one last compromise before heading into the minority.
(SNIP)
Could Dems end the year with some -- gasp -- victories? Andrew Sullivan posits that if Dems pass the tax deal containing a second stimulus and go on to repeal don't ask don't tell, Dems could close out with "a year-end triumph for the president and this party." MORE...

Jane Hamsher on "Barack Obama and OFA" and the Midterms

Jane Hamsher:

They firmly believed that they had permanently "redrawn the electoral map," and their "risky strategy" was to spend $30 million turning out 2008 surge voters rather than traditional midterm voters. There was considerable dissent from the DCCC, the DSCC, the DGA and the unions who were also working on Democratic turnout operations. They believed that Obama's chances of defying history and getting unlikely voters to the polls was small, though the effort was "likely to pay dividends for the president's reelection campaign in 2012." They were right. The entire thing was a complete flop -- for Democrats in 2010, that is. MORE...

Jane Hamsher on the Gibbs attack: "We are echoing the complaints that the American people have." (video)

firedoglake, video (10:27):

FireDogLake founder Jane Hamsher visits CNN's Reliable Sources - full segment Visit: http://firedoglake.com

Howie P.S.: There's enough "cable chatter" in this clip to induce a mild case of STFU.

Jane Hamsher on CNN: "Pot laws unpopular, racist, unfair" (video)

firedoglake, video (07:31):

Jane Hamsher on CNN: Pot laws unpopular, racist, unfair.

Updated: "Why Jane Hamsher and Howard Dean Can't Be Wrong"

UPDATE: "What House Dems are trying to get in exchange for public option"(Sam Stein-HuffPo).

Cenk Uygur (The Young Turks):

Can Jane Hamsher or Howard Dean be wrong on the substance of policy issues? Of course!!! I don't think they often are, but recently there have been many progressives who have thought so. These were reasonable disagreements and everyone was within their full right to think Dean or Hamsher might not have gotten the balance right on any particular issue.

So, why can't they be wrong?

Because even if you disagree with them, they're doing you a huge favor. If you're a strong progressive and you think Howard Dean has gone out too far left on health care reform or Jane Hamsher has attacked President Obama too hard from the left -- then, fantastic, you are now officially a moderate!

And more importantly, so is Obama.

Why is this so important? I'm not sure you particularly want to be moderate, and I'm certainly not sure you are one. But that's not the point. The point is that the mainstream media loves people who they can call "moderates." If Joe Lieberman is somewhere between Obama and Cheney, no matter how far to the right he is, he gets to be called a moderate. Why? Because there's someone to the right of him.

Now, you have someone to the left of you. Congratulations, you made it! You're now part of the cool crowd in DC, the only people that the establishment media care about or give any credence to -- moderates.

I get thrown into the Hamsher category because I believe in attacking hard from the left. Some have started to call this the Uygur Doctrine, which, of course, I love. The reality is I'm a political moderate who until about a month ago believed we should stay longer in Afghanistan and that single payer was not the way to go. But it's not my positions that matter as much as my attitude. We have to, have to, have to attack Obama from the left. If we don't, he is seen as the far left and the whole spectrum shifts even further right than it already is.

If Obama is seen as the middle that helps him. So, even if you think Jane is crazy to team up with Grover Norquist and her attacks have no merit (you would be wrong on that, by the way), you have to send her a thank you note for making Obama look centrist. Rahm might not be happy about their target, but he has to be happy with how the politics of it plays out for the president.

But much more importantly, this isn't about Obama. This is about moving the spectrum. If there is no real and credible left-wing that fights back, then the entire political landscape gets pushed down to the right. This has huge policy implications, as we just saw in the health care fight.

Besides which, what do we have to lose? We lost the public option. We're going to lose on climate change (nearly a foregone conclusion at this point). Financial reform is terribly watered down and getting weaker by the minute. The war in Afghanistan has already been escalated, twice. Do I need to go on? This is what you get when there is no credible threat from the left.

Worst case scenario, Dean and Hamsher lose (I understand their tactics are entirely different, and in some ways I hate to lump them in together, but I do because they are among the few making real noise on the left), and they move the spectrum left and make other progressives look moderate. Best case scenario, they win! Dare we dream?

I know what some of you are thinking -- that's not the worst case scenario. The worst case is somehow their attacks on Obama help Republicans win. But if you buy into that, then you have to pack your bags and go home. That means you are never willing to forcefully challenge Obama out of the fear that it might somehow hurt him. While I'm sure he appreciates that, I can guarantee you that he will thank you by completely ignoring you (and your policy priorities). Asking politely is obviously not getting the job done.

Real political pressure by definition involves the possibility of real political pain. If you're not willing to go that far, then in my humble opinion you are too risk averse to have any consequential role to play in current day politics. Politics is about power, if you don't ever wield it, then you're not really in the game.

Booman challenges Jane who challenged Bernie

Booman:

Bernie Sanders isn't a Democrat, he's an independent who caucuses with the Democrats in the Senate. He calls himself a socialist. According to Progressive Punch, he's the 12th most progressive member of the Upper Body. They rank him as first or tied for first on health care, opposing corporate subsidies, education and the arts, fair taxation, family planning, housing, labor rights, and issues of war and peace. The rankings at Progressive Punch favor senators who have been elected in the last two election cycles because they never had to serve under Bill Frist and cast deliberately difficult votes, but among the group of senators that have been in office since before 2007 only Jack Reed of Rhode Island has a better progressive score than Bernie Sanders (you might remember that I lobbied hard for Reed to get the VP nomination).

It was Bernie Sanders who introduced a single-payer amendment to the Senate health care reform bill. I don't think it is controversial at all to say that on health care, at least, Sanders is the best of the 100 members of the Senate. So, naturally, FDL Action is threatening him with a primary from his left because he is voting for the president's number one domestic agenda, the Senate health care reform bill. This is on a day when Jane Hamsher appeared on Fox & Friends and teamed up with Grover Norquist in some kind of conspiracy-laden pogrom against the president's chief of staff.

I was polite for a while. Anyone still left in the employ of FDL ought to consider heading for exits now. It ain't gonna get any prettier.

Howie P.S.: Lots of back and forth in the comments.

FDL: "Kill the Senate Health Care Bill. Sign the Petition." (with video)

firedoglake:

The Senate's health care bill must be killed. Sign our petition to Congress and President Obama: We must do better for health care than this bill.

The Senate health care bill is an ungodly mess of errors, loopholes, and massive giveaways. When the American people find out what's actually in this bill, they will revolt. Here's why:

Forces you to pay up to 8% of your income to private insurance corporations -- whether you want to or not
1. If you refuse to buy the insurance, you'll have to pay penalties of up to 2% of your annual income to the IRS
After being forced to pay thousands in premiums for junk insurance, you can still be on the hook for up to $11,900 a year in out-of-pocket medical expenses.
Massive restriction on a woman's right to choose, designed to trigger a challenge to Roe v. Wade in the Supreme Court
Paid for by taxes on the middle class insurance plan you have right now through your employer, causing them to cut back benefits and increase co-ays
Many of the taxes to pay for the bill start now, but most Americans won't see any benefits -- like an end to discrimination against those with preexisting conditions -- until 2014 when the program begins.
2. Allows insurance companies to charge people who are older 300% more than others
Grants monopolies to to drug companies that will keep generic versions of expensive biotech drugs from ever coming to market.
No reimportation of prescription drugs, which would save consumers $100 billion over 10 years
The cost of medical care will continue to rise, and insurance premiums for a family of 4 will rise an average of $1000 a year -- meaning in 10 years, you family's insurance premium will be $10,000 more annually than it is right now.

Hamsher: "Why Progressive Activists Are Giving Obama a Pass"

Jane Hamsher (FDL Action):

There are a lot of reasons why the progressive groups that would be leading campaigns on a variety of fronts against George Bush stay silent when Obama does the same thing.

Randy Shaw has a thoughtful analysis that deserves attention:

Why have activists not publicly challenged Obama’s largely following the moderate Clinton-Gore course, and his failure to ignite the grassroots with a sense of ongoing social transformation that Democrats felt in 1965 or Republicans in 1981? There are four key reasons, none of whose legitimacy alters this fact: activists’ continued refusal to publicly hold the President accountable dooms prospects for progressive change.

The four reasons that Shaw lists are:

1. Obama is an extraordinary improvement over Bush.
2. Obama’s non-progressive actions are perceived as reflecting his true views. “He truly believe escalating war in Afghanistan is in our nation’s best interest,” says Shaw.
3. The investment so many made in the campaign and in Obama himself. “After working day and night for months to elect Obama, it is not easy to accept that he is not the President you thought he would be,” he says.
4. Low expectations for Obama’s ability to bring major change.

I’ll add another reason: liberal “validators” were corralled early and easily by the White House, and were silent when Obama started breaking his progressive campaign promises.

The moment that became clear to me was during the AIG bonus fight. The banks went to the White House and said they wanted the rhetoric ratcheted down, and the White House made the liberal groups comply. I remember being out there in the rain in front of the White House with David Swanson, Bill Greider, and 10 Code Pink people the day before the first teabag rally, and thinking “this is a disaster.” All of the populist rage that should have been channeled by the unions and the progressive interest groups was lost to the right at that moment. And the groups stayed silent at the behest of the White House.

It’s going to kill us in 2010.

The White House stitched up the unions quickly and easily by delaying the passage of EFCA. I remember saying at the inauguration that if I were Rahm, I’d never pass EFCA because as long as I didn’t, the unions (which are by far the best funded institutions on the left) wouldn’t be able to move against me. And sure enough, we’re seeing the results right now. SEIU has pushed triggers repeatedly, and the AFL-CIO is on the verge of ditching the public option in exchange for a raise on cap of the excise tax to $25,000. As Jon Walker notes, it’s a completely meaningless concession, but it’s just a fig leaf. The unions are being lied to told that they will get a vote on EFCA after health care passes if they ditch the public option. Since passing EFCA is a matter of survival to many of the private sector unions, they feel they have little choice but to comply.

Shaw concludes, “FDR knew that his progressive base would publicly protest anything short of radical reform; to date, Obama has no such fears.” We’re going to have to start assessing where our loyalties lie — to the issues we say we believe in, or to the personalities we’ve attached ourselves to in the process of achieving them. The left has been largely comfortable in its belief that supporting one was the same as supporting the other. The future of a viable progressive movement is going to mean assessing where those two roads diverge.

Obama is now floating trial balloons about going after Social Security benefits in a midterm election year.

Kent Conrad is on the floor of the Senate pushing for his “commission” right now (something the White House tried to push earlier this year, but had to back burner). If it succeeds in slashing Social Security benefits, Obama will set himself up nicely for 2012, but the cost to Democrats in 2010 could be cataclysmic.

Howie P.S.: When it comes to health care, not all progressives got Jane's memo.

Bloggers push back against corporatists (with video)

Jane Hamsher (Firedoglake) with video from MSNBC-Rachel Maddow Show (06:33):

Ben Smith has an article on Common Purpose, one of the many groups Rahm Emanuel has set up to coordinate messaging among liberal interest groups.

There are a variety of vehicles through which this is done -- the 8:45 am call, Unity 09, Campaign to Rebuild and Renew America -- and they've been extremely successful. When the banks told the White House they wouldn't cooperate with the PPIP plan unless they got their bonuses, and the administration made the decision to "ratchet down their rhetoric," the call went out to the liberal interest groups to stay silent too...and silent they remain.

Unions are getting their contracts slashed, bank execs are pulling in billions, and how many of the usual suspects are running campaigns about the $1 billion in AIG bonuses to be paid out in June and September? Go ahead, count 'em. I'll be here, I can wait. . . .

Back already? Now add 'em up. Here's a pencil. Carry the one, add the three. . . that would be. . . zero.

As Ben writes, one of the goals of Common Purpose is to punish dissenters in front of their peers:

Part of the group's role is to enforce a kind of message discipline, and one topic of discussion there, sources said, was a campaign launched last month by some of the more liberal members of the coalition -- the Campaign for America's Future, USAction, and liberal blogger Jane Hamsher -- under the rubric "Dog the Blue Dogs."

The White House, however, was in the midst of discussions with members of the congressional Blue Dog caucus, and objected to the slogan, which was promptly changed, and the page describing the drive is gone from CAF's website.

Robert Borosage, the president of the Institute for America's Future, which launched the campaign, said he wasn't present at the meeting where the campaign was discussed but that he'd been made aware of the objections.

A couple of things. One, I wasn't actually part of the campaign -- US Action decided to join a campaign they were doing against four Blue Dogs with a CAF campaign against five "Bayh" caucus Senators. I was asked by Robert Borosage to join in on a conference call and be supportive. Which I was happy to do, I like both Borosage and Roger Hickey.

Second, the original press release on Monday, March 23, did say they were targeting Blue Dogs. That was the day I got involved, and I mentioned that since the Bayh caucus weren't really Blue Dogs it was probably better to rebrand. So they did. When the campaign launched and the press conference was held on the Tuesday the 24th, it was actually targeting "Obstructionists," not Blue Dogs. By the time the White House whacked them on Tuesday afternoon, the name had already changed. So that ain't why it happened.

Third -- and most important -- I had no role in scaling the campaign back, because it wasn't mine, and I wouldn't have done it anyway. I wasn't at the Common Purpose meeting because the earth would cleave open and swallow Washington DC whole before I'd be invited to get White House talking points from some lobbyist, which is as it should be. Our big strength is being an independent voice.

Despite the message that was sent at the Common Purpose meeting that afternoon to play nice with the corporatists, this is what I was doing at 10 pm:

Then the next day, there was this. (And very much to his credit, Roger Hickey did likewise.)

There's a big problem right now with the traditional liberal interest groups sitting on the sidelines around major issues because they don't want to buck the White House for fear of getting cut out of the dialogue, or having their funding slashed. Someone picks up a phone, calls a big donor, and the next thing you know...the money is gone. It's already happened. Because that's the way Rahm plays.

Just in case you were worried, that's not a problem for us.