Post by Lark11 on Apr 12, 2022 2:12:12 GMT -5
www.nytimes.com/2022/04/07/opinion/lbgt-rights-republicans.html
I thought this was a pretty interesting take on the Democrats being too reactive and how "agenda control" in American politics comes from courting, choosing, engaging in controversy. The idea that dominating the news requires the energy of support and opposition.
I thought this was a pretty interesting take on the Democrats being too reactive and how "agenda control" in American politics comes from courting, choosing, engaging in controversy. The idea that dominating the news requires the energy of support and opposition.
Lulu Garcia-Navarro: Jamelle, I want to ask you this, though, because we’ve been talking a lot about the G.O.P., but what can be said about the Democrats? Because what is always fascinating to me is that you have Democrats that have policies that enjoy broad support. But they can’t seem to get their agenda passed while they are in power. I mean, one thing is the G.O.P. and what they’re doing. But it seems like the Democrats can’t seem to get traction on things that enjoy broad support.
Jamelle Bouie: I think there are a few things here. I mean, in terms of getting policies through Congress, they just don’t have the votes. They’re reliant on their majority in the Senate — in particular on one senator, Joe Manchin, whose entire political brand kind of depends on him publicly being an obstacle to Democratic priorities, and then another senator, Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, who seems to want to try to cultivate a kind of John McCain maverick energy, which for her also means publicly and visibly standing in the way of Democratic priorities.
And so I think this picture would look very different if there was one more or two more senators, right? If Cal Cunningham in North Carolina had won, if Susan Collins’s opponent in Maine had won, we’d be looking at a very different situation than we are now.
But I think beyond the problem of winning elections and having a larger majority, which is just ultimately what the issue is here, I do think Democrats have adopted a faulty idea of what is going to drive political success. It’s very clear that the idea Democrats had going into 2021 was if they just delivered economic growth, and they delivered policies, and they kept their heads down and did hard work, then that would produce a public that was inclined to re-elect Democrats.
But what seems to be happening, what Republicans seemed to have figured out, is that the actual popularity of the things you’re saying may be a little less important than your ability to seize attention, drive conversations, create a strong impression in the minds of people. And I don’t think Democrats have really been doing that. And I think that the arguments over these bills are actually a good example of it.
I think the Democratic Party is having a hard time figuring out exactly how to go about pushing against this stuff because it runs into this theory of the case they have. There doesn’t seem to be an inclination to really just swing — to make what may sound like outlandish accusations, but that push strongly against the messaging and the rhetoric coming from the Republican Party.
Ezra Klein: I think that Jamelle gets that right, on both the levels. The reason the Democrats can’t pass bills is they don’t have enough votes to pass them. It’s as simple as that. It’s not a messaging problem, fundamentally. Although, I will say that the point of Joe Biden is that he was going to be good at negotiating with egotistical, hard-to-deal-with members of the U.S. Senate.
And I do worry about a sense of resignation that has set in at the White House around Joe Manchin. I would like to see more constant efforts at trying than I’m currently seeing. They seem to be letting their poor relationship with Manchin simply deteriorate when they need to be figuring out how to fix it. And at least from my reporting, what I can tell, I’m not seeing it.
Lulu Garcia-Navarro: But Ezra, I want to ask you this about the Democrats. I mean, it is a numbers game. Of course it is. But on the other hand, I don’t see Democratic leaders really standing up and saying, this is the ground that I’m going to die on, this is the hill that has to be crested, in the same way that the Republicans are on these very controversial bills.
Ezra Klein: So, one, I don’t think that it’s the national Republicans who are trying to make the controversial bills the center of it. But to this broader point you’re making, and to something Jamelle said, the Democratic leaders have had a theory that they’re going to push popular bills. They’re going to try to pass those bills and they’re going to try to run on them.
And that theory basically has failed. They passed the American Rescue Plan. It was a very popular bill. They tried to run using it to generate more momentum for Build Back Better. They did not get Build Back Better passed, and now the child tax credit is expiring. And now they’ve fundamentally lost agenda control.
So it’s like, the agenda is now Russia, which is a world event. They can’t do anything about that. And I think broadly speaking, Joe Biden’s been doing a good job, with the exception of occasional ad-libs. And then there’s inflation, which they’re also really struggling with and to some degree bear some responsibility for.
What they are not doing is the other side of populism, which I think of as unpopularism. And agenda control in American politics comes from courting, choosing, engaging in controversy. For something to dominate the news, it needs the energy of not just support but opposition. That’s why some of these G.O.P. bills in Florida and elsewhere are dominating the news in the way they are.
There are things that Joe Biden could do that would have that internal electricity. They could cancel student loan debt. I don’t know that they think that’s a good idea at the moment. But if they decided to actually try, which is something Chuck Schumer wants them to do, something Elizabeth Warren wants them to do, that would be controversial enough that it would reshape the agenda. American politics would be seized by arguments over whether or not canceling student loan debt is a good idea, and that might be territory more favorable to them. I do not myself understand what fights Democrats want the 2022 election to be over. They seem to me to be in a fundamentally quite reactive place right now —
Jamelle Bouie: Yes.
Ezra Klein: — responding to world events, responding to every month’s economic news drop. And at some point, if they want to do anything differently than that, they’re not just going to have to choose which popular things they say. They’re going to have to choose which controversial things they say, such that Republicans and others engage on the other side, and the locus of American political conflict moves back onto ground they’ve chosen.
Jamelle Bouie: An example of this, pulling from what we’ve been talking about, is if Joe Biden were to, on Friday, give a national speech — from the Oval Office, from the Rose Garden, wherever, a big national set piece speech denouncing the Republican Party as embracing gross homophobia, this would be controversial. People would get upset. But it would seize the agenda. It would reorient things toward talking about these issues on ground that might be more favorable to Democrats. And I see no indication that Democratic leaders are even thinking in those terms.
Jamelle Bouie: I think there are a few things here. I mean, in terms of getting policies through Congress, they just don’t have the votes. They’re reliant on their majority in the Senate — in particular on one senator, Joe Manchin, whose entire political brand kind of depends on him publicly being an obstacle to Democratic priorities, and then another senator, Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, who seems to want to try to cultivate a kind of John McCain maverick energy, which for her also means publicly and visibly standing in the way of Democratic priorities.
And so I think this picture would look very different if there was one more or two more senators, right? If Cal Cunningham in North Carolina had won, if Susan Collins’s opponent in Maine had won, we’d be looking at a very different situation than we are now.
But I think beyond the problem of winning elections and having a larger majority, which is just ultimately what the issue is here, I do think Democrats have adopted a faulty idea of what is going to drive political success. It’s very clear that the idea Democrats had going into 2021 was if they just delivered economic growth, and they delivered policies, and they kept their heads down and did hard work, then that would produce a public that was inclined to re-elect Democrats.
But what seems to be happening, what Republicans seemed to have figured out, is that the actual popularity of the things you’re saying may be a little less important than your ability to seize attention, drive conversations, create a strong impression in the minds of people. And I don’t think Democrats have really been doing that. And I think that the arguments over these bills are actually a good example of it.
I think the Democratic Party is having a hard time figuring out exactly how to go about pushing against this stuff because it runs into this theory of the case they have. There doesn’t seem to be an inclination to really just swing — to make what may sound like outlandish accusations, but that push strongly against the messaging and the rhetoric coming from the Republican Party.
Ezra Klein: I think that Jamelle gets that right, on both the levels. The reason the Democrats can’t pass bills is they don’t have enough votes to pass them. It’s as simple as that. It’s not a messaging problem, fundamentally. Although, I will say that the point of Joe Biden is that he was going to be good at negotiating with egotistical, hard-to-deal-with members of the U.S. Senate.
And I do worry about a sense of resignation that has set in at the White House around Joe Manchin. I would like to see more constant efforts at trying than I’m currently seeing. They seem to be letting their poor relationship with Manchin simply deteriorate when they need to be figuring out how to fix it. And at least from my reporting, what I can tell, I’m not seeing it.
Lulu Garcia-Navarro: But Ezra, I want to ask you this about the Democrats. I mean, it is a numbers game. Of course it is. But on the other hand, I don’t see Democratic leaders really standing up and saying, this is the ground that I’m going to die on, this is the hill that has to be crested, in the same way that the Republicans are on these very controversial bills.
Ezra Klein: So, one, I don’t think that it’s the national Republicans who are trying to make the controversial bills the center of it. But to this broader point you’re making, and to something Jamelle said, the Democratic leaders have had a theory that they’re going to push popular bills. They’re going to try to pass those bills and they’re going to try to run on them.
And that theory basically has failed. They passed the American Rescue Plan. It was a very popular bill. They tried to run using it to generate more momentum for Build Back Better. They did not get Build Back Better passed, and now the child tax credit is expiring. And now they’ve fundamentally lost agenda control.
So it’s like, the agenda is now Russia, which is a world event. They can’t do anything about that. And I think broadly speaking, Joe Biden’s been doing a good job, with the exception of occasional ad-libs. And then there’s inflation, which they’re also really struggling with and to some degree bear some responsibility for.
What they are not doing is the other side of populism, which I think of as unpopularism. And agenda control in American politics comes from courting, choosing, engaging in controversy. For something to dominate the news, it needs the energy of not just support but opposition. That’s why some of these G.O.P. bills in Florida and elsewhere are dominating the news in the way they are.
There are things that Joe Biden could do that would have that internal electricity. They could cancel student loan debt. I don’t know that they think that’s a good idea at the moment. But if they decided to actually try, which is something Chuck Schumer wants them to do, something Elizabeth Warren wants them to do, that would be controversial enough that it would reshape the agenda. American politics would be seized by arguments over whether or not canceling student loan debt is a good idea, and that might be territory more favorable to them. I do not myself understand what fights Democrats want the 2022 election to be over. They seem to me to be in a fundamentally quite reactive place right now —
Jamelle Bouie: Yes.
Ezra Klein: — responding to world events, responding to every month’s economic news drop. And at some point, if they want to do anything differently than that, they’re not just going to have to choose which popular things they say. They’re going to have to choose which controversial things they say, such that Republicans and others engage on the other side, and the locus of American political conflict moves back onto ground they’ve chosen.
Jamelle Bouie: An example of this, pulling from what we’ve been talking about, is if Joe Biden were to, on Friday, give a national speech — from the Oval Office, from the Rose Garden, wherever, a big national set piece speech denouncing the Republican Party as embracing gross homophobia, this would be controversial. People would get upset. But it would seize the agenda. It would reorient things toward talking about these issues on ground that might be more favorable to Democrats. And I see no indication that Democratic leaders are even thinking in those terms.
