Why the Democrats Can't Govern

Look who's killing Obama's agenda now.

The last Democrat who held the White House, Bill Clinton, saw the core of his domestic agenda come to ruin, his political support collapse, and his failure spawn a massive Republican resurgence that made progressive reform impossible for a decade to come. The Democrat who last held the White House before that, Jimmy Carter, saw the exact same thing happen to him.

At this early date, nobody can know whether or not Barack Obama will escape this fate. But the contours of failure are now clearly visible. In Obama's case, as with his predecessors, the prospective culprit is the same: Democrats in Congress, and especially the Senate. At a time when the country desperately needs a coherent response to the array of challenges it faces, the congressional arm of the Democratic Party remains mired in fecklessness, parochialism, and privilege. Obama has made mistakes, as did his predecessors. Yet the constant recurrence of legislative squabbling and drift suggests a deeper problem than any characterological or tactical failures by these presidents: a congressional party that is congenitally unable to govern.

George W. Bush came to office having lost the popular vote, with only 50 Republicans in the Senate. After his disputed election, pundits insisted Bush would have to scale back his proposed massive tax cuts for the rich. Instead, Bush managed to enact several rounds of tax cuts that substantially exceeded those in his campaign platform, along with two war resolutions, a Medicare prescription drug benefit designed to maximize profits for the health care industry, energy legislation, education reform, and sundry other items. Whatever the substantive merits of this agenda, its passage represented an impressive feat of political leverage, accomplished through near-total partisan discipline.

Obama has come into office having won the popular vote by seven percentage points, along with a 79-seat edge in the House, a 17-seat edge in the Senate, and massive public demand for change. But it's already clear he is receiving less, not more, deference from his own party. Democrats have treated Obama with studied diffidence, both in their support for the substance of his agenda and (more importantly) their willingness to support it procedurally.

 

The tone of the Senate's disposition toward Obama was set from the very beginning. Coming into office during a severe economic emergency, he hoped that Congress would have a bill to jump-start consumer demand ready to sign immediately upon taking office. And most Democrats supported Obama's position, though eleven House moderates defected, while a handful of their Senate colleagues joined with Republican moderates to water down the legislation. Economic forecasters projected that the original House bill would increase employment by 3.5 million. After the Senate rewrote the bill, forecasters downgraded their estimate to just 2.5 million. Moderates regarded their contribution with deep satisfaction.

The stimulus served as a mere precursor to the major battle over Obama's budget, which represents a once-in-a-generation chance for the Democratic Party to reshape the priorities of the federal government--to reduce America's unsustainable carbon emissions and reform its bloated, cruel health care system. Democrats have utterly failed to rise to the occasion.

The first sign of how the Senate would respond came on February 27, when Kent Conrad, the chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, gave an interview to CNBC. Conrad listed three objections to Obama's budget. First, he opposed a provision to limit tax deductions for high-income earners. Second, he opposed a new cap on crop subsidies to farmers who take in more than $500,000 per year. And, third, he upbraided Obama for not doing more to reduce the budget deficit.

You might think a performance like this--demanding that Obama do more to reduce the deficit while simultaneously opposing his deficit-reducing measures--would have turned Conrad into a punch line. Instead, it launched him as a symbol of fiscal rectitude and encouraged fellow Democrats to follow in his hypocritical wake. Numerous Democrats have since stepped forward to join what news reports have accurately described as a "revolt" against Obama's budget.

Watch TNR senior editor Jonathan Chait discuss this article with TNR editor Franklin Foer:

What's maddening is not that Obama's budget is a perfect document--though it does a better job of setting priorities than any presidential budget in at least the last 30 years--but that the deficit-reducing measures Democrats object to are the most sensible parts of the budget.

Take the farm payments Conrad endorses. It is virtually impossible to find an economist on the left, right, or center who defends agriculture subsidies, which are costly, distort the market, and hurt the Third World poor. Obama does not dare phase out crop subsidies. Instead, he modestly asks to save about $1 billion per year by eliminating payments to farmers who gross more than $500, 000 per year--the least justifiable slice of a totally unjustifiable program. Conrad the Deficit Hawk, joined by other farm-state senators (such as Nebraska's Ben Nelson) and representatives, cannot abide it.

Or consider Obama's plan to limit tax deductions for the rich. If your goal is to raise revenue without imposing pain on the middle class or unduly harming incentives, this is about the best way one can do it. (Because limiting deductions would not raise marginal tax rates, objections from conservative economists have been generally muted.) Democrats in both chambers have declared this proposal dead on arrival. But, if they want to reduce the deficit and fund health care reform, the money needs to come from somewhere.

 

The most emblematic objection has come from Nelson, who is balking at Obama's plan to save money on college loans. You might suppose that a fiscal conservative like Nelson would agree with Obama's plan to save $4 billion on a social program. But he does not, for reasons that provide a useful window into the rot afflicting the congressional Democratic Party.

For many years, the federal government supported college education by guaranteeing bank loans to students. If a student defaulted on his loan, Washington would simply pay back the difference. In 1993, Clinton undertook to reform the program by cutting out the middlemen and simply having the federal government issue the loans directly. Clinton hoped to save money for the government and plow some of those savings into lower interest rates for students. Of course, private lenders who benefitted from the no-risk profit stream balked and forced a compromise whereby both kinds of loans--guaranteed private loans, and direct loans from the government--would exist side by side.

Recent years have shown beyond a doubt that the direct lending program works better. Every independent analysis--by the Congressional Budget Office, by the Office of Management and Budget under each of the last three presidents, and by the New America Foundation--has found that direct lending is cheaper. The guaranteed-loan program managed to cling to life through its congressional patrons and through simple graft. In 2007, a major student-loan scandal emerged when it turned out that private lenders paid off college administrators to drop out of the direct lending program and steer students to them.

Obama thus proposes to save the taxpayers more than $4 billion per year by ending the guaranteed loans. This is as straightforward a case as you can find of a fight between special interests and the public good. Nelson opposes it because one of the lenders that benefits from federal overpayments is based in Lincoln, Nebraska.

Some moderate Democrats seem to suffer from a conflation of their own fund-raising strategies with responsible fiscal policy. The Wall Street Journal reported, of a group of Democratic Senate centrists, "Their stated goal is to rein in deficits and to protect business interests." In fact, this is not a goal but two often-conflicting goals, and neither is synonymous with "the national interest." This sort of behavior didn't hurt Bush because his agenda largely was synonymous with business interests. But the Democratic agenda isn't, and Democratic confusion of the two is poisonous.

 

A second and related problem is that Democrats are especially susceptible to the dysfunction of the Senate. Congressional scholar Norm Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute penned an article in AEI's magazine titled "Our Broken Senate." Over the last three decades, the filibuster, once a rare weapon used to express unusually strong objections, has dramatically expanded and turned into a routine, 60-vote supermajority requirement. During the same time period, the Senate has developed a new, anonymous one-person filibuster called a "hold." The clubby traditions of the Senate have allowed these new practices to expand unchallenged. "The always individual-oriented Senate," writes Ornstein, "has become even more indulgent of the demands of each of its 100 egotists."

The Senate poses a particular obstacle to Democrats. Its structure gives greater voice to residents of low-population states, who tilt more Republican than the country as a whole. If you assume that every senator represents half the population of that state, then the Republican caucus represents less than 38 percent of the public. In electoral terms, we think of that as a tiny, even fringe minority. It's less than the share of the electorate that voted for Barry Goldwater in 1964. But it supports enough senators to block the majority's will.

There is one tool available to break through the new supermajority requirement. That tool is called "reconciliation." Reconciliation is an expedited process to vote on a budget, limiting debate to 20 hours and, more importantly, circumventing the filibuster. This means that one budget bill every year can be passed with just 51 votes. As the filibuster has grown routine, reconciliation has become a vital legislative tool. Many Democrats, alas, are far more squeamish than their GOP colleagues about deploying this tool.

If you do not follow Senate arcana for a living, you have probably never heard of reconciliation until the last few weeks, when it has suddenly emerged into the public debate as a terrible weapon with fearsome consequences. A recent front-page Washington Post article described reconciliation as a "shortcut." Republican Senator Judd Gregg cast the tactic in the most dramatic terms. "You're talking about running over the minority, putting them in cement and throwing them in the Chicago River," he wailed.

The notion that reconciliation represents some radical and extreme partisan step has settled in so deeply in part because numerous Democrats are making the same case, albeit in slightly less hysterical terms. Eight Democratic senators signed a letter opposing the use of reconciliation to pass a cap-and-trade bill limiting carbon-dioxide emissions. Reconciliation, they wrote, "would circumvent normal Senate practice and would be inconsistent with the administration's stated goals of bipartisanship, cooperation, and openness." Several Democrats also oppose using reconciliation to pass health care reform. Democrat Mary Landrieu offered up a somewhat less melodramatic argument when she said that reconciliation "was intended for deficit reduction, and it should not be used for other things."

Reconciliation may have been intended for deficit reduction, but it has been often used for other things, such as deficit expansion--as in the case of the Bush tax cuts, which Landrieu voted for. (As did Gregg, who, as my colleague Jonathan Cohn discovered, was happy to support reconciliation for proposals like drilling for oil in ANWR when Republicans controlled the majority.)

There is, to be sure, a technical case to be made against the use of reconciliation. It's a more limited procedure that allows for less debate and may constrict the scope of the legislation that can be passed. I'd argue, in response, that the technical compromises required to get through reconciliation would degrade the legislation less than the political compromises required to get 60 votes. But the heart of the case against reconciliation isn't technical, it's moral--reconciliation as an unprecedented act of partisan irresponsibility. Robert Byrd calls the process "an undemocratic disservice to our people and to the Senate's institutional role."

To grasp how upside-down this view is, remember the purpose of the reconciliation process, which is to clear the way for the Senate to make politically painful solutions to long-term problems. Health care and climate change clearly fall into that category. Shoveling hundreds of billions of dollars of upper-class tax cuts out the door, by contrast, is the very opposite of what reconciliation is intended for. And yet, Bush's repeated use of reconciliation to enact his tax cuts attracted no controversy at all.

 

Even at this early date, the contrast between Democrats under Obama and Republicans under Bush is stark. Republicans did not denounce Bush for squandering a budget surplus to benefit the rich, the way Democrats now assail Obama for big spending and deficits. And Republicans did not refuse to use the budget procedures available to them to break through the Senate's inherent lethargy. Republicans, in other words, acted like a parliamentary party.

Voters in 2000 did not go to the polls with the intention of giving the GOP a chance to put its agenda into place. But Republicans acted as if they did. With very few exceptions, Republicans in Congress behaved like the legislative branch of the Bush administration, helping Bush enact his agenda by using every method at their disposal.

Democratic partisans constantly complain that their leaders in Washington fail to display the same partisan unity as Republicans do. And, in many crucial respects, they are correct. Even when they control the White House and both branches of Congress, Democrats have not displayed the parliamentary-style cohesion Republicans managed under Bush.

One reason is that Democrats are trapped by their past. America's two major parties have, historically, lacked much ideological cohesion. The GOP contained conservatives alongside progressives. The Democratic Party consisted of everything from Northern liberals to Southern reactionaries. The latter, in particular, held disproportionate sway in Congress. Having less in common with Democratic presidents than Republican ones, they carved out an independent role and guarded their prerogatives.

Since Democrats controlled the Congress almost continuously for more than 60 years beginning in 1933, the culture of Congress left a deeper imprint on their party. Republicans, shut out from the perks of majority status, finally decided under the opposition leadership of Newt Gingrich in the 1990s that their only path to power lay in partisan discipline.

Democrats, on the other hand, came of age under the old Democratic chieftains, and they have mostly aped that style. They do not fall in line, even under a Democratic president who mostly shares their goals. Shortly after Obama took office, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid announced, "I don't work for him." Even House Ways and Means Chairman Charlie Rangel, whose Harlem constituents danced in the streets after Obama's election, sniffed of Obama's plan to raise taxes on the rich, "I have to study it but I really don't take presidents' recommendations that seriously." Recommendation--that is the term that summarizes Congress's attitude. A president can suggest whatever he likes, but Congress is the one making the decisions, and don't you forget it.

A second factor encouraging Democrats to buck their presidents is the role of the rich and business interests. Unless you are a high school student reading this article in your civics course, in which case I'm sorry to dispel your illusions, you will not be stunned to learn that the affluent carry disproportionate political weight with elites in both parties. So, while people who earn more than $250,000 per year make up just a tiny slice of the electorate, they make up a huge chunk of any congressman's friends, acquaintances, and fund-raisers.

What's more, whatever their disposition toward business in general, Democrats feel it is not just a right but a duty to slavishly attend to the interests of their home-state businesses. That is why Kent Conrad upholds even the most absurd demands of agribusiness, or why even a good-government progressive like Michigan's Carl Levin parrots the auto industry's line on regulating carbon dioxide.

Taken as a whole, then, the influence of business and the rich unites Republicans and splits Democrats. A few Republicans no doubt felt some qualms about supporting Bush's regressive, extreme pro-business agenda, but their most influential donors and constituents pushed them in the direction of partisan unity. Those same forces encourage Democrats to defect. That's why Ben Nelson is fighting student-loan reform, coal-and oil-state Democrats are insisting that cap-and-trade legislation be subject to a filibuster, and Democrats everywhere are fretting about reducing tax deductions for the highest-earning 1 percent of the population.

 

And then, finally, Democrats have locked themselves into a self-fulfilling prophecy. When their party controls all of Washington, things tend to go south quickly. The president's popularity plunges, and soon his copartisans in Congress find themselves scrambling to keep from losing their own seats in the political undertow. It happened to Carter in 1978 and 1980, and again to Clinton in 1994.

And, so, they hedge their bets by carving out an independent identity. It doesn't matter that Obama is popular now, or that a majority of Americans (according to a recent Pew poll) reject the criticism that he's "trying to do too much." If Obama defies history and retains his popularity, they'll retain their seats anyway. They have to worry about the scenario where Obama turns into an albatross.

But, of course, the more Democrats defect, the more the president is defined as an extreme liberal, and the more ineffectual he seems as his agenda crashes upon the shoals. Ultimately, the moderates find there is no escape. Republicans in Congress grasped the futility of beggar-thy-neighbor survivalism, and they stood behind Bush in 2005 and 2006, even as his popularity fell to Nixonian levels. The hard truth for Democrats is that Obama's popularity is bound to fall. The economy will not turn around overnight, and the voters' memory of disastrous GOP rule will grow dimmer and dimmer with time. The one factor within the Democrats' control is whether their constituents see Obama as a strong leader taking action, like Roosevelt or Kennedy, or a floundering weakling, like Carter or first-term Clinton.

It seems impossible to believe that this party, with the challenges before the country so great and the opportunity to address them so rare, would once again follow the path to self-immolation. Yet, somehow, the Democrats can't help themselves.

Jonathan Chait is a senior editor at The New Repulic.

COMMENTS (144)

03/29/2009 - 5:30pm EDT | Ash_4343

Good article. Great that Chait calls out Ben Nelson, who's a parochial hack.

That being said, I do wonder whether Chait "doth protest too much." The picture he paints is awfully premature. Congressional Dems - especially Senate Dems - are infuriating, as is the Senate as a whole, yet so far things are looking way better than they were in '93.

For one thing, the House Democrats have transformed themselves into an efficient, parliamentary machine. One of the big problems both Clinton and Carter faced was the the House Dems were just as fractious and reactionary as their Senate colleagues. That's no longer the case.

Also, as maddening as the likes of Nelson and Landrieu are, Senate Dems are a mo ... view full comment

03/30/2009 - 3:13am EDT |

Jonathan,
The only other factor which you are too ideological to consider is the fact that Congress respects the consensus views of their constituencies. It is only in locations like the editorial room of TNR that people believe Obama's election represented a shift in the fundamental views and values of the electorate. Congress however, in their desire to be re-elected is better grounded in reality.

03/30/2009 - 3:52am EDT | Frank

Sen. Reid was absolutely right, he works for the State of Nevada, not for President Obama.

03/30/2009 - 4:54am EDT | bean

Democrats can't govern because their policies FAIL. In a camaign they make up empty promises to all (that people as stupid as Jonathan Chait buy into) but in reality is is HOT AIR.

03/30/2009 - 5:00am EDT | Vinnster

Same old problem Liberals have every time...Sooner of later , they run out of other peoples money.

03/30/2009 - 6:47am EDT | moz

As usual, well-argued article by Chait. In the nineties, I argued with my Democratic friends about our "Republican" president and congress and their pro-business agenda. 16 years later I think my friends (along with the American people) are ready for change, but congressional Democrats are not. Should we get ready for another round of Bush?

03/30/2009 - 7:00am EDT | Gary

Did JournoList help you with this article?!

03/30/2009 - 7:13am EDT | Why do the Democrats fail?

Any computer geek can tell you.

GIGO. Theoretical garbage in, practical garbage out.

Their entire program is based on the denial of objective reality: that up is down, in is out, freedom is slavery, and ignorance is strength.

Or less poetically: that capitalism is wrong, that socialism is correct; that unborn babies are industrial raw materials and/or disposable blobs of cells, not human beings with eternal souls who die horribly when aborted; that violent jihadist terrorists are not a threat, but 'second amendment fanatics' and 'prolifers' somehow are; that the governemnt knows better than the individual about the individual's needs and well being, and that no government program, once founded, ... view full comment

03/30/2009 - 7:19am EDT | Namson ngo-le

This is by and large a very accurate summation of everything I've felt about Obama's administration for the past 2 months. I know it's a common aphorism amongst American political circles that Democrats have a strong predilection for doom and gloom, but considering the continual incohesion of Senate Democrats even with a very popular President, I don't see why we shouldn't be.

03/30/2009 - 7:36am EDT | Henry Miller

Would everyone please stop using the word "progressive" as a euphemism for "socialist!" The usage implies that the achievement of socialism is a commonly acknowledged goal toward which it's a good thing to make progress. There's nothing "progressive" about socialism! It's a simplistic political system based on the assumption that government is all-was--and must therefore be all-knowing--and that ordinary people can't be trusted to make economic decisions. It's the precise antithesis of the principles on which this country was founded.

03/30/2009 - 7:51am EDT | John Edwards

Mr. Chait writes as if policies like 'Cap and Trade' (understood by most Americans to be a massive carbon tax) and 'healthcare reform' (a massive expansion of Medicare, a program that does not pay for itself today) are very popular. They are not; Americans are nervous about the economy, and both of these policies will raise taxes and further expand our debt. He advocates for pushing through these policies despite their lack of popular support. This is part of the reluctance of some Democrats to use 'reconciliation', and it is well founded.

03/30/2009 - 7:51am EDT | szspeak

So the only solution for Obama to enact the agenda that he and almost all Democrats where elected to achieve is by slicing and dicing the agenda and triangulating? Like Clinton's 2nd term?

Hope not. Or is it to kick some dem tail and force the Senate to grow a 60 pairs?

03/30/2009 - 7:59am EDT | carpe diem

I believe it was Will Rogers who was asked if he were a member of an organized political party. His answer was no, he was a democrat.

03/30/2009 - 8:07am EDT | John D. Froelich

Part of the trouble is that there isn't anythiunbg really new in the Budget. Obama is serving us warmed-over New Deal failures like government control of health care. He set up hisown failure.

03/30/2009 - 8:21am EDT | Lynne Teinert

When Democrats were in the minority, they used the 60 vote filibuster to block votes on judges. Republicans, in contrast to what Chait said, did NOT use reconciliation to get a vote on the floor. Dems and people like Chait wailed that they might, thus undermining the constitution or some such. It is predicitable that when the shoe is on the other foot, Chait thinks reconciliation, or the "nuclear action" is quite reasonable. Hypocrisy, thy name is left wing democrat.

03/30/2009 - 8:31am EDT | JackR

Each time Bill Parcells took a new job as head coach, he would trade for a few players who had played for him previously so that they could influence their peers to get with the Parcells program. They were known as "Parcells' guys". He understood the powerful leverage of peer leadership. Reading this excellent article by Jonathan Chait on the wayward Senate Democrats, I'm left wondering, who are Obama's "guys" (or "gals") in the US Senate? I can't think of even one, much less a cadre, who would go to the mat for him and his program, even among those who were early backers of his candidacy. All right, maybe Dick Durbin. Do any of you have any information or insight about potential or ac ... view full comment

03/30/2009 - 8:40am EDT | Carol

They are GUTLESS and its truly sad. Many had no problems going along with Reagan and his trickle down less government ideology but now all of a sudden they are fiscal conservatives after allowing Bush to increase massive debts they want to curtail Obama who has the support of the American people. Then there is the issue of EFCA all of a sudden they are getting cold feet. In some ways demcrats are worse than republicans. I find myself wondering more and more what is their purpose if they are going to be like Republicans we might as well VOTE republican at least you know what you are going to get. Time and again the American people have elected democratic congress to make a difference to stop ... view full comment

03/30/2009 - 8:47am EDT | Paul R

Thankfully they will do just fine doing themselves in & the American people will be much better off for it. There simply is no such critter as a smart liberal.

03/30/2009 - 8:51am EDT | Steve

The real underlying issue is that Governments are quick to spend the taxpayors money while being the poster children for incompetence and waste. Perhaps, the lack of support is based on trying to sell a spending spree without a stable economic environment, which BO and Co have failed to instill confidence. Perhaps, just perhaps, the real reason is that BO's theoretical experiment is as risky as buying a lottery ticket from an ever expanding Government game of monopoly.

03/30/2009 - 9:00am EDT | Morton Kurzweil

Obama is a mediator. He is a lawyer. He believes that fairness requires all sides to have equal opportunity to present their opinions. The weakness lies in the assumption that mediation requires moderation. The right to opposing opinions does not suggest that they are of equal value. Obama's job is to promote his agenda after consultation and discard arguments that weaken his policies.
He is willing to keep paddling a ship that almost floats to keep everyone in the same boat. That is not politics. It is not leadership.

03/30/2009 - 9:01am EDT | The Ancient

This is the most encouraging article I have read in six months.

God Save The United States Senate!

03/30/2009 - 9:02am EDT | David Kielek

Well Jonathan, that's the best news I've heard all morning! Perhaps the communists will self-immolate. We can only hope!

03/30/2009 - 9:09am EDT | pjwg

Yes, isn't that "separation of powers" thing in the U.S. Constitution a nusiance? And, why on earth should we have only 1% of the population interferring with the majority want (except for gay activists, of course - because we all know that stealing others wealth is a morally superior goal to maintaining such an outdated, albeit successful, concept as traditional marriage)? If only we had a "pure" democracy" as opposed to a pesky democratic republic. Big sigh ....

03/30/2009 - 9:17am EDT | thedaddy

I agree completely with your premise "Democrats Can't Govern", but I see the reasons a quite differently than you do.

It's no wonder Democrats can't govern. They depend on thinking such as you have plunked down in your column above. Your view of how the world works and what is "good" for the country and the people is so skewed from reality that it is beyond fantasy.

Mr. Chait, did you really write the stuff above with any semblance of belief in what you propose as 'good' for the people of this country really is. Or are you thinking about what is good for folks like you (those who know more than the rest of us as to how to spend our money) and the government.

I have never read your columns befo ... view full comment

03/30/2009 - 9:21am EDT | Steve

The real underlying issue is that Governments are quick to spend the taxpayors money while being the poster children for incompetence and waste. Perhaps, the lack of support is based on trying to sell a spending spree without a stable economic environment, which BO and Co have failed to instill confidence. Perhaps, just perhaps, the real reason is that BO's theoretical experiment is as risky as buying a lottery ticket from an ever expanding Government game of monopoly.

03/30/2009 - 9:23am EDT | Rashnak

Let me condense this article- the author wants everybody to do exactly as Obama wants and the universe will be saved. The mesiah has come- fall in line or be labled a heretic.

03/30/2009 - 9:26am EDT | Steve

It's amazing that you can't come to the conclusion that is obvious to even the most casual observer.......the Democrat's are always disorganized, disingenuous and puerile. It's all about their personal power, not what's good for the Counrty.

03/30/2009 - 9:30am EDT | Eric English

Did Chait get the okay to go after other democrats from JournoList before writing this? I fear they may call him a Crazy ass if he's off the reservation.

03/30/2009 - 9:40am EDT |

What's maddening is not that Obama's budget is a perfect document--though it does a better job of **following my** priorities than any presidential budget in at least the last 30 years...

Fixed

03/30/2009 - 9:44am EDT | Ster

Obama's budget "does a better job of setting priorities than any presidential budget in at least the last 30 years"

What? That is the most laughable statement I have read in print in the last 30 years.

03/30/2009 - 9:44am EDT | Ster

Obama's budget "does a better job of setting priorities than any presidential budget in at least the last 30 years"

What? That is the most laughable statement I have read in print in the last 30 years.

03/30/2009 - 9:49am EDT | Red

Wow, editing is more than simply checking that spell and grammar checkers do not spot any issues. The author constructs beautiful sentences and paragraphs but, the argument meanders badly.

03/30/2009 - 9:55am EDT | Boz

Very interesting analysis on the question of why Democrats struggle in power. One flaw in this argument, however, is its failure to recognize the ease of governing when the REAL influences -- corporate America and its lobbyists -- are all working for you. This is not a government of people or for people so why not recast your article to say that George Bush's dubious "accomplishments" had everything to do with easily harnessing cronies and paying them handsome rewards. They had nothing to do with discipline or political skill. Your inferences here are shoddy and reckless.

03/30/2009 - 9:55am EDT | Chris

It is strange you lament the fact that the Senate Republicans tend to represent less population than Dems do in the Senate. This in itself shows your ignorance of the Constitution and the real agenda of the left which is to eliminate resistance to do-gooder tyranny. The make up of the Senate was one of the great compromises of the Framers. The House would be porportional while the Senate was to give each state an equal say by having 2 senators. The Senate having been appointed by the governors of the States and not elected orginally was suited to representing the the states as a sovergn entity not as indivdual people. Hence the protection of state's rights thru the Senate (originally but no ... view full comment

03/30/2009 - 10:00am EDT | D.K. Jamal

Lots of things going on here.

1) Congress's duty is to represent its constituents, NOT to be a rubber stamp for the executive branch. It's called checks and balances. Far from being evidence of why Democrats can't govern, it's how governing is supposed to work. Eight years of no checks and balances led to disaster -- why would we want this failed governing style repeated?

2) People on the left side of the spectrum tend not to fall blindly in line all the time. It is good that Democrats stand against Obama where they disagree.

3) Along those lines, if that many Democrats have a problem with Obama's massive borrow-and-spent debt plans...maybe OBAMA needs to scrap those plans and change the way HE ... view full comment

03/30/2009 - 10:10am EDT | l cole

The medicare prescription drug program has helped my 85 year old parents. Bush's so called tax cuts for the rich have helped me. I'm middle class. Chait you should research this. Also getting rid of the marraige penalty has helped me.
Some of Bush's actions should be honestly evaluated. Hate him for the war and for his bunker mentality but honesty and unbiased vision will help the Dems.
Dems hated even good ideas that were helpful to the public just because they were put in place by the republicans.
USE YOUR BRAINS now while you have power Dems.

03/30/2009 - 10:34am EDT | Jack

a bloated, cruel health care system .... How do you guys get off calling a system that provides better health care for its citizens, despite its flaws, than any national health care system in the world "bloated and cruel"? Don't believe me? Check the figures. They're out there, if you care to pay attention to facts rather than liberal fantasies.

03/30/2009 - 10:35am EDT | Chris

Right wing echo chamber. Democrats = communists. Republicans endorsed by Jesus. Repeat ad-infinitum.

03/30/2009 - 10:40am EDT | dh

Democrats can not lead because they lack conviction and principles, which renders the total inability to make prudent decisions. They are driven totally by the solitary desire to amass power which puts them in the untenable position of being beholden to various interest groups.

03/30/2009 - 11:02am EDT | art

Your article clearly depicts Obama as a victim of congressional (esp Senate) Democrats. Obama is no victim. The problem is that his proposals are radical (in the case of carbon credits), against the grain (vouchers), or antagonistic (card check / ACORN funding). If you measure Democrats by Obama's standard, many/most are conservative. Obama was not willing to listen to the more moderate members of his own party, and he is suffering now as he tries to push an agenda that lacks the support he counted on.

By the way, the taxes on the "rich" $250000 / yr earners? Small business owners who make that money, plow all their profits into their businesses, that pay salaries, health care, ben ... view full comment

03/30/2009 - 11:03am EDT | Northern Observer

Chait,

You seem to have attracted a gang of fools, who offer their neo no nothing comments as golden wisdom.

What they're all missing (with one or two exceptions) is the big picture, which is that that the US Congress and hense the United States of America itself is completely paralysed by norrow coroporate interests and their pocket narcissistic hacks, known as United States Senators. The Republicans are upfront in their servile corporate service and present such behavior as a vitue (free market capitalism) when it is instead a vice (crony corrupt capitalism). The Democrats are looked too by Americans as the cleaning agent, the alternative, the white hats you can send after the p ... view full comment

03/30/2009 - 11:04am EDT | Raconteur

"Why Democrats Can't Govern"...?

Chait, you answer your own question simply by asking it only 2 months into the new administration...

Democrats choose and elect nearly the most far-left fringe candidate available (other than Kucinich), and then belatedly realize he doesn't represent the mainstream (such as there is one) of the Democratic Party. Why is it such a surprise that many Democratic legislators are uneasy about budget deficits averaging $1 trillion a year stretching out to the horizon? Get a clue...I'm guessing there are still a sizable number of responsible people left in the Democratic Party. Why do you think Senator Evan Bayh was so quickly able to get 15 Democratic senators t ... view full comment

03/30/2009 - 11:10am EDT | Matt

That you use the term "tax cuts for the rich" without quotation marks severely undermines you credibility.

03/30/2009 - 11:16am EDT | Malaise

Congress should not take the blame for Obama's dismal leadership. Hate Bush as we may, he never turned legislation over to speaker to write in their "smoke-filled" conference room. Bush drafted them in his own "smoke-filled" room, and then demanded that congress pass them. With more money and power than any president coming into office in a long time, Obama wouldn't shake his tail twice to make sure that either the stimulus or the budget were good, but instead turned them entirely over to the crazed Madame Skeletor to ensure that they would be the most unpalatable pieces of legislation in U.S. history.

Obama was in a unique position to draft all of the available talent in the world to come u ... view full comment

03/30/2009 - 11:16am EDT | oleeb

What is the news in this article? Anyone with any sense saw this coming last year.

One reason many liberals were and remain concerned is because Obama himself has always postured himself to be one of the very type of Senator who is hampering his presidency now. Obama's naivete in believing that he could somehow reason with the sniveling cowards who comprise the DC Democrats, particularly in the Senate is what I find particularly ironic. Jimmy Carter also had the same sort of naivete about the kind of people who claim to be Democrats in Washington.

With any luck, Obama's people will play serious hardball with these halfwit bootlickers like Nelson and Conrad and McCaskill and Bayh and any of ... view full comment

03/30/2009 - 11:18am EDT | Christopher George

Chris has identified the source of Jonathan Chait's angst. The framers were determined to prevent a tyranny of the majority and structured the senate to give voice to that minority not "clear the way for politically painful solutions to long-term problems." If we were talking about outlawing abortion or GBLT relationships it's obvious Mr Chait would be arguing the opposite; such is the intellectual poverty of moral relativism. Like all good socialists, Mr Chait can speak of "shoveling hundreds of billions of dollars of upper-class tax cuts out the door" as if all income is originally and rightfully the property of the state.

03/30/2009 - 11:19am EDT | Duhize

Mr Chait-

You have a fundamental lack of understanding of how our economy works, how our debt is financed, and how much of our way of life is tied to the top 5% of wage earners. I agree with you that the GOP were not good stewards of the budget – however that shouldn’t make it any more acceptable for this administration to, in 8 years, to double the amount of all of the borrowing done by this country in its first 232 years. Take it from someone who is in the capital markets (and didn’t make a dime from toxic assets) -there has never been such fear in the capital markets as there is now. Everyone that understands our financial system knows there is no one out there to buy the $9.6 TRI ... view full comment

03/30/2009 - 11:20am EDT | Peter

So basically if the House and Senate don't adopt The One's proposals exactly as presented we are doomed. And for those outside of Congress who think that creating $7 trillion to $9 trillion more in debt that this Administration calls an investment is insane, they are heretics or worse.

03/30/2009 - 11:53am EDT | politicalmpressions

What was that quotation? Republicans fall in line... Obviously, Democrats do not. They don't fall victim to strict ideology and have this funny little tendency to think for themselves and use evidence and information to make decisions. Still, all congressional politicians are big business lackeys who shout rhetoric that will get them elected by uneducated people while enacting policies that benefit the wealthy and corporate sphere but cut middle America and the lower classes off at the knees.

And it's quite interesting to read all the comments here by undoubtedly Conservative individuals who, due to their strict adherence to ideology, refuse to see the disaster their policies created over the ... view full comment

03/30/2009 - 11:55am EDT |

Wow Jonathan. That piece resonated really well with your readers!!

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