“How A President Negotiates With Congress”: Cross-Party Negotiations In Congress Are More About Leverage
The Democratic presidential primary has sparked a discussion on the left about the value of bold proposals vs incrementalism. In arguing for the latter, Scott Lemieux takes on the ridiculous notion that the history of Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid are examples of bold change proposals.
The idea that the Social Security — which not only offered modest benefits but intentionally excluded large numbers of African-Americans — was not an example of incremental reform is quite remarkable. Even more revealing is the Medicaid example. Nothing makes it clearer that this fake-nostalgia for the REAL LIBERAL Democratic Party of yore is just a rhetorical cudgel with which to beat Democrats and not any kind of serious historical analysis than this. Apparently, a public health insurance program that required states to cover only a subset of people well below the poverty line was REAL, UNCOMPROMISING LIBERALISM while a public health insurance program that required states to cover everyone up to 138% of the poverty line is the hopelessly compromised neoliberal work of useless corporate sellouts. Right.
But then Lemieux takes on an argument we’ve heard often during the Obama presidency about how he has too often pre-compromised by negotiating with himself. This is the case Brian Beutler made not too long ago when arguing in favor of Bernie Sanders’ approach.
But if we’re imagining both of their agendas as opening bids in negotiations with Congress, why fault Sanders for not negotiating with himself? Ask a future Democratic Congress for single payer and a $15 minimum wage and you might get laughed at… but you also might get the public option and a bump to $12. Ask it for the public option and a $12 minimum wage, as Clinton might, and you’ll get a fair hearing from the outset, but you might end up with advancements barely worth fighting for. President Obama, as Sanders is fond of noting, negotiated with himself, and progressives paid an unknowable price as a result.
Here’s what Lemieux says about that:
People who think that important legislation gets passed by presidents making opening bids far outside the expected negotiating space have no idea how presidential power works. (And, for that matter, have no idea how negotiating works. If the Mariners phone up the Angels and offer Mike Zunino for Mike Trout, that doesn’t mean that the Angels will then offer to accept Leonys Martin for Mike Trout; it means the Angels GM will stop taking your phone calls.) To say that a president “pre-comprimised” is often used as an insult, but it is in fact a sign that he knows what he’s doing. The lessons of FDR and LBJ — and now Obama — are the opposite of what this faction of the left thinks they are.
Frankly, the argument Beutler makes is something that has never made sense to me – no matter how many times I’ve heard it over the last 7 years. For example, if President Obama had made single payer his opening bid in health care reform, I fail to see how that would have triggered a more progressive negotiation process. First of all, it would have negated what he ran on as a candidate and more likely would have been ignored – even by Democrats – as a serious proposal. Similarly, the President proposed raising the minimum wage to a meager $10/hour a couple of years ago. Did that spark a negotiating process with Republicans? No, they’ve simply ignored it – just as they did his “bold” proposals for things like the American Jobs Act, universal pre-K and free community college.
The truth is that cross-party negotiations in Congress are more about leverage than they are about bold opening bids. In order to get the other party to the table, you have to be willing to give them something they want. That is why – since 2010 when Republicans took control of the House – pretty much the only thing that has been negotiated is the budget and raising the debt ceiling. Initially Republicans used those “fiscal cliffs” as leverage (or hostages) to get what they wanted. For the last couple of years, both parties have eventually come to the table on budgets in order to avoid another government shut-down (which is the leverage).
Beyond what Lemieux wrote, it is important to remember that when FDR was negotiating for Social Security and LBJ for health care, they were engaged in intra-party negotiations – much as Obama did during those few months that Democrats controlled the House and had a 60-vote majority in the Senate. That is not a likely scenario for a Democratic president any time in the near future. Any “bold” proposal will therefore require having leverage that brings Republicans to the table. In other words, it will require pre-compromise.
By: Nancy LeTourneau, Political Animal Blog, The Washington Monthly, May 13, 2016
“Makes More Sense Than Critics Admit”: The Brave Politics Of Clinton’s Medicare Buy-In Proposal
Predictably, much of the commentary about Hillary Clinton’s newly expressed interest in making a Medicare buy-in option available to people near retirement age is treating it as another calibrated “move to the left” to head off Bernie Sanders or placate his supporters. The unstated assumption is that anything other than a full-on single-payer system (the only creditable progressive proposal, you see) is a half measure reflecting either political cowardice or corrupt kowtowing to private insurance interests.
Here’s the thing, though. People who love to cite polls showing the popularity of “Medicare for all” (the favored buzz-phrase for single-payer) should be aware that the popularity of the venerable retirement program is based on its current characteristics as an “earned entitlement” program for which working Americans pay payroll taxes and then, after becoming beneficiaries, premiums. The “buy-in” proposal, by targeting people who have (a) presumably been paying those same payroll taxes and will continue to do so until retirement if they are employed, and (b) will immediately pay relatively steep premiums (though not as steep, in most cases, as private insurance premiums), does minimal violence to the structure, financing and original purpose of Medicare. “Medicare for all,” once it is a tangible proposal rather than a bumper-sticker slogan, changes Medicare in all these respects, and might make it unrecognizable. The financing challenge alone for a single-payer system — which never much gets mentioned in the polling — makes the incremental approach, via a combination of Medicare, “Obamacare”-subsidized private insurance, and Medicaid, a much easier reach financially and politically.
Perhaps I’m wrong and perhaps Hillary Clinton is wrong in feeling this way. But one thing’s for sure: Expanding Medicare and providing a “public option” under Obamacare are not popular ideas in the private insurance industry. That’s certainly not the constituency Clinton is representing here. And anyone who doubts the political courage it takes to achieve universal health coverage incrementally, instead of just intoning “Medicare for all” until the walls fall down like Jericho’s, hasn’t been paying much attention the last quarter-century.
By: Ed Kilgore, Daily Intelligencer, New York Magazine, May 11, 2016
“An Exercise In Projected Self-Righteousness”: Does Bernie Sanders Really Deserve Any Concessions From Hillary Clinton?
“What Bernie Sanders Wants” is the headline of a Politico article on the extensive concessions the presidential candidate expects from Hillary Clinton if he loses to her in Philadelphia. A similar Time article is slightly more precise: “Bernie Sanders Will Support Hillary Clinton But He’s Sticking to Some Key Demands.”
As it happens, I’ve written myself about how HRC would be wise to offer Team Sanders the fool’s gold of platform concessions and maybe the promise of a look at primary laws and procedures. And I’ve also talked about why Sanders, as the leader of an ideological initiative to move the Democratic Party to the left, can’t be expected to go quietly like Clinton did in 2008.
But none of these practical considerations can quite explain the expectation in Bernieland, and beyond it in the political commentariat, that of course Sanders has the high moral ground and he’s the one who should be dictating terms to his vanquisher.
Yes, there’s no question many Sanders supporters (and probably the candidate himself) believe they represent “true” progressivism and even (despite his decades-long reluctance to call himself a Democrat) the “real” soul of the “real” Democratic Party. This authenticity, moreover, is frequently contrasted with the hollow, compromised, and numb “centrism” that Hillary Clinton is supposed to represent, attributable to corruption or timidity. But isn’t the very purpose of party primaries to air such differences and find out what actual partisans (supplemented in some though not all places by independents leaning toward that party) think about them? And if so, why is it the (apparent) loser who is claiming the spoils, and the right to shape the party’s future? It doesn’t make a great deal of sense except as an exercise in projected self-righteousness.
There is a different and more calculated rationale for a Sanders platform challenge: that Hillary Clinton’s own supporters, who mainly prefer her on non-ideological grounds, agree more with Bernie on the issues that separate them than with their own candidate. That may even be true with respect to single-payer health care, though polling on the subject has been more than a bit suspect (the usual simplistic monniker of “Medicare for All” isn’t terribly descriptive of a system that might extract lifelong payroll taxes and premiums from some people and nothing from others for the same benefits).
If the Sanders campaign really does purport to speak for all Democrats on key issues, it would make far more sense for Sanders to call on Clinton to allow delegates a free and open vote on various platform planks than to demand that she abandon her own positions for his. She could then always rationalize any differences as a matter of delegates articulating ultimate progressive goals while she promotes feasible means for accomplishing them in the here and now.
What that approach would exclude, however, is the high dramatics of demands, concessions, surrender, and conquest that Sanders’s current trajectory suggests — not to mention the certainty of a divisive convention and the possibility of serious damage to the Democratic ticket. If, however, the real goal of Sandernistas is to humiliate Hillary Clinton even as she assumes the official mantle of party leadership, then they should not be surprised if she fights back.
By: Ed Kilgore, Daily Intelligencer, New York Magazine, April 29, 2016
“What Is Bernie’s End Game?”: Hillary Not Likely To Adopt Agenda Of The Guy Who Is Losing
For a while now, Greg Sargent has been speculating about Bernie Sanders’ end game in this presidential primary. The candidate himself has said that it will be up to Clinton to win over his supporters. And at times, he has even suggested that she will need to adopt some of his campaign promises in order to do so – like advocating for single payer and free public college tuition. It’s hard to know if he is really serious about that. But at any rate, it is not going to happen. Clinton ran on her own platform and is winning the primary. She’s not likely to adopt the agenda of the guy who is losing.
Yesterday, Sanders seemed to indicate a push for the Democratic Party to adopt some changes to their election rules and strategy. Specifically, he called for three things:
- Automatic voter registration
- Same-day registration and open primaries
- A 50-state strategy
To the extent that Sanders intends to push to have these issues included in the Democratic platform during the convention this summer, that would be an interesting discussion. If adopted, they would set these up as goals for the Party to work towards. But the national party can’t simply make them happen. The first two involve state parties and legislatures – who establish these rules. This is something that Sanders often fails to articulate – like when he promised that at the end of his first term as president, the U.S. would not have the highest incarceration rate in the world. He failed to mention that reaching that goal would primarily be up to states.
But the 50-state strategy is an interesting one on a different level. As Howard Dean demonstrated, it is certainly a priority that is set by the DNC. But if anyone remembers the argument over that one, it had to do with how the national party distributes funding. Those who opposed a 50-state strategy wanted the DNC to target its limited resources to races where they had determined it could actually make a difference. Dean wanted the funding to be distributed to state party leaders and let them decide.
From the perspective of Sanders and his supporters, this raises a couple of interesting questions. The most obvious is that the resources that are under discussion are the very ones he has criticized Clinton for helping to raise. Remember how the Sanders campaign reacted to the fundraiser hosted by George Clooney? It was all about raising money for the DNC and state parties. In other words, the money that would enable a 50-state strategy.
But the other issue is that Howard Dean’s success with the 50-state strategy resulted in the election of what we often call “Blue Dog Democrats” – especially in the South. They are also the ones who lost in 2010 and 2014. Many of the Sanders supporters I know were pretty happy to see them go.
I would suggest that these are all questions that would be good for Democrats to discuss. But as we’ve seen very often with Bernie Sanders, they lead to much more complicated questions and answers than he has articulated.
By: Nancy Letourneau, Political Animal Blog, The Washington Monthly, April 29, 2016
“Different Analyses Of What’s Wrong With America”: Here’s The Big Difference Between Bernie Sanders And Donald Trump
Tuesday’s New Hampshire primary represented about as emphatic a rejection as you could imagine of that imposing monolith we’ve been calling “the establishment.” Bernie Sanders certainly felt it. “The people of New Hampshire have sent a profound message to the political establishment, to the economic establishment, and by the way, to the media establishment,” he said. “The people want real change.” On the Republican side, you could almost hear the establishment whimpering sadly as the possibility of Donald Trump being their nominee became even more real.
But we shouldn’t make the mistake of thinking that Sanders’ and Trump’s success — whether temporary or not — represents two sides of the same coin, a single phenomenon manifesting itself simultaneously in both parties.
That isn’t to say there aren’t a few similarities between the messages the two men are sending. People joke about Sanders and Trump both being supporters of single-payer health care, even though Trump’s “support” consists of a couple of favorable comments years ago; the truth is that he doesn’t seem to know or care much about health care, just like most policy issues. But Trump has sounded some economic populist themes, particularly on trade, where he’s been as skeptical as Sanders of the free trade policies pursued by Democratic and Republican administrations alike. And Trump has no particular commitment to conservative ideology, so if he does become the nominee, don’t expect him to advocate for traditional Republican economic ideas.
That aside, Trump and Sanders have fundamentally different analyses of what’s wrong with America and its government, and what ought to be done about it.
Anger has been the signature emotion of this election on the Republican side. And while there’s no question that many Democratic voters have problems with what has happened during the Obama years, they’re not angry so much as they are disappointed. And that disappointment is really with governing itself — the difficult slog of legislation, the necessary compromises, the inevitable mix of victories and defeats. Hillary Clinton’s problem is that she doesn’t promise anything different; her point is not that she’ll remake American politics, but that through hard work and persistence she can squeeze out of that unpleasant process some better results.
It’s a pragmatic, realistic message, but not one to stir the heart. Particularly for idealistic younger voters, Sanders’ vision of not just different results but a transformed process was bound to be appealing. To those liberals whose attachment to the Democratic Party is less firm — which may also be true of younger voters — Sanders says that the problem isn’t the other side, it’s the whole system, and the “oligarchy” that controls it.
Trump too has a message that transcends partisanship. But where Sanders says the problem is that the system is corrupt because it’s controlled by the wealthy and corporations, Trump argues that the problem is stupidity. He doesn’t want to bring about some kind of transformation in the system. He wants to just ignore it, and produce unlimited winning through the sheer force of his will. For instance, they may both have problems with the trade agreements America has signed, but Sanders will tell you it’s because corporations exerted too much influence over the content of those agreements. Trump just says the agreements were negotiated by idiots, so we got taken to the cleaners by foreigners.
Here’s another important difference between the two: For all their misgivings about the Democratic establishment, Sanders’ supporters are idealistic, hopeful, and looking for dramatic change that is rooted in liberal ideology. They want more comprehensive government benefits in areas like health care and education, higher taxes on the wealthy, and greater restrictions on financial firms. In short, they want their party to be more ideologically pure.
Trump’s supporters, on the other hand, aren’t motivated by hope and idealism but by anger: anger at immigration, anger at Muslims, anger at foreigners, anger at a changing country that seems to be leaving them behind. They want a restoration of American greatness, the feeling of mastery over events and the world. They are far less interested in fulfilling a wish list of conservative policies — which is why they’re unfazed when other Republicans accuse Trump of not being a “real” conservative. He isn’t, and his supporters don’t really care.
There’s another difference: As dramatic as both victories in New Hampshire were, Trump and Sanders face very different prospects from this point forward. Trump is the overwhelming Republican frontrunner, standing far atop a chaotic race in which his opponents are dropping like flies. He may or may not become the nominee, but at the moment he’s got a much better shot than anyone else. Sanders, on the other hand, still trails Hillary Clinton in national polls and faces a daunting map. He’ll now have to go to states with large numbers of the minority voters among whom Clinton has been particularly strong.
We don’t yet know how deep the desire for “revolution” among Democrats really goes, and that question will probably determine the outcome of their primary race. The conservative rage that propelled Donald Trump to victory in New Hampshire, on the other hand, seems virtually inexhaustible.
By: Paul Waldman, Senior Writer, The American Prospect; Contributor, The Week, February 10, 2016
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