Bayh, Yglesias, and Vizzini

This morning, I read this at Big Media Matt's personal shop:

Evan Bayh, for whom I suppose I'm now committed to being an apologist, is coming in for some criticism for his "yes" vote on the bankruptcy bill, following on the heels of his praiseworthy "no" vote on the cloture motions. While I'll certainly agree that this isn't ideal behavior, voting with the public interest when it counts and with the corporate paymasters on the unimportant vote is a big improvement over doing the opposite. Some might call it cunning.

Cunning?  I do not think that word means what you think it means.  Bayh's corporate paymasters are not as naive about Senate procedure as ordinary Americans.  They know he voted against cloture, against them, when it counted.  So he's alienated them.  And ordinary Americans will only know that he voted for the bill on the floor, and that will be impossible to explain.   Remember the impressive clarity of Kerry's "I voted for it before I voted against it" line?

Worse, Bayh, like every other Senate Democrat who didn't oppose that obscenity of a Bankruptcy Bill straight down the line at every opportunity, has taken away yet another issue that could have been used to run a nationalized populist campaign against the Republicans in 2006.  It's like they don't actually want to win.

Cunning?  I think not.

Comments

[eRobin]

I feel like the people the corps pay to watch votes must understand what Bayh's votes meant too but then what would explain them? There's so much horse trading going on that we don't know about it's hard to figure out what exactly enticed congressperson to sell his/her soul.

The Energy Bill/ANWR stuff coming up is a good example. I've heard that a lot of congress members are being blackmailed with funding for their states (essentially re-election) if they don't support both.

And now I'm going to go watch sausage being made.

[Desert Donkey]

I guess another way to look at it is that this is the type of bill that separates the corporate Democrats from the populists. So we have heard about the weaseling of Feinstein and Bayh, et al. Who might we look to in the other group; the NO votes, for signs of the next populist leader? Maybe there is a silver lining in this situation. I am not talking about the well protected automatic votes, but who in a reddish state said NO?

[Thomas Nephew]

Q: Vizzini?
A: ahhh... now I see.

I guess I agree with Matt that of the Lieberman and Bayh, Bayh did better. I agree with you that wasn't good enough by a long shot.

What do you think of the politology signup list against the bankruptcy bill -- similar to anti Gonzales efforts earlier this year? Politology, tacitus, even Instapundit are on record against this. They and their readers may carry more weight with Republican representatives, but I'm not averse to applauding them for trying. It seems like a good thing to me, I'll be linking to it soon.

[paperwight]

eRob - Yeah, maybe there's a reason for the kind of voting we're seeing from the corporate Dems, but I really don't care. Horsetrading politics are dead as long as the Republicans control the executive and legislative branches. The only thing the Republicans will horsetrade for a vote is just enough horse (in the Lou Reed sense) to give themselves political cover so they can prevent the Dems from becoming a meaningful opposition party. If the Dems in power can't tell that they're being played that way, they don't deserve to stay in power.

DD - That's a really good question. I'll try to do something with that later this week.

Thomas - What do I think about the Politology thing?

(1) With regard to the Republican apparatchik class represented by those participants, I think: "Hey, you dumbasses, what did you think was going to happen? You got your ownership society -- this is what you own. I know you voted for more torture of brown people and fewer civil liberties for the damn libruls, but it turns out that (as those damn libruls predicted) you also got more corporate power and less personal opportunity. Hope you and your children like it."

(2) With regard to the people who are cooperating with the Republican apparatchik class even on this issue, I simply remind them of the parable of the scorpion and the fox. IMO, no common cause can be made with the Republican apparatchik class. Let them raise their voices and we raise ours, but we should do it in different churches.

[Brew]

Oh how I wish the public would rise up against this bill and punish everyone that voted for it- but I don't think that we're that lucky. Yeah, it's a bad bill. Yeah, it punishes the little guy who finds himself 10K in debt, while letting a buncha corporate crooks write off gazzillions - but when put into simple campaign language, it's not gonna be a winner.

The GOP will use nay votes against Democrats in '06 - using the reform bill as a "Financial Responsibility" platform and talking about how they're keeping your bills low by making sure that scoflaws pay theirs. Yeah, it's bullshit, but theirs'll sound better than ours.

Though I wish he had voted nay on both, I think Bayh made a good choice for his circumstances. It'll be awful hard to run without some financial services money in his pocket - or worse with all their money backing someone else.

[paperwight]

Brew - I don't know that Bayh made a good choice. In the last election cycle, the credit card companies gave Republicans 2x what they gave Democrats. If I were in the finance industry, I'd probably punish Bayh for his cloture vote. Actually, I think we may be at the tipping point in which no large-scale, corporate-dominated industry which is better served by Republicans will even bother with giving to a Democrat unless that specific Democrat is completely guaranteed to win election (see, e.g., Joe Biden, Democrat from MBNA).

[Simbaud]

In Mr. Arkadin, which is the first place I ever heard it, Orson Welles tells the same story with a frog and a scorpion. Foxes will swim if they have to, but would mostly rather not.

It would be nice to pretend that Bayh did some canny horsetrading before he cast his vote. However, since the Republicans had all the votes they needed from the git-go, I can't imagine that his yea vote had much in the way of trade value. Perhaps some kindly 'Pub who appreciated the gesture bought him a slice of pie in the House cafeteria.

[Josh Canel]

Remember the impressive clarity of Kerry's "I voted for it before I voted against it" line?

It's very sad. The transformation of Kerry's honest explanation into a gaffe depended upon the media's ongoing failure to explain to the voting public how the drawing up of legislation works. The schools obviously aren't doing good enough civics education. So how does any one individual go about making the marketplace of ideas (and legislation, court opinions, etc.) more palatable to "normal" folks. So much of it is out there, on the internet, for any citizen to see. But for most people, it may as well not be.

[paperwight]

Josh, I agree with your assessment of the ignorance of the citizenry of legislative realities. But I think the blame for that line falls squarely on Kerry and his handlers. The clear answer was:

"I voted to give our soldiers what they needed and for everyone to share the burden of the President's war in Iraq by returning taxes on the wealthy to their pre-war levels. President Bush didn't want everyone to share the burden of his war. The President wanted to borrow to finance his war instead of taxing the wealthy at pre-war levels, and that means that everyone's children will pay his war off. That's what I voted against."

[tunesmith]

Interesting. tunesmith here from politology. regarding scorpion and fox... which of the two parties is taking the greater risk here by participating in the coalition? takes guts for a republican to vehemently and publicly disagree with every single republican in congress. Anyway, I think you're over-romanticizing the scenario. we're hardly seeing any republicans construct elaborate scenarios where democrats have to trust them, only to have the republicans cross them and withdraw, cackling gleefully and rubbing their hands together...

[Thomas Nephew]

Re other flip-flop charges against Kerry, I like Saletan's comment: "The difference between the war Kerry supported and the one he opposed is the difference between the war Bush promised and the one he delivered."

If only Saletan had come up with that sooner; better yet, if only Kerry had. You're right, paperwight, he was too slow on his rhetorical feet. I'm one to talk, but I'm not the one who was running for President.

@tunesmith: to be fair, there is a wee bit of what you're talking about. Tom Maguire (via alicublog) manages to lay the Senate bankruptcy bill fiasco at ... wait for it... Josh Marshall, Paul Krugman et al's doorsteps -- for failing to have it on their radar screen soon enough, or for ostensibly using "phony arguments" (which definitely are not).

I.e., the whole thing is mainly interesting to him as another brick in his and Glenn's "Democrats, The Dying Party Not Worth Your Time" story wall. Despite the much more glaring "Republicans, the Greedy Party Happy To Ruin You" story staring him in the face.

[paperwight]

I'm one to talk, but I'm not the one who was running for President.

Look, it's not like this wasn't going to come up. Failing to prepare for a simple question like this on the most pressing issue of the day is an abject failure to run a decent campaign. Period. End of story.

I.e., the whole thing is mainly interesting to him as another brick in his and Glenn's "Democrats, The Dying Party Not Worth Your Time" story wall. Despite the much more glaring "Republicans, the Greedy Party Happy To Ruin You" story staring him in the face.

There's a commenter at Orcinus who calls himself "The Americanist". He's pretty much the same way. No matter what something is, it's the fault of the Democrats. Either they did it, or they allowed the Republicans to do it by not being a sufficiently vigorous opposition. It's the heads-I-win, tails-you-lose coin flip.

[eRobin]

Tom Maguire (via alicublog) manages to lay the Senate bankruptcy bill fiasco at ... wait for it... Josh Marshall, Paul Krugman et al's doorsteps -- for failing to have it on their radar screen soon enough,

I agree with this argument. Although I don't think it's up to Krugman and Marshall to shoulder the burden alone. But someone - or some coalition of people - should have been marching and writing about this the day after the election. We all knew it was coming. We know that medmal caps are coming. Where are we on that now? The attacks are coming quickly and from all sides (econ, social and environmental). It will be a challenge to put a coalition together but we have to do it - and it probably will be outside of the Democratic party, which is virtually useless.

All I keep coming back to in my imagination is that if Kerry had won the election, there would have been marches on the Mall and around the country every damn week and he wouldn't have taken office until two weeks from now. They would not have let anything go and they would have had their people mobilized.