Friday, November 11, 2011

Jon Stewart: Meet Chris Hayes

There was an interesting yet rather frustrating appearance on The Daily Show on Wednesday night by House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (or "Princess Nancy" as she is known by Herman Cain).

It was an appearance where Jon Stewart - who many on the right feel is a hyper-partisan liberal - kind of took Mrs. Pelosi to task for some of the failures of the legislative process and the Democratic Party's role in such failures.

Here a couple questions/comments from Mr. Stewart:

JS: At every turn, what I hear from you is "well, Republicans would have filibustered" or "the Republicans didn't want to do that". As far as I can tell, the Republicans had a much smaller majority than the Democrats had over the those two years and they got to do whatever the hell they wanted!

&

JS: ...while the Republicans might've filibustered, why not make them filibuster?

I have a couple comments about this before turning over the floor to Chris Hayes.

With regards to the first issue. Jon Stewart is informed enough to realize that the Democrats do not have the same caucus discipline as do the Republicans. That is almost inevitable given the "larger tent" that the Democrats have. Some of George W. Bush's most infamous legislative "victories" were aided and abetted by Democrats. Medicare Part D, for example, got plenty of votes from conservative Democrats (including Max Baucus, Mary Landrieu, and Ben Nelson). Ben Nelson also is credited as the deciding vote to enable the passage of the 2003 Bush Tax Cuts. Contrarily, President Obama and congressional Democrats do not have such Republicans to work with.

True, on some high profile issues - the repeal of DADT, for example, they may receive the votes of the the New England Three (Snowe, Collins, Scott Brown) and/or some other random vote - but sometimes they even lose their own members on procedural votes! Last month, Jon Tester and Ben Nelson (grrr!) voted against cloture on President Obama's American Jobs Act. So, yeah, it was filibustered. Does that make Jon Stewart feel better? Did it make any difference whatsover?

It is a bad position for President Obama to be in when you got some liberal observers like a Jon Stewart criticizing the Democrats for not being able to pass legilation over a unified GOP caucus in the Senate. (IT IS IMPOSSIBLE, JON!) Then, when there is a compromise - which have consistently, in the view of the Furriners blog, been more concessions on the part of Democrats - the President gets berated. All the while, the conservative media have fostered a perception of Chicago-style thuggery on the part of the Obama Administration. (Michele Bachmann infamously refers to it as a "Gangster Government").

So I had all these disparate thoughts while watching the show on Wednesday night. Then, as it happens, Chris Hayes was a guest on The Rachel Maddow Show yesterday and he more succinctly summarized the current situation - in a way that I think Jon Stewart could learn from. He says:

(In the senate), things can either pass 94-1... or they can get blocked. It's those two options. There's nothing in the middle. There's nothing in his current political terrain that can pass by a five vote margin, or a six vote margin, or a two vote margin because the habitual use of the filibuster and the political commitment on the part of the minority caucus in the senate to politically destroy the president in the run-up to the election is so strong it means going after everything the president has his name attached to.

Ding-ding-ding! Correct! Think for example of PAY-GO. This was an idea with several Republican sponsors. Then President Obama voiced his support for the idea and every Republican rescinded his or her support. And yet Jon Stewart's confused as to why the Democrats haven't been able to follow through on their entire legislative agenda?

Come on, Jon!

(Now go home and get your shine box!)

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