Do you think these quotes are really accurated? They do not have to be made up to not reflect what the speaker actually meant and said.

The Washington Press seems to be unable to distinguish between civility and politics. There are real differences over many issues and policies. This requires politicis to resolved, not a phoney bipartisanship. However, the uncivility so common in American politics, seeing those on the other side as enemies not opponents, is not necessary and prevents political solutions.

What is intersting is that the advent of Talk Radio and the Blogsphere seems to have made incivility an even more common value among partisans.

Daniel A. Greenbaum

yeah, this article was pretty suspect in a whole bunch of ways.

The default position of the corporate media is to neuter the Democratic

party, to make them the "mommy party" who are not qualified to take

strong positions on foreign policy, which is the purview of the GOP, the

"stern father" who, though far from perfect (Abu Graib..Gitmo), have a

"realistic" view of the this dangerous world.

The MSM are enablers in this dysfunctional, sociopathic administration.

This bipartisanship line is the same crap they started peddling right after the GOP lost control of Congress. There was NO bipartisanship the last six years, so ANYTHING the Dems do to include the GOP in the working of the legislative branch is an improvement on what went before.

But bipartisanship isn't what the voters want. THEY WANT OUR TROOPS OUT OF THE MIDDLE OF THE IRAQ CIVIL WAR WE CREATED.

Aluminum tubes for me and all my friends!

Greg, yours is a massively wishful misread of the available empirics. Bad intelligence begets bad strategy.

When voters are polled n "partisan vs principled", they suspect our motives even when they agree with our agenda.

On the war, they don't agree with our agenda, or Bush's, all that much.

When "too partisan" is polled, it regularly rocks in the 70's.

Voters routinely applaud investigations. They think we're all corrupt.

Voters value divided government -- both distrusted parties acting as checks on each other.

The overall weight of these predispositions is anti-progressive: policy innovation is mired in the mud of suspect motives. Nothing moves.

Two cherries picked out of the fruit salad. Your Feithian gimmick of aggregating the middle choice ("About right") with your preferred response ("Not far enough") renders one of those worm-eaten. Avoidance of down-to-detail granularity leaves the other one unripe. (Less than 1/3 favor withdrawal by mid-2008.)

Self-deception, and misdirection. The numbers don't say what you want them to say, and don't take us where you want to go.

What budfox said...

Does anyone ever bring up the argument that FOR YEARS we have heard about how weak the Democrats are and how they never stand for anything and how at best they are just Republican-lite and that's why they have such difficulty in elections.

It isn't just us here that post on center-left-lefty blogs. The average "swing voter" joe and jane sixpack likes the idea of their leaders being tough and resolute regardless of whether they agree precisely on ideology. Look how far that one thing got Cheney and Bush. They want a CAGE MATCH not tiddlywinks, and I think more than a few of them are sick of the incompetence and corruption that the Bush's serve up.

The GOP is in favor of bipartisanship in areas where the Democrats are in power such as the Congress. In areas where the GOP is in charge they are in favor of stomping on the opposition's throat.

Tom

"What is intersting is that the advent of Talk Radio and the Blogsphere seems to have made incivility an even more common value among partisans."

And what is even more interesting than that, is that "Talk Radio" was formed and took over the discourse of the establishment Right at least two decades before the "blogosphere" came into existence.

Please take your bullshit claims of equivalence elsewhere. The Right made politics into a zero-sum game, nobody else. The TPMCafe membership is too well-informed to take your revisionism seriously.

Fact: After six years of Republican rule, only 28% of Americans believe the country is going in the right direction.

Fact (according to Panetta): America wants bi-partisanship.

Conclusion: Republicans must compromise with Democrats, not the other way around.

Not sure why this would be a lesson in Democratic overreach.

I'll give Panetta half a point of credit for reminding me that the Democratic Congress hasn't managed to pass all that much through both Houses and send it to the President. Remember that 100 Hours agenda? Has any of it actually passed both houses and been sent to the President?

Any "bipartisanship" between the Democratic and Republican parties results from the following:

1) a desire on the parts of Republican congressmen who are about to lose their seats in the next election to create as much distance between themselves and the current administration as possible,

2) a desire on part of the Republican party to keep the oversight, investigations and criminal prosecutions from literally "forcing" Republican congressman to impeach one or more White House executives prior to the next election and

3) a desire on the part of the Democrats to undo as much of the Republican corruption, crimes and carnage as possible in the interim.

I listen to the commentators on TV and in the print news asking whether or not the American people are mad about the war, health care, education and the economy. No, the American people are not mad. Rabid dogs are mad. The American people are furious. They are losing their homes, their jobs, their children's futures. They are on the verge of losing their comfortable place on this planet. The Republican Party doesn't seem to care one way or the other. Why should they? Its leaders will all be "dead by then" anyway.

There is no bipartisanship. There hasn't been any bipartisanship in six years.

Just a couple of "bipartisanship" reminders:

Who pushed who out of closed-door conference in Congress? Who held voting open for hours in the middle of the night until they could get the vote they wanted? Who printed up, distributed and voted on bill after bill with only a hour or so for the "other side" to review them. Who broke spoken and unspoken rules of Congressional behavior that had stood in place for hundreds of years?

Any effort on the part of the Democratic Party to compromise with this administration will be seen as weakness by this administration and portrayed as such by the main stream media.

It is imperative that this administration be forced to leave office in disgrace, for that is what they brought upon this country and its people in the eyes of the world.

It is nothing more than a talking point to portray the Democratic Party and Democratic Presidents as weak. Throughout our history Democratic presidents have been of the strongest and best leaders the world has ever seen.

Over the past six years, the Republican Party has failed this country in every way that was possible. The Democratic Party must oppose them at every opportunity.

Fact (according to Panetta): America wants bi-partisanship.
Conclusion: Republicans must compromise with Democrats, not the other way around.

This is an inescapable fact that does not seem to enter the consciousness of MSM
On his online WaPo session, David Broder was given polling data showing that the public was in favor of many positons identified with Liberals/Progressives and asked how that data influenced his writing.
Broder did not address the polling data, but just wrote that he did not agree with the questioner and said the public wants civility and bipartisanship.
BushCo is not the only one in a "State Of Denial".

ron, the numbers don't say that the public supports the current Dem investigations into the GOP? the numbers don't say that a solid majority thinks the public thinks Dems are either appropriately aggressive or not aggressive enough with the GOP on Iraq?

you're deliberately focusing on a single specific -- the eventual date of withdrawal -- in order to change the subject. I wasn't writing here about whether the public supports every single specific aspect of the Dems' Iraq policy, and you know it -- merely about the general desire the public has that Dems aggressively confront the White House and the GOP.

Oh, and I still haven't heard you admit that you were 100 percent wrong about the Politico's editors and what they thought of the Gerstein screwup. When will you address that?

I don't disagree with any of the examples Michael cites of Republican aversion to "bipartisanship." At the time of all those examples of monopartisanship, I was reading the articles and marveling at the GOP's brazenness like everyone else.

But sadly, I don't have a compilation of documentary evidence at hand, and now I wish I did. In particular, my Mom is somewhat vulnerable to the "Democrats were just as bad in their day" canard. I certainly think the Democrats have been bad on this score (I'm not a Democrat), but nothing near Republican rule during the GWB era. If I had bookmarked the articles I could make that case.

Can anyone help me with links to articles? Or will hours of Googling be necessary to make my case?

The idea of bipartisan governance will not become a reality until two things change:

1) We, the citizens, pay for elections

2) Redistricting is taken out of the hands of the politicians so there are no 'safe' seats.

Exactly, they were sick not of "partisanship" but of Bush not getting a fucking thing done and screwing everything up. Keeping Bush from not screwing everything up requires partisanship, if the Republicans had an ounce of sense or guts they would help and then it would have Bipartisanship too.

People have little problem with Partisanship when it has the results of getting done what they want, and they want Bush reined in.

Panetta: "It just seems to me the Democrats, if they fail for whatever reason to get a domestic agenda enacted ... will pay a price."

That's true. The "liberal media" has already run numerous articles saying dems can't get anything down. See the article this post links to for one example. mcconnell is on record as saying nothing comes out of the senate. Doesn't matter if a repub senator likes the bill or not. mcconnell will let nothing out of the senate. He said that publicly. He was quoted. Unfortunately, right now I can't find it.

What the "liberal media" will not tell Americans is that a repub president and repub senators are blocking anything and everything. The "liberal media" writes stories saying dems stall. They don’t tell us why.

Joe and jane sixpack and ma and pa kettle elect presidents and members of congress. The "liberal media" keeps telling them dems can't get anything done. So Panetta is correct.

Is Leon Panetta a publican mole? That's the only possible explanation for this:

"The primary message coming out of the November election was that the American people are sick and tired of the fighting and the gridlock, and they want both the president and Congress to start governing the country," warned Leon E. Panetta, a chief of staff in Bill Clinton's White House.

Whatever else characterizes a government in which all three branches are controlled by the same party, it's certainly not gridlock. Seriously, what is he smoking? All three branches are controlled by the Publicans and the voters give one branch to the opposing party because they are tired of gridlock?

I've been carefully following Congressional politics since JFK was elected and FWIW, your Mother is wrong. If you make a distinction between ELECTED officials and POLITICAL appointees, the difference is even more pronounced.

Political appointees are all too frequently nominated because of their political connections and money, not expertise, by both parties. But that's very different than corrruption by members of Congress, and I'm certain your Googling will show that. The exercise will be good for your political education.

As an aside, you will probably also find that much of the malfeanse attached to Dem Congressmen took place when they were elected officials at the State of Local level.

and shielded from corruption by their elected officials.

The new batch of Dems elected in 2006 are still learning how to work the levers of power, but by next year the only bipartisanship in the House will be between Progressive Dems and DLC types.

Greg, I decided it would be the better part of decorum not to respond to your "not to be an a-hole or anything" remark.

Well, not to be a proctologist or anything, but I think we know what we're looking at. I posted a very gracious acknowledgement of your speculation, as it turned out to be correct in the Politico case, and you exhibit deficient character for ignoring it, ragging on it, misrepresenting the occasion, and using that to deflect attention from your errors in the instant case.

Do you seriously assert that successful speculation entitles you to claim a mind-reading license in good standing (as that was the issue in our previous exchange)?

I could take this further, but I have serious priority partisan work to do.

Wishful thinking leads to bad intelligence leads to strategic blunders. Everywhere.

Here's how you know Panetta is wrong: November voters were: "sick and tired of the fighting and the gridlock," - how was there gridlock when repubs controlled congress and the white house? my guess is they thought gridlock was looking pretty good.

I can still remember the attitude of my conservative friends over the last couple of election cycles when they had the upper hand. There was no talk of compromise or finding common ground. To them this was the reason our nation had come to such ruin. To them compromise is the path to destruction. Instead each political entity should fight with every weapon available in a no holds barred political battle. Gusess what??? They finally convinced me about the truth of their position. I say if they are drowning in a sea of corruption, vice and deceit then throw them an anchor. Hell give em two anchors.

"This is a continuation of the fight for the soul of the Democratic Party. The Beltway Dems still want Dean gone even with the success of the 50 state plan.
The Dem grassroots support the new Dems and the plan to restore power to the states.
It's hard for the Beltways Dems to keep power if it is dispersed."

As should have been apparent from the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections, power at the state level is required for power at the national level. The reason this is so is that, because of the peculiarity of our electoral system, all elections are managed locally. Anyone who wants to insure that elections are run fairly (or not) must have control of the state, and lower, levels of government. IMHO, Dean's strategy isn't about local versus national. It's the only strategy for making sure that the Democrats have a going chance in a national election.

On the whole partisanship matter, this seems to be the gambit that the Republicans and their sympathizers on the right (Democrats as well as independents) have picked up since the last election. They seem to be genuinely frightened of a move to the left (which may account for all of the ink spilled on that premier non-issue, John Edwards hair cut) and so are trying knock the Democrats back in line by threatening them with the American voters. This trope is being played repeatedly -- I recall that it figured prominently in efforts to dissuade the Democrats from pursuing the DoJ corruption investigation not too long ago -- and seems to be more of a sign of desperation than anything else.
As a left-leaning independent, I'm not too concerned about these "American voters;" because, I don't seem to be one of them. I'm just a constituent, whatever that is:
"Rep. Tom Cole, chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, warned... 'If they let their constituents and their ideology drive them past the point where the American people are comfortable, [the Democrats] will find how quickly the voters will react.'"
(http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/horsesmouth/2007/04/washington_post.php)

You have hit the nail on the head.

Nitpick: more like 15 years. Talk radio came into its own with the demise of the Fairness Doctrine in the late 1980s, and the blogosphere became a force in the early part of this decade.

But like I said, it's a nitpick. Good post.

Newsweek poll shows Bush now down to 28% approval rating.

The public sees him a "Stubborn and unable to admit his mistakes"

Panetta is having a Andrea Mitchell moment.

Proven wrong is less than 24 hours.

Exactly. "Clinton Democrats" pronounced "Ree-puh-bleh-kenz".

I AGREE that when the Washington Post says the Dems are being too confrontational, they are really saying THEY want the Dems to be more passive, because that's what THEY are more comfortable with. They LOVE to portray the Democratic leadership as passive and ineffective, because it makes their job much easier, and it protects their elitist corporate interests.

HOWEVER, having said that, there is also a danger that if they are seen as neglecting other problems, public opinion could change. I am thinking specifically of the current SKYROCKETING GAS PRICES. We are almost at an all-time record high, even though the price of oil is not. Why haven't the oil execs. been hauled before multiple committees, in the same way that justice department lawyers? Is it because Democrats are now getting much more oil company cash? Is it because they are millionaires, and don’t have the same concerns as average Americans? The danger is that the public will come to perceive what the Democrats are doing as merely partisan politics, if Democrats don't just-as-aggressively address the problems that are affecting the public right now.

The problem isn't that the Democrats are being too confrontational. That will probably never happen. But the problem could become, what they are being confrontational about. If they want to hurt the White House, then go after the oil companies. That's the root of all this corruption.

It is a new day - old ass-kissing Democrats need to stand up and back the people or be reduced to the Quisling status of Joe Lierman. At 28%, what more does the Democratic Party need? We have the wrong people taking America in the wrong direction. We voted for change . . . what is so fucking hard to explain? Leon is a putz.

I'm no fan of the editorial slant of the Washington Post on a number of issues, but to characterize the Post as the "Fox News of print journalism" does great disservice to the Wall Street Journal where Fox News is, I suspect, viewed as a bunch of wimps.

The journalism side of the Journal is not that bad, its the editorial pages of the Journal that make FoxNews look like the World Socialist Workers Daily.

I would suggest that the roots of the "unitary executive" are found in the Cold War when the President would have to make the decision on a retaliatory nuclear response without waiting Congressional debate and decision. Slowly, more and more "instant reponses" have been added to the mix with control vested in the President. (How else do we explain Presidential-initiated "bombing raids" without Congressional approval and really without any direct threat to America?)

Increasing support of use of presidential military power without Congressional debate and ecision are found on both sides of the aisle in our Cold War history. I think we can all recognize that Bush goes too far; but I seldom see a discussion about whether or not a "bombing raid" authorized solely by the President also goes too far.

Well I'm a mathematician, so...Yeah, either my degree is useless or my English skills were sub-par last night. Probably both. D'oh!