{"id":4436,"date":"2010-10-28T09:19:27","date_gmt":"2010-10-28T13:19:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/?p=4436"},"modified":"2010-10-28T09:19:27","modified_gmt":"2010-10-28T13:19:27","slug":"regaining-retaining-power","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/2010\/10\/28\/regaining-retaining-power\/","title":{"rendered":"<strong><font color=\"#800000\">regaining<\/font> &#038; <font color=\"#800000\">retaining<\/font> power<\/strong>&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<div align=\"justify\"><sup><em>From 2003 to 2008, among McConnell&#8217;s top 20 donors have been 5 financial\/investment firms: UBS, FMR Corporation [Fidelity Investments], Citigroup, Bank of New York and Merrill Lynch. During his entire political career, the top three industries donating to McConnell have been: Lawyers [$1.5 million], Securities and Investments [$1.5 million], and Health Professionals [$1.4 million].<\/em><\/sup><\/div>\n<blockquote>\n<div align=\"center\"><strong><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/krugman.blogs.nytimes.com\/2010\/10\/28\/lessons-of-1995\/\">Lessons of 1995<\/a><br \/>      New York Times<\/strong><br \/>      by Paul Krugman<br \/>      October 28, 2010<\/div>\n<p>      <\/p>\n<div align=\"justify\">When I read the <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/voices.washingtonpost.com\/plum-line\/2010\/10\/compare_and_contrast.html\">Mitch McConnell quote<\/a><\/strong> that&rsquo;s been getting so much attention:<\/div>\n<ul> <strong><font color=\"#200020\">The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.<\/font><\/strong> <\/ul>\n<div align=\"justify\">my immediate concern was whether it was taken out of context. And if you read the full <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/nationaljournal.com\/member\/magazine\/top-gop-priority-make-obama-a-one-term-president-20101023\">National Journal interview<\/a><\/strong> [subscription required], the nuances are a bit different from those you might take from the quote in isolation. But not in a good way.<\/div>\n<p align=\"justify\"><img decoding=\"async\" width=\"100\" hspace=\"4\" border=\"1\" align=\"right\" src=\"http:\/\/blogs.abcnews.com\/thenote\/images\/2009\/01\/23\/abc_mcconell_012309.jpg\" \/>If you read the whole thing, what you get is that McConnell is taking  a very different lesson from the events of 1995 than the one most  pundits take, and expect Republicans to take. The whole attempt to bully  Clinton into slashing Medicare by shutting down the federal government  was a political failure for the GOP; but McConnell doesn&rsquo;t see this as  evidence that Republicans were too confrontational.<\/p>\n<div align=\"justify\">No, he sees it as evidence that they weren&rsquo;t confrontational <em>enough<\/em>; they were too focused on their policy agenda, and neglected the necessary work of destroying Clinton:<\/div>\n<ul>\n<div align=\"justify\"><strong><font color=\"#200020\">We suffered from some degree of hubris and acted as if  the president was irrelevant and we would roll over him. By the summer  of 1995, he was already on the way to being reelected, and we were  hanging on for our lives.<\/font><\/strong><\/div>\n<\/ul>\n<div align=\"justify\">So this time around they won&rsquo;t bother much with trying to get actual  legislation passed; they&rsquo;ll focus on the important thing: undermining  the man in the White House.<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n<div align=\"justify\">Mitch McConnell is something of an odious character to me. The reason is simple. I&#8217;ve never personally read of heard anything he&#8217;s ever said that was anything more than a political slur. Even Dick Cheney gave opinions that addressed the issue being discussed. Mitch McConnell is always disdaining something or the other. So I don&#8217;t find what he says here out of character.<\/div>\n<p align=\"justify\">As I look back over the last two years, several things are clearer to me. The Republicans had enough residual power to stop Obama and the Democrats from doing very much. <strong><font color=\"#200020\">President Obama<\/font><\/strong> was correct last night on the Daily Show in touting what he has succeeded in doing. The gradient against him has been focused with a singleness of purpose &#8211; thwarting the Democrats in general and Obama in the specific. They succeeded in turning the Left into a bunch of complainers. Obama&#8217;s attempts at reconciliation have been interpreted as weakness. And <strong><font color=\"#200020\">Mitch McConnell<\/font><\/strong> and <strong><font color=\"#200020\">John Boehner<\/font><\/strong> have kept their fold in the obstructionist mode the whole way. The &quot;attack ads&quot; are actually indicative of the Republican platform. As McConnell says, that <u>is<\/u> the Republican platform. The strategy is only political &#8211; <strong><font color=\"#800000\">regaining power<\/font><\/strong>. Once they have it, the strategy changes to <strong><font color=\"#800000\">retaining power<\/font><\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\"><img decoding=\"async\" width=\"200\" hspace=\"4\" border=\"1\" align=\"right\" src=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/wp-dyn\/content\/photo\/2008\/10\/28\/PH2008102801628.jpg\" \/>I was thinking last night. As disappointed as I feel in these last two years, I don&#8217;t really think the Democrats made a mistake. I think the Left made the mistake. This is no time to measure success by looking at the traditional Liberal Issues and chastising Obama about his failures in bringing them home. This is not the time for federal government to lead those fights. That&#8217;s our job. This is a time to reestablish the viability of the Middle Class. If Obama made a mistake, it was in putting Healthcare in front of Financial Reform. Maybe the &quot;Surge&quot; in Afghanistan was a mistake [politically]. But not being more &quot;Liberal&quot; was not a mistake. I don&#8217;t know if avoiding a &quot;Truth Commission&quot; on the Invasion of Iraq was a mistake or not. I am too biased to trust my own judgment on that topic. <\/p>\n<div align=\"justify\">Right now, the Democratic Agenda needs to be focused on the economic plight of Middle Class Americans. It&#8217;s simply a question of priorities, not what&#8217;s right or wrong. Our version of McConnell&#8217;s statement should be:<\/div>\n<div align=\"justify\">\n<blockquote>\n<div align=\"justify\"><strong><font color=\"#200020\">The single most important thing we want to achieve is to reestablish the Democratic Party as the party of the Middle Class.<\/font><\/strong> <\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n<div align=\"justify\">Obama seems to know that &#8211; but we don&#8217;t&#8230; <\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>From 2003 to 2008, among McConnell&#8217;s top 20 donors have been 5 financial\/investment firms: UBS, FMR Corporation [Fidelity Investments], Citigroup, Bank of New York and Merrill Lynch. During his entire political career, the top three industries donating to McConnell have been: Lawyers [$1.5 million], Securities and Investments [$1.5 million], and Health Professionals [$1.4 million]. Lessons [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4436","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4436","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4436"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4436\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4436"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4436"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4436"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}