The Trust Thing

Chris Bowers writes:

I don’t trust the Obama administration, either. I never really have trusted them, and this has been a major cause of friction I have had with many bloggers and commenters since the end of the election. Given that we are still early on in the Obama administration, the difference between progressive bloggers who are largely critical, and those who are largely supportive, of the Obama administration primarily comes down to this issue of trust. [...]

If you are a progressive and trust President Obama, then when things like cramdown and card check get defeated, or when the stimulus and climate change bill are weakened, it was because that was the best anyone could be done in our current political environment. However, if you are me, then it seems like these defeats could have been avoided, or at least lessened, if the administration had offered more than token, verbal support. The administration’s unwillingness to take on powerful, status-quo institutions comes off as satisfaction with those powerful, status-quo institutions.

I think this is a total misunderstanding of why people sometimes disagree with Chris Bowers and reveals a staggering lack of common sense about the operation of American political institutions. For a bill to pass the House of Representatives, it needs a majority. According to DW-NOMINATE score, the median member of the House of Representatives is currently Stephanie Herseth of South Dakota. The median member of the United States Senate is Kay Hagan of North Carolina. The pivotal sixtieth Senator required to break a filibuster is Ben Nelson of Nebraska. All you need to believe in order to believe that Barack Obama is generally signing the most progressive bills that it’s possible to pass is that the Obama administration is more left-wing than Representative Herseth and Senator Nelson. I don’t think that requires a huge leap of faith or a naive level of trust. The vast majority of Democrats are more progressive than Herseth and Nelson and Hagan; that’s how Herseth and Nelson and Hagan got to occupy those pivot point roles.

Or, to look at it another way, Obama’s median constituent (the median American) is substantially more progressive than Hagan’s median constituent or Herseth’s or Nelson’s.

Bowers likes to make the point that the administration does more to lean on progressives than it does to lean on moderates. This, however, ignores the basic reality that the administration has more leverage over progressives than it does over moderates. It also ignores the basic reality that progressives are actually the good guys. If you decide to adopt an attitude of sociopathic indifference toward the gargantuan looming catastrophe of climate change, this gives you a lot of bargaining power in a legislative negotiation. But progressives can’t adopt an attitude of sociopathic indifference merely in order to strengthen our bargaining position, because refusing to adopt such an attitude is part of what it means to be progressive.

But circling back, all anyone is asking you to trust is that the Obama administration is about as progressive as a generic Democrat, whereas the legislative pivot points are occupied by unusually conservative Democrats. No matter how jaundiced a view you want to take of the “generic Democrat” it still comes out that the unusually conservative Democrats are the real roadblock to progressive change.