Democrats Face a Familiar Foe in an Unfamiliar Time; Will They Learn the Lessons of the Past?
...it is imperative that the Democrats learn from the mistakes of the Obama administration.
By Michael Roderick
We need to have a serious talk about politics and policy in this country. Our politics are broken, and many in both parties want it that way.
Those in power use words and phrases that they either don’t understand, or intentionally misuse to confuse the public, and they do this to play politics and stay in power. Right now, politicians are misusing terms like “bipartisanship” and “deficit” to sell a watered-down stimulus/relief package that will not go far enough to help us rebound from this pandemic.
I fear that the Democrats are going to once again fail to learn from history and are going to miss an opportunity to really effect change and positively impact countless lives.
Joe Biden proposed a $1.9T relief package, which in the opinion of many already didn’t go far enough to have the effect he desired.
Centrist Democrats want to pass a bill that they deem more “bipartisan,” which they believe means one that passes with votes from politicians with an (R) next to their name. This isn’t what bipartisanship should mean, but we can discuss that later.
Despite the fact things like $2k checks to folks making $75k have majority support amongst both major parties and “independents,” (and even retroactive and recurring checks have majority support) Republicans in the Senate are seeking to scale down the already insufficient proposal by basically lowering each and every aspect of the bill in the name of protecting against what they see as a growing “budget deficit.”
Again, they are either misunderstanding government spending or intentionally misleading the public, but again, that’s a topic for another article.
In recent history, there have been multiple times when Democrats had control of the federal government and missed their opportunities to truly improve the lives of the people because of some elusive hope at “bipartisan solutions.”
In the wake of the economic collapse due to the housing crisis in 2008, President Obama worked to pass a stimulus/relief bill through congress. Wanting to seem “bipartisan,” he did what President Biden is doing now, he proposed a bill too small to truly meet the crisis he faced.
He did this in an attempt to bring Republican legislators to the table, but in the end he got a grand total of 3 votes out of over 200 federally elected Republicans, and those votes came with significant concessions that weakened the package. The relief bill included funding for unemployment, infrastructure spending, healthcare, education, law enforcement/homeland security, and cash payments.
Just because the elected officials didn’t vote for it, didn’t mean these priorities didn’t have support of a number of Republican voters. The relief bill eventually did some good, and the economy eventually bounced back, but it was a slow and delayed recovery. It didn’t have to be.
Not long after that relief package, President Obama proposed and attempted to pass a bill to ensure universal health care coverage. Once again, in an attempt to approach the matter in a bipartisan manner, he would propose much less than what would truly meet the crisis of tens of millions of uninsured individuals.
This proposal of course is what eventually passed Congress as what we all now know as the Affordable Care Act or “Obamacare.” From the beginning, Obama took a nominally Republican idea, the health care exchanges Mitt Romney had helped pass in Massachusetts and introduced it on the federal level.
While there was once a “public option” which could have done much more to protect the millions who would remain uninsured, that was eventually eliminated in order to satisfy the same types of Republican and Centrist Democrats now trying to compromise the current Covid-19 relief bill.
After thousands of hours of debate and amendments, the Affordable Care Act was significantly weakened (with amendments from the GOP), and still didn’t receive a single Republican vote.
The GOP merely attempted to delay and weaken the bill in an attempt to run out the clock. While the bill was unpopular by name, not a soul on this planet could convince me that it had zero “bipartisan support” just because it received no Republican votes in Congress.
With these historical examples fresh in our minds, and facing a crisis of a magnitude unseen in recent memory, it is imperative that the Democrats learn from the mistakes of the Obama administration.
There is a glimmer of hope that the Democrats have turned a corner, with Senate Majority leader Chuck Schumer tweeting “We are in the midst of a once-in-a-century crisis. Only big, bold action is called for. This Senate will deliver more help to the American people and fast.”
However, the Centrist Wing of the party have made it known where they stand. West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin announced that “We’re going to try to find a bipartisan pathway forward, I think we need to. But we need to work together” in a response chastising VP Kamala Harris.
And here in San Diego, New Democrat Coalition member Scott Peters has made it clear that he agrees with stricter means testing and less direct payments, when he put out a press release stating “Rep. Peters said he would prefer a higher unemployment benefit over broad per-person direct payments because unemployment benefits are more targeted to those who need it most.
For example, a recent college graduate, who is employed at $70,000 per year who did not lose any income last year, may not need the bonus payment,” setting up the showdown on a stimulus as an “either or'' debate when it doesn’t need to be so.
These types of comments are indicative of a political ideology which is not ready to meet the crises that our nation faces. Politics which are based on buzz words such as “bipartisanship” and “reduce the deficit,” which, with all due respect, these politicians either don’t fully understand, or else are using incorrectly or without context in a misleading manner.
It is time for the party, and our politics, to learn and grow, not to perpetuate these mistakes of the past!