Looking through some of the blogs and comments from self-described ‘progressives’ following the debt ceiling debacle, I’m stunned by the realization that so many on the left have learned nothing from our sorry history of self-defeating behavior.  In 1968 we thought it would be a good idea to blow it all up after our antiwar hero, Senator McCarthy, could not win the Democratic primary.  We created chaos at the Democratic convention and played right into the law and order fear-mongering of the right.  Our own stupidity put Nixon in the White House and we couldn’t defeat him in the next election.

In 2000 while registering voters for the Democrats I kept running into Greens who intoned with wide-eyed solemnity that “you have to vote your conscience.”  WTF????  An election is a numbers game to decide who gets what, not some kind of moral purity test!  Had these folks gotten behind Gore or even just had the good sense to sit down and shut up, W would never have been president, there would have been no Iraq war, and we would not have lost the Supreme Court.  Again, once he was in we couldn’t get him out.

Now we are treated to accusations from some  ‘progressives’ that the debt ceiling outcome exposes Obama as some kind of closet Republican, a weak negotiator, and other equally absurd propositions.  How could anyone on the left think we can afford this kind of self-indulgent smartest-person-in-the-room nonsense while Grover Norquist and Frank Luntz sit in the corner eating our lunch?  These people want nothing more than to give voters the impression that government doesn’t work because that will make the job of dismantling it that much easier.  The folks attacking Obama from the left are working for the Koch brothers just as surely as if they were on the payroll.

The plain fact is that we failed, not Obama.  His weakness flows directly from our weakness.  We lost the public option when we failed to defeat Joe Lieberman in 2006.  End of story, we didn’t have the votes.  While many on the left were busy whining about Obama’s inability to accomplish what could no longer be accomplished, a bunch of angry nuts pumped up by right wing propagandists were grabbing the microphones at town halls across the country at a time when anger was contagious.  Our inaction allowed enough of these nuts into congress to establish a tyranny of the minority. 

In the Senate it has now become routine for sixty votes to become the threshold for moving legislation.  We haven’t had the votes to do much of anything, especially considering that some of those with a ‘D’ after their name represent decidedly non-progressive constituencies like the great state of Nebraska.  In the House a minority caucus in the Republican majority has figured out that they have enough votes to hold hostage must-pass pieces of legislation, aided by establishment Republicans who understand that the dysfunction it creates furthers their ultimate goal of tearing down the government. 

Obama’s purported weakness is not the issue.  A stiffer spine and a couple bucks will buy him a cup of coffee at Starbuck’s without the votes in congress.  The extension of the Bush tax cuts was a result of the Republican's decision to hold hostage badly needed unemployment insurance and payroll tax cuts, not because Obama secretly thought it was a good idea.  The debt ceiling deal was a direct result of the same dynamic and there will be no end to it until we get enough of these people out of office.  That’s our job, not the president’s.  

Instead of helping Republicans with their campaign to suppress voting on the left, how about we try a little message discipline for once?  Progressives don’t seem to appreciate how effective the Republican message machine has been over the past few decades when it comes to influencing the low-information independent voters who decide elections.  They massage their language with focus groups and then flood the media with spokespeople who repeat the same phrases over and over.  If you’re a voter who does not pay a lot of attention to political matters the message gradually seeps in, and the more you hear it the more credible it sounds.  “We have a spending problem, not a revenue problem.”  No matter how ridiculous the message, it becomes an article of faith through repetition.

We have the harder message to sell.  They can hold up the evil Taxman and illegal immigrants as common enemies to blame, while we’re stuck trying to explain that our tax dollars are not really going down a rat-hole and that government can function to meet common needs that markets will not.  We have to try and sell the proposition that there are real physical limits to growth that will require sacrifice for the common good.  A difficult task, and one made much harder when we succumb to the temptation to take the easy way out and blame the president for not winning a no-win situation of our own making.  We elected a president, not a monarch.

I’m not suggesting we get out and lie to the public in unison like they do, but we sure can do better than helping Republicans drive wedges among the left.  Why not focus on placing the blame where it belongs, with the Republican obstructionists and the voters who put them in office?  Why not drive some wedges of our own between libertarians and social conservatives on the right?  Maybe it’s not such a good idea to just let them endlessly repeat their bogus talking points without refutation.  The president has not let us down; we have let him down by failing to give him the minimum number of votes in congress that he needs to govern.  The coming election will be every bit as pivotal as any of the watershed elections we have thrown away in the past.  Let’s not blow it again.