Tactics Versus Strategy

The Dems are winning on tactics but losing on strategy, and the GOP knows it.  Today's unemployment filibuster vote is a prime example as Ezra Klein explains:

Democrats are set to pass an extension of unemployment benefits today. The presence of Carte Goodwin, Sen. Robert Byrd's temporary replacement, gives them the 60 votes necessary to break the Republicans' -- and Ben Nelson's -- filibuster of the bill.

But victory obscures defeat. Republicans managed to take a jobs bill, weaken it to an unemployment benefits and state and local relief bill, weaken that to an unemployment benefits bill, and then weaken that bill. Annie Lowrey -- unmarried partner, etc. -- reports:

The bill does not include an extension of the $25-a-week Federal Additional Compensation funds, tacked onto many unemployment checks. It also does not include any of the other provisions originally included in or proposed for the jobs bill or extenders package: It does not close tax loopholes, or provide Medicare funding to states, or include funds to keep teachers and other state employees working. It also does not create an additional fifth tier of benefits; federal extensions only continue in states with higher than an 8 percent unemployment rate, and the maximum weeks of state and federal benefits remains ninety-nine.

Republicans in the Senate, in other words, have won the fight over further spending on job creation. The argument has narrowed to unemployment benefits, and Democrats can't even reliably win those votes.

9.5%+ unemployment, and the argument is on the national debt, not on helping people.  Voters know full well that this is a complete crock in an ecnomic picture like this, but the Democrats are going along with the Republicans and allowing them to not only frame the argument in Republican terms, but then they are agreeing with the damn GOP.

The GOP has beaten a $100 billion plus jobs plan down to $33 billion, and even that has been almost impossible to pass.  The Republican plan to scuttle the economy and blame Obama is a strategy, and it's working.

Meanwhile the Democrats look like they can't pass a damn thing without Republican help...because that's true.  The even larger problem than the deficit garbage is the refusal to do anything about filibuster rules that are forcing every vote to be a 60-vote supermajority.  And under the rules, the Republicans are well within their rights to stop any legislation from ever passing.

There's something wrong with the rules.