The Week Sauce

So, looking over the political weekly mag titled...well...The Week, it appears to be missing a few words from said title, as with the mag's contributors being the likes of folks on my blogroll, namely intelligent people I respect like Daniel Larison and Brad DeLong, well that's pretty good.  On the other hand, the outfit also includes obnoxious faux-centrist concern-trolling hippie-punching types like David Frum (Krugman is right but we need tax cuts anyway), Tish Durkin (Robert Byrd was history's greatest monster), and of course, Clinton operative Bob Shrum.

It's Shrum's article that epitomizes The Week perfectly.  He wants Obama to hold Congress over in August.

The president should announce the special session, lay out the agenda — and as Harry Truman did when he recalled Congress in the summer of 1948, challenge the Republicans to do “what they are saying they are for.”

On employment, even better-than-expected jobs numbers won’t be sufficient to persuade people that the worst is over. The millions of Americans whose unemployment benefits are running out can’t subsist on a trend. The Republicans in the Senate refuse to extend jobless benefits on the grounds that the cost can’t add to the deficit, that unlike GOP tax cuts for the rich, Bush’s prescription drug benefit, and two wars, it must be paid for. That’s stupid economics in the case of automatic stabilizers that are designed to generate demand and new jobs.

But the president and Democrats could split the difference here. Why not, for example, revive the $19 billion tax on banks in the Wall Street reform bill? Massachusetts Sen. Scott Brown blackmailed Democrats to remove it — in exchange for his vote. But shouldn’t the banks that received hundreds of billions in taxpayer bailout funds pay something to help the unemployed whose livelihoods they shattered by their financial recklessness?

Almost certainly, the Republicans would filibuster anything like this — which would vividly demonstrate whose side they’re on. In fact, a special August session would give them opportunities to reveal themselves again and again.

The Republicans say that since the oil spill, the president and Democrats have done too little on energy; in truth the Senate GOP has blocked the energy bill. Give the party of “no” the chance to do the bidding of big oil and their big contributors — and to vote against the environment and energy independence — in the globally warmed glare of the August sun.

The xenophobes claim that anti-Hispanic profiling like the recent Arizona law is a reaction to the Obama administration’s failure to act on immigration. Never mind that Sen. Lindsey Graham and the few so-called moderate Republicans walked away from reform, along with Sen. John McCain, who appears willing to do anything to salvage his degraded career. Give the GOP the chance to rebuke racism and help pass a fair solution — or alternatively, to spew anti-Hispanic rhetoric and doom the party’s presidential prospects for a generation. 

Now, on the surface, this would be a good idea.  The problem is actually pretty simple:  The Republicans will simply block everything day after day.  This only works if the Democrats can actually pass the legislation in question, and barring that, it would only work if they don't get stabbed in the back by Ben Nelson, Evan F'ckin' Bayh, Joe Lieberman, etc.  Senate Dems voting against Obama's agenda only gives the GOP the opportunity to say "Hey, even the Democrats don't like this.  Clearly this must be stopped."

The problem with Shrum's logic is that the Republicans have already filibustered jobs legislation and everything else time and time again, and people refuse to call the GOP out on it.  Even worse, Democrats are helping them filibuster things.  Something like this is a waste of time unless the politics are there to pass the damn bills, and that's something Obama, Reid, and Pelosi have to do when Congress is actually IN session.

You don't pick a fight you're not going to win.  Getting beaten up doesn't make you a winner in politics.

The words missing from The Week's title are in Village Idiocy.