Well that was fun – now what?

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Yesterday was a microcosm of the Obotian experience: Exultation, followed by outrage and then despair.

Morning: “Ha ha! Take that you teabagging racists. Obama is the shiznit! That’s how you play bare-knuckle politics!”

Mid-day: “How dare those tea-bagging racists disrespect the President like that!”

Afternoon: “What? Obama caved in to those tea-bagging racists AGAIN?”

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The schadenfreude was so thick you could eat it with a spoon. I had three or four helpings. But now what?

Ann Althouse raises a good point:

Should Obama be criticized just for doing a Joint Session of Congress, quite aside from the debate? This proposal isn’t going to amount to anything, is it? It’s political grandstanding. There’s something dreadful about locking all the members of Congress in place where they’re supposed to sit silently — God forbid anyone yells “you lie!” or whatever — or cheer and laud the President. Frankly, I don’t think it’s presidential, because — in America — we have 3 branches of government, and the President’s forays into the Capitol should be rare, dignified rituals of a nonpartisan nature.

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We have three co-equal branches of government. Obot claims to the contrary, Congress does not have to kowtow to the President. In fact, they shouldn’t. The President does not demand a joint session of Congress, he requests it. They don’t have to honor that request, even though they always have.

So anyway, what is Obama going to say that is so important? We know that the subject is jobs, but what legislation will he propose?

Matt Yglesias:

I think Jon Chait gets this exactly right. The debate between moderate Democrats who want the president to propose initiatives that can pass Congress even if they don’t create jobs and liberal Democrats who want the president to propose initiatives that would create jobs even if they can’t pass Congress is nonsense.

If you’re going to propose things that can pass Congress and they create jobs, then I don’t think it matters whether or not they’re popular. The job creation will be rewarded. But if you’re going to pass something that can’t pass Congress, then it doesn’t matter at all whether it would hypothetically work, all that matters is that it polls well. And as Chait says, the things that Keynesian analysis suggests would create jobs — much larger budget deficits, higher inflation — are not popular things to campaign on. The smart move, if you’re just going to give a speech for speech’s sake, is to make the speech be full of nonsense bromides that voters like to hear. Except one problem President Obama will face is that for a “nonsense bromides” strategy to be maximally effective, it would be really useful for the entire progressive echo chamber to get really excited about his bromide agenda and start loudly insisting that the bromides would be super-successful in reducing unemployment if implemented. But Paul Krugman, Rachel Maddow, etc. won’t do that. A speech full of bromides will be disparaged as bromidish. These are the wages of the “hack gap,” the fact that the progressive media ecology is less leadable than the Conintern. Consequently, the president will probably try to split the difference in a way that leaves everyone unhappy and sniping at him from all directions.

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Is there anything Obama can propose that would be a) popular, b) worthwhile and c) have a hope in hell of passing?

There is no way that Congress is going to pass another massive stimulus bill. Obama had his chance with that and screwed it up. So what’s left? More tax cuts? Some trade treaties that won’t be a drop in the bucket to our economy?

But if Obama is just going to get up in front of Congress and propose “nonsense bromides” so he can posture for his reelection then Congress should tell him to go piss up a rope not to waste their time.

BTW – Remember when progressives eschewed groupthink and authoritarianism? Now they want followers, not independent thinkers.

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