Mark Schmitt "Changing the Tone"

[claymisher]

I always learn something from Mark Schmitt's posts:

Indeed, there is an aggrieved minority in this country -- maybe 15 percent to 18 percent of the population -- that will not go away. Their grievances are couched in terms of the health-care bill, government spending, or gun rights, but it all boils down to race. It's not just that the president is not white. It's that for the first time since President Rutherford B. Hayes ended Reconstruction, the white South does not control the country. In every political configuration we've known, whether under Democratic or Republican presidents, white, mostly Southern conservatives held the balance of power. They were the unyielding, aging committee chairs of the 1950s and 1960s, the heart of Nixon's "Southern Strategy." They were the essential electoral votes for Democratic presidents like Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter, and by the time of the Bush administration, they not only dominated the party but the House and the Senate.

http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=changing_the_tone

[bjkeefe]

I always learn something from Mark Schmitt's posts:



http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=changing_the_tone

That was interesting. I agree -- Schmitt is always worth reading. Thanks for the link.

[claymisher]

Mark Schmitt on Obama's first year:

What President Barack Obama needs to do is .... No, let's try this again. The problem with Barack Obama is ....

Stop! I can't bear to read another column that starts like that, much less write one. As the administration's first year in office comes to an end, the most distinctive thing about it is the degree to which people who should long ago have outgrown Great Man theories of history remain transfixed by a single individual. Every success is interpreted as a measure of Obama's skills and priorities; every disappointment is read as a revelation of his excess caution, naiveté, or other flaws.


and what it takes to make progressive change:

the current health-reform effort began years before Obama even announced his campaign for the White House. Drawing on the lessons of past failures, when reform had no organized constituency, advocates and funders put massive resources into groups such as Health Care for America Now. They picked up political scientist Jacob Hacker's idea of a public plan within a structured insurance marketplace and developed it to give progressive advocates of a single-payer system something politically realistic that they could get behind. And they worked to ensure that all the Democratic candidates for president (with the exception of single-payer stalwart Rep. Dennis Kucinich) converged around roughly the same basic model. Years of health-reform-policy development, projects to improve public awareness of health reform, and advocacy campaigns were able to lay the groundwork for health reform well in advance.

http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=machinery_of_progress

[bjkeefe]

Mark Schmitt on Obama's first year:



and what it takes to make progressive change:



http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=machinery_of_progress

Thanks for that link. Clever closing line there, too.