A Pox on Both Their Houses

Would you like to know what is wrong with Washington? How much time do you have? Not that much, well then here is a quick example of what is wrong. These people in our government are perhaps the most craven group of six hundred or so people you could find in our population.

Led by a President that needs to update his Webster's so that he can see that negotiation does not equal capitulation and a set of Senate Leaders on both sides of the who would rank amongst the least feared and least popular members from their own brethren you can see why little gets done. At times in the last week it seemed like The President was negotiating against himself. Faced with getting basically everything that Democrats want by doing nothing the President like a movement junkie could not do so, like an unpopular kid offering more and more of a handicap to get someone to play ball with him in the end he is stuck with a bill that no one likes, no one feels good about, and that frankly he owns completely. President's in their second term do not need to capitulate before the second inauguration.

The folks in the House are no better but at least in these cases you have over 500 of them with the expectation that it will be hard for a leader to keep them corralled.

The right's new boogeyman Nate Silver wrote last week about one of the biggest causes of the inability of Congress to get anything done. The outrageous gerrymandering that has been done to Congressional districts over the last couple of decades has changed our electorate in an overwhelming way. Silver shows us that the amount of districts considered Swing Districts have dropped more than twenty percent to an all time low. At the same time the percentage of districts considered landslide Democratic or landslide Republican has increased exponentially. Who did this? Sad to say in most cases this has been with the sole purpose of keeping those in power in office. Almost twenty years after Newt Gingrich's Contract with America and term limits the entrenchment of incumbents on both sides is nearly absolute. The net result of this is that for many if not most incumbents their greatest obstacle to reelection is a challenge in their primary, from the left for a Democrat and the right for a Republican. Thus anyone who acts in a centrist manner, who does not demonize the other side, is setting himself up for defeat. Ask Richard Lugar about this principle?

As a Democrat, and I consider myself a moderate I understand that there is a need to work with the other side but this President is the worlds worst negotiator. How would you like to be part of his team, forced to say never, never, never , only to have at the last minute he capitulate on something he insisted and forced you to constantly insist would be the " one thing" he would not negotiate on. It is an old saying but it it so applicable here, " If you do not stand for something you will fall for anything." Mr. President what will you fight for?

Republicans are intractable, some of their actions are crazy. House Speaker Boehner last week proposed a bill that would cut school lunch and the child tax credit but he was negotiating. This President...well I have said my piece.

Why it is though that when the President is done negotiating that I often feel like I am hoping that the bill is rejected in the house. This happened in our public option less health care bill and certainly is my hope in this awful extension of the Bush tax cuts.

Terrible. Terrible. Terrible. All aboard for the Disappointment Express conducted by Barack Obama.