I've been a DailyKos member for longer than I can remember, but I'm a lurker here for the most part. Over the last several months, I've watched the pro-Obama/anti-Obama feud fester, crescendo and generally dominate the rec list. Both sides have legitimate points. But as you contemplate whether to strap on your boots and get out there to do something to help Democrats this year, think about a different "what might have been" scenario than those in the chic Obama-debates diaries.
What would have happened if we had sat on our hands in the 2008 cycle because we weren't satisfied with Obama's centrist campaign promises? Back then there were plenty who thought Obama didn't promise enough change (or the right changes) on a range of issues – health care reform, war crimes prosecutions, ending the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, and on and on.
Consider for a moment if, uninspired enough by Obama's campaign, we'd been tepid in our support or even just sat out the election altogether. Where would we be now with President McCain?
After the Republican primary in 2000, Mavericky McCain lurched further right after licking his Bush-inflicted wounds. In 2008, it was fun pitting the old, less-right-wing McCain in a debate against the new sell-out, anything-to-win, bomb-bomb-bomb McCain. Whichever McCain would have shown up for his inauguration in January 2009, he would have been a very different President than President Obama. There would have been no timetable for withdrawing from Iraq, and the combat mission that just ended would have continued unabated through 2009, right up to the present, under a commander-in-chief who didn't know a Sunni from a Shiite. There would be no timetable for withdrawing from Afghanistan either, and the surge there would have been bigger and come sooner.
Increasingly impassioned and unreasoned anti-Iranian rhetoric would have continued to masquerade as policy, and the Middle East quagmire would have deepened.
Phil Gramm would have become the architect of economic policy.
The changes Obama and congressional Democrats have achieved may be incremental, but all the recriminations aside, they are still movement, if only baby steps, in the right direction. Sure, they're a lot less than the overwhelming majority of us around here would have liked to have seen. But with a President McCain, decades of doing absolutely nothing about health care would have continued for at least four more years. There would be no consumer protection legislation, no consumer protection agency, and you wouldn't even know who Elizabeth Warren is.
The Supreme Court would have at best remained the same if Souter and Stevens had stayed on, at worst moved significantly further right. Even just one McCain appointment to the Court would have been a monumental setback on a range of issues for years to come. Think Sotomayor and Kagan are disappointing picks? Imagine what McCain's picks would look like.
And don't forget about a V.P. Palin. How d'ya think that Twitterin' veep-thingy would be workin' out for ya? One heartbeat away. As awful as a McCain presidency would have been, we'd still have another 2 1/2 years of his health to worry about.
In the final analysis, none of us can say with any certainty whether things would have been appreciably better had the Obama administration negotiated differently on big ticket items (a public option, more infrastructure spending in the stimulus, greater accountability under TARP II, stronger financial reform, a stronger environmental bill, yada yada yada) – if we're honest with ourselves. No one can credibly deny such a strategy would have carried a significant risk of achieving a big fat nothing. With an economy far deeper in the tank (as it surely would have been without the 2009 bailout payments and the too-small-stimulus package), voters would probably be even more ready to change horses midstream than they are now. Given how little appetite voters have for the blame game despite how blame-deserving Republicans are right now, there's no reason to think voters would be ready to throw out Republicans if things were worse. Even with the bailout and stimulus, the economy is still the most important issue for voters, yet one of the most obstructionist Senate minorities in history is currently poised to win seats. Not to mention, a strategy that depends on things being worse – with all the real life consequences that would entail for millions of people – is no different than the current Republican strategy and every bit as cynical, arrogant and reprehensible. Even the most noble ends don’t justify corrupt means.
It is, however, absolutely certain that far too much would have been significantly different under President McCain. As the combat mission in Iraq officially ends and the 2010 campaigns begin in earnest for most voters, this is an especially appropriate time to ponder just how different things would have been if we hadn't done all that we did to defeat McCain, despite the shortcomings many of us saw or have come to see in Obama.
True, things would likely be a colossally bigger mess than they are now. And we can dream how voters would perhaps come to their senses in growing numbers and elect more progressives to Congress this coming November, setting us up for a truly smashing win in 2012. But those dreams are just that: dreams. There's no guarantee that's how things would have played out. Permitting bad Republican government to flourish as a strategy is not only bad strategy, it's eerily similar to the warped reasoning of the Bush years. Preemptive war as a means to peace, prosperity and democracy in the Middle East. In a word, that kind of strategy is irresponsible.
This isn't some national poker game in which we can risk everything in hopes of winning one really big hand. Lives were and are at stake. The lives of thousands of American soldiers. Millions of uninsured Americans. So much more could have been accomplished, at least in theory. Some things still can be achieved, even if only frustratingly incrementally, and more than just in theory – but only if we retain control of Congress. We can debate the inadequacy of the progress we've made, but it is still progress, no matter how disappointingly small or far from the ideal.
As we consider, debate and threaten what we will or won't do as we head into the final stretch of this election, it's worth considering where we'll be if instead of Speaker Pelosi being sworn in next January, Speaker Boehner takes her place. Or instead of having Harry Reid to kick around, Majority Leader McConnell controls the Senate calendar. Are we just going to postpone any progress on all the things-that-can't-wait while Republicans rule the roost in 2011 and 2012? If they retake the reins, even incremental progress is over for at least two more long years. The stakes are as high as they've ever been. DOMA, DADT. Disappointed with Obama's slow-going approach? You'll just love the Boehner/McConnell strategy. Climate change legislation? Fuggedaboutit. Sure, we can afford two or more years of doing nothing about global warming. You know I could go on and on and on because you know the issues. And you know the stakes.
Faltering, inadequate, maddeningly slow baby steps in the right direction are way better than a return to movement in the wingnut direction. You don't have to be happy with everything or even most of what Obama's done. I'm plenty unhappy with a lot this administration hasn't done, and in too many cases, things they have done. But I'll be goddamned if I'll sit back and passively help a dangerously crazy opposition party regain control of Congress just because Obama and this Congress aren't what I hoped they'd be. Or because they're nowhere close. Debate Obama's and congressional Democrats' shortcomings all you want, but one thing is beyond all rational debate: the choice between them and the alternative is a no-brainer. As Yosef 52 sums it up so well, "There is a difference between mediocre and horrible." A huge difference.
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UPDATE: Wow, thanks for the RecList folks (my first)!
UPDATE II: For a more in-depth reflection on what a McCain presidency would have brought us, I'm Betting on McCain is a great read if you missed it last year. Thanks, wmtriallawyer.
UPDATE III: I'd like to make a few final points and address a couple of recurring themes in the comments, before I get back to work for the day. I apologize in advance for how long this update has become. To paraphrase someone smarter than I am (Pascal?), I'd have written something shorter, but I don't have the time.
First of all, I tried to steer clear of the "all the great things Obama has done" versus "all the things Obama hasn't done"(or "all the bad things Obama has done or hasn't stopped") narratives. There's really not much new to add to that debate. I agree with Obama's progressive critics on a host of issues, and with Obama fans on others. Let me offer just two examples. I wanted single-payer, and I still do. I think Obama made critical mistakes in the health care debate and negotiations. So did Congress. And as disappointed as I was with the final product, I agree with Joe: what they passed, imperfect as it is, is still a BFD when you consider how many have failed before for so long. Why the fuck don't you suspend enforcement of don't-ask-don't-tell, while we await a congressional fix, to stem the damage caused by the loss of good people over a bad policy? On the other hand, I'm certain the military leadership and Secretary of Defense would not have come out forcefully in favor of repealing DODT in a McCain administration, and it wouldn't be undergoing study. McCain wouldn't have extended benefits for same-sex partners of federal employees. Obama did. These kinds of debates, playing out on this site (and in the comments below) make me run hot and cold on Obama and the Dems in Congress all the time. It frustrates me to no end! But I didn't intend this to be yet another in the seeming endless stream of Obama-feud diaries about which I'm of two minds myself.
Likewise, my "anti-Obama" shorthand wasn't meant to slur Obama critics. Far from it. I shudder at the thought of Democrats becoming a monolithic, dissent-fearing party like the Republican Party. I apologize to each of you who understood "anti" to be demeaning of good faith criticism. Obama is due a very healthy dose of criticism on a wide range of issues. Where I part company with some of you is when you let your disappointments and frustration with Obama - and sometimes even outrage - blind you to the reality that the only other alternative to continuing to work for the election of more and better Democrats is something much, much worse. Which brings me to my next point.
A number of you think pointing out how things would have been had McCain won, or if Boehner becomes Speaker, is playing the "fear card." While it would be intellectually dishonest of me to maintain that this line of argument is not to some degree playing a "fear card," it is at least equally intellectually dishonest to contend that there is some moral equivalency between this kind of "fear argument" and Republican-style fear-mongering. Not all "fear cards" are equal. Republican scare tactics consist of using phoney, ginned up goblins designed to bully voters into voting against their self interests. The mother of that kind of craven fear-mongering was the Saddam-al-qaeda-Iraqi-WMD lie based on false, secret "intelligence" to recklessly frighten and goad the public into a war of aggression. (And yes, I agree with Rachel that Obama should have had something to say about that in his Oval Office address last night, but I digress.) That's one example of an utterly illegitimate use of a fear card. Fear is not, however, always irrational and does not always produce irrational behavior.
There are some things that should be feared. Michele Bachmann wielding a Chairman's gavel on any committee in the House ought to scare any thoughtful, sane voter. Which isn't to say that a Republican controlled Congress will be able to pass their agenda without Obama's signature. Of course they can't. But only someone with a very short memory needs a reminder of the damage a Republican-controlled Congress can do with a Democrat in the White House. Newt Gingrich. Tom Delay. Ken Starr. Endless congressional investigations. Impeachment.
Pointing out the very real, potential consequences of voting-but-not-working-and-not-donating is not the same kind of illegitimate fear-mongering Republicans engage in. If you don't fear handing the reins back over to Boehner, McConnell or both....then, wow. Debating with you isn't going to be productive. When FDR declared we have nothing to fear but fear itself, he didn't for one second mean to suggest there wouldn't be anything to fear in handing power back to the same Republican crowd that had run the country into the ground in the 1920's. And things are no different today than they were then. Losing either the House or the Senate to the purged, extreme, right-wing, teabag-pandering, birther-appeasing, 14th-amendment-repealing, lunatic party congressional Republicans have devolved into these days is frightening. If that prospect doesn't scare you, you're either not paying attention, or - well, I question why you even visit this site.
My point (and I question now whether I made it clearly or whether I can) is that regardless of where on the Obama-diaries perspective you may come from, don't sabotage a relatively good thing through complacency and inaction. There are only two choices in this and virtually any election. Agreeing to vote, but not to work or donate is a cop out. The lack of enthusiasm on our side isn't going to change among the vast majority of voters out there if we cannot come together long enough to pull out all the stops to keep moving the ball down the field. Yeah, I'd like to see an occasional Hail Mary pass attempt, too. But few games are won that way, whether you're talking football or politics. Unless we keep grinding out the plays and gaining a few yards at a time through hard, determined work, the other side is going to get the ball. We are among the most politically informed and passionate, and if we let that passion for something better wane because things take too long, because they don't turn out as well as we had hoped, or because there are some things our side is doing with which we very strongly disagree, then we're capitulating to something far worse. If we let the perfect become the enemy of the good – or the okay, or the fair, or even the just mediocre – we may as well be actively supporting the other side. The result will be the same. You don't have to quit your bitchin'. Just don't be a quitter. Don't be a Palin.