I subscribe to the bitch slap theory of politics (Yglesias’s).  This argues that the voters, as a general rule, prefer the guy who bitch slaps his opponents to the one who gets slapped. I subscribe to it because, more or less, all American voters partake of the basic American preference for winners and bullies over reasonable people. 

Its true that the three basic culture groups in the US: far right, center, and liberal/left (we don’t have a real left at all) may have slightly different takes on each individual incident but that’s because they have different stakes in each player. 

There was a recent very good essay about coalition politics somewhere—I forgot to bookmark it—which argued that the Obama team simply refuses to respect coalition needs and that has led to a rolling dissaffection within Obama’s coalition. I agree with that assessment of what has happened. Its not that Obama lost any individual battle or didn’t advance the ball incrementally on many important things. He did. But every single one of his high profile showdowns with his (and our) enemies has generally involved his team laying down markers and then letting the markers be thrown off the table in some incredibly public way. Women’s rights, gay rights, tax policy. I get the legislative imperative here. But I think to the extent that he is dealing with two different types of coalitions (coalitions of voters/viewers and coalitions within the legislative body) Obama has tended to continuously scant and neglect his voters/viewers. That means that those people don’t have his back when he is attacked. They should, but they’ve been told time and again that the President “has this” and doesn’t need their help. That the President’s strategy will unfold in time. Is very subtle. Requires sacrifice from X, Y, or Z. But the payoff time never comes.

I agree with you that all members of the democratic coalition ought to rally around the President and make the Republicans look bad. We ought to hammer this home—disrespect for the President is disrespect to the office and to the whole country. I take this shit very personally, myself. But thats because I identify with the President as my President. Other people’s experience of working with the President on a notional “team” really varies.

I guess I’d also like to say that loyalty has to be cultivated and rewarded. That’s just the fact of politics and romance. Obama and Michelle (from whom I receive almost daily communications these days) are trying to cultivate that loyalty and personal identification. They recognize its a natural part of the process of getting back into power. But its also a natural part of that identification process that when Obama is attacked *his voters feel attacked,*  when Obama is disrespected his voters are being disrespected.  You can’t expect people to get all excited and overcommitted emotionally to protecting Obama and have Obama fail to get his ducks in a row in handling the fall out from yet another failed ploy.  At a certain point the voter stops being willing to have sand kicked in the face of his chosen leader. He may get super angry with the sand kicker. Or he may withdraw emotionally from what he sees as a losing situation and stop identifying with Obama.

I believe it will work out to Obama’s (and the democratic party’s) benefit. I hope so. But I think the Obama team needs to bring in a series of psychologists used to dealing with dysfunctional families of adult siblings—especially those who deal with issues of inheritance and parental care—because that’s basically what’s going on. And the Obama people really don’t seem to get it.

aimai

Even meatprod got into the act at BJ. Luckily, his reputation proceeded him.

I think this is the final straw for me; I hate the left as much as the right. Actually, more, because they know the stakes, but their butthurt is way more important than their own supposed causes. Bush laid the foundation for disrespecting the office of POTUS, by pissing on it at every turn, ignoring subpoenas, dismantling the justice system. Now, the fucking Speaker gives the fucking president the finger? Too bad the rest of the world is turning away from the Enlightenment, or I’d be trying to leave this dying empire. GRRRR!

What no one seems to understand is that if Obama had asked to address a joint session of Congress on Thursday, Boehner would have insisted it be moved to Friday.

Like you, Betty, I’m glad the debate is in the clear so those maniacs can be mocked for a full news cycle before Obama’s speech.

Those who claim Obama should have “stood up” to Boehner really don’t understand the dynamic here, or who controls the schedule. Obama needs to be absolutely cooperative and concilatory ahead of his speech, so the GOPers can’t claim he “poisoned the well” before he ever got to the podium. Now, they’re just stuck with defending their inevitable rejection of whatever he proposes.

I subscribe to the bitch slap theory of politics

I like that, too. Except that the speech would still be happening on Thursday, and Obama would appear to be both powerless and petulant.

But every single one of his high profile showdowns with his (and our) enemies has generally involved his team laying down markers and then letting the markers be thrown off the table in some incredibly public way. Women’s rights,

Uh, what? Lily Ledbetter, reversal of Mexico City policy, two women added to SCOTUS (one being the first Latina), more women in his cabinet than any other president, HHS requiring insurance companies to cover contraceptives with no co-pay (a MAJOR aim for pro-choice groups for decades), establishing the White House Council on Women and Girl…

Where, exactly, did the Obama administration “let the markers be thrown off the table in some incredibly public way” on women’s rights?

And yes, those Master Bitch-Slappers and Trash-Talkers, McCain and Palin, really brought it home in 2008, didn’t they?

What no one seems to understand is that if Obama had asked to address a joint session of Congress on Thursday, Boehner would have insisted it be moved to Friday.

No, I think everyone gets that. Absolutely everyone except the Obama team. I think they just don’t get how rapidly the goal posts are moved in front of them. They called the Speaker’s office to clear their choice (which I think was a good and natural choice) and the Speaker’s office gave them the all clear without a written confirmation.  It didn’t occur to them that a handshake deal doesn’t exist anymore? Because it occured to anyone who watched the negotiations over the debt ceiling that without something in writing there simply are no agreements anymore.

I think the right thing to do was for Obama/Carney to say “I’ve requested to speak to…the speaker’s office gave us a verbal agreement…but my past negotiations with the speaker’s office mean I won’t announce the speech until I receive written confirmation because the Speaker has proven again and again that his word is only as good as Rush LImbaughs. Although it would be unprecedented in American history for this to happen, I’m afraid that we are living in unprecedented times.”

If Obama is going to run with “these motherfuckers are crazy” he needs to make clear to his supporters and independents that they are crazy, not that he gets played. 

I always seem to be the only one taking this position on these threads so I apologize for being the outlier as usual.  I am extremely pro Obama personally, and simply prefer my chosen candidate to win, and win big.  I don’t think its disloyal or irrational for me, or anyone else on the left, to have serious qualms about Obama’s political skills in handling a fractious and complicated electorate in which most people are simply watching grand, silent gestures on a small screen—politics with the sound off.  I’ll be thrilled if obama’s speech blows the Republicans and their campaigns and Boehner et al out of the water and resounds well with the electorate.  Its what we all want. The only question we all have is how best to get there.  Again: if you want people to identify with your campaign you have to please your voters. I don’t mean the left I mean all your voters. Obama knows it and that’s what he’s trying to do. If he fails to do it, we all pay the price.

aimai

You gotta love our so-called ‘progressive’ betters.  Boehner responds to Obama’s request with an ‘Up yours, nigger!’ and the professional left responds with ‘Take that, you spineless house nigger!  That’s what you get for not giving us our robust public option and ending DADT by presidential fiat!’  Anyone who calls themself a progressive can go fuck themselves.  This liberal doesn’t give a flying fuck about stupid process bullshit, and will enjoy the high pitched squeal that the emo-pros will emit on election night 2012 when the Spineless, Gutless House Nigger crushes Rick Perry.  The combination of the emo-prog whine with the teabagger wails that night might rip open the space-time continuum.

Why the fuck should Obama give a rat’s ass about the ‘Progressive Movement’ when they want him to fail just as much as the Conservative Movement does?

Yes, indeed, there are two competing narratives here, but I’m more interested in one particular question: are there really more than, say, 100 people in the whole country who actually give a shit about this ridiculous incident?  I certainly wouldn’t form any opinion on the President or his staff based on something so petty, and I certainly wouldn’t use this nonsense to confirm any pre-existing opinion.  Whole lotta dog squat.

It’s hard to arrange a meeting with a handful of people, let alone hundreds.

No matter which day Obama gives his address, there will be at least a couple of hundred legislators who had to cancel something else to be there. I figure when the speaker requested it be on Thursday instead of Wednesday, the President said, “Sure, Thursday works fine for me too.”

I think the right thing to do was for Obama/Carney to say “I’ve requested to speak to…the speaker’s office gave us a verbal agreement…but my past negotiations with the speaker’s office mean I won’t announce the speech until I receive written confirmation because the Speaker has proven again and again that his word is only as good as Rush LImbaughs. Although it would be unprecedented in American history for this to happen, I’m afraid that we are living in unprecedented times.”

Right. And that would be the perfect excuse for dismissing his policy address out-of-hand, because he’s an arrogant, combative, recalcitrant bully who embarrassed Boehner before he even heard the word “No.”

Right on, Hunter Gathers.  Gah.

I think you’ve got it bang on the nose, LACP—except that the political junkies who think discussing theory and narrative and the intricacies of optics and messaging and all the rest of it, ad nauseam, have nothing better to do than inflate/conflate this BS as some sort of referendum on leadership style or lack thereof.

(“Are there no phone banks? Are there no community meetings?”) Seriously, there have got to be better things to do than Monday-morning-quarterback the appointment calendar. And yeah, I know I’m guilty of doing the same damn thing right here and now, but seriously—this shit reminds me of some of the debates I see break out on theater blogs that I read in the other part of my life—histrionic pitched battles between fervent opponents that most people, least of all the theatergoing public, do NOT give a solitary green shit about.

It’s one of the downsides of the Internet age—squabbles grow into squalls and then gale-force punditry. The overall effect, I think, is for most people to just tune it out. So to that extent, I think the whole “The president looks reasonable and Congress looks dickish” thing is a good takeaway for our side. And the approval numbers seem to bear that out. What is Congress at now—12 percent?

shorter narrative:

Boner caved to Limbaugh, again.

@ Aimai:

I always seem to be the only one taking this position on these threads so I apologize for being the outlier as usual.

No apology necessary—it’s great to have your perspective.

I kinda get and kinda don’t get the politics as theater angle. I realize it works that way to some extent, and, being a huge sports fan, I understand how people long for vicarious vindication.

But on the other hand, it strikes me as deeply silly, and I want people to grow the fuck up and look at the scoreboard. I dunno. It’s frustrating.

Rush Limbaugh is taking credit for cowing Obama into submission.

His alternate Wednesday script, “Taking Credit for Making Obama Reveal Himself As a Powerless, Shrieking Tyrant,” will have to stay in the file.

Don’t read the comments at the NBC NFL sports site.

It’s as disgusting and vile as you would expect it to be. I really feel like I’m living in a country of absolute morons. And you can tell they’re all connected to each other in their retarded talking points. Birth certificate, social security card, Blame Bush, teleprompter, blah blah blah.

Honestly, it’s still amazing to me how racist and hateful these idiots are. If there was any idea that race relations have improved and bigots were on the decline, forget it.

sigh

I subscribe to the bitch slap theory of politics (Yglesias’s).

Considering it’s 7+ years after his “I would’ve been against the Iraq war cause war is bad and stuff, but the people who were against it were such smelly hippies that I had to support it anyway” it’s weird to see Yglesias have any credibility with, well, anybody…

Sometimes Obama plays and wins, sometimes he plays and loses and sometimes he realizes that his presidency does not hinge on the latest 24 hour ginned-up kerfuffle and does his best not to play at all.  I think the very fact that Obama got elected is proof that you don’t have to play the game most of the time.

I’m not sure which one applies here, but I don’t give a shit to find out, actually.  I know no kids are going to starve tonight because of whatever the president was supposed to do or not do in this situation.  I’ll save my ire for when that happens and ignore anybody whose paycheck is directly correlated with how pissed off they can make people about the president. 

Those people will always find some fresh outrage, some new proof that Obama sold us all out, no matter what happens.  I would too, if my job depended on it.

A story I will tell my grandchildren:

As I stood there in the voting booth about to pull the lever for Obama (Yes, pull the lever. I lived in the Steampunk district) I reflected on all that the man and his administration had accomplished in the previous four years or so and smiled.

Smiled until I remembered Dategate. The roiling, acrimonious fight over the date of a speech no one would watch. Here my pride turned to sorrow and I realized it was over. I knew what I had to do. Congratulations President Perry. I have voted Republican ever since, kids.

Oh, and since I never had children, who the hell are you?

Aaaand scene!

Interestingly—at least to me—is the fact that I agree with everyone here.  With aimai I agree that I want more emotional satisfaction for myself from Obama’s display of what these fuckheads so richly deserve.  With Betty and Oblomova I agree that none of that is remotely as important as his actual accomplishments.  With Strange I agree that snarking back at Boehner can be seen as descending to Boehner’s debased level.

What makes this issue so continual and continually frustrating is, I think, the simultaneous existence of two audiences: me, and my and “our” desires and even needs, and “the masses,” who aren’t as sophisticated as I and whose tendency to think the wrong thing and vote against their own interests was cemented in my perception by Little Boots’s re-election.

Meaning, “Yes, yes, WE know better than to care about this childish schoolyard made-ya-flinch behavior of Boehner (we’re mature, adults, etc.), but the masses won’t.  They’ll disrespect Obama and fall for the Repubs’ cheap theatrics, and end up electing Perry/Bachmann.  And then what?”

This is what I fear.  I’m not prepared to defend it or argue in favor of it.  I could be wrong and I hope I am.  Every four years I agonize about going after the Stupid vote—can we?  should we?—and I have no idea what I’ve learned by now.

So if the President’s team wanted to get maximum exposure for a speech and also force the GOP to put up their own non-solutions for jobs, they might pick just before the NFL season start for a target TV time, and then ask for the day before so the GOP could rudely refuse and force them to accept the next day - which is what they wanted in the first place. Of course, to come up with a strategy like that, they would have to be smarter than the average progressive shit-for-brains, but we know that can’t be true because the President is black.

Not that I’m annoyed or anything.

Look. Obama can’t fart without Boehner beating the dog, and telling everyone why he did it. The fact that the Uber-Left has allowed itself to be sucked into this ridiculous fake-conflict — and not only that but ON THE WRONG SIDE — makes me hope Obama will resign over “health” issues and leave those Progressive bastards beating the bushes for unicorns they can primary against Joe Biden.

After four years of President Palin, they’ll think Trent Lott was a Liberal.

I’d perhaps worry more about the care-and-feeding of the feelings of some on the professional left (which category, I believe, leaves out anybody who comments on this Haven of Sanity) if they themselves didn’t go out of their way to be such nasty pieces of baggage with their “dumb motherfuckers” and “Obots” and “Dear Leader” juvenile horse-hockey—whilst utterly failing to achieve any progressive goals whatsoever. But then, for a bunch of people who want Obama to show some spine, a lot of the leftie bloggysphere seems to be composed of whiny puling motherfuckers who couldn’t locate their asses with eight hands.

I’m gonna marry Jewish Steel’s comment @12:48, and together we’ll make comment babies that we name after Jewish Steel, so that JS’ lack of children will not prevent the continuation of his legacy.

Its not that Obama lost any individual battle or didn’t advance the ball incrementally on many important things. He did.

If every win is a loss, it makes Obama a loser.

aimai - when i was an organizer a million years ago, one thing we got hammered into us was that whenever possible “cut it as a win”. if you ask for 10 and get 2, you ended up with more than you had and instead of weeping about those 8, boast about the 2. This was a lesson that I had to relearn in business. Goal is to accumulate points, not to beat someone else’s expectations. if you cannot make that leap, you give control of your emotions to someone else.

bats eyes coquettishly @ meepmeep

meepmeep wisely pretends not to see revolting display and makes hasty exit

I subscribe to the bitch slap theory of politics

I believe this is what Obama meant when he said he didn’t want politics as usual. 

If he can actually get the folks in the middle to respect him for being the only adult in the room, he’ll have killed this theory and made a bigger contribution to American political life than anyone since Washington.

...ignore anybody whose paycheck is directly correlated with how pissed off they can make people about the president. 

Thank you,  Angry Geometer. I may just have to print that out and tape it to my monitor.

I’m sure it will improve my blood pressure.

Interestingly—at least to me—is the fact that I agree with everyone here.  With aimai I agree that I want more emotional satisfaction for myself from Obama’s display of what these fuckheads so richly deserve.  With Betty and Oblomova I agree that none of that is remotely as important as his actual accomplishments.  With Strange I agree that snarking back at Boehner can be seen as descending to Boehner’s debased level.

I was pissed last night that the speech was moved.  Then, upon reflection and thought, I got pissed at Boehner for having the utter disrepect in allowing the speech on the day requested.  The thing is, however, in the long run it really doesn’t matter what day the speech is on; what matters is what’s in it.  (Not that any of it will come up for a vote.)

And, can someone smack the folks at TPM for there current Dategate timeline lead story?  They seriously need to move on.

are there really more than, say, 100 people in the whole country who actually give a shit about this ridiculous incident?

No.

It reminds me (again) that I wish people would sit back every so often and repeat the following words: “Blogs are not the entire world and relatively few people give a damn.”

I swear 50% of the screeching from the EmoProngs is down to the fact they think Obama is purposely ignoring the really great policy suggestion they posted on the Great Orange Satan. (The other 50% is because they’re dicks.)

If he can actually get the folks in the middle to respect him for being the only adult in the room, he’ll have killed this theory and made a bigger contribution to American political life than anyone since Washington.

Comment by MikeJ on 09/01/11 at 01:56 PM

Such an outcome seems unlikely in our World Wrestling Federation world. But you’re right.

The other 50% is because they’re dicks.

You don’t understand! My butt REALLY HURTS!!!!1

/emoprog

Such an outcome seems unlikely in our World Wrestling Federation world.

You’re a bit behind the times. You’ll get a kick out of this - the wrestlers were beaten up by a pack of koalas.

Xecky, that wouldn’t have happened if the wrestlers had used the bully pulpit.

With any luck, the live Republican rebuttals will come on after everyone’s already switched over to the football game.

Jewish Steel wins the thread.  I wish to three-way marry him and meepmeep.

Betty, I’m with you on the light shining on the Republican debate… anything deeper than shallow attention does not benefit those charlatans, lunatics and scumbags.

And good analysis as usual, aimai. 

For those who want to read the original bitch-slap piece, it was by Josh Marshall, here, about the swiftboating of Kerry:

@asiangrrl, I ain’t gonna marry Jewish Steel - he’s weird.  But that comment is totally hawt!

By the way, it doesn’t look like I get to post comments from work anymore.  It would appear that not everyone has gotten the message to NOT defy the combined might and gravitas of the Rumproast and meepmeep franchises.

Meddling Fools!