• Home
  • Blog
  • Contact
The Screaming Moderate

Will they look good losing?

10/13/2021

0 Comments

 
Back when I worked in the Reagan Administration, Commerce Secretary Malcolm Baldrige, my boss, would say of the then-right wing of the Republican Party: “They like to look good losing.”

That’s because those folks would have rather died on the battlefield clinging to their most extreme beliefs rather than compromise with the moderates in the party, or the Democrats.

Today, the same can be said in the Democratic Party. Progressives are holding any compromise hostage while they cling, at least publicly, to their $3.5 trillion package of spending and programs to revamp American society. Every day we read about the “talks” within the Democratic Party to try to find a compromise on the package that would likely be anywhere from $1.5 trillion to $2.5 trillion. Republicans have opted out of negotiating at all because they want nothing to do in any way with “helping” Democrats. Their eyes are not on legislating but on winning next year’s elections.


Progressives in the Democratic Party were known as “liberals” in my day but changed the label, I guess, because “progressive” sounds more acceptable.


For those of us not inside the Democratic talks, we have no idea what’s really being discussed. We just know that the progressives spokesmen are clinging to $3.5 trillion awaiting on Democratic Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Krysten Sinema of Arizona to tell them what they really want to support the package.


 You gotta believe both Manchin and Sinema have laid out their needs/wants clearly to at least the White House.


This eventually will get settled, I believe, partly to show that Democrats left on their own, can get things done. Especially before next year’s mid-term election when, at the moment, the odds are they will lose both majorities they hold in the House and the Senate.


What they are succeeding in doing now is helping in the collapse of belief in President Joe Biden to get anything done. He’s down to his lowest approval ratings since he’s been President (also attributable to the continuing too-high numbers of deaths and cases of COVID, a mucked up withdrawal from Afghanistan, a border issue that doesn’t appear to be getting better, etc).


If the Democrats don’t come up with a compromise that helps (1) the people, (2) their own continued majority aspirations and (3) to boost Biden’s numbers, get ready for the country to go Republican in next year’s mid-terms and potentially in the next presidential election, potentially pushing us to the edge of the end of our democracy. And I don’t think that’s hyperbole.


This all while Trump holds rallies where he rails against Biden and lies about the last election (which has Republicans by a vast majority agreeing with him).


Trust me, I can handle Republicans back in power but not Republicans like Trump, or Cruz or Johnson, Republicans who sound like they oppose democracy too often, whether they know it or not. Republicans who refuse to admit how the last election went. If they can succeed while believing the Democrats stole the election, nothing is beyond their capability.


Trump, who continues to have no limits on what he says rails against Biden even for policies he (Trump) established in his administration and Biden continued. Among those: development of a safe COVID vaccine (the last time he mentioned the vaccine at a rally, he got booed. That was the last time he mentioned it rather than take credit for the rapid development of the vaccine to save lives); and, the withdrawal from Afghanistan. Remember when Trump wanted to bring the Taliban to Camp David for a signing ceremony? That war needed to be over and Trump set that in motion with Biden finishing the job.


The world, my friends, is upside down.


I am among the millions who would benefit from adding vision, dental and hearing to Medicare, as the progressives propose. I never understood why, when we hit the ages where those three areas are most needed, that they weren’t included.


But, I think most of us on Medicare would pass on those benefits and instead get child care straightened out so mothers can get back to work and help get our economy moving.


There are acceptable tradeoffs in that $3.5 trillion package. 



If only people in Washington would work together, compromise and make a deal that actually helps the country.
0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    RSS Feed

     
    Follow @bjaycooper

    Archives

    June 2025
    May 2025
    April 2025
    March 2025
    February 2025
    January 2025
    December 2024
    November 2024
    October 2024
    September 2024
    August 2024
    July 2024
    June 2024
    May 2024
    April 2024
    March 2024
    February 2024
    January 2024
    December 2023
    November 2023
    October 2023
    September 2023
    August 2023
    July 2023
    June 2023
    May 2023
    April 2023
    March 2023
    February 2023
    January 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013

    B. Jay Cooper

    B. Jay is a former deputy White House press secretary to Presidents Reagan and George H.W. Bush. He also headed the communications offices at the Republican National Committee, U.S. Department of Commerce, and Yale University. He is a former reporter and is the retired deputy managing director of APCO Worldwide's Washington, D.C., office.
    He is the father of three daughters and grandfather of five boys and one girl. He lives in Marion, Mass.

powered by bjaycooper.com