Robert Gibbs, Elizabeth Warren and Democratic turnout

The Republican Party mobilizes the right wing to vote. The Democratic
White House insults liberal voters. The Democratic president, in my
humble opinion, is preparing one more insult to the base he needs to
vote by preparing to pass over Elizabeth Warren for the consumer
protection post.

Regarding Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, two points. First, he does not
speak for himself, he speaks for the president and the White House
chief of staff, who has a renowned contempt for the Democratic base.
Second, obviously, an attack on the Democratic base during a midterm
election that will be decided on turnout will go down in history as one
of the dumbest acts since the Titanic stopped for ice.

It is interesting that Gibbs mocked and scorned the people he called professional liberals (an expected attack from the people I call professional hacks) over their alleged obsession with the Canadian healthcare system.

No, Robert, the concern of liberals, which in this case I fully share, was the surrender on the public option, not the Canadian system. Liberals are being scorned for supporting a public option the president claimed he supported. It was the public option that was the most popular piece of the far less popular healthcare bill.

What infuriates liberals is being scorned for backing what the president said he backed, and then being slandered over the Canadian healthcare system. But Gibbs does not speak for himself, he speaks for the president and the White House chief of staff. Calls for his firing ignore the truth of what is happening and miss the heart of a very big matter.

Gibbs should not be fired. The president and his chief of staff should figure out who their real friends are, and stop insulting them, or they will have a long election night indeed.

Regarding Warren, had the president intended to name her, he would have done so already. It would have been a recess appointment, notwithstanding the contrary advice of the ubiquitous Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.), whose political skills are so great he was run out of town on a rail by angry voters back home, who rejected Dodd so decisively he wouldn’t run in a reelection he was destined to lose in a landslide. So let’s ignore his opposition to Warren.

The more Obama acts like Dodd, the more Democrats stay home on Election Day. Of course, Warren is the candidate of choice for the voices of consumers, at a time when consumers need the lift she would provide, at a time the Democrats need the lift of the turnout of those who support her, who will be even further inflamed and depressed if she is passed over for a far less qualified candidate.

I pray I am proven wrong in believing that the White House knife is being placed in the Warren back (and the consumer’s back, and the Democrat base’s back). We shall see.

But there are larger issues in these matters.

From the point of view of progressives, and progressive populists such as myself, the progressives were proven right on issue after issue, the right was proven wrong, and the president went wrong by equating his supporters with his enemies. For a White House to dis the president’s supporters, surrender to the president’s enemies and attack his supporters for supporting what the president campaigned to do is theater of the absurd and political suicide in the extreme.

What infuriates some liberals, depresses others and inspires nobody is this:

Liberals were right about not going to war in Iraq. Liberals were right about the excess of greed on Wall Street, greed that was virtually supported by Republicans, far too often accepted by Democrats and championed for a decade by the president’s Treasury secretary.

There is something profoundly wrong when Tim Geithner soars with power and Christina Romer leaves with disappointment (that is the truth; ignore any spin to the contrary).

Liberals were right and the right was wrong about offshore drilling, while the right said, “Drill, baby, drill” and the Democratic president said famously that we should drill more because offshore drilling was safe.

Liberals were right and the right was wrong and the president was uncertain about the need to regulate Wall Street greed, the need to fight to create more jobs, the need to do far more to end the Grapes of Wrath-esque foreclosures, the need for a healthcare bill that would actually lower the deficit in the coming decade (which the current bill does not) and do far more to protect the consumers and far less to reward the insurers.

Liberals were right and the right was wrong and the president is uncertain about the need for financial regulation that does more than give even greater power to those who caused the crisis (the Fed and the Treasury secretary).

If a power-hungry Treasury secretary and money-hungry bank lobbyists can veto the regulator for consumers (that is what happens if Warren is passed over; ignore all spin to the contrary) that would be a sad day for Democrats, a bad day for American consumers and one more inducement for base Democrats not to vote in November.

The liberals are right, the right is wrong, the president is weak and his spokesman is disingenuous by attacking those who worked to elect the president and surrendering to extremists, partisan Republicans and special interests, who embody everything the president ran against in the 2008 campaign.

The great irony of Obama is that on most of those matters where the White House has contempt for the base of the Democratic Party, the base was supporting positions that the majority of the nation supports and the majority of political independents support.

It is lunacy, of course, to attack the party base in an off-year election that will be decided by the turnout of the Democratic and Republican bases.

The president had better understand who his friends are in the coming elections, because a politician who continues to insult his friends is a politician destined to lose.

The president had better understand that if he adds one more insult to the base of the party and the consumers of the economy by passing over the most qualified candidate by far for the consumer protection post, it would be one more dagger in the heart of Democratic turnout in November and one more surrender by a party that has lost its way, lost its will and is losing far too many of its most loyal voters.