Webb ponders a single term

A simple matter with the Bush tax cuts, and Obama’s seeming desire to capitulate: either you have a  serious concern over the deficit, or you don’t.

It gets dumber than that, though.

I think this is the Partisan Pain Caucus, the Caucus of Republicans desiring to extract maximum pain on the president and attempt to snuff out his political existence at any and all costs — as against enacting previously bi-partisan foreign policy — things that in previous eras received near unanimous vote totals, and would be under a Republican Administration.

Similar effects go down the list of Republicans who have governed.  Contrary to widespread belief, there are differences between the health care policies passed under Governor Mitt Romney’s signature, and what garnered President Barack Obama’s signature.  But Romney would have to explain the differences, and that would get away from the rubric of Unconstitutional Socialized Power Grabs.

As a rule, the one thing that keeps the 2012 slate of vulnerable Democrats — there are 23 Senate Democrats up as against 10 Republicans — is that anything they pass and put through will have been filtered through the Republican House.  “Cap and Trade” is not going to hit anyone, unless — perhaps — the Koch Brothers run ads as a Citizens Group on a different topic to look down the line.

That being said, to look at the group, and to stammer over to Jim Webb… and why the Democrats will always be presumed to be the ones who will have to give in:

We’re talking about why voters didn’t come around. Webb is weighing my report the morning after the election: Democrats won the smallest share of white voters in any congressional election since World War II.
“I’ve been warning them,” Webb says, sighing, resting his chin on his hand. “I’ve been having discussions with our leadership ever since I’ve been up here. I decided to run as a Democrat because I happen to strongly believe in Jacksonian democracy. There needs to be one party that very clearly represents the interests of working people … I’m very concerned about the transactional nature of the Democratic Party. Its evolved too strongly into interest groups rather than representing working people, including small business people.”

I’m pretty sure the “small business people” is a signal of his stance on the issue of Bush expiring tax cuts.  I don’t know what Health Care policy he has in mind — something, mind you, that will satisfy a lowest common denominator to 60 votes — a process which Presidents Roosevelt and Kennedy had to roll through in sorts of transactional faction.  But he apparently has a problem with the “effete” stature of his party colleagues…
… even as he broaches the topic of Prison Reform, which if pressed by his liberal colleagues would satisfy his criticism of his supposed post-McGovernites.  This all appears a cultural stance.

Webb represents an endangered species. It’s more than his red state Democratic stature, although that would be reason enough. The moderate House Democratic coalition lost more than half its lawmakers last week. But that Blue Dog set is still more common than Webb.

Webb’s one of the last FDR Democrats. An economic populist. A national security hawk. His Democratic politics are less concerned with social groups than social equality (of opportunity, not outcome). His values were predominant in the Democrat Party from FDR to JFK, the period in the twentieth century when Democrats were also dominant.

So we’ve jumped back to FDR — JFK. 

Webb walks to this older Democratic beat. Today’s Democrats’ are more McGovern than JFK. (Could a John Kennedy win the Democratic nomination today?)

A common criticism of Kennedy was of a back-benching Senator with no real accomplishment who parlayed a telegenic image and power of myth-building into a Presidential victory, which was somehow a bit depressing a signal of American Democracy.

But I’m still stuck at this somewhat antiquted reference line:

I decided to run as a Democrat because I happen to strongly believe in Jacksonian democracy.

I think this gives him just enough allowance to celebrate the Confederacy while disowning the Calhounites — the “common people” tools of the Plantation Owner elites, right?  It is interesting to have heard Obama in a speech a while ago refer to Jackson as one of our great presidents (not a speech anyone would remember, and I don’t remember the basis for it, but it stuck out to me.)  For Webb, you might as well be the Tea Parties spouting the pose of Thomas Paine.  When referencing Jackson, I have the two opening thoughts: Opening up the White House to the public like that seems kind of like a security risk (Hey!  We’re back to Kennedy again.).  And, just how many Indians does Jim Webb want to kill?

I guess Webb would be sniping with his John Calhouns (Rick Perry today?).

I know that George Allen is eyeing this Senate Seat.  Maybe if Jim Webb finds himself more and more alienated by the supposed post-McGovernites making up all 52 of the Democrats in his party caucus, maybe Tim Kaine can run.  Anyway, it is a curious state, Webb’s.  It was the tipping point state for Obama’s presidential victory.  And it held the quickest part of his electoral coalition to fall apart… such that it may be a few states lower than what Obama’s “tipping point” state would be in 2012.

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