I think my general feeling about Bob Shrum is that if he says Democrats should do something, their best bet is to do the opposite. But this advice actually sounds fairly plausible:
Why should Congress take its annual August vacation while 15 million Americans are unemployed and millions more are underemployed, underpaid, or under the radar of official statistics because they are so discouraged they’ve stopped looking for work? With oil gushing into the Gulf, why should senators and representatives be rushing out of Washington to travel, raise money, and campaign?
Democrats in the House will respond that they’ve done their job; the Senate is the roadblock. Democrats in the Senate will plead that they’re not the problem; a willful GOP minority is blocking progress not just out of spite, but calculation. Republicans figure that a slow recovery and the lingering oil slick will drive a protest vote for them in November.
The Democratic arguments are right, but largely irrelevant and generally ignored by a fearful and frustrated electorate. Ironically, the way to break through is not to flee the Beltway, but to keep Congress there in a drama that plays out on center stage — in front of the cameras — with the president calling a special session of Congress to deal with too-long delayed issues of urgent national necessity.
This would sound plausible, anyway, if Democrats had their act together a little better. In general, the idea here would be for Obama to submit a raft of popular, highly targeted jobs bills to Capitol Hill and insist that Congress vote on them. One by one, either Republicans would defect and Dems would get a series of wins, or else, one by one, we’d get a series of 59-41 votes that would showcase Republican intransigence on the economy.
But would it work if, instead, each bill were the source of intra-party bickering that turned off the voters, long delays that made Washington seem impotent, and votes that ended up 53-47 because a handful of centrist Democrats insisted on breaking ranks? Probably not. And unfortunately, that’s probably what we’d get. Better Democrats, please.
