This Week Has Been an Unexpectedly Great One for Democrats

[applegrove]

This Week Has Been an Unexpectedly Great One for Democrats

By Josh Voorhees at Slate

http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2015/02/25/democratic_victories_liberals_notch_political_victory_on_keystone_and_appear.html

"SNIP...............


On Tuesday, patience began paying off for Reid’s battered party as Democrats notched several political victories. First came the strongest sign yet that congressional Republicans have badly misplayed their hand in the fight over President Obama’s immigration reforms; then a presidential veto of the GOP’s Keystone bill; and, in the late afternoon, the news that Republicans have effectively given up on fighting net neutrality, paving the way for the FCC, later this week, to approve regulations that would treat the Internet as a public good. All in all, that’s a pretty great day for a man who is still regaining vision in his right eye and for a party that controls neither chamber of Congress.

Of course, Reid and his fellow congressional Democrats don’t deserve all—or even most of—the credit for those political victories. Try as they might, they couldn’t derail the GOP’s Keystone bill last month, and in the process lost the short-term messaging battle over whether man-made climate change is as real as the science tells us it is. Instead, it was the environmental groups that turned the polarizing pipeline into a climate litmus test that Obama couldn’t risk failing. Likewise, the looming net neutrality victory—along with the GOP’s decision to give up on trying to overturn it—was the result of what the New York Times called “the longest, most sustained campaign of Internet activism in history, one the little guys appear to have won.” (Reid is not the little guys.)

Still, sometimes playing a bad hand will win when the other guy misplays a stronger one—something the ongoing immigration fight illustrates. For the most part, Democrats have simply sat back and weathered the storm as Republicans pressed on with plans to tie funding for the Department of Homeland Security to efforts to block Obama’s high-profile reforms. The GOP plan was DOA almost as soon as it was hatched late last year, yet Senate Republicans waited until this week—with only days left until funding for the agency expires—to pivot to a plan B that still appears to be a long shot and that in their realistic best-case scenario ends with the DHS funded and Obama vetoing their efforts to block immigration reform.

Of course, a victory today doesn’t guarantee one tomorrow. Democrats know there is serious trouble on the horizon in the form of two lawsuits that could hand Republican lawmakers the wins they have been unable to produce for themselves of late. The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals will most likely decide whether or not the White House can indeed press on with the immigration reforms that Republicans are currently attempting to undermine. And that case is arguably small potatoes compared with the one the Supreme Court is set to hear next month regarding whether people who got insurance through the federal exchanges can keep their subsidies.


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[roguevalley]

1. it will frost people's asses to get doctor

bills again like the old days. Time for a national shut down or revolution. I don't give a crap anymore which it is. I am just so SICK of them. Fascists.

[BlancheSplanchnik]

2. me too. sick of them, sick of the stupid brainwashed cultists

Gleeful over their hateful team.

[jeff47]

3. Except those two big dangers at the end of the post also would benefit Democrats

Let's say Republicans win at the SCOTUS and states that refused to set up exchanges don't get subsidies. Who gets hurt? People in red states. Blue states set up state exchanges.

"Hurray! We busted our ass to take away your money and health care" is not a terribly good campaign theme.

Immigration case? Same deal - Republicans were trying to make inroads with Latino voters, mostly via their ally-with-the-religious program. "We want to throw children to the wolves because they look like you" is also not a terribly good campaign theme for winning Latino votes.

(Yes, real people will really get hurt if these decisions come to pass. The point is there is no "win" for the Republicans in these causes. They only lose in different ways)