Centrism all tarted up like liberalism

Nate Silver looks back at the year in post-partisanship and finds it wasn't what he expected. Instead of a centrist sheen on fairly liberal policies, we've gotten centrist policies effectively painted by Republicans to look like Social/fascism. Nevertheless, he has some good advice.

I absolutely acknowledge that the White House has inherited an exceptionally difficult situation, one made much more difficult when the economy continued to bleed 700,000 jobs per month in January through April. Many of the problems that they have encountered, I would not have seen coming, and many of the mistakes that they have made, I would have made too.

But the Democrats do have the benefit of hindsight now -- and they ought to take advantage of it. For one thing, they need to be very careful about rewarding Republican nihilism. The best case is when you can simultaneously achieve both a policy and a political victory. More often, especially given the structural constraints imposed by the Congress, you'll have to settle for one or the other. But I would be very careful about any course of action which concedes victory to Republicans on both levels. Mistakes were made along the way to health care reform, but you've paid the political price for health care: now pass the fucking thing.

As for the rest of the policies in your portfolio, take an inventory and figure out which have the votes to pass right now (through reconciliation where prudent), which can't be passed no matter what, and which could be achieved but will require some expenditure of political capital. And then on the other axis, wargame everything and figure which it would be to your benefit to have an extended public debate about (this would almost always be for political theater rather than policy reasons), which you should put up to vote, but as quickly as possible, and which ought not to see the light of day.

I know: easier said then done. But henceforth the Democrats, from the White House on downward, have gotten a remarkably poor return on the investment of their political capital. The failures are more tactical than strategic. But to do what Democrats usually do, and crawl into a shell in the face of adversity, is not advisable.

The trouble -- if that's the word -- is that Obama isn't there to play political theater. He appears to genuinely and sincerely believe he can get important stuff done, and he knows he doesn't (and didn't when he took office, remember) have 60 votes to get anything through the Senate without Republican support. As such, he's got an awfully hard row to hoe. Republicans may not have a single coherent idea about repairing our economy, but they can see the monthly jobs reports and they know this thing ain't turning around quickly. They figure they can ride out the remainder of this Congress on nothing more than nihilism and the Sunday Talk Shows and still achieve big gains in November, relying on the amnesia of the American people (and pundits). Cynical, certainly. But no one knows the political benefits of a well-tended cynicism better than the political heirs of Richard Nixon.