Hillary Clinton's Attack on the Democratic Congress
Fri May 02, 2008 at 01:38:13 PM PDT
I guess I shouldn't be surprised that it has come to this, but it's still a rather stunning development.
By introducing her idiotic gas tax cut idea as a Senate bill she is forcing her fellow Congressional Democrats to have to on record about whether they support this stupid concept or not. This is not helpful to the efforts to expand our Congressional majorities this November, and by introducing this as a bill, Hillary may have given a huge opening for Republicans.
Earlier today at Calitics I explained how Hillary's gas tax cut proposal runs the risk of undercutting our efforts here in California to push through tax increases to close our massive budget deficit and avoid catastrophic public schools and health care cuts. By giving cover to the Republican notion that tax cuts are the only solution to our environmental, energy, and economic crises, she is going to make it much more difficult for Democrats to sell tax hikes to the public.
That was bad enough. But now she has gone and thrown this into the Congress. The effect is going to be to force members of Congress to have to speak out on the matter. Most Democrats agree with Pelosi that the proposal is stupid (quote is from the WSJ):
"First of all, there is no reason to believe that any moratorium on the gas tax will be passed on to the consumer, first and foremost," she told reporters, "Second of all, it would defeat everything that we have been trying to do to lower the cost of oil." Pelosi said to lower gas prices Congress should be investing more in renewable energy resources.
Pelosi is of course totally right. But will Blue Dog Democrats, and other Dems facing tough reelection battles against Republican challengers, be able to follow her on this? The gas tax cut idea is one of the stupidest policies proposed in this country in a long time, but it tends to poll well with voters who don't make the connection between taxes and services - who think $30 bucks is worth the crippling of federal transportation projects that would help them drive less and save money.
Republicans will have a field day with it - "even Hillary Clinton supported a gas tax cut, but Senator/Congressperson X voted against it." So Congressional Democrats, never the most reliable people in the world when dealing with bad Republican ideas, are going to come under a lot of pressure to vote for this turkey.
Now, this idea might not even make it to the floor for a vote (though its high profile suggests a vote is more likely than some think). More importantly, Reid and Pelosi cannot appreciate this act which puts them and their fellow Democrats in a very difficult position. It might help drive more superdelegates to Obama, of course, but the real impact is what it shows us about how Hillary will govern.
For what this shows is that Hillary is going to govern from the center-right. Her netroots supporters have tried to convince us that she would govern from the center-left, or even as a progressive. This blows that argument out of the water. Hillary has spent the last two months campaigning against core Democratic constituencies and dividing the party to seek the nomination. Now she reveals that she will continue to do the same in office, sandbagging Congressional Democrats for her own gain, even if the policy outcome is deeply conservative.
The mask has fallen off now. There can be no more denying the inherently Republican, Liebermanesque nature of Hillary Clinton's politics. Do Democrats really want four years of this?
Update [2008-5-2 16:54:25 by eugene]: dansac in the comments points to Mark Udall's denunciation of this idea and Hillary's "with us or against us" framing:
"Senator Clinton claimed yesterday that I either stand with her on this proposal or stand with the oil companies. To that I say: I stand with the families of Colorado, who aren't looking for bumper sticker fixes that don't fix anything, but for meaningful change that brings real relief and a new direction for our energy policy. We can't afford more Washington-style pandering while families keep getting squeezed.
"It is exactly the kind of short-sighted Washington game that keeps us from getting real results to our energy problem."
