 by Chris HayesStory of the Week, Up w/ Chris Hayes |
COMMENTARY
This was, I think, my favorite moment in the President's speech on Thursday night:
And yes, my plan will continue to reduce the carbon pollution that is heating our planet because climate change is not a hoax. More droughts and floods and wildfires are not a joke. They're a threat to our children's future. And in this election, you can do something about it.
A-fricking-men, I say. Climate change was only invoked at the RNC as a laugh line, and hardly mentioned at all the DNC, save for three references. So it means a lot to hear it from the President's own lips.
But there was also something distressing in that line, something that haunted both me and haunted the entire Democratic National Convention. It was this line: "And in this election you can do something about it."
After the spectacle of dysfunction and obstruction over the last two years, it's hard to take that proposition at face value.
Remember in 2009, Barack Obama had a House majority by a 79-vote margin and a Senate majority of 60 votes and, to his credit and the credit of him and the Democratic party and especially Nancy Pelosi, they worked tirelessly through a long, hard legislative slog to produce a bill that would cap carbon emissions.
The Waxman Markey bill passed Congress by seven votes.
In the Senate, Lindsey Graham had once been a co-sponsor of a similar cap and trade bill. He'd even passionately argued for the need to address carbon pollution:
Our country doesn't have a vision on carbon, we need one, and we need to lead the world rather than follow the world on carbon pollution.
But ultimately, Lindsey Graham did what nearly every Republican in his cohort has done, which is to conveniently forget his previous beliefs and instead commit himself to opposing any and all major legislative initiatives that bore the President's mark.
And so cap and trade died. Now, keep in mind all of this was before the Republicans took over the House in 2010. Since then, things have only gotten worse.
The record of Republican opposition and obstruction is legion at this point: the record number of filibusters, the unprecedented foot dragging on judicial and executive nominees, and, of course, the explicit threat to provoke a possible new financial crisis by holding the nation's full faith and credit hostage in pursuit of a savage austerity agenda.
In fact, since the emergence of the Tea Party and its electoral success in the 2010 elections, the central political story of our time is of Republican obstruction: The ways in which, with remarkable discipline and fervor, the Republican Party has overturned the previous norms of congressional behavior in order to create a country that is nearly ungovernable. This is the reality that looms over this election, and yet the GOP opposition was almost entirely absent from the President's speech.
Unless the Democratic Party manages to retake the House—possible, though not probable feat—the President's second term will face precisely the same obstacles it now does: a Republican congress bent on his destruction and humiliation. The President, however, told Time magazine that if he wins in November, the stark choice voters will have made would "pop the blister" of polarization.
If you're laughing at that line, I don't blame you. But, of course, whether the President believes that or not, he kind of has to say next time will be different. Otherwise all of his articulation of his vision for the country in his speech on Thursday night is more or less for naught.
The cruel irony of the Mitch McConnell plan to sandbag Barack Obama is that it creates a devilishly cynical, implied reason to elect a Republican president: It's the only way to restore the country to normal governance.
The Republican Party is so wildly irresonsible, so sociopathically maximalist that it cannot be trusted in opposition. You can only get compromise when Republicans have the power and the Democrats are the ones doing the compromising. Republicans won't let it work the other way around. It would be a true low point for American democracy if this argument were persuasive.
But the President and Democrats need to acknowledge it head on in the remaining two months of this campaign. You can't simply ignore the tanned weepy elephant in the room. If the President and Democrats are going to lay out their agenda for the next four years, they have to make an explicit case either that it is vital the president be given a Democratic Congress (my strong preference); or some new set of policies, tactics, approaches, or innovations to overcome (or run around) Republican opposition.
The decision to offer DREAM Act eligible youth a form of administrative repireve was a great example of what this would look like. Whatever the case is, whatever the solutions are, we need to hear them, because the Republican Party and its agenda of political destruction cannot be ignore or willed away. Nor can the politics of self-immolation be perpetuated by rewarding them with electoral success.
The President himself has suggested he will use executive powers, as he did with the DREAM Act, to circumvent an obstructionist Congress, but that is only the second-best way to deal with Republican obstruction. What President Obama did not say in Charlotte was that the best way to stop Republicans from holding them hostage is to strip them of the power to do so in November.
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Fantastic commentary, though, it helps that I totall agree with your analysis. On the CC issue, you are spot on and the sad part is that we are not too far away from that point where our saying "I told you so", won't make any difference, because we will have passed the point of no return, for even, greater, severe consequences.
From the IPCC Third Assessment Report on Climate Change 2001 1st footnote from page 5 Summary for Policy Makers 1...
"Climate change in IPCC usage refers to any change in climate over time, whether due to natural variability or as a result of human activity. This usage differs from that in the Framework Convention on Climate Change, where climate change refers to a change of climate that is attributed directly or indirectly to human activity that alters the composition of the global atmosphere and that is in addition to natural climate variability observed over comparable time periods."
Since the IPCC is the Scientific Temple of The Catastrophic Anthropogenic Carbon Dioxide Global Warming Hoax you appear to be grossly uninformed concerning the robustness of the scientific evidence linking carbon dioxide concentration in the air with the earth's average annual global air temperature, Global Warming and Climate Change.
I have found that in talking with Global Warming Believers science is so foreign to them that they don't even know the average annual global air temperature in degrees Celsius. I ask this so I won't waste my time.
Bite your tongue Chris Hayes! That's like lieing down to die without a fight! From what I can see Dems are winning this election.. The polls that show most have already made their choice, and most are paying attention to what is going on in Washington, and have chosen there sides. I don't see Republicans spending millions on commercials making any dent in this.. Pres. Obama would have to really fail the debates to make a change, I don't see this happening. So far Republicans have flubbed everything being cocky sure their money would make them invincable.
The obstruction of Congress is exactly why I will vote a straight ticket for the
Democrats.. I saw some video where a republican was making a statement that if we elect Obama, the Republicans will not work with him, all with a smirk on his face you wanted to slap off of it. You could tell the implication was that we were to vote Democrat or the Republicans would hold the whole USA hostage..
Add to that all the voter suppression from the Republican party, to cheat and steal the election.
Well, I will not be threatened! I will not be forced into a dictatorship, with no exercise to have the freedom to vote due to being held hostage by some self-centered Narcissistic..
I am voting with the plan to keep a Democratic President, a Democratic Senate, and if we can not retake the house at least make a good inroads to retaking it..
Let Republicans know that if they don't start serious efforts to negotiate and
compromise rather then follow the contract with Norquist to obstruct, they WILL be out in two years time.
I also vow to not vote, and then return to my life and not keep tabs on what
Congress is doing.. Obama said the change will not happen unless "we"
make it happen. I have been negligent to simply vote and then trust those in
office have the best interest of the USA though with different interest, so
will work on a compromise.. I will pledge to write to those in Congress who are
to represent me, and look for other suggestions offered on how we can work
together to make our voices heard.. Petitions, Polls, demonstrations.. Whatever I can to make sure that I am do my part to help my Democratic representatives get what they need..
If ever the Republicans do come back to the negotiation table, and can put up a compromise I think if fair and sensible. Well then, and only then will I support them in that effort..
I plan not to give in to their tyranny..
If Obama wins the election, the Republicans will have to hold firm more than ever, or Obama will spend us into oblivion and will destroy any incentive to work hard to succeed that America is so known for. America will become an entitlement society where anyone that wants to build something for themselves and not the government will become the devil and will be demonized. I am afraid we won't know America any more. The values that it once held sacred are being chipped away at little by little. If Obama is elected, there will be nothing to tamp down his socialist agenda except a Republican house. At that point, since he has no way to run again, he will cram down our throats anything he can before he leaves office. I don't know why anyone will even want to own a business when the dems want to take a huge chunk of what you make to spread the wealth around. That takes all the incentive away. Why should a person bust his tail to work hard, take all the risk, provide jobs for people, take no salary so he can pay his employees when times are hard to share it all with the do nothingers. The business owners might as well join all of the others on the government dole, because we are all going to have the same amount of money in the end anyway. Take the incentive to work hard away, and our country is dead. There will be no one to pay the bills except the government, and that money comes from us. According to the 2010 US census, in 2008, one-quarter of people lived in households receiving a government lifeline and about 45 percent a government check, according to the Census Bureau.More than one in three Americans lived in households that received Medicaid, food stamps or other means-based government assistance in mid-2010, according to a new report. That's more than 148 million Americans and growing. That is a huge jump in only 2 years. We CANNOT sustain the Obama agenda. I can't belive people cannot figure that out. WHERE will the money come from. There must be some drastic changes, or the change will be forced on us. Some of the smaller countries like Greece can receive enough aid from other countries maybe to survive. Who will support an economy like ours. The rich don't make enough to bail us out. We cannot afford another 4 years of this.
Who are you? I'll bet your post could be found on Fox and Friends almost word for word. You are definitely the person who needs 4 years of Romney/Ryan but the country would be so totally irrapairable that it could never be reversed. Don't you know a lie when you hear one? Everything Obama has done is working toward gettting us out of this mess that your guys got us into. Its the same old story. The Pubs screw it up and the Dems have to come in and straqighten it out. That's the story of this country. Get off Fox and do some fact-checking. Stop getting your info from Fox because they aren't a news organization. kThey're a propaganda machine.
I watched mitch mcconnell make the statement on making President Obama a 1 term president and thought "what the H??L" and also saw the vidio stating that if he wins again the repugs will hold us hostage for another 4 yrs! I say "the hell you will!"
The American people need to put all T-pugs on the street in november and the rest of them out in 2014 including the tooter turtle faced mcconnel and crybaby boner!!!!
It is time to stop
wasting our breath by asking the "Republicans" in congress to
cooperate on behalf of the American people. There are no longer any Republicans
available to ask. The Republican Party is DEAD! Left in its stead is an amoral
minority ... an organization that is corrupt from the top down. The
choice has become clear.
This November you will
vote for a president or you will vote for a board director. You
will vote for someone who looks at our country as a cherished possession
in need of protection or you will vote for someone who looks at our country as
just another company with a bottom line. You will vote for a man who
respects you as a fellow citizen in possession of a good amount of
intelligence or you will vote for someone who looks upon you as only human
capital and has judged you to be as dumb as a herd of cattle.
This November you will
vote for a Democrat or a Plutocrat. In other words, this November
you will vote for a sole proprietorship --- YOU --- or you will
vote for a corporation --- THEM.
This November you will need to THINK!
Very well said. I really like you.