Where's the Beef?

Rolling Stone contributor Matt Taibbi, who is a great voice from the left, pens a piece called "Obama's Big Sellout." Here's his intro:

Barack Obama ran for president as a man of the people, standing up to Wall Street as the global economy melted down in that fateful fall of 2008. He pushed a tax plan to soak the rich, ripped NAFTA for hurting the middle class and tore into John McCain for supporting a bankruptcy bill that sided with wealthy bankers "at the expense of hardworking Americans." Obama may not have run to the left of Samuel Gompers or Cesar Chavez, but it's not like you saw him on the campaign trail flanked by bankers from Citigroup and Goldman Sachs. What inspired supporters who pushed him to his historic win was the sense that a genuine outsider was finally breaking into an exclusive club, that walls were being torn down, that things were, for lack of a better or more specific term, changing.

Then he got elected.

None of this intro is untrue, except perhaps the degree of hyperbole. Obama never promised to "soak the rich," and it's ironic that this progressive writer uses a right-wing talking point to make his argument. What Obama promised was a modest tax increase on the wealthiest Americans and corporations making over $250,000 a year. That increase raised their marginal tax rate by 3%. Therefore, an individual making $250,000 would pay an additional $7,500 a year in taxes, or $625 per month. In California, someone making $250,000 is in no way considered rich, but this amount of increase is not all that burdensome. And just because he ripped NAFTA during the campaign, he never promised to dismantle it. In fact, he's on record as being very pro-globalization. Further, he has not shied away from his stance that the financial community has had it too good during the Bush years, even doing a little collective scolding as late as this morning.

What Barack Obama is not is a liberal. Liberals, according to the definition attached to them by Republicans since time immemorial, tax and spend like there's no tomorrow, and believe government is the solution to all problems. After more than eight years of financial deregulation and political blindness, which resulted in the Great Recession (which began more than a year before Obama ever took office), Bush was forced to rally Hank Paulsen and Ben Bernanke and spend hundreds of billions of dollars and bail out the big banks.

Part of that bailout was symbolic, of course. The media (and some members of Congress) had done such a great job calling into question every financial decision made by the financial sector that basically nothing they did was good. Forget the fact that many people who were smart investors made a killing during those years; it was all bullshit because those who couldn't catch a ride didn't get their due. Well, to some degree, that's capitalism for ya. It's all about opportunity and risk.

So along comes Obama, and Bush hands him a suitcase containing notes for a trillion dollars that'll have to be paid back to the taxpayers. On top of that, we're bleeding jobs, losing home equity every day, and pushing back our retirements further and further. Revenue generation is definitely an issue. And the perception is that Wall Street, who got billions in bailout money, is using that money to hand out fat bonuses to their top performers. Time for a reality check there, and it's well-deserved. If there's one thing a rich person should not do when suffering is everywhere, it's flaunt his wealth. So the president takes the step to put curbs on any company receiving TARP money in compensating top executives.

But what really bothers Taibbi is that Obama peopled his transition team and his advisory board with men who had deep ties to Wall Street. I suppose then, he should have done the Dave thing and hired some local CPA who has a shingle out in a DC suburb and who drives a Subaru to balance the budget and come up with the plan to administer TARP, the Home Affordable Refinance Program, Cash for Clunkers, etc. That way, there's no appearance of conflict.

But during the process, Obama runs into very stiff opposition from members of his own party. And Obama tailors his proposals a little in order to make deals with these politicians. This, in Taibbi's view, is the big sell-out.

Well, as Matthew Yglesias so wisely points out --

The implicit theory of political change here, that pivotal members of congress undermine reform proposals because of “the White House’s refusal to push for real reform” is just wrong. That’s not how things work. The fact of the matter is that Matt Taibbi is more liberal than I am, and I am more liberal than Larry Summers is, but Larry Summers is more liberal than Ben Nelson is. Replacing Summers with me, or with Taibbi, doesn’t change the fact that the only bills that pass the Senate are the bills that Ben Nelson votes for.

It's disgusting that single members of Congress wield this kind of influence, but as Patrick Appel over at The Daily Dish notes, it is just part of the process of politics in America.

It is impossible to separate wealthy or powerful groups from the centers of government. And trying to do so can make a country less stable. Opposition movement must enlist opposing powerful elements in order to achieve success, which means one group of powerful individuals is replaced with another.

...

This is not to say that we should always capitulate to powerful interests, but that these interests will always have a say in government and that our system of lobbying is an alternative to much less desirable arrangements. Pretending that if Obama were more liberal that the government would suddenly have to tools to oppose these interests is wishful thinking. These problems are systemic and not attributable to any individual.

The length of my post attests to the fact that these problems are highly complicated. I wish Joe Lieberman would lose his Senate seniority and his wife tossed out of her positions on certain health-related non-profits because of her ties to insurance and pharmaceutical interests. Sadly the only way to neutralize Lieberman would be for Connecticut voters to recall him or vote him out in 2012. Another way is to cut a deal with him or Ben Nelson and lobby Olympia Snowe very hard to get the 60 votes needed to break the filibuster. This is the way it's done now. A Senate health-care bill with no public option will kill the House public option, but Snowe might just be persuaded if there are the trigger mechanisms built into the bill as she wanted. Finally, Obama has another 3-7 years to go in his presidency. There is more time to craft better legislation.

In the final analysis, Obama has sold out to no one -- not to the left, not to the right, not to business, not to the international community. He has not held onto deep dark secrets about his associations, and he has not been deterred from where he thinks the country needs to go. He is making alliances as need be, and he is compromising when he needs to do so. Want health care reform? See if you can get past the insurance monolith without paying the toll.