The Broder error:

From Sunday's op-ed: (emp add)

... an op-ed in The Post by William Daley, his fellow Chicagoan and one of the canniest Democrats I know, [warned] Obama that he is on the verge of losing his hold on the vital center of politics.

His target is the left of his party -- the grass-roots liberal activists who condemn the centrist Democrats sitting in marginal seats for blocking some provisions of health-care reform, for example ...

These groups put heavy pressure on Obama to move his agenda to the left -- even when a Congress with swollen Democratic majorities is balking at the measures that Obama already has endorsed.

One of the primary reasons that the Democrats are "balking" is due to the configuration (non-representative Senate) and rules (e.g. filibuster) that pervent the kind of legislation the left want.

Broder, by being silent on this point, gives the impression that a national-level-representative body, operating with majority rule, is in Washington. In this case Congressional Democrats are normative, and the left (whatever that's supposed to mean) is some marginal group that doesn't deserve the time of day.

Or maybe Broder thinks that the current situation, with it's clear structural biases, is the optimal way to go and the proper means of advancing the commonweal.

You get the feeling that Broder would approve the process that was in place wherever he'd happen to be - in time or space. Broder would approve absolutism in the time of Louis XIV, any parlimentary system in Europe today, oligarchies throughout history, and so on.


posted by Quiddity at 12/26/2009 03:26:00 AM