How much did the Democrats suck?

Last week was, as I noted below, a terrible week for Democrats in Washington and progressive politics more generally. And the consensus is that, for all intents and purposes, the Democrats blew it.

I think that's basically true, but worth examining a bit more deeply. Let's work backwards, starting with the SCHIP veto vote. Not only did the override fail, but the Democrats failed, in the days between the veto and the mulligan, to convert a single Republican to their side.

Obviously the fight isn't over, and obviously the Republicans, for their legendary intransigence on this issue and everything else, will pay a price for their tactics eventually. But there are a lot of lessons the Democrats could possibly learn from the fiasco, and I think the wrong one--the one David Broder might try to teach them--is that the heavy pressure, the ad campaigns, Graeme Frost, etc., etc., are losing tactics. Too mean. Too partisan.

Looked at crudely, SCHIP is evidence that there's still a place for Broderism in Washington. But I think that's a terrible misreading of what happened. If part of the ultimate goal is to convince Congressman X to switch his vote from "no" on SCHIP expansion to "yes" on override, then it makes much, much more sense to make him fear for his seat than it does to--for all intents and purposes--buy him off or beg him to flip. There is no hypothetical package of enticements the Democrats can offer a Republican that outweigh the price that that Republican will pay within his own party. He'll only be treated leniently when his party bosses realize that, if they don't let him vote with the opposition, he might lose his seat.

At some point the Republicans realized something crucial: That, for now anyhow, upholding the veto is politically neutral. That the Democrats had not caused enough damage with their SCHIP campaign to put any more seats into play than there were before the fight began, so there was no reason for them not to whip all the safe members of their caucus into their corner.

That's not to say that appeasement has no place in tactical skirmishes like this, but it's a much different place. The incentives should be carefully calibrated, and aimed at the opposition party as a whole. I think it was a huge mistake for the Democrats to schedule the RESTORE act vote for the day before the SCHIP override. It made no sense--none--for the Democrats to try to do anything on SCHIP week that could--whether by bludgeoning them on unrelated issues, or handing them a huge victory--galvanize GOP camaraderie in any way at all. In that regard, it was smart of them to hold off on enforcing the still-looming contempt citations. But it was also very dumb of them to pick a national security fight with the GOP at the same time. (Note: This is not to say that the Democrats are on the wrong end of that fight, but that by now Pelosi and Hoyer must realize that about 25 percent of their caucus is too terrified of boogie men to fight along with their team when they hear the name Osama bin Laden or the word al Qaeda.)

And buried in there is, I think, another crucial difference between the Republicans and the Democrats in 2007. On a straight vote, it's possible--I'm not sure how likely, but certainly possible--that the RESTORE Act could have passed, even if it might have been shrewder to hold off for a week or so. What the Republicans were able to do was manipulate the House Rules in such a way that RESTORE Act became synonymous with the AID AND COMFORT TO OSAMA BIN LADEN Act, and the Democrats scrambled as if the John Boehner and Eric Cantor had just kicked a dust cloud over their ant hill. The Democrats, for reasons that utterly baffle me, didn't see that coming. It's hard to prove a correlation between the GOP's RESTORE victory, and their SCHIP victory, but it's also hard not to conclude that what happened last Wednesday emboldened to GOP ahead of the separate fight the following day.

It's a real disappointment, I think, that the Republicans in both chambers have either a better understanding of parliamentary procedure or a greater willingness to use it to their advantage. I'm not a student of modern Republican political history, but I'd speculate that this comes from their 40 year absence from Congress in the mid-to-late 20th century, and the revolutionary spirit with which they regained power in the 1990s--basically, that, as an energized movement, they come to the Hill everyday intending to win.

It seems to me that by the end of the 109th Congress, Democrats had become a much stronger opposition party than they were only a few years beforehand. But they were still learning when they became the majority party and I get the sense that they still somehow have no idea how impressive the machine they're up against really is.

They have to be bolder. They have to do better.