Over at Naked Capitalism, Lambert Strether has written a strong rebuttal to one of the central excuses for the Obama Administration's and the Democrats' failure to do what we sent them to do back in 2009:
The bottom line is that “Republican obstructionism” is entirely of the Democrat’s making. What Reid (and Obama) want — or say they want — to do in 2013, and butchered doing in 2010, could and should have done in 2009, immediately after Obama’s inauguration. Republicans would have had no ability to obstruct had Obama and the Democrats not deliberately given them the power to do so. The gridlock is a gridlock of choice.
The Obama Enabler’s Big Lie: “We Never Had the Votes”
As Lambert notes, anyone who remembers the "nuclear option" back in 2005, when then-Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist threatened to use Senate procedures to eliminate the filibuster if the Bush Administration's Supreme Court nominees were blocked by filibuster, knows that there are ways around filibusters for politicians willing to employ them. Yet this remains a big lie of Democratic politics - that it was those nasty Republicans who spoiled it all. The truth is that things were much better for Harry Reid and President Obama if the insurance companies and other masters of the universe got what they wanted, and we didn't.
This is why no progressive with the least bit of sense thinks that merely electing more Democrats to Congress is going to fix what ails America. They clearly aren't motivated to do what they know they can, and most progressives seem perfectly willing to let them get away with it.
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