I cannot conclude but otherwise.
- Democrats in Congress refused to pass a budget this year. Paul Ryan thinks that they’re doing this in order to justify passing a VAT: I think that they’re d0ing this because they don’t want to explain why they spend worse than drunken sailors*; these two opinions are not incompatible with each other.
- The White House plans to wait on trying to pass a cap-and-trade bill until after the elections, but before the 112th Congress takes office. This is incompatible with the Democrats’ breezy assurances that they’re going to do well in November; and I agree with Jim Geraghty that Republican nominees need to get Democratic incumbents on the record as to how they feel about this policy.
- Immigration reform? What’s that? Aside from the White House signing off on telling Ecuador about upcoming litigation before it bothers to tell American citizens, of course.
- Congressional Democrats do not want to repeat the debacle of the health care summit – and, yes, it was a debacle for Congressional Democrats; they were expecting to be able to run on passing Obamacare, and now they’re hoping that it doesn’t hurt them too badly – on any of these subjects.
None of the above is my fault; or the fault of my political party; or the fault of my general ideology. Cowardice is the absence of bravery and resolution, and I can’t just go and take either quality from people and thus make them weak. This is a collective, yet personal failure on the part of the Democratic leadership, and while I will be no doubt actively hated for pointing all of this out… really, why should I care?
Moe Lane
*As many people have noted, drunken sailors stop spending when they run out of money.
Crossposted to Moe Lane.