Third Way has been trying to privatize Social Security since 1990s. This is not playing chess.

[HereSince1628]

38. Blind Pragmatism is the enemy. It's only care is to do the doable & compromise makes more doable

People who hold traditional ideals/principles associated with your Grandfather's Democratic Party see this habit of compromise as constant spineless caving. It's not. It's the core tactic of blind pragmatists... a group typified by people like Rahm Emmanuel who as we remember got this administration off to the right start as Obama's Chief of Staff.

Pragmatism, and it's slowly creeping seismic compromise, has emboldened the obstruction and intransigence on the part of Republicans. The R's recognize that the DC Dems will come toward them in order to "do the work of the American people", whether or not the work that gets done is what the American people wanted.

How does that work, you ask. Provide an example or shut up or look like a Dem basher

Well, it works just like it did with DC reacting to the Newtown shootings.

The Dems jumped knee-deep into gun-regulation immediately after Newtown pushing assault weapons and high capacity magazine bans, because frankly it looked doable considering citizen outrage.

But just 3 months later it doesn't look like DC Dems were really committed to fight for gun-regulation. They seem to have just thought it was a reasonably doable thing. The leader of the party was was seeking action on doable 'common sense' things. The facility of dusting off old legislation was confused with do-ability.

A mere 12 weeks later, in Congressional time just midway into the first semester of this Congress, Fienstein is folding on her assault weapons.

Why? A clear majority, 57% of the American people, want it.

But the R's were intransigent, and the Dems are moving on to do what's doable.

What's doable appears to be pushing states to comply with NICS reporting already required under law and pushing for private guns sales to always involve a background check system.

Well, that's better than nothing, and with 90% of Americans supporting it. It was doable.


The politics of cutting SS is predictably going to go down the same way. To get the Grand Bargain that will provide Obama a
headline that can be passed as a legacy, Obama must have something to 'sweeten the deal' to get the R's to accept it.

Americans will be lucky if the R's are willing to settle for SS only getting deformed by a Chained-CPI.