Sunday, December 25, 2005
The Lack of Need to Discuss Policy in the Present Times
Atrios spells it out nicely and simply and worth running in toto:
Wonk Off
Garance and Kevin, responding tolWaMo profile of Markos discuss the lack of blogospheric wonkery.
I've said this before, but there's just little point in detail-oriented grand policy proposals when Bush and Republicans are in office. Just about everything their side offers up involves tax cuts, corporate pork, or cuts to programs that help keep granny from freezing to death in winter. The rest are complete disasters for obvious reason, like the Medicare drug plan, and there's really not much to discuss.
If our team actually had some power we could be debating the merits of various universal health care proposals, or considering just how large a minimum wage increase might be appropriate, or various other wonky things. It would be good fun. But we live in an unserious age where the people running the government have no interest in policy and the people not running government have no ability to get anything passed without having anything good about it destroyed by the Republicans.
The 90s were a delightfully wonky era when serious center-left political types spent lots of time debating lots of things. We had a wonky president, a wonky vice president, and an utterly bored press corps, until the blow jobs happened anyway. I'd like a chance to spend more time talking about how policy matters, but the space just isn't really there right now.
Wonk Off
Garance and Kevin, responding tolWaMo profile of Markos discuss the lack of blogospheric wonkery.
I've said this before, but there's just little point in detail-oriented grand policy proposals when Bush and Republicans are in office. Just about everything their side offers up involves tax cuts, corporate pork, or cuts to programs that help keep granny from freezing to death in winter. The rest are complete disasters for obvious reason, like the Medicare drug plan, and there's really not much to discuss.
If our team actually had some power we could be debating the merits of various universal health care proposals, or considering just how large a minimum wage increase might be appropriate, or various other wonky things. It would be good fun. But we live in an unserious age where the people running the government have no interest in policy and the people not running government have no ability to get anything passed without having anything good about it destroyed by the Republicans.
The 90s were a delightfully wonky era when serious center-left political types spent lots of time debating lots of things. We had a wonky president, a wonky vice president, and an utterly bored press corps, until the blow jobs happened anyway. I'd like a chance to spend more time talking about how policy matters, but the space just isn't really there right now.
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