Trigger Is Joe Scarborough's Latest Dog Whistle

The Morning Joe Rebuttal for November 23rd, 2009


Observations


1) Imagine the horror amongst subscribers to have JS and Lawrence O’Donnell giving each other credit for “having it right” for the last several months. The revisionist history that it takes to convince one’s self that your frequent projection of failures have not time and time again been countered by the forward marching of health care have made you officially in denial.


Obviously I’m on Lawrence’s side on political matters, but he has the air of a gatekeeper, of a doorman at the Mondrian that tells you that even though you’re a democrat your expectations of success are naïve. It’s apparently empowering as he lines up false failures and explains away the extremely tough but seemingly routine procedural success we’re witnessing.


The latest in “having it right” from Joe Scarborough is that this series of events lines up for the use of the trigger version of the public option. It takes a village of people willing to vote yes on a thing to get a thing, and because JS is aligned with the 39 no votes, a viewer is forced to assume this is the latest in a long line of soon to be debunked wishful thinkings. But like only dogs hear a dog whistle, only Joe Scarborough is convinced that he is predicting the future, and will be revising his historical stance sometime soon to claim he was right about this wrong as well.


2) Thankfully , there was a wide range of guests today and you can point two things out that make the message coming out of the show very well rounded. Joe Conason described the trigger as a way of not providing a public option at all and stated that history shows no trigger has ever, well, triggered in our nation’s history.


That scenario I was asking for last Thursday with Lawrence and one other realist on a panel found the result I had anticipated, albeit on a different front. The spending is out of control and we need to focus on jobs conundrums were reconciled as a “false choice” by Lawrence and Andrew Ross Sorkin. Just to be clear, ARS asked Joe Scarborough for his plan on jobs {thank you!} and it was all about public works, ARS reconciled immediately that that was stimulus and that Joe had to back off of an anti Stimulus position if he wanted public works, and furthered that stimulus is a requirement of a jobs initiative, but because that would require a deficit expenditure, it was a false choice for the shows platform to try and have it both ways. Music to my ears.


If we had made a tourism friendly transit system in Los Angeles a priority with some portion of the stimulus money and stopped greeting European and Japanese tourists with bus maps and dangerous layovers out in the open at Slauson and La Brea, you might argue that you fixed two problems with jobs and revenue in Southern California that will never be able to be fixed at the state or local level. That’s a reconciled stimulus opportunity and I’m sure it exists in all 50 states.


3) Mike Barnicle continues to be confused. How can the oldest soul on the show wake up and suddenly cry foul at an earmark for vote scenario? What have you been covering all of your life, the Philippines? I love the Will Rogers populist take that Mike brings to things, but beyond some point it only accomplishes the preaching of discontent and uncertainty. Guest after guest described the Louisiana earmark scenario as having been played out since the 1920’s as a method for getting a tough bill done. What I wish I would have heard from Mike is the “A-ha” of just why Joe Lieberman is running around with his hat out. But, they’re friends so I guess Joe gets a pass.



That’s all for today, see you tomorrow.