Old Mika Is What America Wants

The Morning Joe Rebuttal For December 9th, 2009


Observations:


1) There are two Mika Brzezinskis. The fitful uncooperative lets keep this conversation above the Mendoza line Mika, and the complacent paychecks are nice and so what if Joe and Willie want to spend half the day in the gutter version of Mika. The latter is a new version who has allowed the show to have a tough time of late. The former got a re-awakening today and whether it was a lack of Joe Scarborough or a story that just keeps getting farther and farther away from it’s previously sold image, old Mika grabbed a pitchfork and asked in her outside voice for some decorum. It did not go away, and we are grateful. We need you Old Mika, for the current events will magnetize themselves far from progress if left to their own devices.


2) You have to interrupt Michael Steele, or you have become a vehicle for his tool-ness. If Savannah Guthrie wants to ask a question, she cannot let Mr. Steele answer some other question of his choosing out of convenience. Some of the best loggerheads between strangers have occurred on Hardball when Mike Barnicle was guest hosting, because Mike just stares into the camera when it’s actually by default his job to create order. He did the same thing here.


3) Thank god for Donnie Deutsch. The point is that every important and painful legislative progress in our nation’s history had systematic obstructionist working the other side. Yes the subject was slavery in one of the examples. But it’s no less valid than any other example, because there are only 4 or 5 of these in our nation’s history. It was a poor choice for Senator Reid only because it allows a convenient cloud of distraction to avail itself to his opponents, but not for real impropriety or real mistaken logic. The logic is in fact correct. It does not pass the “call the opponents Nazis” test the Joe Scarborough correctly indoctrinated but is incorrectly assessing here. Donnie Deutsch was dead on target by getting the tough question out there, optics be damned. Michael Steele was exposed as the tool he is: hide behind the race card via false indignation.


What this latest issue does is reveal how the Republican party uses it's leader’s race at its core, for convenience. It sucks, but that is why Michael Steele is the current chosen leader of the RNC, because he optically disarms a core notion amongst the opposition to it, that it is in structural practicing opposition to the black population of the United States along with latinos, gays, and most other non-white segments. The level of shame in this story is unending, but brave people will fight through falsely based nonsense and get the job done anyway.


4) I’m ready to admit one level of defeat as the public option got axed from the Senate health care bill. It looks like there is some consolation in the structure of the compromise bill, but it’s neither a co-op or a robust public option, so it may be a mirage of the idea the president campaigned on. It’s too early to be sure either way, but here’s hoping that the leading newspapers and news outlets help carve out a real understandable measure of progress as the bill marches forward, outlining how much special interest has hijacked the legislative process and continue the debate of the governability of the United States when our Senators and Congressmen are so awash in money that they cannot get it right.


I’m still holding out hope that 11th hour tactics come through and real teeth get added in conference, reconciliation gets it through the Senate, and America gets it’s first change it can believe in in a generation.


5) There were green shoots of progress in a practical conversation on jobs on the ground in the United States today during the show. But alas the vigil continues because by his absenteeism, Joe Scarborough is still at 30,000 feet on the issue. We will retire the vigil when he rolls his sleeves up and embraces what started in earnest on the show today. Otherwise, it only happened because he wasn’t there.


That’s all for today, see you tomorrow.