Lev's Area

Segregation in America has never been lower

2010-12-15T10:56:00.000-08:00

Because, despite all the bad shit going on, there's always some good news if you look for it.

The New Blog

2010-11-30T19:46:00.000-08:00

Hey everyone, got any space in your RSS readers? I know you do, because space on those things is unlimited. If you like my writing, you might want to add Library Grape to your feed. I just submitted my first post over there as a new front-pager, alongside the existing crew, which includes Gherald the thoughtful libertarian and Metavirus the occasionally irascible (but good-hearted) lefty. It looks like a good team of writers and I'm thrilled to be a part of a group blog, which should be good because there are bound to be plenty of interesting discussions and differences taking place between us. So if you want to follow me and the other folks, you should head on over there.

I don't think I'm going to shut down my Area completely, and I'm sure I'll be back from time to time with random things to amuse and befuddle. But the real action is going to be going down at the Grape, so by all means, join us!

Credit where it's due

2010-11-30T15:00:00.000-08:00

My current opinion is that John McCain's soul is either sold or at least in the middle of a very long lease, but I have to give him some credit for putting his neck on the line for START. Of course, he is simultaneously trying to derail the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell to complete his evolution from voting against a constitutional ban on gay marriage to becoming Tony Perkins's best friend, which is just sad on so many levels, but on START he's doing the right thing.

Where I Am

2010-11-30T14:16:00.000-08:00

I have a new policy: If I see TSA anywhere in the title or first paragraph of a blog post anymore, I just don't read it. I realize it's A Big Thing that is Worthy of Serious Discussion, but I rather feel that the topic is completely exhausted and has been for some time now, and it's just time for people to move on.

I'm nearly at the point of doing the same thing for Wikileaks. There are interesting things to be said about it, but only so many, and it seems like too many of the blogs I'm reading are turning into TSA-and-Wikileaks-only affairs. There's an awfully big world out there. I have no objection to commentary on those topics, but seriously.

Okay, this is really a content-free minirant. Enjoy the rest of your day.

A Triumph

2010-11-30T13:20:00.000-08:00

Tell me this isn't a complete triumph for the forces of equality:

Nearly seven in ten U.S. troops said they served alongside someone in their unit who they believed to be gay or lesbian, and 92% of these servicemen and women said their unit's ability to work together was fine. What's more, 89% of Army combat units and 84% of Marine combat units saying they had good or neutral experiences working with gays and lesbians.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates, after noting the non-existent risk to military readiness, "strongly" urged the Senate to pass the pending legislation "before the end of this year." He added that repeal "would not be the wrenching, traumatic change that many have feared and predicted."

Commenting on the Pentagon report, Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, added, "We treat people with dignity and respect in the armed forces, or we don't last long in the armed forces: No special cases, no special treatment."

Message to the Senate: pass the damn DADT repeal and do it smartly by legislation, or let judges do it for you, and be responsible for any consequences. Quite adept. I wonder if this is going to finally budge those recalcitrant Republicans in the Senate.

Quote of the Day

2010-11-29T13:37:00.000-08:00

"He's a silly, simple-minded man whose success leads a cynic to the conclusion that the world is run by similarly silly, simple-minded men." -- Alex Pareene on Tom Friedman.

Oh, that it weren't the case...

The Future of Climate Denialism

2010-11-24T11:06:00.000-08:00

Think Progress has an interesting post on what a winning message on climate change might look like. It includes this figure that breaks down how two different groups--one with that believes in an essentially just world and one that doesn't--react to a climate argument that emphasize the importance of the problem and the ability of solving it, as well as a climate argument that makes it sound impossible to solve it. Here are the outcomes:

In essence, the tone of the message made little difference to people who don't think the world is or should be just, but it was hugely divergent to people who do. Maybe I'm feeling a bit cynical today, but this seems like the next step for climate deniers. I believe in climate change as I tend to trust science and scientists far more than politicians and spin. I go even further than that and support taking significant action to curb the effects of climate change, but as they say, admitting there is a problem is the first step. Republicans increasingly view climate change as a hoax, but this in the long run this stance isn't terribly tenable. For one thing, the epistemological implications of the "it's a hoax!" view are far more terrifying than actual global warming, since it would seem to make suspect literally every scientific fact we know, and possibly all the other ones as well. Additionally, the climate deniers tend to be much older than the average person, and part of an age cohort that is quite a bit less friendly with science in general terms, as this chart demonstrates:

There's a lot on the chart, but notice how much less likely older people are to vote for someone who believes in evolution. Among most people it's a pretty neutral factor--in fact, perhaps a positive one without seniors pulling it over. What I contend is that the current crop of senior citizens--one that does not yet include the Baby Boomers in significant numbers--is an incredibly conservative generation, one that missed the Depression and WWII for the most part, but rather came of age during Eisenhower and the conservatism of the 50's. Being conservative doesn't invariably imply climate denial, but the media of the right have indeed pushed this argument for some time now, and seniors are Fox News's bread and butter, demographically speaking. It's quite a confluence of message, media and audience that isn't replicated demographically anywhere else. Ultimately, climate denialism is a generational artifact for the most part, and eventually it will die off because it just can't be substantiated with the data, and the typical generational turnover will take care of some of it as well. But not all the deniers are going to die off, so the study that TP did seems to show the next step: instead of saying that climate change is a hoax, why not admit that it's happening but simply say it's too late to do anything about it and that we're all doomed? With that message, skepticism of climate change shoots through the roof among people who are natural targets to believe in taking action. Ironically, making the concession that the globe is warming seems to increase actual skepticism of this scientific phenomenon. It will be interesting to see how the debate plays out over the next decade or so.

By Republicans For Republicans: Who would referee the closed-circuit Republican debate?

2010-11-22T11:47:00.000-08:00

The indispensable Steve Benen runs down the chatter among Republicans against any sort of engagement with non-partisan media:

The Daily Caller's report went on to note that Grover Norquist disapproves of "nitpicking from left-of-center journalists asking questions that will impress their fellow journalists." Far-right activist Brent Bozell was similarly displeased: "When, oh when will Republicans learn? Every four years the presidential debate season takes place. Republicans dutifully line up for debates moderated by liberal 'moderators' except there's nothing moderate about these moderators who mercilessly attack them."

Just at the surface, blasting NBC News and Politico as "liberal" seems pretty silly. MSNBC has some liberal hosts in primetime, but NBC News itself doesn't appear to have any political agenda to speak of. Politico, meanwhile, appears to me to lean pretty clearly in Republicans' favor.

Indeed, in 2007, there was an NBC/Politico event, and the moderators were practically deferential towards the candidates, asking one softball after another.

That said, I don't much care either way whether the event takes place, or whether anyone shows up. What's more interesting to me is the competing partisan standards. A year before the 2008 presidential election, you may recall, Fox News was scheduled to host a debate for Democratic presidential candidates. The highest-profile Dems quickly balked at participating in an event aired and organized by a Republican propaganda outlet, and the debate was scrapped.

But it was the reaction from the right that stood out. Bill O'Reilly compared Democratic presidential campaigns to Goebbels; Mort Kondracke and Fred Barnes said Dems were guilty of "Stalinism"; and Fox News president Roger Ailes argued in all seriousness, "The candidates that can't face Fox, can't face Al Qaeda."

And yet, here we are. Republicans are complaining about an NBC/Politico event, and at this point, aren't facing any pushback at all.

It's a shame and it would be a disgrace if there was that much left for Republicans to disgrace. But what interests me is who would form the panel to moderate such a debate. I very much doubt Rush Limbaugh would be asked, since polls like this one show him as politically toxic and having every Republican sucking up to him would be devastating to the party. It would, among other things, revive the meme that Limbaugh is the leader of the Republican Party and be worth a couple billion propaganda points for the Democrats. So it can't be Rush. It can't be Michael Savage, for reasons obvious to any follower to politics. Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck would probably be out--not for conflict of interest reasons due to moderating a debate with their FNC colleagues, since they don't really care about that stuff (see Beck's pimping of Goldbug for a prime example of this)--so much as because all of these guys insist on self-identifying as independents as a defense against the liberal attacks against them as party hacks. They are party hacks to varying degrees, but the justification behind Fox News is that applying a conservative lens to current events is somehow a corrective for the liberal lens that the mainstream media allegedly uses when presenting the news. Of course, even this frequent justification is misguided, since opposing biases don't just cancel each other out, presuming the bias even exists in the first place. But there is a difference between presenting yourself as just an independent trying to present the news as stripped of bias instead of a Republican trying to get out what the party wants you to get out. It turns out that there is no substantive difference when it comes to the outcomes produced by these two approaches, as Fox News is generally in sync with unapologetic partisan organs such as Weekly Standard, but it makes a difference in terms of perception among your viewers.

So, if O'Reilly and Hannity were to moderate a debate amongst Republicans (I'm guessing Beck would not get an invitation, for even more obvious reasons), they would be inserting themselves into the political process in a way that would severely undermine their professions of "independence" to such an extent that even Fox News viewers might find it hard to justify. It might not matter that much, since Beck has been inserting himself into the political process quite baldly and has not lost support at Fox, but I think O'Reilly and Hannity see themselves very differently than Beck does. And if all those people are off the table, you're down to the second-string right-wing crew, with the likes of Bill Kristol, Laura Ingraham, Mark Levin and so forth. Considering the weakness of the GOP field so far, I wonder if such an event absent a marquee right-wing panel would really summon up all that much interest.

My Home State

2010-11-19T13:18:00.000-08:00

Political Wire pointed me to a survey of what Californians believe. Lots of interesting stuff in here, though not too much of it is surprising. This should seem familiar to anyone following politics these days:

The party faces a critical collision between its own voters, a minority in California, and those it needs to attract to win. The most faithful Republicans this year — those who voted for both Meg Whitman for governor and Carly Fiorina for Senate — said by a 27-point margin that to be more successful, Republicans should nominate "true conservatives."

But among the majority of voters who spurned Whitman and Fiorina in November — and in whose good graces any future winning candidate would need to be — the results were reversed. Forty-three percent said that future Republican candidates needed to be more moderate. Only 20% said that Republicans should nominate "true conservatives."

As those figures help illustrate, the GOP's difficulties in California rest on two overlapping conflicts, ideological and demographic. The party's conservative primary voters determine nominees, even if their views are often opposite those of the far more moderate general election audience. And the party's white and conservative voter base is increasingly giving way to the state's non-white and nonpartisan population.

And then there's this, which is nothing if not an I-told-you-so moment:

Marjorie Smallwood, a Democrat from Palo Alto who was among the poll respondents, illustrates the difficulty that GOP candidates face in the state. The only Republican she's been tempted to vote for recently, she said, was Senate candidate Tom Campbell, who lost in the primary after a barrage of criticism that he was not conservative enough. "He's moderate, he's a thinking person," she said. "If they want independents and Democrats to vote for them…"

I wouldn't exactly call Tom Campbell a moderate, but he is reality-based and a decent guy who feels the weight of civic responsibility. Kind of a shame what happened to him.

In any event, the import of all this beyond California is debatable. California has a lot of things you don't see anywhere else in the country: a demographically significant Asian-American population that has tilted strongly in the Democrats' favor over the past two decades, a larger-than-average LGBT population thanks to San Francisco (and Los Angeles as well), and a voting population that's quite a bit younger than normal states, which translates into a lot of voters whose formative years were spent under Bush 43's rule and are rabidly anti-Republican as a result. In fact, California has the fourth-lowest median age of all states, though the overall list suggests less of a correlation to voting than one might expect. Still, this is an overwhelmingly young and Hispanic-heavy state, and one where both cohorts are deeply influenced by progressive values and ideas. Republicans often dismiss California as some sort of non-mainstream exception to their center-right nation claims. They better hope they're right.

Will they shut it down?

2010-11-19T11:31:00.000-08:00

Grover Norquist is practically lusting over a potential Republican government shutdown. Chait points out an important difference between now and 1995-96:

If Republicans refuse to let the government continue running at current levels while they negotiate with Obama, then they are indeed the ones who are shutting down the government. But as a matter of political reality, it's true that the existence of Fox News and the power of other Republican organs gives the GOP a better chance to spin a shutdown as Obama's fault -- or, at least, to lose the battle for public opinion less decisively. Norquist is also right that Boehner is not acting like, and being treated as, a kind of prime minister, and that factor would also reduce the degree to which Republicans are held accountable for outcomes like the shutdown.

My view is that it's going to be pretty hard to blame Obama for a government shutdown when some of your most influential activists are already cheering one on so forcefully. And if, as Norquist suggests, Republicans try to shut down the government over the debt ceiling, he really is drinking his own ~~Kool-Aid~~, er, tea, since Americans don't really care about the deficit but will not stomach grandma not being able to cash a Social Security check. Then again, you never know. Spin can only go so far, but this isn't 1995, and it's certainly something to keep an eye on.

I'm not sure this quite fits with the post, but it's Friday, so I think a little Talking Heads is perfectly warranted:

This issue doesn't seem to be on anyone's radar

2010-11-19T09:32:00.000-08:00

But I think I'm with Ron Wyden on the Combating Online Infringement and Counterfits Act. Click to learn more.

The right in a nutshell

2010-11-18T11:09:00.000-08:00

Have I mentioned my loathing of Eric Cantor recently? Here's a reason why I don't care much for him:

The plan would replace some corporate and income taxes with a 6.5% sales tax "as well as an excise tax on sugar drinks like soda." Proponents told the Journal the sales tax "was a good way to go rather than try to put more burden on an income tax," a concept which doesn't sound especially European on its face. In fact, it sounds a lot like the so-called "fair tax" national sales tax plan conservatives have been pitching for years.

Cantor sees it differently. The proposal sounds like a value added tax to him. And that's, well, you know.

Cantor, according to the Journal, said lawmakers "wouldn't support VAT-type tax because its ties to Europe might make it politically poisonous in Washington."

"I don't think any of us want us to go the direction of the social welfare states around the world," Cantor said.

Look, I don't care for the right's corporatism or its obsession with marginal tax rates, but what drives me crazy the most is when they make policy arguments on the basis of cultural signaling. Where this happens the most is on transportation policy (What, you want us to give up our SUVs and ride a train? What, are we going to concentration camps?) and with the VAT. The latter is literally the most stupid thing the right argues, since they're the ones who are always arguing that we should tax consumption. Virtually no liberals push this. And not only in America, but European conservatives have implemented VATs in order to make way for flatter taxes with lower rates. Without a VAT, sustainably lower personal income tax rates are not possible. But some European countries did it, so it's socialist, even though it's strongly related to what they actually want to do. You start to see the contortions and contradictions that being an American conservative entails, and one wonders how anyone with a thinking apparatus could possibly fall for it, but Fox News proves its worth by keep many of them thinking from their id at all times.

Personally, I'm not wild about a VAT. It's a regressive tax and a complicated one, which leads me to believe that loopholes would be abundant, though there is something to be said for an incentive structure which actually makes it a good idea to pay your taxes, so that you get more back. I'd prefer doing something like implementing a millionaire's tax bracket with higher marginal rates, but I'd be willing to consider a VAT as part of a serious long-term deficit reduction project. Not that this matters to Republicans like Cantor who don't really care about the deficit. I just wonder what the logical endpoint of his argument would be. Of course, America is more like Europe than unlike it, what with liberal democracy and a common cultural and intellectual heritage. But let's take Cantor's argument further: Should we oppose new nuclear plants just because France has a bunch of them? If France is doing it, it can't be good, right? And of course there's socialist Britain, passing austerity measures that would never be considered here in the States. Should we oppose those because they're too European? Should we protest the building of aqueducts because they're too much like the old Roman Empire? Cantor probably wouldn't say these things because they're silly, but they flow naturally from his precepts. Of course, "Europe" doesn't exist, and in reality Europe is a large group of different nations that disagree on many things, including politics. For every France, there's a Poland that balances things out. The reason so many countries over there have universal health care (though in many different models: from the fully socialized British to the fully market-oriented Dutch) and a transportation policy that makes sense is because the case for them is self-evident. When you don't feel the need to confront some sort of inferiority complex as Cantor seems to here, you can actually have a conversation. And when that happens, the European Cantor equivalents simply get ignored. If only we were so lucky.

Pelosi officially staying put as leader

2010-11-17T14:32:00.000-08:00

Josh Marshall sees ominous signs in the final vote:

Two term Rep. Heath Shuler (D-NC), as anything other than a protest candidate against Nancy Pelosi, was a preposterous candidate to lead the smaller, more liberal House Democratic caucus. And it's not my understanding that he did anything to canvass for votes. So it's a bad sign for Nancy Pelosi that 43 members of the caucus voted for the guy. That's almost a quarter of the caucus. If a serious challenger had opposed her, it would have been a tough race.

I see two basic possibilities. The first is that Pelosi has just had her Anthony Meyer moment, and her leadership is nearing its end (Meyer gained notoriety by presenting a failed Tory leadership challenge to Margaret Thatcher, one that showed her political weakness and led to Thatcher being ousted a year later). The other basic possibility is that Democrats are pissed that the party lost a bunch of seats and are taking it out on Pelosi, and if the Dems do well in 2012 all will be forgiven.

The Pelosi puzzle is a complicated one. She's a talented legislative leader but a polarizing figure (intentionally so). My instinct is that loathing toward her is wide but not deep, that voters have a vague dislike of Pelosi due to what they know of her profile but that only hard-core partisans on both sides have deeply-held opinions on her. But I'm willing to listen to the argument that what might generally be a nominal effect might be quite a bit less nominal in places like Mississippi, where it could well have taken just enough votes away from, say, Gene Taylor. I wonder if running for minority leader was the smartest move at this point--maybe letting Hoyer (or better yet someone new) take the hits at the top for a few years in exchange for Nancy getting to be speaker when the Dems get the House back. But the Democrats' problems this cycle were at least 98% not Nancy's fault, and I'm personally happy she's sticking around.

New developments on New START

2010-11-17T10:35:00.000-08:00

I must confess that the maelstrom of New START defeatism confuses me a bit. I never figured that Jon Kyl would come around and support ratification because Kyl is cynical and stupid and doesn't care about wreaking havoc. The politics of this whole episode are pretty dumb, too: screwing with national security is going to bring a price, and it looks like the Administration is actually going to try to make Kyl pay it. As well they should, since unlike Democrats calling for Iraq withdrawal in 2005, Kyl really is screwing up national security here. The thing is, though, Kyl was never going to be there for this treaty, and passing the treaty was always going to involve getting some Republicans to defect from their leadership's position, and it still doesn't seem impossible that the thing will pass: between avowed supporters, retiring senators and Senate moderates, you get about as many Republicans as you need to pass the thing. And there are some cases--like the Sotomayor confirmation, for example--where this has actually happened. So that's something, I guess.

The main takeaway from this should be that McConnell and Kyl simply can't be trusted to follow-through on their agreements, and that the Senate Democrats need to kill the filibuster ASAP to neutralize them. I don't actually expect this will happen, but I don't see any reason to hope that these guys will behave better in the future if they're going to compromise national security and foreign policy now.

One-term Obama Watch, ctd.: Jobs, Jobs, Jobs

2010-11-17T10:03:00.000-08:00

They're coming:

This is joblessness plus part-timers looking for full-time work, just so that you know. Both are going down individually as well. I've found Gallup's measure a pretty good leading indicator that almost always tracks what the next Thursday jobless claims will look like--if Gallup's number goes down, there's usually fewer jobless claims. Here is Gallup's overall analysis:

Gallup's economic data suggest that the job market continued to improve during the first half of November. As noted previously, if current Gallup unemployment trends continue, the government's unemployment rate for November is likely to show a decline when reported in early December.
Because Gallup's U.S. unemployment rate and underemployment measure are not seasonally adjusted, some of the late October and November improvement is probably the result of retailers hiring for the Christmas holidays. This is particularly likely because Gallup's most recent spending estimates suggest at least a slightly better holiday sales season this year.

Although many economists and politicians continue to complain about the Federal Reserve's efforts to inject money into the economy, it may be that anticipation of this aggressive Fed policy has increased economic optimism among the nation's business leaders. In turn, this could be leading to more companies being willing to hire.

Regardless of the reason, this is good news for retailers and the overall economy as the holiday season gets fully underway.

I maintain that if unemployment is around 8% in November 2012 and moving in the right direction, I say Obama's second term is assured. And there's this poll out of Virginia by the great pollster PPP:

When matched up against Mitt Romney, Obama has a 48%-43% advantage. His lead is an identical five points against Mike Huckabee (49%-44%). Against both Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich, that lead grows to 11 points -- 51%-40% against Palin, 52%-41% against Gingrich.

Also, Jim Webb is leading Macaca for another term. Let's just keep in mind that this is how things stand now, before next month's job numbers, before the Republican freak show in the House gets going next year, before Obama starts ramping up attacks on an unpopular do-nothing Congress, headed by an unpopular party which has several key vulnerabilities that a leader like Romney would only intensify.

Yeah he is

2010-11-16T11:27:00.001-08:00

John Thune is the Republican John Edwards.

One-term Obama Watch, Part Two: How to read Schoen/Caddell

2010-11-16T10:54:00.000-08:00

I find it interesting that Doug Schoen and Pat Caddell wrote a (perhaps) serious article about Obama stepping down after Larry Sabato's post last week effectively mocked every one of their premises. Lots of good takes on this (Weigel's is good, but you can't beat this one). I suppose my reaction to this is my reaction to about 99% of D.C. discourse, which is that it's pointless. This is sanctimonious and perhaps a truism, but I mean it sincerely: don't these guys have anything better to do? Isn't there something more productive they could spend their time on? I don't read the big op-eds very often, but when I do I keep picking up on this at times frantic unease, a distaste for having to play the role of an "independent" and ostensibly liberal pundit under a Democrat, which seems to involve hilarious nitpicking as to why a pundit can't just support health care reform, or calls for some new third party that they can support so that they don't have to say they support the Democrats. This is all evidently more stressful than when they're playing the same role under a Republican, when you can issue limp dissents on everything and nothing really happens, their status is protected, and the party invitations keep rolling in. This is the sort of culture that could produce an article saying that Obama should not run for re-election despite the fact that he's the most popular politician in America, bad economy and all. It's a way of showing the "independence" that all pundits apparently need.

Incidentally, the presidential approval rating today is 48%.

Good choice

2010-11-15T14:34:00.000-08:00

TPM:

"In a sign that Democrats hope to do a better job claiming credit for their accomplishments, and emphasizing the differences between themselves and the GOP, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has merged the Senate Dems' policy and communications shops, and tasked Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) with chairing the new office as a member of party leadership.
Schumer has developed a reputation among his colleagues, and across Washington, as a shrewd political strategist and a master of message control."

Schumer suffers from a decent amount of smugness, and he's notoriously camera-seeking. But he's also one of the few Democrats I know of who doesn't mind throwing an elbow when it's required and can actually land it. The ingredient to political success that Democrats lack the most is tenacity, which is something Schumer has quite a bit of, so this seems quite smart to me.

The job nobody wants...but should!

2010-11-15T12:40:00.000-08:00

Senator Mike Bennet has become the most recent Democrat to turn down the job of running the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, i.e. the committee designed to elect Democrats to the U.S. Senate. Evidently quite a few other Democratic Senators--including Chuck Schumer and Al Franken--have also turned down the gig, ostensibly because the Democrats will have over twice as many seats to defend as Republicans will in this election cycle. It certainly seems like the sort of thankless job that nobody wants, but I wonder why it's so difficult to find someone when one considers the following factors:

Since everybody expects the Democrats to lose seats, the bar for success will be low.
Since nobody wants the job, the person who takes it will earn some serious points from the party for being a good sport.
The 2012 electorate will not be the same as the 2010 electorate, and there are a number of signs that the economy, including the employment numbers, are starting to improve. It will be a much more favorable environment to run a campaign than 2010 was for Democrats, which should make recruiting easier.
Obama's 2012 re-election effort will undoubtedly feature an extremely robust GOTV effort that would help Democrats running for lower offices.

And looking at the 2012 Senate battlefield, it seems far from likely that a second bloodbath is even plausible. The Democrats will be defending a very large number of seats, but many of those are among the safest the Democrats have. There's just no way the Republicans are going to knock off someone like Daniel Akaka. The Republicans had an outside chance of beating Boxer this year (that they helpfully squandered, thankfully) but they have no chance of unseating the less-polarizing Dianne Feinstein, or her most obvious replacement if she retires. Ditto someone like Tom Carper or Ben Cardin. In fact, by my count, there are only seven Democratic Senators that ought to be in significant trouble, all red- or purple-state Democrats who could be vulnerable with the right challenger:

Bill Nelson of Florida
Claire McCaskill of Missouri
Jon Tester of Montana
Ben Nelson of Nebraska
Kent Conrad of North Dakota
Sherrod Brown of Ohio
Jim Webb of Virginia

There are others that are more of a stretch--Bob Casey in Pennsylvania, for example, is an extremely good fit for a socially conservative/fiscally moderate-to-liberal state and should be safe, but you never know--however, these are the obvious takeover ideas for Republicans. I would have figured Nelson would be in trouble over health care reform but evidently his polling against two established commodities--outgoing Senator George LeMieux and Jeb Bush--looks pretty good. McCaskill's approval looks tepid, but the Republicans are looking to field two-time loser Jim Talent against her, which could help her get another term. The other Nelson's problems are obvious, but he's got a pretty longstanding relationship with his state's voters that could help him stick around. Conrad might squeak by because the ND GOP doesn't seem to have another giant-killer around like they did in 2010 ~~with~~ against eleventy-term Senator Byron Dorgan, and Sherrod Brown is quite progressive but a deft populist who won big last time. Webb might or might not get another term, but there's always Tim Kaine if he doesn't. I'm not saying that all these folks are going to win even if the economy improves greatly, but none of them are sure losers if they run again, and in most of their cases the boost of a national campaign along with some points in their favor should prevent really any of them from being doomed. If a bunch of them retire, of course, things get a lot tougher.

On the other hand, Lieberman's seat seems all but assured to fall to an actual Democrat, Scott Brown isn't likely to stick around when Obama wins 60% of the vote in Massachusetts, and John Ensign is a sure loser in Nevada, especially since he's running again and appears to have substantial Republican support. That should be a gimme in the general election. Throw in Olympia Snowe's inevitable primary loss (another probable Democratic pickup), and maybe one or two other outside possibilities (Janet Napolitano stepping down from the Cabinet to challenge Jon Kyl?), and there's a good chance the Democrats can keep the Senate in 2012. The real challenge will be keeping it in 2014, when you have some real tough ones like Alaska and Louisiana coming up in the traditional "six-year itch" elections. If I were a young Democratic Senator trying to make my name, I'd step up to the DSCC in 2012 and stay the hell away in 2014.

Obama knows what he's doing today

2010-11-15T11:01:00.000-08:00

Two examples:

Middle-East diplomacy: Like most everyone, I've grown not to expect too much from the current round of peace talks. But they're not dead, and this can only be seen as promising. During Bush's last year, he tried to accomplish Middle-East peace with the Annapolis process and suffered a high-profile failure, as his White House hyped the effort and increased expectations. Obama's team seems not to have pushed back on a lot of the defeatist rhetoric but kept things going, so any progress actually made will be a much bigger deal. I'm not going to get too optimistic, but as a J Street supporter I remain hopeful for a two-state solution. And if it were to happen, it would be huge.
Obama takes the blame: I can only imagine what Krugman and the Kossacks are saying about this:
“I neglected some things that matter a lot to people, and rightly so: maintaining a bipartisan tone in Washington,” he told reporters in a brief question-and-answer session aboard Air Force One as he returned from a 10-day trip to Asia. “I’m going to redouble my efforts to go back to some of those first principles,” he promised.
Democratic partisans must be livid over this sort of stuff, but I think there are basically two ways Obama could have responded to this most recent election. He could have continued with the fierce (and usually correct) attacks on the Republicans that he lobbed around during the 2010 campaign, or he could have offered the Beltway opinionmakers a bit of a bone. Most of what I read suggests the Administration has about as dim a view of the news media as the partisans do, but one cannot get around the fact that these idiots do have a lot of power. Throwing down a marker at this point would probably not have gained Obama anything, but statements like this make sense if Obama wants to set the tone for the next two years, with himself as the reasonable adult in the room and the GOP as hyperpartisan crazies. And it's not like he's giving up anything of substance yet. Meanwhile, after having used the drawn-out process of passing health-care reform to hurt the favorability of Obama and the Democratic Congress and witnessed the damage done firsthand, their evident response is to get themselves some of that too. Time will tell how serious they are, since repeal right now would mean bringing back recissions, benefit caps, the "donut hole" and so forth, and the government shutdown card would be quite a radical one to play.

Why won't capital punishment go away?

2010-11-15T09:44:00.000-08:00

I'm glad Ta-Nehisi follows this stuff. I think there are by now a number of examples where it seems clear that an innocent person was executed (David Grann's lovely, heartbreaking piece on Cameron Todd Willingham and the circumstances of his execution is something that everyone should read), and yet public opinion still overwhelmingly backs the death penalty, even though almost everyone surveyed admits that it's likely that someone innocent has been lost due to the practice. Capital punishment was one of the first areas where I rebelled from my evangelical conservative upbringing, and one of the causes that I am personally passionate about (though it's probably fallen into my second tier at this point). Capital punishment is an excellent example of man's hubris, the notion that people can somehow determine for sure that someone can never be rehabilitated, that we can really see into another person's soul (or, for my materialist friends, whatever term you wish to substitute in for the soul). There is, in my opinion, not really any satisfying argument in favor of the practice, though John Stuart Mill's comes close. But capital punishment has almost completely dropped out of sight as an issue in American life, and nobody even bothers to defend it on its own terms anymore.

There are a lot of reasons for this state of affairs. Crime has gone down dramatically since the early 1990s, but I don't think people have adjusted to the new reality in their minds. My personal experience growing up in suburbia is that it involves highly distorted (and self-glorifying) views of the realities of urban living, since why else did they move to the suburbs? And it cannot be denied that there is a sort of caveman justice to capital punishment that intuitively makes sense to people with certain assumptions. One of the key problems to anti-death penalty argumentation that I've come across as a death penalty opponent is that opponents tend to emphasize the poverty of the "deterrence" argument in favor of capital punishment. There is a major point to be made here, since the Supreme Court invalidated the death penalty for nearly two years with the Furman v. Georgia decision in the mid-1970s, and crime did not shoot up. Not only that, but the common sense rebuttal is compelling as well--one of the earliest episodes of The West Wing noticed that drug kingpins live every day under the threat of execution, so why would a more sanitary and drawn-out one threaten them at all? All of this is solid reasoning, but the problem is that it proves the wrong point. Nobody believes in capital punishment as a deterrent, as that's just the reasonable facade to make it seem a lot less like something intolerably dark. Fighting this point won't change any minds in and of itself, but most death penalty opponents (in my experience) tend to be rational types more swayed by evidence and reason than by emotion. Which is to say that they're basically the opposite of how most people process something like the death penalty. Which is part of the reason why things are the way they are. After all, if 2/3 support capital punishment and almost 9/10 admit that innocent people have been executed, there's clearly something other than dispassionate logical analysis going on here.

At some point, we death penalty opponents are going to have to realize that the reason we're getting our asses kicked is because we have never been able to rebut the Dukakis question. It's not terribly likely that one's wife or daughter will randomly be raped by a stranger and murdered, since most rape is date rape to begin with, but that is such a vivid and emotional example that virtually everyone can project themselves into, and all the reasonable arguments in the world aren't going to overtake emotionalism of that magnitude (Incidentally, the weakest rebuttal to the question, "If your daughter were raped and murdered, wouldn't you want to see the killer executed?" is "No."). I suppose the equivalent for the anti-capital punishment side is "What if your son happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and got falsely accused of a murder and was sentenced to death?" which is simply a lot weaker than the other argument since accepting the premise requires someone to assume their child is associated somehow with undesirables, and if your strategy involves overcoming parental denial it's probably not a good strategy. It might work well among minorities with whom the police have a less friendly relationship overall, but that's going to reach only a limited amount of people, necessarily. How to make this argument to your average suburban household, then? I admit that I really don't know, and the lack of institutional support for ending capital punishment makes outreach all the more difficult. At best, the pro-life movement pays lip service to capital punishment. And that's at best. Then again, considering their track record, I don't think anyone is really crying out for their help.

When you get down to it, though, capital punishment functions as a microcosm of the American public's relationships with our civic institutions. In most cases, Americans are skeptical of pretty much all authority, rightly or not, and I can think of plenty of examples of both types. But when anything related to public safety comes up, people seem to become practically inured to any argumentation arguing for healthy skepticism. I'm always the optimist, and I do believe that America will eventually mature into a nation where emotionalism does not guide public policy with such a heavy hand. But that day has not come yet.

And we liked it!

2010-11-11T14:18:00.000-08:00

Zack Handlen's write-up of the classic Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "The Best of Both Worlds" (part one here, part two here) has some interesting insights into how television viewing has changed over the past 20 years:

I don't think I watched "Worlds" when it originally aired, so I have no idea if people actually believed Picard was lost. I kind of doubt they did, given Beverly's comments, and seeing as how we never actually see Worf firing the Magic Bullet that will supposedly take out the Borg cube; most cliffhangers don't resolve by just giving us the most obvious next step. But this was back before everyone knew about actor's contracts, before every casting development hit the Internet before the ink was dry. Plus, the episode is structured in such a way as to strongly indicate that Picard is on his way out.

Yes, secrecy and mystery are important to make any sort of creative endeavor more interesting. But there is also the possibility of picking up on different perspectives and missed details, which is a plus with one considers how much more sophisticated television has gotten since the 90s. I find it interesting that the cliffhanger seems to be out of favor these days--DVDs have encouraged people to see the season and not the episode as the fundamental indivisible unit of television, making the season-ending cliffhanger feel lazy instead of thrilling. Plus, after 24 ended every episode with a cliffhanger, and sometimes even put multiple cliffhangers in a single episode, it just seems like a tired device by now. But there is something to be said for the shock value of something like "Worlds", coupled with having to wait three months before seeing the conclusion.

Is Webb done?

2010-11-11T08:47:00.000-08:00

Rumor has it that Jim Webb might not run for re-election. It is just a rumor. At this point, though, nothing would surprise me. It's amazing how quickly the Democrats seem to have just given up and accepted the "center-right nation" notion. Webb certainly seems to be one--he started out outspoken, economically populist and proud, and slowly he's morphed into a Bush tax cuts-supporting, DADT-anxious Southern Dem. It's been kind of sad to watch, actually.

I've mentioned this a few times, but I think Greg Sargent captured the struggle within the Democratic Party:

Three dozen moderate Dems have signed a letter to Dem leaders demanding a vote on extending all the tax cuts. And behind the scenes, they are telling House Dem leaders in no uncertain terms that they don't want a vote focused on just the middle class ones, the sources say. The leadership aide says moderates are complaining that if they take the vote, "they'll be subject to a 30 second ad saying they raised taxes."

When you have overwhelming public support for many of your agenda items, and you can't convert that into political victories, there are big, big problems. Not all of those are of the Democrats' making: Fox News, the corporatist Pravda; its enablers in the mainstream media, who are content to let lies stand as truth; Citizens United and its consequences; intense polarization based on cultural factors; and a thoroughly busted structure of government are all things that it's difficult to see how the Democrats can really address alone. So, I've been willing to cut them some slack, since in spite of all this they have accomplished a lot. More than any Congress/Administration pair since the Lyndon Johnson days, as a matter of fact, with a considerable handicap. That's worth a lot, in my opinion.

But the quote Sargent gets here tells a lot about how Democrats in Congress think. I get that there are tough obstacles, but in order to actually succeed, you have to actually believe you can succeed. That's not all you need to succeed, but it's an important precondition. I've met quite a few successful people in my day, and approximately none of them got that way because they were afraid people would say nasty things about them--if anything, they thrive on that stuff, as it gives them more of an incentive to succeed to prove the naysayers wrong. If you're in a place where you're afraid to vote for a tax cut for the middle class because it will be portrayed as a vote to increase taxes, then you've lost. You've been psyched out. All those obstacles don't even matter if you can't even get over the obstacles inside your own mind. And it's nuts, because while spin can accomplish a lot (like retconning Operation Iraqi Freedom into a mission to install liberal democracy in the Middle East), the spin suggested here is simply unintuitive. There's logic here, but the counterargument is so simple I don't see how it could be outspun. There's no desire to fight back against the smears, and there's not even a desire to fight the good fight, even if they lose. The implications are pretty shocking, if you draw them all out.

This just makes me think of the Iraq War Resolution, voted on a bit over eight years ago. Since then, we've had three wave elections that have produced major turnaround in the ranks of Congress. The Democratic Party's demographic makeup is way different now than it was back then, but when I think of the Democrats' performance in the immediate post-9/11 era, there are some striking similarities with how it still operates today. I keep thinking about the Jerry Seinfeld bit about how old people don't buy new clothes, they somehow keep finding new old clothes, which makes me wonder how the Democrats keep finding defeatist seat-fillers to take the place of the departed ones. Every once in a while, they get someone like Tom Perriello in there for a while, but it's hard not to see that as an exception. After the classes of 2006 and 2008 turned out to largely be busts, politically speaking, 2012 will present the Dems with a chance to get it right at last. Let's hope they don't screw it up.

Reality Check: One-term Obama Edition

2010-11-11T08:23:00.000-08:00

Larry Sabato has a funny, tongue-in-cheek argument as to why Obama is absolutely a one-term president:

Nonetheless, we are quite confident in our assertions. President Clinton’s easy reelection to a second term in 1996 should imply nothing about 2012. The pendulum of American politics cannot swing so quickly in just two years, except maybe in 1994-1996.

Despite his upset victory over heavily favored Hillary Clinton in the ’08 Democratic contest and his easy win over a much more seasoned John McCain in November two years ago, Barack Obama lacks the political skills necessary to adjust to the new realities of divided government. Unlike Bill Clinton, Obama is an inflexible liberal who couldn’t find the center with both hands, even if his career depended on it. And there is no chance at all the new Republican leadership in Congress could over-reach and repeat the errors of Newt Gingrich and his allies. The GOP legislative caucus contains no core of rigid ideologues that might go too far and create an opening for Obama.

Historically, incumbent presidents who have sought another term have won them by a two-to-one margin. Those aren’t impressive odds. How many of us would bet on a horse with minimal chances like that? Since 1900 only one incumbent president whose party captured the White House from the other party four years earlier (Jimmy Carter) has been beaten. The other incumbent losers—Taft, Hoover, Ford, and the senior Bush—were from a party that had held the White House for two or more consecutive terms. But the key is that Carter and Obama are practically twins; both won the Nobel Peace Prize. Enough said. Moreover, the present moment is unprecedentedly perilous for an incumbent president. There’s really no comparison in the existence of the American Republic, save for about a dozen crises like the Civil War, economic panics, the Great Depression, world wars, and 9/11.

I hadn't thought about the fact I bolded, but it's a good point. It's true that the economy will be a major determining factor here. But you have to have somebody to beat somebody. The president has a pretty unique hold on the public's attention and imagination in our system, for better or worse, and due to the personality-centric model of contemporary politics, for the Republicans to beat Obama they are fundamentally going to have to find somebody that the public actually likes more than Obama. None of their top-tier guys come close, with the possible exception of Huckabee, who has serious problems himself.

Of course, as the Republican blogs would say, there's always Marco Rubio. But will he Jindalize after inevitably being asked to respond to Obama's next SOTU, or will he be smart and decline the offer?

Quote of the Day

2010-11-10T15:11:00.001-08:00

I'm a little too busy today to blog, but I just wanted to point you to this post, which breaks down the idiocy of Jim DeMint's following quote:

"Well, you can't be a fiscal conservative and not be a social conservative. A large part of the expansive government is to make up for a dysfunctional society because our culture's falling apart. The family's falling apart."

It's really not, of course. But did you expect anything else from DeMint?

Because when you're hiding behind an eminence front, it's so very easy to forget that it's a put on

2010-11-09T14:51:00.000-08:00

First Marco Rubio and now Rand Paul are signaling that they will be completely orthodox, pork-requesting Republicans in office. I wish I could deliver some sort of smug, "I told you so" sort of sentiment, but the truth is that I am actually shocked by the cynicism. I figured that all the Tea Party candidates would eventually wind up just being standard-issue Republicans, but only after some time had passed, people had stopped watching, maybe after some vocal debate on spending or earmarks or some such. For Rubio and Paul to give up the ghost a week after the election merely just shows how right were the people saying that the Tea Party movement was a complete sham, probably full of earnest and well-meaning people in the grassroots, but quite cynical on every other level. I'm sure they'll have lots of great ideas on cutting spending, don't you?

The trite thing here would be to quote a certain Roger Daltry-sung lyric from Who's Next, but that's just so played out. So you'll get a whole Townshend-sung Who song instead. Enjoy:

DADT

2010-11-08T12:00:00.000-08:00

I have been reading that it's likely to be stripped out of the Defense appropriations bill. Some liberals are wailing about it. Am I the only one who remembers that the law has already been overturned in the courts, which made the government ask for a stay pending appeal, and the law can come down at any time if Obama orders Eric Holder to drop the suit? Which is probably the most likely outcome at this point, though I wish that Democrats would actually try to land a few blows on the "moderate" Republicans who are keeping this from happening. And abolish the filibuster, since if Snowe/Collins/Brown/Kirk are too afraid to stand up to their leadership on this, where else are they going to provide bipartisanship?

The problem with Christian media

2010-11-08T11:21:00.000-08:00

Sully links to a great article about why Christian-themed media is so awful. It's worth a read in full. As a Christian who avoids that stuff like the plague unless the purpose is to mock it (Fireproof: A laugh and a half for believers and heathens alike. It really is!), I think there need to be a few distinctions made here. I don't have anything against people who just don't care to watch movies with profanity, sex or violence in them. Personal preferences are what they are, and since there are plenty of movies that I won't watch due to my understanding of their content--the synopsis of the film Antichrist intrigued me, but after reading about the genital mutilation I skipped it--and if I were to say that people should watch a bunch of stuff that is just unpleasant to them, I'd pretty much be a hypocrite.

I don't really think this is the problem, though. I remember that my parents for a time received the Focus on the Family critical mag, which was titled "Plugged In", which is a great ironic title. I always found it to be a pretty good gauge of the evangelical/fundamentalist attitude toward art and culture because it was incapable of understanding several things. It was incapable of understanding that portraying something is not the same thing as endorsing it. I suppose this is an arguable point, and maybe in some specifics that is true (Truffaut's argument about the impossibility of making an anti-war film applies). But we're talking about a magazine that would do things like pan both Half-Baked and Requiem for a Dream because they were both about drug culture. Which is true--they are both about drug culture. But other than that, they are essentially opposite films, in terms of tone, approach, and their fundamental attitudes toward drug culture (and the drugs they portray, it should be noted). I get that critics miss the point sometimes, but there is a real disservice done here. I mean, both Philip Roth and Eyes Wide Shut are about sex, but Roth's books are all about how having sex is great, a part of vitality, and not really anything that should be suppressed, while Eyes Wide Shut tries to show a few reasons why sexual repression is necessary on some level, and how we couldn't function without it. Roth's work and Kubrick's film have flaws--I'd say Eyes is a severely flawed film that has some serious lapses in direction that go to show that Kubrick wasn't at full power near the end--but you almost have to be willfully obfuscating not to recognize the differences between different visions like that.

What this reflects is, as the author argues, basically an inability to think about art in any manner other than at face value. It's part and parcel of a movement in Christianity to reduce literally every aspect of the Christian experience to feelings (and, particularly, upbeat feelings), with learning being a tertiary (or even nonexistent) influence. It's unbalanced, obviously, and it's been pretty damaging to Christianity over the past decade on a number of levels--note the soaring number of people who don't claim a particular faith, for example. I can't imagine Kirk Cameron's performance in Fireproof, inspires anyone to take Christianity more seriously. Willem Defoe in The Last Temptation of Christ? Admittedly not a fully canonical Christian film, but who knows?

Democrats after defeat

2010-11-08T10:46:00.001-08:00

Benen and Drum are disgusted:

Honest to God, stuff like this just makes me want to scream. Why do Democrats panic so badly whenever they lose an election? Why run to the nearest reporter to spout idiocies about Obama not feeling middle class pain or not being an extrovert like Bill Clinton? Bill Clinton! For chrissake, I like and defend the guy, but he was an extrovert who felt people's pain and he lost 54 seats in the 1994 midterm. No one cared if he felt their pain. Likewise, no one cares if Obama feels their pain. They want jobs, not pursed lips and moist eyes.

Drum is right: the talking point about Clinton is really stupid. But my take on this is pretty different: I was just thinking that the circular firing squad isn't nearly as intense this time around as it has been in the past. I mean, the despair after 2004--in which Democrats lost a national election by all of three percentage points--was quite dispiriting and just unnecessary. But so far, all I've heard are the complaints of an outgoing conservative Democratic governor from Tennessee, a TNR columnist who always thinks the Democrats are too far to the left, and Alex Sink, who is most likely just looking for someone to blame after losing a high-profile election to an ex-con in Florida. If that's as bad as it gets, then I'm not that worried.

Also, on a tangentially related note, Yglesias is right about this:

It looks like Nancy Pelosi is going to stick around as Top Democrat in the House. This has led to a dumb media meme about her continued presence being a political millstone for the party moving forward. That’s dumb. People pushing that narrative should recall that when Pelosi first took over as minority leader the CW was that her ascension doomed the party to perpetual minority status. The fact of the matter is that congressional leaders just don’t play that kind of role. House leadership is very important to what actually happens in the House of Representatives and their political importance is strictly secondary to that.

Pelosi was never the problem. Every poll shows her as more personally popular than Boehner, but nobody ever suggested that Boehner's presence as leader would consign the Republicans to a minority status. People generally seem to have a vague dislike for congressional leaders because they have a dislike for Congress, largely because the economy is so poor. But outside of the far right, is there really an intense animosity to Pelosi? My impression is that few really know or care too much about her. And if that's the case, her legislative talents recommend her to stay at the top spot. On the other hand, there might be good reason for Senate Democrats to ask Harry Reid to step down and let Chuck Schumer have a shot at the leadership, on the basis that Schumer is more tenacious, has a more aggressive style that could rile up the base a bit more, and can communicate a lot better than Reid. But I've come to the conclusion that Reid has done about as well as can be expected under the circumstances, and I suspect that his come-from-behind victory for re-election has boosted his personal stock considerably. I bet he doesn't even draw a leadership challenge.

California vs. Texas ctd: Goldilocks?

2010-11-08T10:23:00.000-08:00

Yeah, that ubiquitous talking point of yesteryear turns out to be not even correctly premised. Texas's budget hole is now comparable to California's, and Republicans are looking to slash education funding and end health care for kids as well as Medicaid, and maybe even Social Security somehow (?). All made necessary by conservative dogma, no doubt, but one suspects that these actions would be politically disastrous, not to mention truly catastrophic on a human scale (and a clear example of why states shouldn't have any responsibility to provide health care for their residents).

My operating theory is that, despite the voting attitudes of the public, right-wingery simply isn't that popular overall. The public dislikes "government" but likes most government services, even the ones that it should really dial back on, like military spending and the drug war. So, while the right often scores points when attacking "government" there is usually careful taken not to get too specific, outside of a few very small examples like foreign aid. On social issues there is much the same pattern: a lot of signaling and rhetoric about the horrors of church-state separation with very few concrete ideas on where to take that balance. This is all politically smart because we have seen countless evidence that when people actually try to achieve ostensible right-wing goals, they achieve massive public notoriety and disgust. There are just a couple off the top of my head: Terry Schiavo. Bush's Social Security privatization scheme. The Dover, PA board of education trying to ban the teaching of evolution. The Texas State Board of Education rewriting history from an extremely biased Tea Party-esque perspective, which was so poorly received that all of those people were voted out of office in a Republican primary. Not even Republicans in Texas could stomach that crap.

Of course, that Texas history episode didn't really have a broader electoral impact, since Republicans did quite well in Texas anyway this year. But what is being considered here is quite a massive rewriting of the social contract, one that might or might not plug the state's deficit, but that will cause quite a bit of real-world suffering and could cause considerable political backlash. For all the Republican discussion about the effects of "uncertainty," they have never seemed to be too worried about introducing uncertainty themselves, and this is uncertainty on a really unprecedented level to me. I somehow doubt that it'll actually happen, but if it does, I will be monitoring the fallout to see if my theory has been vindicated.

Feingold in 2012: Not happening

2010-11-04T10:22:00.000-07:00

I was just wondering when the chatter about Obama getting a primary challenge in 2012 would commence. Pundits are nothing if not predictable: when one considers that nearly every president suffers losses in the midterm elections, the notion that this would be an inevitable precondition to a primary challenge is pretty silly to my way of thinking. Every president would get primaried! After the 1994 elections, pundits kept speculating about Bill Clinton getting a primary challenger. Of course, no prominent Democrats even seriously considered it, because it would have been crazy. But it looks like a Republican pollster is trying to kickstart the conversation with respect to Obama:

Other tea leaves McInturff read this morning are less positive for team Obama. McInturff's polling finds that those opposing Obama's current Afghanistan strategy are "overwhelmingly Democratic."

McInturff said the escalation of the war in Afghanistan, the continuing housing of terror suspects in Guantanamo Bay and Obama's propensity to "compromise" leave his left flank wide open for a Democratic challenger in the primaries. He added that based on his reading of things, a primary challenge is actually "very likely."

McInturff even had a potential name for Obama's liberal foil in 2012: just-defeated Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI.)

Feingold has already denied an intention to challenge Obama. I've alternately gushed and gnashed teeth about Feingold, but he is not an idiot. According to the most recent Gallup poll I could find with crosstabs, Obama's approval rating is 83% with Democrats and 88% with liberal Democrats. The latter number represents near-universal acclaim. There is no opening here. What's more, liberal Democrats are not the only kind of Democrats and Obama's numbers are fairly strong with both moderate and conservative Democrats, which would be harder groups for a challenge to Obama from the left to penetrate. As a side note, it is bizarre to me that much of the liberal blogosphere has scrambled to speak to the subset of that disapproving 12% that actively looks for news and commentary online, while ignoring those making up the other 88%. There's Balloon Juice and The Daily Dish for sites that don't take a completely hostile approach to Obama, I suppose.

There are two essentially firm rules about primary challenges to presidents. The first is that one they almost never succeed. It's hard enough to beat an incumbent president seeking re-election, but in order to get there in the first place you have to form a lot of relationships with powerful people within your party and earn their favor in order to win. Even a president widely considered an apostate by the base (as Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, and George H. W. Bush were) is still extremely hard for more ideological insurgents to knock off for that reason. For such an effort to be a success a president would probably have to alienate every single powerful interest in their party as well as breeding intense hostility among both the base and elites, which is rare since most presidents actually want another term--the only president who ever did anything like this was John Tyler way back in the 1840s, which is basically the same as saying it never happens. That's not to say it couldn't happen, but it's mostly to say that backing an insurgent is a very risky move for activists to take--it's an abandonment of a still very powerful person in favor of someone who has no track record of winning a national election--that few will go for it even if they sympathize with the insurgent more. I mean, most Republicans wanted Reagan to primary Ford in 1976, but it was not successful, and this is why.

The other firm rule is that presidents who face stiff primary challenges usually lose the general election. Ford faced Reagan in 1976, beat him and lost to Carter. Carter defeated Ted Kennedy in 1980 and lost to Reagan. And Bush won easily against Pat Buchanan, who had a lot of support from then-embryonic conservative talk radio. Bill Clinton beat him in the general election. These sorts of primaries breed intraparty divisions and bad blood that make it hard for the incumbent president to rebound from to unify the party (though Ford came very close). Feingold is no fool, and he is certainly aware that launching such an effort, even if he would want to, would fail and help hand the White House to a Republican. What's more, while I like Feingold and a lot of other liberals do as well, he doesn't have anywhere near the stature in the party to make a credible go of it--he's no Ted Kennedy, if you will. Ultimately, I doubt Obama will face any serious threat to his leadership in 2012 (perhaps Dean would try it, but I said serious), as the liberal discontent we often hear about is exaggerated, and the extent to which liberal Obama followers are disappointed with certain actions he's taken or not taken usually doesn't outweigh overall support for the man, which is hardly an insane position when one considers what he's accomplished, as this Rolling Stone article does. But if you don't believe me, listen to someone you trust to lie always: Bill Kristol thinks it will happen. So it won't.

This notion that Russ Feingold will challenge Obama for the Democratic nomination seems to be entirely a right-wing desire. There have been no stories about bad blood or feuds between the two men that I've come across, and while I'm sure he frustrated the White House on FinReg (and vice versa) that seems like a thin reed from which to launch a candidacy.

George W. Bush: puzzling, conflicted

2010-11-03T20:17:00.000-07:00

This quote from a new interview with George W. Bush is getting quite a bit of attention:

"I faced a lot of criticism as president. I didn't like hearing people claim that I lied about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction or cut taxes to benefit the rich. But the suggestion that I was racist because of the response to Katrina represented an all-time low."

Okay, I can understand not liking to be called a racist, though taking Kanye West seriously is something anyone in touch with the culture couldn't possibly do. And I might even be able to give him a slight point on the WMD, because I don't think he lied so much as he didn't ask the questions he should have asked of the data and the people bringing it to him, or that he flat-out ignored anything contrary to his gut feeling. Gross incompetence has always seemed more Dubya's speed than anything else. But how on earth can he deny that his tax cuts mostly benefited the rich? That's just fact. Bush could claim that tax cuts for the rich help everyone by extension, but that's a hard one to argue. They sorta did for Reagan, but Reagan's success in taking apart the redistributive mechanisms that let working people share some of that growth mostly ensured that regressive tax cuts would never work that way ever again.

Anyway, this is old news. Bush comes off as something less than the sociopath that some people thought he was, more as someone who is just now grappling with his legacy. Then again, I never thought he was a sociopath, nor Dick Cheney for that matter. Rove, sure, but Cheney's thing always seemed to me to be a desperate attempt at self-justification by a man who, deep down, knows he has committed some horrible wrongs. The energy he projects in his post-VP appearances always seemed to hint at that. I've picked up a lot of self-loathing from him, as though the moral man within him hates what he's become. Which doesn't excuse what he's become at all, or Bush either, but it is interesting.

Palin the Weak, ctd.

2010-11-03T13:44:00.000-07:00

With the AP finally calling the Colorado Senate race for Mike Bennet, we now have merely another example of a botched attempt by Sarah Palin to influence an election. In fact, most of her high-profile endorsees (Tancredo being the most recent) lost elections that another candidate might well have won. Absent Palin, the Republicans might well have won the Senate, and I would perhaps be gritting my teeth about Senator Jane Norton, Senator Sue Lowden, Senator Tom Campbell, etc. She couldn't even get her own crony elected to the Senate in her own state! Palin showed several traits--notably poor judgment of character and ignorance of the state of the electorate--that cost the GOP real life stakes. You might think that this would wake up a number of Palin supporters and let them wonder if Palin really has what it takes to run a successful presidential campaign.

I very highly doubt that thought will cross their minds.

In fact, I think that Palin will use the media stories about Republicans fretting about her to her advantage. Why did so many of her candidates come up short? Media sabotage! Why do senior Republicans worry about a Palin run? Because they're afraid of her shattering the establishment boys' club! She is already running, and the two or three themes she has will probably be enough to dispense with most problems. Questions about her initial support for TARP and taxing oil companies will likely be harder to answer, but I'm sure any explanation will either bear a strong resemblance to her other two lines of attack, or will be completely incomprehensible. Not that it matters to her fans! What's more, every article written about her bad endorsements or how much other Republicans fret about her candidacy will only strengthen her position, instead of hurting it. Republicans are not wild about their establishment right now, a position that is likely to intensify once Boehner and his crew aren't able to deliver on what they promised. I can easily see Palin drawing sympathy from otherwise skeptical voters out of shared disdain for the Republican establishment, which is only likely to be assisted by her main rival being the uber-establishmentarian Mitt Romney, a man who, incidentally, has little compunction with employing slashing, personal attacks on his opponents. The sorts of attacks that might make Republican primary voters get angry at mean old Mitt, I'm thinking.

At this point, while I can't say I'd prefer Palin winning the nomination due to some nominal chance of her victory, I think there would be certain advantages to that state of affairs. I think it would certainly revive Democratic enthusiasm for 2012 and would probably send the indies back to Obama. I think Palin as president is simply unthinkable to a very large segment of the population, even a fair number of Republicans, and it would probably open the door to a third-party "centrist" candidacy (perhaps by Mike Bloomberg), that would mostly siphon center-right votes from Palin. But in a larger sense, a Palin loss to Obama (and particularly a really bad Palin loss, like 60-40 for example) would simply be devastating to the right-wing fringe to such an extent that they would probably never recover. As someone who holds out hope for a Republican Party that isn't dominated by venal, nutty people, I think a Palin run is the most plausible, quickest path there. After all, if Romney loses, Rush and Fox will just blame his prior moderation. But they couldn't well do that with Palin, could they?

The Boll Weevils and their damage done, plus where do we go from here?

2010-11-03T09:58:00.000-07:00

Josh Marshall acidly notes, "Thinking that decision to punt on the tax cut debate was simply brilliant move by the Democrats," which seems to have produced some sort of karmic justice since the Blue Dogs' size was diminished by more than half, and their organization seems to have been completely decapitated, leadership-wise. But even more important than their relative presence within the caucus is that their composition has changed dramatically. Most of the surviving Blue Dogs actually voted for health care reform, which is because most of them represent districts that could easily support sending a more liberal Democrat to Congress. I mean, someone like Dan Boren (OK) or Jim Matheson (UT) is probably irreplaceable at this point in time, but people like Dennis Cardoza and Jane Harman of California and Jim Cooper of Tennessee could easily be primaried if they move too far to the right, and their opponent would likely win the general election, so they can't get too conservative. One would think this more common dynamic would make the Blue Dogs somewhat less aggressive in intraparty policy debates, but we'll see. In the long run, of course, the Boren/Matheson wing is going to be eroded away slowly with every election as people select representatives increasingly based on party affiliation, which is only right and proper. We merely need to adjust our institutions accordingly to reflect this way of thinking and voting.

Of course, the lesson that Democrats will undoubtedly take from this election cycle was that they got too liberal and ambitious. It's simply the nature of the Democratic Party on an elite level, one that simply isn't really in touch with its supporters (or, at this point, the electorate). But I think that there are a number of ways Obama could ease the bad blood among the electorate that don't involve substantive policy changes. For example, having Geithner step down would be a good symbolic way of letting the public know he understands their anger about the bailouts, sort of like how Bush "got" 2006 by letting Rumsfeld go (which, admittedly, didn't help him in the long run). Picking someone like Warren Buffett to take his place might or might not be a good idea--it might seem a little gimmicky--but he's someone the average person knows and it would probably be well-received, and it could buy some goodwill from the business community. At this point, a little symbolism could go a long way, and set a tone for the next two years. I also think it would be smart of Obama to give Arnold Schwarzenegger a job in the government, probably Cabinet-level. There are a couple of reasons why this wouldn't be a good idea--like most Californians, I haven't been too hot about his tenure as governor--but what this White House has been quite poor at so far has been in finding articulate, effective spokesmen who can command attention to its policies. Whatever one can say about Arnold, I'm pretty sure that the spectacle of him joining Obama's cabinet would command a lot of press wattage, and he'd sure generate a lot more interest in what the government is doing were he to regularly feature on the Sunday morning circuit. Plus, you're telling me that you don't want to see Arnold Schwarzenegger yelling at Mitch McConnell at 8:45 AM? I'd actually pay good money to see that.

Also, I think Obama has to act quickly to give Russ Feingold an important position. Feingold is a progressive hero, and his defeat was a big blow last night. Obama giving him a key role should buy him some goodwill among the left, and it will keep him tied over should he want to take back his old seat next time around. He's still young enough to do it! Obama probably should offer one to Sestak too, though I'd be willing to bet Sestak just runs for his old House seat in 2012 and gets ready to fight Pat Toomey next time. When one considers that Toomey really underperformed other Republicans on the ballot and his own lofty poll numbers--only winning by 2% in a state that easily elected a new Republican governor and turned out a handful of Dem House incumbents--the most obvious interpretation is that Toomey benefited from the outsized senior turnout and would not have won without it. Essentially the same thing happened in 1994, when Rick Santorum won the state's other Senate seat. The bad news for Republicans is that in sixteen years from now, Pennsylvania will not have a Senate seat up for grabs, so it will be difficult to squeeze an extreme right-winger in there when President Tim Ryan (D-OH) goes through the same thing as Obama and Clinton did.

California's not-Republican Wave

2010-11-03T07:15:00.000-07:00

Pretty good night out here in California for Democrats, though that didn't seem to be the case nationwide. Brown and Boxer won of course. The Democrats seem to have retained all the House seats except for Jim Costa's, which is a race that really came out of nowhere. But I had the opportunity to prove Nate Silver wrong here in CD-11, where the OFA team and myself apparently managed to get Jerry McNerney another term in office against some fairly stiff odds. And while it looked like California might elect a Prop 8-defending drug warrior Republican for A.G., which still doesn't compute for me, it looks as if Kamala Harris pulled the upset, which is good news for, well, everyone in the state.

As for propositions, Prop 19 expectedly went down for defeat (though not by a terribly wide margin, as I expected), but the majority budgets amendment passed. Regrettably, the more conservative off-year electorate also approved another 2/3 tax rule that was widely pushed by oil companies and the Chamber of Commerce/Howard Jarvis types. But it didn't win by much. Those people did lose their fight to repeal the state's global warming initiative, by a pretty hefty margin as it turns out. So, you gotta take victories where you can.

So there you have it. Not a perfect night, but a very good one overall.

The elections

2010-11-02T14:02:00.001-07:00

I guess I should put an official post about today's elections in the can. The reason I've avoided it so far is that I don't have much to say predictively. I suspect the polls are accurate, and while I have some hope they aren't, it's not much hope. I hope that the Democrats do better than the polling suggests they will. I hope that Russ Feingold somehow holds on in Wisconsin. I hope that Joe Sestak manages to beat out that smarmy Club for Growth creep. I hope Ken Buck and Sharron Angle return to the obscurity their cretinous views and actions should consign them to. And I would love for the Democrats to retain the House, if only with a nominal majority. I would rather Nancy Pelosi get the chance to leave her job on her own terms. But the nature of power is such that it sometimes doesn't get to happen that way, and I've resigned myself to it.

What I feel most is the unfairness of this whole cycle. Okay, bailing out the banks was odious, though successful. The stimulus wasn't big enough. Health care reform got ugly and the jobs didn't materialize. Believe me, I can understand why people are pissed off. Obama is responsible for some of these things, though not all of them. But the past two years has been filled with a right rebounding politically with obviously insincere straight talk on spending, a variety of baseless and disgusting smears of Obama, and flat-out lying about so much of what's actually happened. HCR is a prime example of this, but so much of what the government has done positively has been distorted or ignored. I don't even blame the voters for voting Republican, since if I were inundated with all the garbage I might well act the same way. But between the money unleashed by Citizens United and the media's unending commitment not to offend the right by offering up the facts, the Dems never really had a chance to get out the facts or really any other side of the argument. I mean, the polls show 2/3 of people believing that the Affordable Care Act raises the deficit and almost nine out of ten unaware that the Obama Administration cut their taxes. Complaining about the media is becoming passe, but realistically, who else can be to blame when the public simply doesn't have the most basic facts under discussion? And how can there even be a discussion when the opposition is controlled by people dedicated to exploiting the fears of people suffering from an ill economy? I mean, how can one side have a conversation with the other when both sides believe that the other side is on the verge of enacting a putsch? There has to be some level of trust for there to be any understanding or cooperation, and the bile of Fox/Rush/Drudge--enabled by the pundit establishment, in my opinion, because of its entertainment value--seems designed to keep that from happening. Because if it did, they'd be out of a job. And they know how to push their follower's buttons. The levels on which we have failed--at such a crucial time!--are astounding. Despite various disappointments I still believe in Obama and I think he's the absolute best hope Democrats have for the future, and a lot of the bullshit just can't be laid on him. His mission is going to be a lot harder than I ever thought it would be, but we've gone through worse. I admire the steady nature of the man's leadership, and after reading Bob Woodward's book I still believe he takes his responsibilities seriously. Which is a rare enough commodity these days, and it is something to be embraced once found. All in all, I'm not sure were in a better place as a country now than we were in 2008, but we must remember this at all times:

Practically speaking, the Democrats keeping the House might be too much to hope for. But keeping the Republicans to a majority in the single digits? That might be realistic. And were that to happen, it's unlikely that they'd have as much of an ability to gum up the works with a government shutdown, since small majorities are extremely difficult to shepherd. Maybe that's being both optimistic and naive, since Republicans seem to be willing to cut off anyone who tries to compromise or go against the party line. That policy has been self-defeating in a lot of ways--you can easily argue it will keep the Republicans from winning the Senate--and it is some consolation that the rigidity of Toomey and Johnson will very likely lead them to be one-termers swept out in the more robust election year of 2016. But that's still six years of being stuck with them.

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that the Democrats will fare better than expected in the Senate races--I think Reid will stick it out, and I think Mike Bennet and Alexi Giannoulias in Illinois will get in there barely. I also have a gut feeling that John Hickenlooper will win the governor's race in Colorado, and so will Alex Sink in Florida and Ted Strickland in Ohio. But that's as far out there as I'm willing to go, outside of the standard predictions. I'm also pulling for Prop 19 here in California to somehow surpass expectations and win (I think it will come closer than expected, but it won't pass) and for California to finally end the insanity that is the 2/3 budget majority (which I think will happen). And I'm hoping that the Alaska Senate race will be an entertaining one: it seems like it's possible for the Democrat, Scott McAdams, to actually win since he's doing about as well in the polls as Joe Miller. Miller is terrible, and with Murkowski as a write-in you just never know. That the right wing qualified a shitload of write-in candidates to crowd out Murkowski's name might well make voters looking for her proper spelling forget about it and vote for McAdams instead. In any event, I suspect Alaska will become the Minnesota of this year, with all the fun that that entails.

Regardless of the results, this election cycle has radicalized me in a lot of ways. I've gotten more involved with this cycle than ever before, with donations and phonebanking mainly. I'm ready to do the hard work necessary to make the country better. And the long-term trends still look favorable to the Dems, from my point of view. Screw those Firebaggers who think that everything is lost. I've only begun to fight. So the Obama era didn't turn out to be a walk amongst the daisies after just two years. I'm over it, and I'm ready to start the next go-round.

Bachmann to join House Republican leadership?

2010-11-02T13:29:00.000-07:00

Sam Stein has the scoop.

Eh, it probably wouldn't matter substantively. Michele Bachmann already has tons of influence in GOP circles. The talk radio guys and Fox News love her, which is basically where the power is at this point in the right. But she'd be saying her future insane ramblings as a member of the House Leadership, which would probably be bad for the Republicans. Right now, she's just a backbencher, so nobody really pays much attention to her aside from right-wing radio and liberal blogs. But as Conference Chair? There would be a lot more scrutiny.

It should be a good test to see how much the Republican establishment is going to give the tea types.

Good news for Sharron Angle haters

2010-11-01T15:58:00.000-07:00

People who know think Harry Reid might pull out his race.

Palin: The Repubs McGovern?

2010-11-01T14:33:00.000-07:00

[Yes, a historical parallel, but strictly to explain a concept and not as an assertion. And yeah, that promise I made a few months ago about never posting on Palin didn't pan out, did it? Moving on...]

I really wonder what people in D.C. are thinking about sometimes. If one assumes that the Republican establishment doesn't want Sarah Palin to win the Republican nomination, why on Earth would they dish to Politico about how much they don't want Sarah Palin to win? For people who are presumably smart and competent at politics, this is just a really stupid thing to do. This is the sort of thing that endears Palin's hard-core supporters to her, and one that might even make Republican non-fans of Palin a bit more sympathetic to her. Many Democrats have expressed the sentiment that bile from people like Chris Matthews directed toward Hillary Clinton in 2008 made them feel more sympathetic toward Clinton, so it's possible that Republicans will feel the same way for Palin due to things like this. After all, it's easy enough to call the other campaigns a boys' club when one considers that all the other prospects are white dudes, and when their staffs are talking about actual conspiracies.

My personal theory is that this kind of thing is the only way Palin can win. Most polls (including this one from about a month ago) show her behind at least Romney and oftentimes others too. If ignored by the other candidates, she'll be able to attract her core group of fans, but few others. There are large numbers of Republicans that like Palin but don't want her to run for president, possibly leaving a cap on her support. Something along the lines mentioned in this article, though, will only make other Republicans feel more sympathetic toward her, and these days Republican voters seem to be perfectly willing to throw away races if they feel that the establishment is trying to tell them what to do (such as this example). Palin's antipathy toward the Republican establishment seems to be more or less where most Republicans are these days, and in the absence of someone else for conservatives to get really excited about, I'm beginning to think Palin isn't badly situated to get the Republican nomination. Of course, she'd actually need to campaign and build an operation to do so, which she is probably too lazy to actually do. I guess we'll see. Of course, this has nothing to do with her prospects in the general, which are practically nonexistent. Her marquee endorsements (excluding the sure things intended to up her batting average) this cycle have either stumbled enough to make easy races into competitive ones (Nikki Haley, Sharron Angle), stumbled enough to turn competitive races into losing ones (Carly Fiorina, O'Donnell), or just failed to win the primary altogether (Vaughn Ward, Karen Handel). She has no handle on what the public wants, and that will go double for the inevitably less-Republican electorate of 2012.

If Palin gets the nomination, I think she'll be worse for the Republicans than George McGovern was for the Democrats (or, more accurately, Richard Nixon's distored version of McGovern that he fed to the public). McGovern lost badly because he wasn't a competent-enough politician to dispel the persona that Nixon crafted for him. But his defeat, contrary to conventional wisdom, did not destroy liberalism or the Democratic Party in the mind of the public. Nixon's landslide did nothing for congressional Republicans and within two years the voters were electing extremely liberal candidates to office after Watergate. It did, however, create divisions within the party that still haven't fully healed. I don't really think that Palin's nomination will create enormous cleavages in the GOP, since they'll all support her. Maybe David Frum will endorse Obama in 2012, but you won't see the Chamber of Commerce backing him the way the unions backed Nixon in '72, to name an example. It could, however, completely solidify Palin as the image of right-wingery in the public mind, and make that concept completely radioactive for a generation. After Bush, a Palin nomination would send a message of doubling down on Bushism instead of changing course with someone like, say, a Mitch Daniels. Putting someone avowedly unpopular and lacking in communication skills, vision, and leadership to even a greater extent than Bush ever did is simply madness, and if she is unable to define herself positively, the only definition that will stick is what her opponents say. Palin does have a nonzero chance of winning, but I think the public has already decided how they feel about her, and a public craving steady economic stewardship just isn't going to vote for a half-term quitter. Which is something that would come up--Obama could just make "Strong and Steady" his campaign slogan were the Republicans to pick Palin, to remind voters of Palin's biggest weakness at all times.

Update: She's endorsing Tom Tancredo in Colorado. Congrats, Gov-elect Hickenlooper, I'm guessing.

Obama going to war with Iran?

2010-11-01T13:21:00.000-07:00

Daniel Larison illustrates the folly of old, demented David Broder's idea that President Obama should start a war with Iran to get re-elected.

Personally, I think war with Iran is a pretty stupid idea. Launching an attack on Iran for developing a nuclear weapon would lack even the most basic moral authority, so long as we build the damn things ourselves. We don't even have the troops or the money to pull something like that off, along with about a thousand other reasons that Larison goes over thoroughly. I'm pretty sure I wouldn't be able to vote for Obama in 2012 if he did something like that, which I doubt he would. But Broder's argument transcends to true idiocy because of this notion that wars end bad economic circumstances, based solely on one data point. We are, of course, currently fighting two wars which does not include the broader "war on terror" efforts. And yet our economy is experiencing mediocre growth. Broder's historical grasp here merely proves the old adage about how a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, and shows once again the wrong way to deploy history in a political argument. There are many things we can learn from historical events, and these things are cyclical to a certain extent, but no two situations are ever the same and it's extremely easy to make a superficially compelling historical parallel that really only draws on a couple of similarities between events. But the differences are usually critical. My general rule of thumb is that anyone who uses a historical parallel as an actual point and not an explanation aide or some such is a fraud who should be ignored, since history, while useful in understanding why things are the way they are, is not an exact science (or really even a science in my estimation) and you can find an example somewhere in history to back up any particular point of view.

Bush's memoir: a firecracker?

2010-10-28T15:43:00.000-07:00

Doesn't look to be the case:

Matt Drudge appears to have scored an early copy of George W. Bush's memoir, Decision Points, though if his preview is any indication, the book's a snooze: Sections that Drudge highlights include a bone about how Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia almost walked out of Bush's ranch because he was so angry about Israel, until he saw a turkey and took it as a good omen. Drudge also says Bush reveals he gave an order to shoot down planes on September 11 and thought the plane in Pennsylvania had been shot down. Drudge adds that Bush rarely addresses his critics and steers clear of President Obama entirely.

How...banal. Doesn't really seem like someone you would want to share a beer with, does he?*

Then again, it's not all that surprising that Bush wrote a pretty dull book. It has a very dull title, after all, and most memoirs are dull because the people writing them are dull (U. S. Grant being a notable exception to both counts), which seems to be the tendency in politics. Obsessive personalities--which most politicians tend to be, in my reading and experience--are usually insufferably dull. It's funny to think that all those years people were arguing over Bush's faith, leadership style, accomplishments, and personality, the final truth is that Bush really doesn't have much of interest to say about himself.

This is actually one of my deepest points of disgust with the mainstream media, though it's one that I almost never hear anyone make: it's bad enough when journalists take spin at face value, or do a he-said-she-said thing with the two parties' approaches to policy, without any actual analysis. What annoys me most is how frequently the media totally buys into the candidates' public personae. Politicians almost always adopt a public persona that has some fixed points but leaves a lot of space for individuals to project their own beliefs, values, or fears into them. But in nearly every case, that is not anything like the real person. One of the my favorite aspects about Gore Vidal's Narratives of Empire series is that it tries to take a real look at what powerful people are really like behind all the rhetoric and stunts, and the usual conclusion is that they're boringly ambitious people without too much of an inner life (though this is not exactly his take on Lincoln). In nearly all those books, the high-ranking government officials are the least interesting characters in the narrative, by intention. I think it's easy to confuse the actor and the role in general, especially if part of the enterprise of politics is to deliberately screen the actor from public scrutiny, but I feel like it is the media's job to try to puncture that cloud, and I don't feel like they try that often. If wonder how things would have gone if the media had adopted the idea that George W. Bush is boring (which he always was), since ironically everything I've seen suggests that Al Gore is privately a very witty and entertaining person in real life.

*Will it ever be explained why the "having a beer with Dubya" thing became a thing when Dubya doesn't ever drink beer as a member of AA? I guess it can: Chris Matthews is an idiot.

Law school: a particularly raw deal

2010-10-27T16:21:00.000-07:00

Ezra Klein says this article makes him happy not to be a lawyer, and I have to say I agree. Especially this graf:

There are the jobs at white-shoe firms that pay about $160,000 per year to recent graduates, and then there are the rest of jobs, which generally pay between $45,000 and $60,000. Almost no salaries are near the median or the average.

I know there are a lot of lawyers that are passionate about what they do, but my experience in college was that people who wanted to be lawyers were largely in it for the money. Frankly, though, if you want to make money, picking an overcrowded profession with high barriers to entry seems absolutely crazy. As this list proves, the best way to make big bucks is to pick a major with math in it:

Best Undergrad College Degrees By Salary	Starting Median Pay	Mid-Career Median Pay

Petroleum Engineering	$93,000	$157,000

Aerospace Engineering	$59,400	$108,000

Chemical Engineering	$64,800	$108,000

Electrical Engineering	$60,800	$104,000

Nuclear Engineering	$63,900	$104,000

Applied Mathematics	$56,400	$101,000

Biomedical Engineering	$54,800	$101,000

Physics	$50,700	$99,600

Computer Engineering	$61,200	$99,500

Economics	$48,800	$97,800

Computer Science	$56,200	$97,700

Industrial Engineering	$58,200	$97,600

Mechanical Engineering	$58,300	$97,400

Building Construction	$52,900	$94,500

Materials Science & Engineering	$59,400	$93,600

It seems obvious why these majors pay off so highly: they're really, really tough! At Cal Poly, it was widely known that the College of Engineering had the second-worst GPA out of all seven colleges (Agriculture kept us from last), and the reason for that wasn't that all engineers are stupid, but that the coursework was really freakin' hard, even for brilliant people. I did a CS degree and even though I have a talent for it, it was still plenty difficult. And, honestly, CS is one of the easier degrees on this list. Something like aerospace engineering just scares people who have a visceral fear of equations taking up five whiteboards, which is something I can relate to. But if you can actually make it through a program like that (and most people probably can't) and endure the four-plus* years of brain pain, then you're pretty much assured of getting a well-paying job with decent stability. Contrast this with the law, where you spend four years at college, plus three years of law school, plus the time and money to pass the Bar exam so that you can actually get a job, and all for an entry-level position that pays about as much as a starting job that a Building Construction bachelor's degree can get you (not to mention the opportunity cost of not working for several more years) just makes the law school route seem like the worst of all possible worlds. Then again, a lot of people seem to think that being a lawyer means making huge cash being some sort of stylish bullshitter who never does any work, which only goes to show you that many people still make career choices based on television shows.

*Of course, hardly anyone finishes college in four years anymore. Personally, I worked toward my BS and MS concurrently and did them both in five, which was made possible by AP credits and summer classes, and taking full loads most of the time. Most college kids don't do that stuff, so it can typically take five-to-six years, unless you're a journalism major or something.

Update: I actually did consider being a lawyer for a time, as I have an interest in software patents. Probably should have made that clear. I might have had an easier time with a law career, given that I had a direction and some pertinent education that I could have applied to it, and I wonder whether law students who have a specific focus in mind--like, say, environmental justice--are better able to tailor their bachelor's degrees to what they want to do with the law, and are better equipped to find a job. Then again, it's generally the case that any sort of public interest profession doesn't pay too well, so my particular example might not be great.

Jon Stewart's "moderates" and right-wing "independents"

2010-10-27T13:48:00.000-07:00

I rather liked Mike Tomasky's column on the Stewart/Colbert rally taking place in D.C. this weekend, but this misses the point:

Playing off a phrase known instantly in America and dating back to Louis Farrakhan's 1995 Million Man March, Stewart wants a "Million Moderate March". To get his viewers into the intended spirit he offered some samples of the sort of placards he'd like to see at his rally. In this age, when Tea Partiers march carrying placards of Obama wearing a keffiyeh or sporting a Hitler moustache, people know they should pay particular attention to placards; Stewart suggested that an emblematic one for his event would read: "I disagree with you, but I'm pretty sure you're not Hitler."

The conflict arises in the fact that this sober and earnest middle is not really Stewart's audience. Stewart's core audience is news-junkie liberals. It's people like National Public Radio host Terry Gross, who, in a recent live dialogue at Manhattan's venerable 92nd Street Y, thanked Stewart for being the last thing she sees at night, which permits her to "go to bed with a sense that there is sanity someplace in the world". It's young urbanites and students. It's the out-of-place blue fish swimming the waters of the vast, red, middle-American sea.

I don't disagree with the qualitative description here so much as I think it misses the point. Liberals tend to like the term "moderate", as we tend to see our agenda as straightforward and reasonable. Common sense, in the parlance of our time. The vast majority of self-proclaimed moderates seem to agree and usually vote for Democrats, which is probably why the term is anathema among conservatives. They tend to see moderation and liberalism as essentially interchangeable terms, and the nom de preference there is "independent", as in not bound to the mainstream dogma. Of course, that winds up meaning commitment to conservative dogma, since the conservative frame of analysis is not regarded as a frame at all. The idea that Bill O'Reilly is in any way independent seems silly to people like myself, and Stephen Colbert has gotten a lot of mileage out of pointing out the ridiculousness of that claim, but right-wingers accept it without irony.

In any event, I don't know if Tomasky's married couple is going to go all the way to D.C., but if they catch some footage of the rally on TV, perhaps it could help the Dems? I think so. I suppose it's possible that it could turn into another iteration of Paul Wellstone's funeral, as Tomasky suggests, but there seem to be some key differences: it's not taking place at a funeral, which made that sorry incident easier to propagandize, and Stewart should therefore have more control over what gets said there. There might be some racy signs out there, but I'm pretty sure it would be easy for liberals to go blow-for-blow over that specific charge.

Thanks, I needed a laugh

2010-10-27T13:46:00.000-07:00

Lots of bizarre headlines and events over the past two years, but this is definitely the most bizarre:

Giuliani Mulls Another Bid
According to Politico, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani is still considering another presidential bid and has consulted possible donors and other GOP insiders.

Said Giuliani: "The door's not closed."

The real-world equivalent would be like investing your money with Bernie Madoff now.

My not-sinking heart

2010-10-26T14:00:00.001-07:00

I was trying to think of something to say to this statement by Anne Applebaum (h/t Balloon Juice), but I mostly just snickered at it:

I don’t know about you, but my heart sank when I read about Jon Stewart’s Million Moderate March, planned for the Mall next weekend. My heart sank further when I learned that liberal groups, lacking any better ideas, have decided to take this endeavor seriously. It’s bad enough that the only way to drum up enthusiasm for a “Rally to Restore Sanity” is to make it into a television comedian’s joke. But it’s far worse that the “moderates” in attendance will have been bused in by Arianna Huffington and organized by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.

Applebaum seems to be under the impression that Stewart is just Jay Leno, but of course Stewart is a satirist and not a hack. He has a point of view and speaks truth that is difficult to find elsewhere in the media. This whole argument is something that bugs me about the media in general. Look, I don't mind if the Villagers get upset when Alan Grayson starts yapping about how Republicans want you to die. That's fair enough. But it seems like literally any attempt by the Democrats to play politics is disdained by the chattering class. Going after the Chamber of Commerce, the megabucks outfit funding your opponents? Unfair. Bringing up Bush and Cheney to remind people of what they have to look forward to? Not classy. Personally, I don't see the problem posed by having popular political commentators holding a rally before an election. It's not like they bill themselves as journalists, or appear on a station with "News" in the name, which is more than can be said for other Washington rally-holders of note.

Rubio's future, considered

2010-10-26T12:41:00.000-07:00

Taegan Goddard thinks that Marco Rubio's closing ad makes a good case for a future Rubio presidential bid. I can see how his biography would make for compelling campaign messaging, but I didn't think the ad was as good as Goddard did. It's not bad, but it seems very by-the-numbers to me, lots of flag-waving and old-timey pictures. I suppose we'll see. I am sure Rubio will make a presidential run in the future, but I think the premises of such a candidacy should be considered.

I doubt he would try to do it in 2012. He'd have to declare his candidacy almost contemporaneously with being sworn in, which would look really bad. So let's say 2016. I have no idea what the political situation will look like in 2016, but I do know that the Hispanic vote will be bigger and even more important than it is today. After the right went anti-immigrant in the mid-1990s, it went conciliatory in 2000 with immigrant-friendly George W. Bush. It's hardly impossible that history will repeat itself and the GOP will try to put a less-xenophobic foot forward in 2016. Putting Rubio out there will be smart from that perspective. But aside from the unanswered questions of race and religion (Rubio is Catholic), I think the basic premise of a Rubio candidacy would be his ability to win back the Hispanic vote. Considering that Hispanics went for Obama 2-to-1 after moving a bit toward Bush in 2004, it makes sense for someone like Rubio to run to try to win back some of the Hispanic vote, but after looking at a recent poll showing the typical Rubio lead, I was surprised to see he's only winning 38% of the Hispanic vote. Admittedly, this is a three-way race. He's winning more than the other two candidates. But this seems like roughly the percentage of Hispanics that voted for McCain, with a slight bump due to the dynamics of an off-year election that favors the GOP. That isn't really all that impressive for what is certain to be one of his biggest ostensible selling points.

Now, it's true that a decent amount of Hispanics are still undecided, and he might take a lot of those votes in the end. I don't know. But I think it's extremely relevant because it shows that Rubio is not pre-sold to the Hispanic community. He may or may not be successful with these voters in a national run, but he would not be able to merely assume their support. How does this differ from what any other Republican would have to do to win their support? Maybe he'd have an edge in persuasion with Hispanic voters, I don't know. The pertinent data do not seem to suggest it. Since the vast majority of Hispanics in Florida--home to one of the more conservative Hispanic populations in the country--are either voting for someone else or are still undecided with a week to go, it stands to reason that he'd have to work hard to earn their support in a prospective presidential bid. And it's entirely plausible to me that he'd have a hard time doing that. Rubio's support of the Arizona anti-immigration law seems to me like an extremely difficult hurdle to overcome. Maybe he needed to endorse it to get Republicans to back his nomination, but one has to suspect that it has much to do with the reason why his support among Hispanics trails his top-line polling numbers. It's true that he might well flip-flop to support comprehensive reform in a few years, but the whole episode suggests some cravenness at work that opponents could use against him. But it's not just immigration reform--other issues, like education and health care reform (strongly supported in the community) are extremely important to Hispanics. And then there's this enlightening reader-generated piece from TPM:

While the focus in CA has been on immigration and the Latino vote--and I agree it is a make or break issue in that community--it is not the only issue of importance to Latinos. PPIC has been doing an annual poll on environmental issues for at least 20 years. It has a massive sample size to regional and demographic sub groupings are statistically reliable--i.e., the margin of error is acceptable. I first noticed about sixteen years ago that the most environmentally concerned group in CA was not white, suburban women but was the Latino community---and by a significant margin! This pattern continues to this day. The Latino concern is about air and water pollution.

This is part of an article about Whitman-Brown and Fiorina-Boxer, and California Hispanics specifically, so I can't say for sure if this trend holds everywhere in the country. But it makes sense that it would! It isn't controversial to assert that many Hispanics work out of doors and suffer from the effects of pollution and global warming disproportionately, not to mention their prevailing Catholic bent and that denomination's emphasis on environmental justice. The TPM piece argues persuasively that Whitman's flip-flopping on California's own cap-and-trade system has cost her support among Hispanics. But Rubio doesn't support cap-and-trade, either, and his stances on environmental issues are typically Republican. Frankly, I'm not seeing a lot of plusses here. What we see is someone who disagrees with most Hispanics on the issues most important to them, and has little to offer other than the symbolism of his ethnicity. Can someone tell me how this isn't a repeat of Palin 2008? Wasn't she supposed to bring home the women voters who wanted Clinton to win? I have no idea how all this will play out, and I could well eat my words, but I see some significant downsides to the Republicans with respect to a Rubio presidential run that should keep it from happening.

It means that they're losing

2010-10-26T11:35:00.000-07:00

Steve Benen notes the rise of Republicans rebelling against church-state separation, and asks an astute question before getting too hyperbolic:

But putting aside the fact that these unhinged Republicans simply have no idea what they're talking about, I have a related concern: what is it, exactly, they'd replace church-state separation with?

Liberals like to freak out about this stuff, and maybe I'm too sanguine about it. But I'm not that worried because there is absolutely no content to these rantings. There's no argument, no priorities, no solutions. I'm sure people like Buck and Angle believe what they're saying, but this all comes across as crude cultural signaling to me, with a certain desperation that seems to scream, "I don't know what I'm doing." And let's be honest: neither Sharron Angle nor Ken Buck is terribly bright, neither are very good politicians, and in a normal year neither one would be the nominee for anything. Fearing a secret plan from these guys seems perverse to me--not that I'm saying that we should not worry about having people with their sensibility in public office, but rather that they're more likely to ultimately make their causes more radioactive through their efforts than to make them more appealing.

I generally don't have much respect for the political abilities of George W. Bush, but I think his team was smart in the way they went about pursuing church-state synergy. They took a position that wasn't (and still isn't) all that popular, that there should be more cooperation between the church and the state, but spelled out what that would mean--like faith based initiatives--in a way that made most people either happy or indifferent. Of course this program was abused to some extent (and one hears stories about Focus on the Family writing government policy on reproductive rights, of course), and I think it wasn't really a great idea in the first place, since churches can already apply for federal contracts so long as they obey certain limitations. But Bush's initiative was sold in such a way that it sounded like a good thing to people who didn't know much about it. Money for religious charities is very politically appealing.

But the fact is that the concept of church-state cooperation has been losing steam. A recent poll showed broad unpopularity for the concept (though with some support for particular cases like religious displays on government premises). Hell, even most Texans don't like the broad concept of bringing religion and government together. Bush's administration seemed to understand this and tried to keep their agenda on this matter specific, as some of the concrete aspects of religion-state synergy are reasonably popular. But then there was the evangelical tone of Bush's administration, the increasing vitriol of the religious right, and the religious-inflected Bush wars, which together did great damage to the overall concept of breaking down the church-state wall. As America becomes decreasingly religious and increasingly secular on a personal level, one expects the religious right to become more desperate in maintaining its position, which only seems to contribute to the aforementioned secularism. What does all this mean? It means we're winning.

And for the record, there is a clarification that needs to be made here. The right has become conditioned to believing that "church-state separation" means "people of faith should not be in politics", which is something nobody really believes. It doesn't mean that one's faith (or lack thereof) won't affect one's politics. My faith certainly does. Ultimately, what we're talking about is the principle that religion alone shouldn't be the basis for public policy decisions.

What Brown can teach other Democrats

2010-10-25T13:36:00.000-07:00

Ezra Klein finds a really hilarious closing ad by Jerry Brown:

Meg's closing ad is a bit less cheery.

I have to admit that I'm still surprised by how this race has turned out. Brown has turned out to be a stronger campaigner than I thought he would be, it's true. But what's helped him the most is that Whitman's megabucks and the associated huge ad buys have become a big-time problem for her. Brown is partly responsible for making an issue of it, but the thing is that while attack ads can be quite effective, there is a need for proportion in these kinds of things, and it's important to be wary of overkill. Whitman is a novice politico, and evidently thought that applying enough resources to her strategy would be enough to win. This has not remotely come to pass.

There is a lot to learn here, actually. Democrats tried for a time to hit the Chamber of Commerce for its highly partisan role in this year's elections, but evidently the complaints of David Brooks scared them off. The simple fact is that most of the money in politics pays for ads, and the enormous surge of Republican money has led to an increased capability to run lots of negative ads. Turning that into a liability might have made helped out the Democrats, as in, "Notice all those ads for X? They're being funded by outside groups, paying X's ad bills with money raised from sources they won't disclose. What happens if X gets to Washington, and those groups' bills come due?" My perception is that people say they're concerned about the deficit but that they're really worried about the state of the economy and the power of corporations over our politics. Too many Democrats seem to buy the media's perceptions of the public (which are indebted to the right's perceptions of the public) as infuriated over deficits, instead of taking these complaints with the grain of salt they require. Maybe it's different for someone with lots of training and experience in the software game, but my view of clients is that they usually know what they want, but they don't always say what they want, and it's part of your job to cut through the inexactitude. I think it's wise for politicians to view voters in the same way.

The military after Vietnam used to have as a mantra the saying, "You can't win a war with only air power." That seemed to go away after Desert Storm, when we basically won a war with air power. But it's true in war and in politics. I don't think you can win a campaign just with ads, and the Brown campaign managed to neutralize a pretty important asset to Whitman's team. If the other side is bombing you relentlessly, try to use that to bring together the other people on the ground against the common enemy. That's just common sense.

Additionally, if you're interested in California politics, this is a valuable piece from TPM.

An auspicious occasion

2010-10-21T15:30:00.000-07:00

Talking Points Memo is turning 10 in a few weeks. I'm definitely a big fan of the left-leaning site, which I feel is one of the few popular sites of its kind that isn't run by an obviously insane person. To be fair, most right-leaning sites are run by obviously insane people as well. But TPM is generally a great resource for both breaking news and commentary that has a perspective but doesn't overdo it like Fox.

Since I was a little bored I decided to utilize the Internet Archive to dial up the oldest version of TPM they had, from February 2002, since who isn't nostalgic for the early '00s? And I found a piece that made me laugh:

Are liberals hopeless suckers?
You better believe it.
Back in 1997 and 1998, as the presidential contenders were readying their engines, all Democrats pretty much realized that the nomination was Al Gore's to lose. But liberals were discomfited by Gore's centrism and casting about for some standard-bearer. Dick Gephardt decided he was that man.
Eventually, Gephardt decided that the Gore juggernaut could not be stopped and he stepped aside and endorsed Gore. But until then he pitched himself as the real Democrat, the Democrat who wasn't afraid to admit he was a Democrat (as Jim Fallows put it in this article), the Dem who still believed in the old time New Deal religion. Throughout the latter years of the second Clinton administration, looking toward the 2000 primaries, Gephardt consistently positioned himself as the leader of the party's liberals -- and signaled his stance by bucking the administration on some key votes.
I had just started working at the American Prospect -- the publication of liberal Democrats -- at the time and people had totally taken the bait.
Now, we're getting ready for 2004 and the lay of the land looks a little different. Gore wants to run again. Maybe Tom Daschle (though TPM feels confident this will never happen). And others. Now, Gephardt has decided he's going to run to the right of everyone else, as the one who doesn't believe in the same old tax and spend, who doesn't want to revisit the Bush tax cut, and so forth.
There are two possible explanations here. Either the Democratic party has lurched hard to the left in the last four years or Gephardt is a shameless opportunist...
And they say Bill Clinton's slick willie? That Al Gore's constantly reinventing himself?

I guess it's more hilarious since not only did Gephardt go from New Dealer to conservaDem to Bush's Democratic floor leader on the Iraq War, but since leaving politics he's become a particularly soulless corporate lobbyis t. Marshall was even more right than he could have known.

California marijuana legalization in trouble? Also, what's up with majority budgets.

2010-10-21T13:59:00.000-07:00

Nate Silver takes a look. I've already voted for it, as I'm convinced that 30 years of the Drug War have been a complete disaster for the country, filling our prisons with nonviolent (often non-)criminals while weakening our civil liberties. There isn't a general backlash against all these years of obvious failure and abuse because John Q. America doesn't think too much about this stuff since he doesn't use drugs and he doesn't think it affects him, but it certainly does. We pay to arrest, try, and jail these folks, of course. And the damage done to users, families, and communities is so unnecessary and stupid. Personally, I don't think marijuana really figures into this, since it's not intrinsically addictive and fairly harmless. But people still get arrested for it, so it's time to act.

Evidently the polls have tightened considerably. I don't know that it's doomed, though. If the drive is losing momentum now it might be too late to salvage it, but evidently Yes on 19 has a significant resource advantage over the No side, which is good (and was certainly not the case with Prop 8). There's still nearly two weeks to get the message out. My gut instinct is that it will pass, but I'm quite a bit less certain of that than I was a few days ago. Looking at the PPIC poll, it shows about the same margins for Brown and Boxer that other pollsters are showing (Boxer up by a handful, Brown up by about eight), but the actual levels of support look lower than other polls are showing. So it could be understating things across the board. I don't know.

This has all been precipitated by a PPIC poll showing the initiative losing momentum. Interestingly, the poll also shows the hugely important Prop 25--i.e. the one that will end the idiotic 2/3 state budget requirement--actually gaining support from last month. Prop 25 has been portrayed as an intensely partisan issue, which is true but defensible, in my opinion. It will basically destroy most of the leverage that state Republicans still have on our politics (the 2/3 rule for taxes will still apply, though, and that will be a lot harder to kill), but on little-d democratic principles it's hard to defend 1/3 of the legislature having so much power with practically zero accountability, since the Democrats get blamed for having to make really unsavory deals every year. Of course, Republicans don't want to give up this power and many of the California right-wing talk radio people (with some rare exceptions) are heavily against Prop 25. In spite of all this, it's interesting that 25 is actually getting a reasonable amount of Republican support--39% support to 45% opposition--and it's just mopping up with Dems and Indies. Perhaps this is due to the issue simply being impossible to spin, but I think the wording of the proposition is pretty strong, specifying the 2/3 rule for taxes will remain intact, with a dash of populism in the form of freezing pay for legislators if they don't deliver the budget on time. Not that it's actually likely to be necessary if a simple majority can pass it. Our long statewide nightmare might finally be ending, and the irony is that the scourge of our political system might well be ending it.

The Deficit Commission Folly

2010-10-19T12:36:00.000-07:00

Chait posits why the Deficit Commission is leaning right:

In any relationship, the party that cares the least about winning an according has the upper hand. That's what you're seeing out of the deficit commission. Republicans don't care about reducing the deficit, so they'll only support a plan that consists entirely (or almost entirely) of spending cuts. If it fails, fine. Most Democrats do want to reduce the deficit, so at least a significant core of them are willing to sign off on a solution that's far from their ideal mix.

This is why I have not been too impressed with the notion of a bipartisan deficit commission in the first place. If Democrats want to do something about the deficit, they should do so with the majority they now have, possibly using reconciliation rules in order to circumvent a filibuster. (Admittedly, the Blue Dogs make that problematic.) I realize this idea goes back to Mark Schmitt's theory of how Obama often tries to draw in bad-faith opponents by involving them in the process, and that if they don't have any ideas it's apparent. But the critical ingredient for that to work is public exposure, which does not appear to be a factor in the deficit commission's deliberations.

Ultimately, little will come of this. Democrats will not vote for a plan with significant benefit cuts, and Republicans will not only not vote for anything with defense or spending cuts, but they will even demagogue the benefit cuts as well. The commission's report will most likely be ignored, which is fine from my perspective, as I'm just tired of politicians hiding from accountability by deploying the bipartisanship dodge. I want politicians to get used to actually wielding power and getting held accountable for it, not to look for cover behind a handful of ostensibly dealmaking Republicans who turn around and backstab when convenient, as in the healthcare debate. And while those of us in the know realize that bipartisanship is no guarantee of quality policy, I think lots of voters (especially low-information ones) do believe that.

And speaking of Christianity...

2010-10-18T11:03:00.000-07:00

I just had to share this post about the Cold War changed Protestantism. Here's a list of the things that mainstream Protestant leaders advocated in 1942:

• Ultimately, "a world government of delegated powers."

• Complete abandonment of U.S. isolationism.

• Strong immediate limitations on national sovereignty.

• International control of all armies & navies.
• "A universal system of money ... so planned as to prevent inflation and deflation."
• Worldwide freedom of immigration.
• Progressive elimination of all tariff and quota restrictions on world trade.
• "Autonomy for all subject and colonial peoples" (with much better treatment for Negroes in the U.S.).
• "No punitive reparations, no humiliating decrees of war guilt, no arbitrary dismemberment of nations."
• A "democratically controlled" international bank "to make development capital available in all parts of the world without the predatory and imperialistic aftermath so characteristic of large-scale private and governmental loans."

Hard to believe, no? Then again, the politics of the WWII and the time immediately following the War are most radically different from our politics today in the area of foreign policy. Following WWII, public sentiment in favor of a pretty radical vision of internationalism was pretty robust to a far greater extent than it is today, outside of a very small sliver of the left. I don't think all of these ideas are good, though I think the seventh, eighth and ninth items are pretty blindingly obvious, items two and ten have indeed come to pass, though I'm not sure we'll be able to construct a universal system of money that works for everyone, considering how Germany has been quite empowered in the ECB, at the expense of Greece and the others.

What I think has been lost the most in liberal thought over the past few decades is a broader, more idealistic vision of foreign policy. Granted, a lot of the '50s- and '60s-era liberal idealism about the world was a bit utopian and excessive, and politically speaking, one-worldism isn't a winner at this point. But we currently have an unbalanced situation where the right often wins on the topic by invoking nationalism, and the left comes back with a watered-down version of the same nationalism. I don't suppose I need to get specific here, but simply saying "John Kerry's presidential campaign" really ought to be enough. I get the tribalism complaint but the inescapable trend of the past few millennia has been toward ever-larger "tribes" and with the technology advances of the past few decades I suspect it will continue. It has brought a number of benefits along with it, and while tribalism is a strong force I don't think it's an impossible one to overcome. And there is definitely a Christian basis for that.

Instant karma

2010-10-18T10:26:00.000-07:00

Jonathan Haidt claims that the tea parties are really all about Karma:

Now jump ahead to today's ongoing financial and economic crisis. Again, those guilty of corruption and irresponsibility have escaped the consequences of their wrongdoing, rescued first by President Bush and then by President Obama. Bailouts and bonuses sent unimaginable sums of the taxpayers' money to the very people who brought calamity upon the rest of us. Where is punishment for the wicked?

As the tea partiers see it, the positive side of karma has been weakened, too. The Protestant work ethic (karma's Christian cousin) holds that hard work is a duty and will bring commensurate rewards. Yet here, too, liberals have long been uncomfortable with karma, because even when you create equal opportunity, differences in talent and effort result in unequal outcomes. These inequalities must then be reduced by progressive taxation, affirmative action and other heavy-handed government intervention. Such social engineering violates our liberty, but most of us accept limitations on our liberty when we agree with the goals and motives behind the rules, such as during air travel. For the tea partiers, federal activism has become a moral insult. They believe that, over time, the government has made a concerted effort to subvert the law of karma.

Listen, for example, to Rick Santelli's "rant heard 'round the world" on CNBC last year and its most famous lines: "The government is promoting bad behavior," and "How many of you people want to pay for your neighbors' mortgage that has an extra bathroom and can't pay their bills?" It's a rant about karma, not liberty.

There's a real crumb of truth to this. I think most people want to see the bad guys lose and the good guys win, and the notion of bailing out people with bad mortgages is not palatable to quite a few people in this country. Clearly, a lot of banks made a lot of bad bets, and some of the blame rests with them, but the tea party argument about mortgages is fair enough and hard to rebut. The sensible option is to start rolling back the numerous government programs that encourage home ownership (and, by extension, reckless betting by banks), starting by phasing out Fannie and Freddie. I have no problem with this, though it should probably wait until the housing market recovers.

But I simply cannot believe that the tea parties are motivated solely by karma. It is telling that Haidt brings up only two examples of his karmic betrayal: progressive taxation, which is so abominably anti-free market capitalism that it's only been championed by Adam Smith, who created the whole idea in the first place, and affirmative action, which has become such a nonentity in American life that few liberals are even willing to defend it anymore, and outside of some public universities and other organizations (such as the military), it's just gone. He obviously couldn't have said Medicare or Social Security since the tea parties like those programs, and it seems like quite a few tea types take advantage of them. Haidt's article includes this quote: "Or look at the political issue that most enraged the early tea partiers. Messrs. Armey and Kibbe state categorically that it was not Mr. Obama's stimulus bill that turned millions into activists; it was Mr. Bush's bank bailout." This is important because if the tea parties were motivated by some sense of karmic justice, they should have been absolutely infuriated with the arrogant banksters who nearly broke America. I have noticed very little of that sentiment with the movement, though I suppose their relative silence on financial reform is something, but I suspect they really believe the Fox-approved narrative that the Community Reinvestment Act of 1979 caused the crisis or whatever and see the bankers as free-market warriors. Say what you like about this view, but it is hardly karmic. The tea partiers were infuriated by the response to the crisis and not necessarily the crisis itself, or its architects. And then there was the BP oil spill, in which Republican sentiment in favor of a company whose recklessness caused an unforced environmental disaster was so intensely sympathetic to the disgraced BP leaders that some Republicans just couldn't keep their mouths shut.

I personally find this entire argument preposterous, but let's talk for a moment about the Protestant work ethic (a/k/a Karma's Christian cousin). Haidt makes this statement without any supporting argument, and I think it needs some. Karma is a pretty easy concept to understand on a fundamental level--you get rewarded for what you do right, you get punished for what you do wrong, and ultimately you get what you deserve. In Christianity, the big idea is that you get something you do not deserve. You are justified by your faith and not by your works, and it is pointed out many times that good deeds, while pleasing to God, have no real reward in God's eyes (cf. the story of Jesus and the rich young ruler, which I'm sure everyone is familiar with). There are many points of overlap between Christianity and Buddhism (and possibly Hinduism, though I know a lot less about that), but there are plenty of points of divergence as well. Karma is pretty clearly antithetical to the basis of Christianity in my reckoning. I'm not going to say that any version of Christianity requires a full-fledged belief in a left-liberal agenda, because I do not believe that, but for a believing Christian to say "We get what we deserve" should not be a comforting notion but a terrifying one, and even if one were to accept that, I think it's pretty hard to make the argument that the 43.6 million people in poverty have each done something to deserve that state, which is the inevitable conclusion of the idea of the inherently just free market that Ayn Rand preached, and that conservatives like Rand Paul vociferously agree with.

The mystery of Sharron Angle's competitiveness

2010-10-15T15:47:00.000-07:00

I think this answers it: of the $14 million she took in last quarter, she already spent $12 million of it. That's a lot of dough to spend, and that might be why she's where she is. Evidently she and Harry Reid are about even on cash for now (excluding the massive spending by outside groups, of course).

No Mississippi

2010-10-15T13:25:00.000-07:00

I just find the title of this piece hilarious:

GOPers Begging Haley Barbour Not To Run For President

For the record, the image in my mind is of Rove on bended knee right in front of Barbour. It amuses me. But seriously, it's definitely true that, despite the conventional wisdom, Obama isn't really that poorly positioned for re-election in 2012. His approval ratings are better than Clinton's and Reagan's were at equivalent points in their presidencies, and both won re-election decisively. By 2012, our involvement in Iraq should be at an end, our involvement in Afghanistan should be winding down, and there will have been more time for the victories on health care, Wall Street reform, etc., to sink in. There will be a lot to run on, and while a lot of liberals seem to think that the trends in 2010 are going to remain permanently it's worth noting that midterm elections are usually made up of fickle electorates that tend to just be blowing off steam. FDR knew that, and after 1937 he rarely tried to do any big domestic policy for the final two years of his terms since he almost always dealt with more conservative Congresses during those times. And it's worth noting that the Republicans winning the House and the economy failing to recover could make Obama's position even stronger, especially if they trigger a government shutdown that makes things worse.

This is hardly a sure thing, though, and the thing that tips me over the edge into the likelihood of this happening is the weakness of the Republican opposition. It's entirely possible that the Republican field will include Mitt Romney, Sarah Palin, John Bolton, Newt Gingrich, Mike Pence and Haley Barbour, which seems like such a feast of venality, intemperance, intolerance and ignorance that it should just scare the hell out of independents. But it's pretty much par for the Republicans' course at this point. (Incidentally, that Tommy Franks Republican presidential bid seems not to have panned out so far. Maybe this is the year!) What interests me is that Republican leaders are apparently trying to pressure some prospective candidates from running at all, which doesn't seem like something that usually happens in these things. Sure, there was Bush clearing out prospective opponents in 2000, but there wasn't much of that in 2008 or 2004. I don't recall hearing Democrats trying to pressure Dennis Kucinich and Al Sharpton out of running, since neither was going to get the nomination the feeling must have been to let these guys do their thing and keep their (very small) followings in the tent. Sure, some (most?) people have negative associations of them, but most of them either aren't going to vote Democrat anyway or don't care that they are allowed to share the stage with the real contenders. Had it looked like Kucinich might have actually been able to somehow win the nomination in 2008, I'm quite sure elites would have tried to push him out of the running. Clearly, Republican bigwigs believe that Barbour could actually get their nomination in 2012, and the thought of a Confederate-loving Deep South governor running against the first Black president must really scare them. And I don't think their fears are misplaced in either case, as Barbour is sort of like Sharpton with a huge donor base, massive institutional support, and a pretty substantial regional advantage in one of the GOP's best regions that is likely to be underrepresented again among presidential candidates this upcoming cycle. I'm guessing Huckabee skips because of his record on policy, and Gingrich's faux-traditionalist cosmo-Catholic act seems less powerful to me than Barbour's legitimately traditionalist Baptist profile. I don't see him beating Obama, but getting the nomination seems possible. If I were Barbour, I sure as hell would run in this environment, prostrate Karl Rove or no.

In any event, for all our sakes we better hope that unemployment starts going down soon--Gallup has underemployment (unemployed + part-timers looking for full time) dipping by half a percentage point in two weeks, which is a trend that could stand to continue for a while.

The beginning of the end

2010-10-14T14:42:00.000-07:00

Before liberals all start OD'ing on the Obama hate again, I saw something Tom Hilton shared over at Balloon Juice:

The Pentagon today instructed military lawyers to halt all open investigations and pending discharges of gay and lesbian service members under the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy, which has prohibited them from openly serving.
The e-mail notice from the Defense Department's Judge Advocate Generals came in response to a judgment by Federal Judge Virginia Phillips Tuesday, ordering an immediate, worldwide end to the policy's enforcement.

This is real progress. The end is nigh.

DADT ruling to be appealed

2010-10-14T12:47:00.000-07:00

Here, as I predicted. I guess they still think Congress will overturn it anyway, and they don't want to railroad Gates. Still, it's weird that they're turning down a fait accompli at a time they could use one. Gates is only going to be on the job for a few more months anyway, after all.

Reality on Obama and DADT

2010-10-13T14:45:00.000-07:00

Here's how I see it: it's pretty clear that Obama made a deal some time ago with the top military brass, Bob Gates and Mike Mullen specifically--in exchange for their public support for ending DADT, the Administration would wait until the military's review to be over in December to push for change. When you read about the Administration not really pressuring Congress to get the repeal done last month, I suspect this is the reason. Without the buy-in of the brass, it doesn't really matter what the polling looks like: DADT repeal is going to fail. Let's be realistic here. The numbers for letting LGBT people serve openly were decent when Bill Clinton tried to push it in 1993, but the brass fought him tooth and nail and it never happened. December seems to be the price Obama agreed to pay for Mullen's and Gates's support, and it's a narrative that fits the facts unless you want to go the FDL route and assume that Obama secretly hates gay people. I do not.

Now, I do think that the nine-month review period seems agonizingly long and Obama should have tried to trim that. Maybe that's normal for government work, I don't know. But I don't think Obama will order Holder to drop the current case because if I'm right, that would basically involve him going back on the whole review promise that was made. Gates could make the whole process difficult if he wanted to, and I think his and Mullen's deliberatness is due to neither Gates nor Mullen not wanting to be seen as pushing a social agenda onto the military. Frankly, I could care less, but I'm not them, my job doesn't depend on my credibility with the military and I don't have to worry about any of those sorts of things. My strong feeling is that Obama's reticence here is the result of an agreement and not a lack of conviction. Maybe he could have gotten a better one, I don't know. But when I hear talk about executive orders and lawsuits and all the rest it seems beside the point. Sure, the guy has some tools to make it happen, but issuing an executive order or dropping the DADT lawsuit would present very real risks and preclude any other options. Doing things Gates's way has some downsides, but it doesn't rule out other avenues if the Senate continues its dickishness.

As for Andrew Sullivan's disparagement of Obama on gay rights, I totally understand where it's coming from but I think it's misplaced. No Republicans voted to proceed on the Defense Bill, and that's not because they all support DADT (Snowe, Collins and Brown publicly don't) but rather because ending DADT would give Obama a big win with his base, and they didn't want that to happen. Sue Collins's bullshit editorial more or less confirms the cynicism--she complains about not being able to offer amendments on the bill, but she voted not to proceed on the bill, which ensured she would be able to offer no amendments. It's not as if the bill were debated, her amendments were ignored, and Reid moved for cloture and final passage. No amendments can be considered at all if the vote to proceed is filibustered. Republicans unsurprisingly want other Republicans to win elections, and getting Democrats to yell at each other isn't a bad way of doing this. I understand everyone's frustration, but Obama simply isn't to blame for Republican cynicism. To blame Obama for any of this is to play right into the hands of a cynical party that just wants to win.

Doubling down

2010-10-13T10:44:00.000-07:00

Check this out:

California gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman (R) "contributed an additional $20 million to her campaign this week -- bringing the total she has spent so far on her run to $141.5 million," California Beat reports.

"The contribution only adds to an already record-shattering total -- no other American candidate has ever spent so much of his or own wealth in an attempt to get elected as the former eBay executive has."

I suppose this is a reminder that campaign finance laws can only go so far, as self-funders will always exist and will likely not be restricted from doing stuff like this. Then again, that she's spent over $100 million and can't capitalize on a good Republican year in the polls might well prove the axiom that self-funding is vastly overrated, since it tamps down donor involvement and volunteer enthusiasm. I guess we'll see.

$20 million is a big number, to be sure, but it's like a few hundred bucks to most people so why not spend it? Whitman is down in the polls partly because of some controversies of her own making but mostly because her message is a thin gloss over standard-issue Republicanism in a state that simply has little affection for it. Read this and tell me it doesn't reek of desperation. Had Brown personally called Whitman a whore she might have a point, but a five week-old voicemail by some aide is weak sauce indeed. Brown had already apologized already. If this is their "October Surprise" then they might as well throw in the towel. And the thing about Wilson using the term himself seems to negate the whole thing. Whitman seems to be under the impression that voters are deeply offended by nasty words, which might have been reality in 1987 or so, but even conservatives don't care any more since Fox News's biggest personality drops bleeped F-bombs quite frequently.

I guess in the end I don't get why Whitman is doing this. Her bold new direction for California is anything but, an amalgamation of yesteryear's buzzwords and Republican pablum. It mostly reflects someone who isn't terribly interested in policy and doesn't want to change much of anything too much. I guess she's conservative, so the latter is fair enough. But either this is a vanity campaign, or Whitman just wants to run for president and wants to use the California governorship as merely a stepping stone. She wouldn't be the first (most notably see Nixon, Richard M.), but at least people like Pete Wilson and, well, Brown himself circa 1975 actually bothered to show an interest in policy and act like they cared about the job. Whitman clearly doesn't, so maybe Whitman's candidacy is bolder than I thought!

Oh, and TPM commenter Rich in NJ has a pretty clever comment: "If Whitman would be willing to balance CA's budget with her own money, I might support her, otherwise, no." She probably couldn't do it by herself, but a gesture in this direction might have helped, who knows?

Centrism as the path of least resistance

2010-10-11T09:53:00.000-07:00

Sue Collins's op-ed is as awful as others have said. I particularly agree with this. In between the self-righteous posturing about the bipartisanship of the "Gang of 14" (which was bipartisan but a double-victory for the right, since they got to keep the filibuster as well as their right-wing judges) and enough complaints about being picked on by both sides that brings out my inner Livia Soprano ("Poor you!"), we get nuggets like this:

During the past two years, the minority party has been increasingly shut out of the discussion. Even in the Senate, which used to pride itself on being a bastion of free and open debate, procedural tactics are routinely used to prevent Republican amendments. That causes Republicans to overuse the filibuster, because our only option is to stop a bill to which we cannot offer amendments.

This might sound fine to an uninformed person. I am not an uninformed person. Susan Collins was, for a time, a gettable vote on health care reform. She and other Republicans offered tons of amendments that were considered and even accepted in some cases, but she still filibustered and voted against the final bill. When you consider that Collins, like very other Republican, voted to filibuster the motion to proceed on the DISCLOSE Act--not even the actual bill, just the motion to consider the bill and offer amendments, her big sticking point--this whole argument is revealed to be a farce, and a poignant one, since Collins is sure to be primaried in a few years and all that undisclosed money is sure to work against her. Ultimately, Collins wants (and has) to stand with her party's filibusters or she's going to get primaried and/or lose plum committee assignments, but she has to come up with an argument for why she's blocking things she ostensibly agrees with. That is the path of least resistance, and she's characteristically running it.

Collins's version of moderation deeply annoys me, and this op-ed is clearly a pitch to the establishment for the idea of a GOP-led Senate. The idea that such a Senate would enact a moderate agenda seems ridiculous to me, but I don't think Collins would care all that much about what gets passed because there's no evidence she ever has cared before. There are different kinds of moderates in the United States, some see moderation as being in between the two parties, and others see it as more a sober, evidence-based sensibility than a set of positions per se. Collins's view of moderation, in view of her record, seems to define the term as the path of least resistance. She voted for the stimulus, sure, which would make her a Keynesian, except that she voted for the second round of Bush's tax cuts, which was such an extreme extension of supply-side logic that her colleague Olympia Snowe voted against it. These are radically different economic positions that Collins would have a hard time reconciling, if she ever cared to. The only thing in common with both was that a popular president proposed both ideas, and she presumably wanted to get in on the hot-hot inside dealing and influence-making that both occasions provided. Her position with the whole "Gang of 14" business--that the Senate should preserve the filibuster but allow votes on Bush's right-wing nominees--is the sort of "centrism" I'm talking about, one that is not based on either the principle of majority rule nor one that is opposed to judicial extremism, so much as a stance that sets out to maximize the power of the Senate and, incidentally, the pivotal members in the center (such as Ms. Collins). She's been on both sides of cap-and-trade and immigration reform as well, depending on the political climate. What shines through at every turn is someone who adapts to the political environment rather than someone who tries to shape it, someone who is more interested in holding power than wielding it to any constructive end. I personally don't believe that our political problems stem from "incivility" in any respect, so much as I think they stem from an excessively powerful business lobby that renders the notion of a public interest quaint, a media that sees cynicism as practically a sport, and a number of figures who mostly exist to shut down any attempt at a dialogue between different sides in the political debate. These are the real problems we have, not civility. Gilded Age politics, as a counterexample, were extremely civil and polite, as well as deeply corrupt and craven. Everyone agreed on everything because powerful people were owned by the same corporate masters. I don't think things are that bad yet, but it is worth noting the supreme idiocy of this whole notion and its holders. Either that, or it's just another flavor of cynicism.

Palin the Weak

2010-10-07T15:35:00.000-07:00

I'm glad this year's primaries are over, if for no better reason than that the press will stop analyzing Sarah Palin's effect on particular races. In fact, her whole "Mama Grizzly" concept seems to have been a bust. Karen Handel couldn't even win a primary in Georgia without Palin's endorsement, Carly Fiorina is looking less and less competitive in California, and now two straight polls are showing the original Grizzly, Nikki Haley, not even above the margin of error in South Carolina. The sure winners she endorsed to up her batting average, like Fallin in Oklahoma and Branstad in Iowa, are doing better, but still. This is not good.

What Palin represents, ultimately, is the final stage in evolution for the conservative movement. The movement can no longer be considered a political movement, I believe, since it had little problem with Bush's frequent violations of their own self-stated principles during his reign, and the rank-and-file gave him huge support right up until the end. It's primarily a cultural movement at this point, and one which is holding an ever-diminishing amount of sway in modern America, despite their likely gains this year due to the recession and voter frustration. Palin offers an entirely cultural argument with some political points that don't add up to anything like a philosophy, and that don't contain anything resembling an argument. A lot of people characterize the whole Tea Party concept as racist, but I think the more accurate description is white nationalist. Many are full-on racists to be sure, but what motivates the Tea Party (and, by extension, many of the rest of conservatives) is fundamentally a cultural vision, partly historical but substantially invented, of an America replete with small-town values and a government that sticks out of your hair and all the rest. Needless to say that this is a predominantly white vision, but most conservatives I know aren't opposed to some diversity and don't actually hate minorities. They just generally see American history and cultural history as white-dominated and think this is simply part and parcel of American identity as well as their own identities, and they worried about being pushed out somehow. I see this notion as dubious, since minorities don't have near the level of wealth or success of white folks and that is not likely to change, but I understand it. It is only comprehensible through the lens of white nationalism, and if you start there, then most of the rest of it falls into place.

There is a small problem with all these chants about "taking our country back", which both is and isn't an innocuous phrase that partisans of either side can say: for the Tea Parties their country can't come back. It's gone forever. It's gone when over 80 percent of people in America are urban or suburban, when the fastest growing blocks of the public are young people with few of their hangups and Hispanics, who many of their candidates have gone out of their way to antagonize. This is not to mention the rapidly falling rate of people who practice a religion, as well as the rapidly rising percentage of people who support GLBT rights. America has already changed, and it's going to continue changing along roughly the same lines as it has been changing. The America of the '50s, or the '20s, or whatever other time period the right-wing pines for is simply gone forever, and the sooner they realize it and try to live in the now, with all its possibilities and perils, the better off they will be, and the better off we will all be. It's not like there aren't more productive things they could be doing that could really help us out, you know, by being a functional opposition party.

So, Palin is the ultimate distillation of the conservatives' mentality. She might well be able to elevate a candidate to win a nomination, but her poor record in this election shows the diminishing pull that she--and her movement--are having on our politics. I think the effect is pretty clear: when she gets involved in a contest, people tend to have second thoughts about it, even if the state in question is thoroughly conservative. When the dust settles, this will be clear. So who thinks she can win in 2012?

Obama-Clinton 2012? Shouldn't happen.

2010-10-06T14:49:00.000-07:00

Today's buzz is over a possible Obama-Clinton 2012 ticket, with VP Biden taking over Clinton's job at State. It's been officially denied, of course. Tomasky offers a positive outlook on the potential pairing here, but I'm skeptical for a few reasons:

The fallout could make Obama look disloyal if Biden doesn't look as though he's done anything to deserve demotion.
A possible Blair-Brown situation between Obama and Clinton. Biden is a good VP in many ways, but one of them has to be a lack of an independent power base. Gordon Brown had one and was able to hamstring Tony Blair to some extent during their effectively joint reign, and Dick Cheney's power base probably made Bush more inclined to take old Darth more seriously. Putting Clinton in there means radically different power dynamics in the White House, which are pretty unpredictable as far as I can see.
Plus, seriously? Clinton has many talents and has done a fine job at State, but her managerial skills, particularly her ability to judge character and ability, have been proven to be poor (see: 2008 campaign). As far as the longer-term consequences go, setting her up as Obama's heir makes some sense from an electoral perspective, but it's not like Obama couldn't name his own heir any time he wanted to, and Democrats usually win when running younger, charismatic, outsider-type candidates instead of insidery, elder statesman types. Maybe that would be different with Clinton specifically, since she's iconic in a way that Kerry and Gore aren't. I don't really know.

Still, given all that, if she could get some ambivalent Democrats to definitely vote for Obama it is eminently worth checking out. None of this stuff is insurmountable and a lot of such a decision depends on the situation in 2012. This particular point, though, by Tomasky strikes me as off-base:

She would help rev up women and Latinos, and she's [sic] raise the comfort level on a second Obama term inside the Beltway establishment, which generally speaking likes her a lot and consider the Potus a little unproven as yet.

Actually, they hated her up until she won rural whites in Ohio, which showed that she can reach the holy grail of politics, or whatever. Anyway, this is not an argument for Clinton as VP, but rather for Mike Bloomberg as VP. I think that's a pretty lousy idea, since Bloomberg has no experience in the federal government and delivers pretty much nobody who wasn't going to vote Democrat already, but the Village's obsession with the man--to the point of imagining running mates for the guy!--along with his genuine skill leads me to believe that Obama might want to consider bringing him into the government in some way. Considering his talents are mainly for running large and unwieldy institutions with technocratic efficiency, and that is stature is decidedly independent, something like Secretary of Defense seems like an interesting idea to me. Of course, Bloomberg probably knows little about defense policy, but maybe the Villagers would assume that putting Bloomberg in the Cabinet equals seriousness about government or something.

No matter how many parties we have, I will not invite Tom Friedman to any of them

2010-10-05T15:19:00.000-07:00

I'd like to associate myself with this post by Jonathan Bernstein criticizing Tom Friedman's call for a third party. I just read the column myself and, considered along with David Broder's most recent column, I don't think a more poignant case for legacy media irrelevance has ever been made.

Friedman's column is especially infuriating. People like Friedman never say something like, "I generally prefer the Democratic platform and policies to those of the Republicans for reasons that are self-evident" because that would bring the insinuations of the dread liberal bias, even though it's clearly the perspective of the article. So every left-of-center voice in the media has to act like a completely independent maverick with no connection to the progressive movement or politics, and an active dislike of them is preferable. This is insane. And since saying, "Vote Democratic, because they would do a better job of fixing things, especially if those deficit-poseur Blue Dogs were purged" is not the thing a maverick independent can say (though it is pretty logical, I think), Friedman's solution necessarily has to be awkward. A third-party movement that duplicated the goals of the progressive movement would find itself directly at odds with the Democratic Party (see also, Green Party), and the same is true of a party that tries to duplicate the goals of the Republican Party. I guess Friedman wants some sort of "radical centrist" party, and this party of the elites (The Bloomberg Party, basically, 'cause that's what it is) presumably includes moderate hawkishness, fiscal conservatism and social liberalism, which is what the elites always say we voters want, but I've seen no evidence of it. I do think that there is an opening for the opposite of what the elites want--a dovish, socially conservative, fiscally liberal party--but presumably Friedman wouldn't want that at all.

Even if one grants Friedman's assumptions about the state of the two parties, it does not stand to reason that a third party is even the right way to go. Fixing the existing parties might well be the easier and better idea. But that's boring, and wouldn't make for a splashy column. Overwrought Roman references aside, Friedman's column mostly represents a desire by the establishment to drive the course of public policy. The problem is that the establishment has spent its last decade destroying its credibility at every turn--by embracing nearly every disastrous Bush policy they could find, from No Child Left Behind to Iraq to Social Security privatization (though they couldn't make that one happen on their own) so as to prove their independence from the left, without ever raising any concerns of which I am aware. Through all of this, they showed themselves to be concerned with maintaining access to power than exercising theirs responsibly. They have worked hard to make themselves irrelevant, and we see the results: now, major candidates simply don't talk to the media ever. And now they want to run the place?

Broder does it again

2010-10-05T10:38:00.000-07:00

Everyone's favorite octogenarian columnist has a new (chronologically, not content, speaking) column up:

Before Boehner opened his mouth, Speaker Nancy Pelosi blasted him in a statement charging that "Congressional Republicans and Mr. Boehner have stood in the way of Democratic reform efforts in Congress for the last four years, and now they want to take America back to the exact same failed policies of the past that put the corporate special interests ahead of the middle class."

That is par for the course in this campaign season, and it represents the sort of reflexive partisanship that voters are understandably sick of. [...]

Many of the Republican leader's proposals are standard, and some that are not are questionable. But few who serve in the House, or observe it closely, would challenge Boehner's analysis of the dynamic that has made Congress a dysfunctional legislative body and Capitol Hill a hostile workplace. [...]

Boehner was a serious legislator for five years at the start of this decade as chairman of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, before he became a floor leader for his party. His diagnosis of the problems in Congress offers a starting point for a cure. Let's hope the Democrats respond.

I should say I'm shocked, but really, I'm not shocked by anything that establishmentarians do anymore. Broder is probably not read by anyone outside of political junkies and political figures, and that probably makes it easier for him to believe that the reason Americans hate Washington is "reflexive partisanship" rather than, I don't know, a relentlessly networked and arrogant ruling class that cares only about its pet obsessions rather than real middle-class issues? I'm just speculating here, but the Republicans have been extremely partisan over the past two years and the voters seem likely to reward them for it. How does Broder explain this? I guess the thing about how Democrats have been shutting off debate is supposed to answer that, but it's not like conservatives have had much trouble getting their message out. And nobody even does debates in Congress anymore.

Of course, calling Boehner a serious legislator is wildly off the mark, as Steve notes here:

He is, as we talked about last week, almost a caricature of what's wrong with Washington insiders. Boehner first gained national notoriety in 1996, when the chain-smoking conservative congressman, shortly before a key vote, walked the House floor distributing checks from tobacco industry lobbyists.
More recently, Boehner has developed an unrivaled love of corporate lobbyists, with whom the GOP leader coordinates to try to kill jobs bills, Wall Street reform,health care reform, and energy legislation.

We're talking about a long-time Capitol Hill veteran who literally meets in smoke-filled rooms to scheme behind closed doors with powerful interests, most of which have hired his former aides for maximum influence and impact.

Is Broder out to lunch? I don't hate the guy nearly as much as most lefties seem to, though I've been more critical than not. At risk of being too mean, he's the best argument there is for a mandatory retirement age for media outlets. Why? I think it has to do with the messed-up way we as a culture view aging. Everyone knows about the justly famous "full retard" bit from Tropic Thunder, which is basically that movies about mentally challenged people tend to give them special powers of some sort or other--Rain Man being able to play genius poker, for example--because people feel bad about not really giving a damn about handicapped people and want to think that everything somehow evens out, that lacking the ability to connect with other people is offset by some other gift somehow. I think a lot of people figure that age automatically grants wisdom as a similar way of life compensating for the downsides of being old. Of course, people who actually spend time with senior citizens know that this is a complete stereotype, and it's far more common for the elderly to be more set in their ways and resistant to new ways of thinking than other groups. This is, of course, a generalization, but as a person with a background in the sciences I can tell you that most changes in scientific thinking didn't come about because of some bold new theory or because some visionary led the way--it's usually been because all the people who backed the old way of thinking died off. The debate over particle physics comes to mind, but there are many, many more.

My point is that Broder seems to have missed the past fifteen years of history, and he still thinks that the two sides are 1) willing to reconsider their ideologies and 2) that bipartisanship is an inevitable good. How do we fix the ideological gulf in this country? More talking, of course, among political elites! This is all just so sad that I feel bad laughing at the guy. He came from a time and place when both of those notions were true, and now they're pretty clearly not. But at least there's a decent excuse for why he says this stuff--he's stuck in his ways. The question is, what's the rest of the media's excuse?

No, Mike, the Blue Dogs really suck (a digressive post)

2010-10-01T10:24:00.000-07:00

Mike Tomasky's recent blogging has been pretty erratic, especially this:

Politically speaking, let's face it, the best possible outcome from these elections for Obama is that the Democrats hold the House by a narrow margin, and the Blue Dogs D's have more power, which means no more big liberal legislation, which means he can maybe recapture the middle again by 2012. Unfortunately the middle in this country today is well to the right of where it was 15 years ago, let alone 30. But that's another subject and a longer battle, one liberals have obviously been losing for a long time.

I do not think any of this is true at all, and it makes me wonder if Mark Penn is guestblogging over there.

The reality is that big liberal legislation is not going to happen because, if the Democrats win, they will only hold the House by a few votes. The Blue Dogs will make the balance here, but that's sort of the situation already, and the relative proportion of conservative Democrats is likely to actually go down, even factoring in the expected losses. Nancy Pelosi got two votes more than she needed for health care reform despite having a nearly 80-seat majority, so it's impossible to imagine any major legislation occurring in the next Congress. Conversely, if the Republicans gain control of the House, it will likely be by less than ten seats, and successfully pushing the sort of highly ideological agenda they're envisioning (complete with government shutdowns!) seems equally as unlikely. Independents are leaning Republican due to the state of the economy and frustration with Congress. They still hate the GOP. How long will they tolerate that sort of nonsense? Probably not long, I would think.

This is not to mention the state of the Senate--one would hope that recent events would make every Democratic Senator realize the need to reform that institution's rules, but considering how image-obsessed and process-fixated most Democrats seem to be I highly doubt the bare Democratic Senate majority will muster up the will to stand up to the barrage of FNC/Limbaugh/Drudge attacks on the "Liberal power grab in defiance of the public will" blah blah blah. You just know it will happen, and considering they can't even stick together to vote for tax cuts on the middle class (!) I don't think the other thing is going to happen. The right time to reform these rules is at the beginning of a new presidential administration when the media will be obsessed over pageantry, cabinet choices, and so forth. Nancy Pelosi pushed through some pretty significant House procedural reforms of a similar magnitude during the Obama transition and nobody even noticed or cared. So maybe we shoot for 2013 for Senate reform? Perhaps. Especially if Obama treats Mitt Romney to the thorough ass-whipping that I wholly expect he will.

As for "capturing the middle", Obama's real problem is that a lot of Democrats are disengaged from the election. Some of those self-identify as independents, of course, which is why it's stupid to use centrist and independent interchangeably. But has the center really moved to the right in the last few decades? The Republicans certainly have moved to the right, but I haven't seen much evidence that what people actually believe has. If you define the center as "equidistant between what the two parties profess to stand for" then maybe this is right. If you define it as "those things that voters look for in a candidate" or "what assumptions voters make about the economy and social issues" then I think not. In fact, I think that the average American now is a lot more skeptical of free market politics than was the case during the Reagan era or, indeed, even five years ago. In fact, I suspect that Republican victories this year are part of the same phenomenon that propelled some very liberal Democrats to victory in the 1974 and 1976 elections, despite the public developing a huge conservative streak that had let Nixon win a big landslide in 1972--a crummy economy (and Watergate) led people to take out their frustration with the party in power, but after the dust settled, the mistrust in government that Watergate fostered played right into Reagan's hands. The fallout from the Wall Street collapse isn't all apparent yet, and many Democrats (Blue Dogs particularly) don't know how to channel it. But someone will. I still think that 2008 was the beginning of the end of laissez-faire, but that never meant that the transition would be smooth.

In any event, the whole post is pretty stupid. I'm not going to go the full DeMint and say that I'd rather have 20 real Democrats than a majority of sell-outs but, honestly, to see these people take such a weak-ass and out-of-touch stance on middle class tax cuts has admittedly radicalized me to the point where I think it's time to curb the Blue Dogs' influence. They seem to combine the worst of all possible worlds--the limited imagination and vision of moderate Republicans like Olympia Snowe and Sue Collins, the deficit hawk fraudulence and corporate ownership of conservative Republicans, and the fear and insecurity of much of the Democratic establishment. They're like a Frankenstein of fail. I can't think of the last time a major initiative or debate was headed by a Blue Dog, and that's not counting their antecedents in the DLC and the New Democrat Coalition. As far as the argument that we need them to hold the majority, my local Congressman right now is Jerry McNerney, a mainstream/progressive Democrat who has voted with the Democrats on all the big things in this Congress despite being in a classic swing district. He's facing a close race but he's got a good chance of sticking around, and my activities for OFA have introduced me to a lot of people who are grateful that he stood up for their priorities and are spending a lot of time trying to keep him in office. You're telling me that those people would even bother doing anything if he'd done the typical Blue Dog thing and voted against HCR and cap-and-trade? And without enthusiastic volunteers, what chance does any politician have?

The State of Israel

2010-10-01T10:12:00.000-07:00

This is almost certainly true, though the last line makes the point too broadly:

Since the 2002 intifada, the Israeli polity has been experiencing an extended freakout akin to America's post-9/11 freakout, and Netanyahu is Israel's George W. Bush. It's naive to assume that Netanyahu is merely making a series of tactical errors in pursuit of a benevolent goal. It's equally naive to assume the same about the Palestinians.

Chait doesn't mention when Arafat walked away from Bill Clinton's peace negotiations in 2000. Was it because the right of return was so important to him, as he said? Or was it because Ehud Barak put his neck on the line for peace and Arafat knew he'd be able to take him down by walking away from the talks, thereby discrediting the Labor/Meretz peace faction in Israeli politics and ushering in a Likud government that would make a much more villainous foil for Arafat to use to enhance his personal power? Or at least to distract talk of his taking relief dollars and sending them to support the lifestyle of his high-living wife in Paris? There's a certain logic to this. It doesn't mean that actual Palestinians don't want peace, but knowing what I know about Arafat this level of cynicism is hardly excessive.

Chait has plenty of ideas I disagree with in his posts on Israel/Palestine, but I do feel like he does want what is best for Israel and America and he isn't completely blind to what's going on in the world. This sets him up from most self-stated pro-Israel writers. At he definitely brings up important issues in his writing.

Brown vs. Whitman, redux

2010-09-29T14:12:00.000-07:00

The hits keep on coming. Now Whitman has a nanny scandal and a new poll shows both Brown and Boxer with substantial leads in their races.

In the comments to my previous post on this contest, Montana asks if Fiorina and Whitman are falling in the polls because they are better candidates on paper than in reality, or if it's because people are figuring out that they're not quite in step with what Californians want to begin with. I think this is a really good question, actually. The new poll shows Boxer/Brown riding a stampede of women voters to their side, which is probably indicative of the public paying more attention an realizing that both Republican women are anti-marriage equality, Fiorina is pro-life, neither has a particularly compelling message, Whitman won't talk to the press, etc. The GOP had an opportunity here, and that both these races were close (or even GOP-leaning) suggests that they had the right idea in terms of candidate selection, image-wise. But it turns out that billionaire self-funders with no political experience (outside of shilling for the McCain campaign, I suppose) and no real vision aren't best positioned to exploit the public's anger at unemployment, corporate welfare, and phony politicians. In retrospect it seems so obvious.

They did it again

2010-09-29T13:04:00.001-07:00

History repeats itself, and conservative Democrats have postponed a vote on the Bush tax cuts until after the election. I've heard several plausible explanations for this entire baffling episode: that the Blue Dogs are simply sticking up for the people who bought and paid for them, that they really think this is the better policy, or that they're simply so paralyzed by fear of Republican attacks that they don't want to vote. Undoubtedly elements of all three are at play, though I strongly suspect that what motivates most (though not all!) Blue Dogs is a deep desire to avoid sharp partisan contrasts. After all, it is unlikely that someone like Dan Boren, who represents an R+14 district, really wants to draw attention to how he differs from the Republican Party, even if he actually opposes the policy (which I don't even know is correct or not). Of course, the politics of this are stupid, and these Blue Dogs have to know that the simple argument "I voted to cut taxes for the middle class" will be more resonant to voters than their opponents saying "Well, sure, they voted for middle class tax cuts, but in doing so they didn't force a vote to cut taxes on high-income producers, which is the same as hiking taxes." That spin is so convoluted and strained that it sounds like the conservative argument against the minimum wage that nobody ever buys. I find it hard to believe that people with enough political skill to be sent to Congress actually think that argument would do anything, but these people exemplify the out of touch politician type.

A lot of conversation has gone into whether or not the Democrats will hold the House, but what interests me is the potential aftermath. According to Nate Silver, the Democrats are going to lose 45 seats in November, which I think is pessimistic but let's make the assumption. According to his projections, half of those casualties will be Blue Dogs, reducing their number from 54 to 32, and dropping their numbers inside the Democratic caucus from about 20% to 15%. By my accounting, only about half of the Blue Dogs sticking around even bothered to sign the letter to Nancy Pelosi to extend all the Bush tax cuts, which means they're perhaps clustered in the less conservative part of that group. All of which is to say that it's looking likely that, while the Democratic coalition in Congress is going to be smaller, it will also be more liberal proportionally speaking, and perhaps more likely to keep on Nancy Pelosi as leader and stick together more on key issues than is happening currently. In the long term, of course, a number of Blue Dogs represent substantially Democratic areas (many hail from safe districts in California, oddly), and will eventually be replaced by mainstream Democrats, while constant waves of attrition will clear out the rest of the legacy Democrats from the South. In the end, we'll wind up with a party split between mainstream and progressive Democrats, which strikes me as a desirable outcome.

The disaffected left

2010-09-29T09:06:00.000-07:00

Larison lays into one of The Atlantic's less impressive bloggers, who makes the typical establishment critique of Obama:

Crook’s thesis rests on the shaky assumption that the public has soured on policies that were “less than perfect but vastly better than nothing” because of the way the policies were pitched. Never mind that it is progressives and Democratic activists who feel neglected, slighted, insulted and used over the last two years. According to Crook, they needed to be dismissed and marginalized completely for the sake of maintaining Obama’s centrist reputation, despite the fact that it is his centrist policies and reputation that have discouraged and dispirited so many of the people who got Obama elected. Perhaps many Obama voters had unreasonable expectations, as activists and ideological voters often do, and perhaps they don’t appreciate how good they have had it. Regardless, Obama’s political problem is clearly the problem of having a Democratic base that is disaffected, and that problem would have only been made worse had he prostrated himself before the Washington establishment consensus even more quickly than he did.

The discontent of the professional left with Obama is rapidly becoming one of my least favorite subjects to discuss. The media, of course, loves conflict stories and they are picking up on all this stuff and exaggerating it, as is their wont. But the truth is that some of the thing is the product of people not being able to get over themselves, others being willfully stupid and petulant, and still others who have entirely legitimate gripes. People who read this blog probably know who I consider to be in each category. It's all more pronounced in the political environment because this sort of thing only ever happens to Democrats--in spite of everything, Republicans never turned against Bush because all that really matters to them is holding power, not what they do with it. That the GOP has been so mushy on policy specifics for this election cycle merely confirms the hypothesis.

Time for a break

2010-09-28T14:41:00.000-07:00

I found this post by blog friend Emily Hauser to be very entertaining: a list of things she hates more than she should. What would be on my list? Any number of traffic-related phenomena, Denis Leary, and televised awards shows. Maybe the latter is justifiable. These things don't actually exist to celebrate greatness in whatever media they represent, they exist for their own sake. And because they need to give out awards, it just becomes another campaign, with politicking and dollars making the difference. I'd love it if they didn't name winners and just picked a few noteworthy films and performances to honor--they could just ditch the awards and keep the nominees secret until the broadcast, and then let the people personally decide which ones they liked best. I suppose that would sap excitement from the broadcast, but you don't usually use "excitement" and "award show" in the same sentence, unless a negative is involved.

Ohio

2010-09-28T14:21:00.000-07:00

Native Michigander Jon Chait makes some funny digs at Ohio here, but I think this is a far more damning indictment against the Buckeye State:

A new Reuters/Ipsos poll in Ohio shows Rob Portman (R) leading Lee Fisher (D) by 13 points in the race for U.S. Senate among likely voters, 50% to 37%.

"The poll found a majority of Ohio voters brushed aside Democratic charges that Portman would represent a return to the failed economic policies of Bush, with 60 percent saying his work with Bush made no difference in their vote."

He didn't just work for Dubya, he was Bush 43's budget director, which is essentially the budgetary equivalent to being the navigator on the HMS Titanic. Before that, he was Bush's Trade Rep, passing bad free trade agreements that Ohioans usually dislike. (Full disclosure: I am a free trader, but there's a way to do it that prevents exploitation and environmental degredation and a way to do it that CEOs like. Bush's agreements tended toward the latter.)

As for the underlying attitude...I guess I just can't understand. I'd like to think I tend less toward despondency than most of the liberal writers I read. I'm as frustrated with the GOP's resurgency as any of them, but I view it philosophically: my short fuse post from a few months ago seems ever more correct to me, as I think voters are more just desperate than anything else. I actually do believe most of the Republicans' ideas will hurt the economy, and do you really think the GOP will be able to topple Obama if the economy gets significantly worse after a government shutdown next year? Democrats will probably wind up with even bigger majorities than they have now should that happen, as I believe it would. I still want the Dems to hold the House so that the GOP doesn't get to screw with agency budgets and what not, so I wouldn't say I'm halfway hoping they get the House, but maybe quarterway hoping, sure.

But I do have to admit that the aforementioned desperation really is pretty depressing to me. I get that most voters are low-information but seriously, how easy is it to get voters to ignore your entire record? Just saying that it doesn't count? This guy manned the Trade Rep's office and the OMB chair during Bush's term, two key policy positions that helped shape economic policy during the Bush years, and voters are actually buying the whole transformation act based on nothing but words? Hardly encouraging. I know that the Republicans won't succeed in their quests to demolish HCR and so forth, and that failure will harm them even more than they already are harmed. That doesn't make it any easier to take when complete frauds barely even have to try to make it into office.

The case for Jerry Brown for Governor of California: A megapost!

2010-09-28T13:39:00.000-07:00

Boy, this got longish! Okay, I'll just try to get through all this.

A week or so ago, I finally just gave up in the face of the Meg Whitman's constant internet presence and visited her website. Personally, I've been skeptical of both Jerry Brown's and Meg Whitman's candidacies, and I don't think either of them either understands what needs to be done or has much of an interest in doing it. Everyone knows about the dysfunctional 2/3 budget requirement that makes every budget into a titanic struggle, which is a legacy of the Reagan years and Prop. 13, or the initiative process that lets gobs of money be spent without offsets or oversight. But while California is invariably thought of as some sort of ultraliberal, hippy-dippy state that spends too much on welfare programs or whatever, there are plenty of other things in our government like the 2/3 rule, relics of a past that nobody is particularly interested in changing. A big part of the problem is that we have lots of unduly harsh sentencing laws for a variety of things, a legacy of 16 years of tough-on-crime conservative governors during the 1980s and 1990s. The three-strikes law is merely the tip of the iceberg here. One of my local Sacramento-based news nets has a pretty striking fact here:

Right now, California spends $8.6 billion, or 11 percent of its budget, on state prisons. That works out to an average $52,363 per year to house an inmate in prison, according to the California Department of Corrections. That's $143 a day per prisoner.

That's right, and the headline says it all, "State spending on prison inmates outweighs spending on K-12 students." Clearly, this is the correct priority. Over ten percent of the state's budget is spent on prisons, largely because the Democrats that run the state are a bunch of worthless humps who don't want to be "soft on crime" and don't want to make an issue out of it. As is customary, Republicans deny that there's a tradeoff between guns and butter and Democrats are too wimpy to even make the argument. That crime is down country-wide to such an extent that even the City of Compton is livable now matters not at all. Police and prison unions are super-powerful, and that's pretty much that. The situation has gotten so bad that the courts have ordered the state to reduce prison overcrowding. Legalizing marijuana might take some of the pressure off, and it looks likely to pass in an initiative in November, but there are hard battles that need to be fought here, and nobody is particularly interested in fighting them.

So reading Meg Whitman's page on public safety (found right here) is pretty much the exact opposite of what we need in this critical (but underrealized) issue. It starts bad ("I'm going to be a tough-on-crime governor.") and gets worse. The ideas are basically these:

Supporting Three Strikes
Defending the death penalty
Opposing gun control
Building new prisons and opposing early release
Opposing the legalization of marijuana

The last one is particularly odious, trotting out the most tired cliche about pot ("gateway drug") that I'm frankly amazed she actually had someone write. Look, I'm a Democratic partisan, but I realize that one-party rule is usually a bad idea and I'd love it if the state had a Gary Johnson-like governor that brought sanity on issues like these. Whitman is no Gary Johnson, to be sure. But to actually recite such a hoary and idiotic cliche like this? Ugh. And the rest of these items are nearly as bad. The Three Strikes blurb has the usual boilerplate about keeping violent criminals in jail or whatever, but there's still the little problem about people getting sentenced to life because they shoplifted something worth twenty bucks, which is hardly infrequent. There's no way a judge can overrule the sentence either. I'm not surprised Whitman supports capital punishment, but given that the state's budget crisis is so bad, and that the Death Penalty Information Center says that abolishing capital punishment in California would save the state over $120 million a year (which is not chump change by any means) why not just do away with it? After all, there's no difference to public safety between killing a prisoner and just sealing him away for life. The rest of this is just as insulting: I'm no anti-gun crusader, and I'm sympathetic to Whitman's position here, but looser gun control does not enhance public safety, it reduces it. Unless you think the Wild West was a paragon of public safety, of course. And I don't want to even talk about the prison item. Whitman's solution to our overcrowded prisons is to build more prisons, instead of changing the policies that are imprisoning too many people and costing too much. Brown doesn't have a particular crime agenda on his website, merely this list of things he's done as AG. It's not a terrible list, but even if Brown merely maintains the (ultimately unmaintainable!) status quo, it'll do less damage than letting Whitman actively make things worse. Advantage: Brown.

Education is another big problem here in California. Our state routinely lists at the bottom of the 50 states (Thank God for Mississippi!), in large part because of the poorer areas of the state (pretty much anywhere more further inland than L.A. or S.F.) as well as the typical inner-city education problems in Los Angeles. Here, Whitman's fact sheet is mostly ho-hum. More money to the classroom is an education policy cliche and hardly a solution. Rewarding outstanding teachers is fine, but not that novel. I have no problem with charter schools or grading schools based on quality. Converting failing public schools into charter schools is an idea I haven't heard before and could be interesting. Putting $1 billion into the state's university systems is fine, but cutting welfare to do it isn't. And I wholly support bypassing the long credentialing process to let qualified people teach. That much of this agenda will require fighting the teacher's unions makes it tough for me to believe that Whitman, a Republican, would actually be able to do it. Just like it was easier for Republican Presidents to sign peace agreements with China and the Soviets during the '70s and '80s, it's easier for Democrats to take on the teacher's unions, not that they always do it. But in any event, for a candidate who has emphasized education to such a significant extent, this list seems so by-the-numbers and humdrum, that it seems to betray a lack of passion for changing the educational system. There's nothing new here, and nothing incredibly visionary. It's lukewarm and uncompelling, though I guess that's a step up from her actively terrible public safety material.

Brown, on the other hand, might have won my vote with this alone:

We must also reverse the decades long trend of transferring state support from higher education to prisons. We can do this without sacrificing public safety. For example, as Attorney General, I recently blocked a proposed $8 billion prison hospital expansion—which was unnecessarily expensive and which would have added substantially to our state’s deficit. By relentlessly pursuing similar cost savings, we can channel needed funds to our higher education system.

He gets it. Plus, he talks about community colleges, burdensome standardized tests, school principals' importance to reform, and in much more detail than Whitman can muster. Brown wins this one, no contest.

I'll briefly mention the Prop 8 case. Brown wants to drop it and let gays and lesbians get civilly married and Whitman doesn't. Your mileage will vary here, but it's a point in Brown's favor to me.

Of course, the economy is pretty important here in California, and it's worse here than the average. Whitman has some decent ideas, but it's all mostly small-bore. Eliminating the $800 business start-up tax isn't going to help the economy too much, as I would hope someone starting a business would have more than $800 to spend starting out. Cutting capital gains (presented here as a job creator, weirdly) doesn't seem likely to actually save many jobs, but I guess it's a Republican litmus test these days. (In related news, the Director of the Congressional Budget Office agrees with me.) In fact, almost all of the job creation efforts are tax cuts of some sort or other, and it's all conventionally Republican. Brown wants to actually take some actions to restructure the economy, mostly by actively promoting green energy, which is something California still leads at, as well as some of the same tax cuts Whitman wants to do. There are specifics here that sound good, and much of it revolves around new standards to encourage free-market innovation. Sounds good to me. Whitman's cutting of capital gains means that the money has to come from somewhere else, and some unmentioned welfare reform program seems to be the golden goose. In this state? I think not. I've got to give it to Brown here.

So, now we get to Whitman's proposals to cut spending. Great! Only one sheet of ideas, though, with the rest of it campaign boilerplate. What are her new ideas? Well, they are:

Instituting a strict spending cap
Defending the 2/3 budget requirement
Turning Sacramento into a part-time legislature

Seriously. That's all. Whitman is a conventional Republican if nothing else. Item #1 is redundant. We have a spending cap--it's called the amount of revenue we have! California, like most states, has a balanced budget requirement. This pretty much sets a cap on how much we can spend. Of course, Whitman wants to set a cap based on making government spending a specific percentage of GDP, which is the flip side of liberals' old penchant for price floors and ceilings on things like air travel and what not. Setting arbitrary caps is bad policy in my opinion--we should decide what we want the state to pay for and go from there. Whitman's way is invariably based on the notion that pretty much everything the government pays for is equally worthless, so we might as well treat it all equally by just setting a firm limit on it. Of course, future progress might well make government spending as a percentage of the economy rise or fall dramatically independent of budgetary decisions--for example, if inner-city L.A. has an New York-style turnaround in the near future, spending on social services would drop significantly since they would be far less necessary. Or maybe some sector of the economy would experience a technological breakthrough that would make living a lot less expensive. Private sector spending would go down, and government spending would proportionally go up, even if little new spending even occurred. So, this is completely stupid in every way. Item #3 would save a couple hundred thousand dollars at most, and is more a campaign gimmick than anything else. "If serving in Sacramento were a part-time job, maybe we wouldn't have so many full-time spenders at the Capitol," makes absolutely no sense to me at all. And you just know you're in for a line of bullshit when you start to hear talk about "citizen legislators" and how "professional politicians" are ruining everything. Look, I have no problem with citizen legislators. The reason we have so few of them is because modern-day politics costs money. A lot of money. If you have a system like ours, where raising money for television spots is the big expense, people with more money are going to be able to compete better than people without it. Of course, if Whitman supported some form of public financing of campaigns, then we might see more average folks getting into politics. But California voters voted down the pilot program for this in the primary election and Whitman presumably echoes the new Republican stance of huge, endless, and unmonitored expenditures on campaigns. For a current example, absolutely no U.S. Senate Republicans voted for even something as innocuous as the DISCLOSE Act, which would merely make it required for political organizations to say who is giving them money without even putting a limit on it. This is where they're coming from. And I won't even talk about her defense of the 2/3 requirement, which Whitman says ~~lets legislative Republicans shake down the 65% of Democrats for whatever they want~~ ~~institutionalizes corruption~~ ~~gives the state GOP enough leverage over policy so that they don't bother to move to the center~~ keeps taxes low. I'm not in favor of raising taxes indiscriminately, but supermajorities frustrate accountability and promote corruption. If budgets could pass with a simple majority in California, spending would certainly be quite a bit lower, since getting 2/3 of the legislature to sign off means that everyone gets all sorts of goodies inserted in there in exchange for their vote. But Whitman knows her audience well, and here, as most everywhere else, proves herself to be a joke. Brown's plan doesn't get us to where we need to go, but there's a lot in there that seems realistic and at least sane.

I could go on (Whitman's environment page isn't too bad, to be fair), but enough is enough. It's true that campaign literature doesn't exactly translate into a governing agenda, and I'm sure a lot of Whitman's items are things that the base wants more than she does. The same might well be true of Jerry Brown's agenda. But if this is basically all I have to go on, the choice is clear. Sure, Jerry Brown is running for governor because he wants the job and thinks he can win, but at least this guy is putting out a lot of specifics that, even if they don't all happen, at least reflect a passion for wonky detail and institutional reform. After reading Brown's material I'm quite a bit more comfortable with his candidacy and have a pretty clear view of where he wants to take the state, and I'm mostly fine with it. He's not nearly radical enough, but in many respects at least he'd be a step forward. And he actually bothers to put plausible, substantive ideas on his site, which might not be sufficient in the long run, but at least reflect a fundamental respect for the public and voters. I'm not fully sold on the guy, but his stock has gone up significantly on writing this. Whitman, on the other hand, offers hardly any specifics, has mostly old and uninspiring ideas, defends the worst aspects of California governance, and offers not a clue of what her "New California" would look like, aside from being likely as dysfunctional and sclerotic as the old one. What's more, there's little reason to believe she'd have any more influence with the state's Republicans than Arnold has had, a situation which has not exactly been a roaring success outside of the 20% of Californians who still like Schwarzenegger. I now think I get why Jerry Brown wants to be Governor. I have no idea why Meg Whitman wants the job. And since she doesn't speak to the press at all and seems to think that she can buy her way to the governor's mansion, I can't particularly say she's done anything to earn it.

In the words of another press-avoiding female Republican, thanks but no thanks.

Hello again!

2010-09-28T10:59:00.000-07:00

Sorry for the light posting recently, as I've been on vacation. But I'm back, and ready to write some (hopefully) good stuff.

I see that the Marty Peretz racism controversy seems to have been wrapped up for now. It stuns me that someone with such a documented history of racism would be able to remain good company in Washington society. This quote by beer summit participant Henry Louis Gates somehow just irritates me even more. I think it's great that the guy likes debate and has friends of different viewpoints, but frankly I could give a damn so long as he uses his platform to push for AIPAC-style policies and anti-Arab sentiment disguised as scholarship. It somehow smacks of "but some of his best friends are black" style excuse-making, and yes I do appreciate the irony that it's Gates saying it. It's fine for people to personally think of the man as the equivalent of their funny uncle whose casual, occasional racism is mostly just dismissed as a product of some old-fashioned incorrigibility--after all, he's so funny and charming!--but all the same, I don't want anyone like that actually having power of any kind.

People often talk about why Americans hate Washington so much. Clearly, a big part of that now is the economy, and the seeming paradox of the public both hating Republicans and planning to vote for them en masse stems from a mentality in which the public trusts nobody and doesn't want any particular group to have enough power to do anything in Washington. But in a larger sense, I think it comes back to the simple belief that most everyone in Washington simply cares about themselves over the good of the people. I honestly couldn't say the extent to which this is accurate, as I tend to think that most politicians actually try to do their best to do what they think is right (though they usually tend to think that being re-elected is a pretty right thing). Then again, at some point we have to accept that a predominantly rich Congress (average net worth: $2+ mil, according to this) is simply going to see things in a certain light. This is another discussion entirely. But the public's trust in the media has plummeted so low in recent years, lower than most any other institution by most surveys I've seen, and I have to assume that things like this Peretz matter are, if not a driver of this trend, at least emblematic of it. I mean, we have a media that by and large doesn't give a flying you-know-what that it prints deliberate disinformation and spin without a critical look. They don't feel any particular need to educate their viewers, so much as to not chance alienating any of them by hitting any side particularly hard, and especially by not risking social and professional contacts of people in power. I tend to see this as the worst of all possible worlds of journalism, practically the complete opposite of the Ed Murrow model, and it's as lazy and cynical as can be. I do think the public has by and large picked up on this, and that's why the mainstream media is dying such a rapid death. Independence and moderation don't have to mean mushy, but at this point, I'd take just mushiness from the media. I think it's a lot worse even than that. But at least the complete lack of standards within the media is counterbalanced by the knowledge that Marty Peretz's parties are feisty and fun! That's a good tradeoff.

Bye, Bayh

2010-09-17T16:38:00.000-07:00

Steve Benen flags a frankly remarkable quote by outgoing Sen. Evan Bayh on income inequality: "What we need to be focused on is growth, how do we create jobs, how do we expand businesses. That needs to be job one right now. And all these other issues involving, oh, fairness and things like that can wait."

It should be said that Bayh is by no means typical of the Democratic Party, but it's frankly shocking for one of the premier animating concerns of progressive thought and the Democrats to be so easily dismissed. I mean, I think it's important for the Democrats to have a moderate wing, but if Bayh really believes that expanding business is more important that alleviating poverty and reducing income inequality, then he's clearly picked the wrong party to be a member of. And I say this as someone who would rather keep the Blue Dogs than lose them despite all their bullshit. Bayh's deficit penitence--which doesn't apply to cutting the estate tax, naturally--is a particularly galling example. Despite all this I would prefer to keep him over an even worse Republican, though I certainly won't be too sad to see him and so many of his ilk go.

The next few years should be really interesting for the Democratic Party. By the beginning of 2013, I fully expect Bayh, Blanche Lincoln, Ben Nelson and Joe Lieberman to be out of the Senate (I expect Lieberman to lose handily to an actual Dem in 2012). I've long had a special dislike for those four (to slightly varying degrees, of course), and I think they embody a lot of the worst elements of the Clinton-era Democratic congressionalist politics from which they all emerged. It will sure be interesting to see what happens to the Dem caucus after that, though I expect this Senator-to-be will pick up some of the slack.

Why are they unhappy?

2010-09-17T16:25:00.000-07:00

Chait tackles liberal disappointment:

A few smart people I know have responded to my TRB column about liberal disappointment the same way, which means I didn't make the point clearly enough. In the column, I noted that liberals have turned against literally every Democratic president of the post-war era. The response I've heard is that the disappointment was warranted in this case or that -- Jimmy Carter, Lyndon Johnson, Bill Clinton especially.

I mostly agree. My point is not that Jimmy Carter was a good president, or that liberals had no good reason to resent Lyndon Johnson. What I'm saying is that, if you're a liberal and you think every Democratic president is a disappointment, then you need to recalibrate your expectations.

It's pretty simple, really. Liberals expect every new Democratic president to be the next F.D.R., and they're always angry when it turns out not to be the case. Of course, the liberal idea of Franklin Roosevelt is as airbrushed and distorted as conservatives' view of Ronald Reagan--one in which Roosevelt's conservative legislation like the budget-slashing Economy Bill and the enduring shame of the Japanese Internment never happened--but the difference is that it doesn't seem that conservatives actually get angry when their presidents fail to live up to the Reagan model, while liberals still can't forgive Bill Clinton for welfare reform.

I have to agree with Chait here that our expectations have to be recalibrated. A decent expectation for a new Democratic President would be a second-term Bill Clinton--a moderate but progressive leader who knows how to fight conservatives and is able to win constant incremental change, all the while preserving past progress. To me, that should be the bar. I'd say that Carter falls below it while Obama exceeds it palpably, as does Johnson despite some rather gross missteps. But setting the greatest president of the past 145 years as your expectation is a recipe for disappointment, and so much of what Roosevelt accomplished was just so sui generis--a once-in-history combination of man and moment that frankly will never recur.

2010-09-15T15:50:00.000-07:00

I followed a link from Andrew Sullivan's blog to his review of Dinesh D'Souza's prior book, and it's definitely good Sullivan stuff. I found this quote from D'Souza hilarious:

"If the left can convert national security -- usually a source of political strength for the right -- into a liability, then it has vastly improved its chances for winning future elections....The entire conservative agenda, from tax cuts to school choice to restricting abortion, would be stalled."

I realize that D'Souza probably doesn't mean to imply that those three items are the entirety of the conservative agenda--using the from...to construction for items that don't form a logical sequence is poor, confusing writing and one of my pet peeves--but it really kinda is the entirety of their thing, isn't it?

Update: This bit is good as well:

Islam and Christianity together: that is D'Souza's dream. He does not seem especially interested in God. He writes nothing about his own faith, whatever it is. His interest is not in the metaphysics or the mysteries of religion, but in the uses of religion for social control. (Somewhere Machiavelli is smiling.) In the goal of maintaining patriarchy, banning divorce, outlawing homosexuality, and policing blasphemy, any orthodoxy will do. D'Souza's religion, in a sense, is social conservatism. He is not going to let a minor matter such as the meanings of God get in the way of his religion.

I don't think that you can find any individuals on the planet more cynical than neoconservatives. Not even ad executives or mobsters could touch them.

The only fiscally responsible Republican

2010-09-15T13:08:00.000-07:00

Unsurprisingly, it's Voinovich. And he's retiring this year. The thing is, though, that he's right and he has the guts to say it out loud.

The Paladino Effect

2010-09-15T10:58:00.000-07:00

The fallout from New York Republicans overwhelmingly nominating a Tea Party dude with a tendency of forwarding emails with racism and bestiality themes looks like more than just an expected embarrassing landslide loss to Andrew Cuomo--it might well wind up wrecking the Republican Party in the state for some time to come. In the long run, this could be more significant than the Delaware story.

Who is Chris Coons?

2010-09-15T10:50:00.000-07:00

The likely next Senator from Delaware is profiled here:

A former lawyer, Coons holds a master's degree from Yale Divinity School and spent time in South Africa and Kenya doing relief work. He entered the Senate race after Biden's son, state Attorney General Beau Biden, declined to seek his father's old seat. Both Bidens recruited Coons before Beau Biden made his intentions known. Former Obama campaign manager David Plouffe, a Delaware native who knew Coons and his wife, also leaned on his old friend to make the run, despite Castle's clear advantages.

In an interview last spring, Coons said he had been looking forward to a quiet end to his second term when the Bidens first contacted him. "This was going to be our perfect year," Coons said. "We were going to take vacation."

Not quite. It's been a pretty tough year for Dems, but this is a huge break. I don't think it will make the difference in Senate control because I don't think the Senate is really up for grabs.

Do we win when moderates win?

2010-09-13T14:41:00.000-07:00

Matt Yglesias:

A lot of people I know are excited about O’Donnell’s surge since it gives Coons—who’s much more progressive than either—the best shot. My view is that that kind of partisan view is a little short-sighted. Both parties are destined to govern approximately half of the time and what matters most is the strength of progressive ideas in either party. The increasingly rigid conservatism of the GOP is a huge impediment to progressive causes and Castle’s problems reflect that.

This doesn't make much sense to me. Castle is 71 years old and has health issues, so he'd only likely serve a term or two in the Senate and would unlikely to accumulate the seniority necessary to really become a force in the institution. But the other issue is that Castle highly resembles the Senate's current two Republican moderates, Sue Collins and Olympia Snowe, who have almost no influence among other Republicans and little vision on where to take their party. It's not like the guy is Nelson Rockefeller--like Collins and Snowe, he's a smart, professional officeholder who is constrained by the Republican base. This is terribly significant.

As for the larger point...I don't really have a clue. If the GOP runs people like O'Donnell and Sharron Angle and doesn't capture Congress, Rush and Hannity won't be able to say it was because their candidates weren't conservative enough. Or will they? In any event, one would hope that they wouldn't be believed as much, but you never know.

Glenn Beck, religion, and individual rights

2010-09-13T11:30:00.000-07:00

He wants religion to emphasize them more. Larison, as always, says what needs to be said with style, and I love this irony: "Because he is reading political categories back into theological questions, which is the very thing he finds so offensive about liberation theology, he gives the impression that he is repudiating what most Christians would consider to be a core teaching of their faith."

Beck is clearly not someone to debate rationally (as if he ever debates anything aside from the straw men he creates), but it's worth noting that in Christianity there is a clear presumption of personal freedom, but also a very clear set of limits to be placed on them (i.e. the Ten Commandments, etc.) that reflects a pretty coherent view of humanity, one that Reinhold Niebuhr characterized as humanity's tendency to exceed its creatureliness. If you see murder as exceeding human authority by playing god and taking another's life, theft as exceeding human authority by deciding you should have what someone else has, and so on, it all pretty much fits into place. What unnerves me about Beck is that his rhetoric doesn't really ever acknowledge these limits, and it makes sense why: if there are limits that need to be observed, then you need to have an authority to enforce them. A government, say. And that means taxes to pay for what the government does. And all of a sudden we're back to where we started, and the Mormon libertopia that Beck desires goes away. Not that it's plausible to begin with, of course, since we are both individuals and members of society, and as members of the richest society on the planet we have a much greater chance at success than someone born in the Third World. Beck himself being born to upper-middle class parents in Spokane gave him probably 90% of what he needed to succeed as a morning zoo DJ, and I don't want to say that the guy hasn't worked hard or anything, but he certainly had an easy go of things compared to a poor kid in the Appalachians or even one in Somalia. Some of us feel that the arbitrariness of this arrangement leads to a duty to ensure that everyone gets at least a chance at success, but Beck does not, which is a valid point of view but one that requires an essentially God-like view of the powers of the free market, which is just not the case for something that moves primarily based on the mostly unconscious actions of people. In the end, Glenn Beck is a puffy-headed fraud, but you all knew that already, right?

Would catching a break be too much to hope for?

2010-09-08T08:53:00.000-07:00

It's often seemed like Democrats just can't catch a break this year (as of this moment, it looks like they're going to be beaten badly in Pennsylvania, which is not exactly a Republican state), and the GOP's nominations of several extreme candidates has only backfired to a limited extent (Sharron Angle still has a shot in Nevada, Rand Paul is slightly ahead in Kentucky, and Joe Miller might well still win in Alaska). It's actually been rare that Republicans have picked candidates that will obviously lose over candidates that will obviously win, but evidently they might kneecap themselves in New Hampshire and Delaware. In both states, establishment Republicans could find themselves purged by Tea Partiers that would turn easy wins into likely bad losses in blue states. I mean, really, why people from Delaware would nominate the woman who lost to Joe Biden by 30 points in 2006 is strange to me, and it's probably too much to hope for, but I guess we need something to hope for these days.

It's all about money

2010-09-08T08:06:00.000-07:00

I was recently talking to a friend of mine about television. My theory is that great dramas require quite a bit of world-building and setup that takes time to do properly, and dramatic shows usually take a few seasons to peak, seasons 3/4/5 are usually the best and the show might remain watchable for a few seasons after that. The Shield is a pretty clear thesis here, but there are plenty of others (The Sopranos and the middle two Star Treks come to mind). Great comedies, on the other hand, don't require any world-building because they depend upon a situation and not a world (hence, the sitcom), and the first few seasons are usually the best. Most aren't watchable outside of five seasons, and only some of the all-time greats (M*A*S*H, Cheers, Frasier, Seinfeld) are able to put in seven or eight great seasons.

This is all preamble to say that, while I've frequently enjoyed the US version of The Office, I think the decision to keep it going (or even make a feature film!) after Steve Carell leaves is a bad one. The show, while quite good up until the most recent, very patchy season, is not immune from the problem that long-lived sitcoms come up against, which is that sitcoms generally do not support such sustained storytelling. Without the benefit of a rich universe for storytelling, the payoffs in sitcoms come from the characters interacting and gags. The notion that a show could do 150+ stories along these lines and still feel like there's so much more to do is so bizarre to me. A drama can do so much more because it has its world to fall back on, and it can refocus and do different things with the same premise (as The West Wing did so brilliantly after a post-Sorkin slump). Sitcoms that try to change their underlying situation usually fail miserably--like Rosanne suddenly being about a bunch of rich people who won the lottery--and there sort of isn't a point, since you might as well do a spin-off if you're going to change the situation. I find it hard to believe that a post-Carell Office would remain watchable or profitable for long, so why not just read the writing on the wall and end it with some dignity?

Indeed, I suspect that the decision to keep The Office going for however many seasons it lasts (eight? nine?) is due primarily to greed. NBC is in terrible shape and wants to keep one of its only hits on the air, and I'm sure that the pay and recognition is pretty good for everyone else on the program. I guess I don't begrudge them that too much, but I only wish Lieberstein would own that if it is indeed the reason, instead of spinning like crazy.

The politics of opposing Bush's tax cuts

2010-09-08T07:52:00.001-07:00

Chait makes the case here. I agree with what he says, but there is a level of genius here that one doesn't often get from Democrats. Picking this fight with Republicans gives Democrats an opportunity to tie Republicans to Bush directly and rhetorically (at a time when voters inexplicably disbelieve the Republicans will not pursue the same policies as Bush). "Bush tax cuts" is a rhetorically excellent way of framing the issue, which is not exactly something Democrats usually excel at. Not to mention that it's actually good policy to let the cuts for the rich expire, since the rich are doing just fine in our great recession.

I'm beginning to see the outlines of a strategy here: use the tax debate to tie Republicans to Bush, and get the GOP to oppose their own ideas on job creation to show that they don't want to do anything about the recession. And now Democrats are the underdogs, which means holding the House--even by only a few seats--will be seen as a huge achievement. This fight isn't over yet.

The Republicans' procedural advantages

2010-09-07T13:16:00.000-07:00

Matt Yglesias, on the Franken/Coleman fiasco:

I think that this highlights one of the most admirable things about the Republican congressional caucus. Both its leadership and its rank and file show a good deal more commitment to the substance of things and less concern about transient matters of appearance. Senate Republicans clearly understood that legislative outcomes in 2009 were a very important issue and focused their energy pretty decisively on playing an objectively weak hand to influence them. Senate Democrats, dealt a strong hand, spent an amazing amount of time fretting about process and superficial matters and only really buckled down in 2010 by which time their hand was much weaker.

It helps that few Republicans put any stock in what mainstream media outlets say about anything, but there's something to this. I've had a long-running theory that I don't really have any data to support, but the gist is basically that elite Republicans tend to be in touch with their supporters because their supporters resemble them a lot (i.e. both are whiter, older, and more frequently male) while elite Democrats are more like their elite Republican counterparts demographically than they are like their supporters. The Democratic obsession with process makes sense if one assumes that someone like Max Baucus doesn't really know what preoccupies a white Manhattan neurologist or a female Hispanic housekeeper in San Diego, and just assumes that he is doing what he needs to do to represent a generally Republican state. If that means spending months unsuccessfully trying to get Chuck Grassley to not talk about death panels...then that's what he's doing. It doesn't help anyone besides Max Baucus, but that all-for-one ethic strangely doesn't seem to apply much among Democrats in Congress. In some ways the Democrats' tendency to focus on local issues serves them well electorally (as Mr. Larison argues here), but there are drawbacks as well. And quite a few Democrats come from places like Montana that don't quite match up to typical Democratic districts.

In any event the ideal here is for both parties to respect the process. Republicans usually don't, so Democrats should feel free to change the rules in my opinion. Not to do so is the same as fighting with an arm behind your back.

The enthusiasm gap

2010-09-03T15:43:00.000-07:00

Steve Benen ponders it:

If you're reading this blog, you're probably significantly more engaged than the typical voter, so other examples -- Robert Gibbs' comments about the "professional left," the defeat of the public option, annoyance with Rahm Emanuel in general, frustration on judicial nominees, the administration's disappointing record on civil liberties in the context of national security -- likely come to mind to explain progressive disillusionment. But like Adam, I suspect these developments are noticed in far more detail among actively engaged voters, and occur under the radar of folks in general, most of whom don't keep up on current events at the granular level.

Of course, if Adam's assessment is correct, and I think it is, then there's just not much to be done between now and November. Major liberal initiatives are highly unlikely to be approved over the next 59 days, and the economy almost certainly won't see dramatic improvements. A party goes into an election season with the broader circumstances it has, not the broader circumstances it wants or wishes to have at a later time.

But there's one aspect of this that I struggle to wrap my head around. In campaign politics, there's always been one major drawback to playing exclusively to the base, and it has nothing to do with alienating the "middle." It's the risk of a backlash from the other side. If Republicans, for example, cater exclusively to the desires of right-wing lunatics, rank-and-file Democratic voters will see this and think, "Hey, I'm starting to feel more motivated all the time...." At least, that's the theory.

I really wish I knew the answer to that last one. And I'll agree that the Emanuelesque disdain for liberals is certainly coming through from, well, Rahm Emanuel. But what about the effect of almost all the major progressive outlets--DKos, HuffPo, the MSNBC crew--never missing a chance to dump all over Obama? Look, I think that this has been really stupid on all sides. The White House could have given these outlets a few interviews to these guys here and there, made them feel like part of the team, and that would probably have gone a long way to keeping everything going smoothly. How hard would that be? Not hard, I'm guessing. Not being listened to makes people angry. But ultimately you'd think the people who worked the hardest to get Bush out would want to actually see things get done and reap the rewards of their labor. That hasn't really happened, though, and at times it's seemed as if many of these people don't care what actually happens, so long as the right doesn't win, which has led to numerous symbolic fights that accomplished little. And now you have Arianna stuffing all sorts of passive-aggressive Obama snipes into a little post about the White House redecoration when her main page is almost a comic example of their Obama Insufficiency Syndrome. It's almost as if they can't help themselves.

And here's the thing: I don't agree with everything Obama has done. I really don't. On many matters I'd probably agree with, say, a Glenn Greenwald. If I were Obama I'd have done things plenty differently (such as pushing EFCA through back when there were 60 votes for it, for one), but I'm not him, so I try my best to understand what he's doing and support him when I can. But by not giving way to reality on, I don't know, the public option fight or even assuming the administration's good faith on financial regulatory reform, these outlets have set up a dynamic where the White House feels they need to do battle against the "professional left" to get anything done instead of working with them, and it just mutes the effectiveness of criticism from the left when it matters most. That Gibbs quote annoyed me (isn't it his job not to say stupid things?), but the thing that angered people the most was that he was basically right, and it's hypocritical for the likes of Kos to say that they are trying to apply aggressive pressure to Obama from the left on nearly every issue and then complain that the Administration feels they need to work against them. There's a cognitive disconnect in there that I find inscrutable. Not to mention that that whole "we're shifting the Overton Window" idea appears to be bad for business and demoralizing to readers. But I'm sure it generates interest from the mainstream press! I hear they just love conflict stories.

Now, as always, top progressives need to get over themselves. Might not do much in the short term, but for next time...

Was HCR handled correctly?

2010-08-25T14:15:00.000-07:00

I appreciate the sentiment here, but I really don't think any of this is right:

Meanwhile, nobody can seem to make a good campaign issue out of the fact that, for the first time ever, a law was passed that embraced at least in principle Ted Kennedy’s lifelong dream of universal health insurance. It was a weak and sickly stab at it, but it was a political triumph nonetheless. Why is this administration not getting credit for all it’s done, wonder the president’s most avid supporters. It’s because there’s nobody out there — including the president, apparently — who can connect these accomplishments in a coherent narrative in such a way as to command the respect of a public conditioned to believe that universal health insurance means that Stalin will rise from his grave in order to march your white-haired granny into hers.

I think Obama was effective in connecting HCR into a larger progressive tradition of progress and change. Remember all the stuff about how Teddy Roosevelt was the first president to pursue reform, and he was going to be the last? Reform has been getting more popular, in any event. The reason it isn't much of a campaign issue is because, well, it passed, and due to budget hawks it won't start in earnest for a few years. There's not much to campaign on yet, and people are more concerned about other things. I think there is a strong issue in forcing the GOP to come out in favor of repeal--a distinctly unpopular position among the public--but ultimately the economy is still issue #1. I think people are trying hard to improve that situation.

Is Barbour going to surge?

2010-08-19T14:15:00.000-07:00

Tomasky makes the case for Haley Barbour as the next GOP nominee:

I think he has a real chance of becoming the GOP nominee. The corporate conservatives will love the guy, and on the Kulturkampf front, which is really where the GOP's collective heart beats these days, there's no one who makes such a stark contrast with the incumbent. He may be a harder sell in Iowa than someone like Tim Pawlenty, but if the contest drags out and the schedule groups several southern states together, lookout. I think this would be great as it is inconceivable to me that America could elect this man its president, but then again, a fair number of previously inconceivable things have already happened.

This is certainly a possibility, and he's probably the only one who could beat Romney with money and endorsements. But Barbour would have the same sorts of flaws as Huckabee--a specific appeal to coregionists and coreligionists and not much of anyone else--without Huck's advantages, or anything resembling charisma. I don't think Romney stands much of a chance of becoming president, as he'd be pretty easy to define as a typical politician and would have many of McCain's issues with his base if he got the nomination. Palin can't win because she's already been defined and hasn't done much to make people take a second look. Barbour would not have those base issues (probably) but I don't see how someone who can normatively be described as a lobbyist can actually become president. The definition practically makes itself. But you can never really know, I guess...

Yes, Russ, more of this

2010-08-19T13:58:00.001-07:00

Lord knows I don't agree with Russ Feingold all the time, and his Naderish tendencies often drive me crazy. But the flip side of Feingold is that his principle can kick in at the right time sometimes, and it certainly has here:

Feingold said those who are looking to use the issue as a political wedge are guilty of "gutter politics" and "one of the worst things I've ever seen done in politics."

"In the end I believe in freedom of religion," he said. "If somebody owns property and it's within the zoning rules, if they want to build a house of worship that is a fundamental right. And I would make the point I am for freedom on this point, and freedom of religion is fundamental."

I still think this issue is a ridiculous, media-driven phenomenon that does involve an important principle that has, incidentally, already been upheld. The center is being built. The debate here is succeeding the event, not preceding it, which makes the entire thing pointless. The issue should be closed. But since we're still talking about it we might as well highlight instances of courage here. See also: high-ranking Maryland Representative Chris Van Hollen.

Life after Gates

2010-08-18T16:16:00.000-07:00

Robert Gates announced his retirement yesterday, which struck me as very big news since the Defense Department is the country's largest bureaucracy, and Gates's initially controversial retention has turned out to be one of Obama's wisest staffing calls. It's worth noting that Bill Clinton's first two years were hampered by enormous problems with his pick for SecDef, Les Aspin, who wasn't quite ready for prime-time. Gates has been completely professional and classy throughout his term, and furthermore has supported ending Don't Ask, Don't Tell, has advocated for defense cuts like no one else in recent memory who held his office, and has conducted himself with great dignity and decorum. He will be missed, I assure you.

Since Hillary Clinton's name has been mentioned as a possible replacement, I figured I'd write a post saying why I don't think that's a very good idea. Unlike some progressives I thought the HRC appointment to State, as well as Gates's reappointment to Defense, were both excellent staffing moves. Clinton is something of a hawk, which I think paradoxically makes her a good chief diplomat because she doesn't see conflict as unimaginable. Gates is every inch the realist, which makes him a good Defense Secretary because he'd just as soon avoid a fight if possible. I think the hawkish Secretary of State/dovish Secretary of Defense combination is a good dynamic if you have the personnel to pull it off, ideally with the National Security Adviser mediating between the two (which we also have with James Jones). Gates has the credibility with the military to pull off his role, which is the real key ingredient here. I fear that a Defense Secretary Clinton would not feel she has that credibility, that she would have more influence toward hawkery in her (prospective) new office, and that she would feel the need to be even more hawkish in order to secure the military's trust. Plus, the dynamic of a hawkish SecDef/dovish SecState strikes me as one tilted invariably in the direction of Defense, as the Carter Administration showed (though National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski's own hawkishness could not have helped that dynamic).

So, who would be a better choice than Hillary? At this point, I think that Obama would have to pick a Democrat simply because picking another Republican for the job would really send a crappy message (much like Bill Clinton picking a Republican as his Defense Secretary in 1997) and also because there just aren't that many of the kind we need left in the GOP: the Gates faction is small and aging. Brent Scowcroft is 85 and is undoubtedly too old for the position, Chuck Hagel would be a possibility but I don't think he's really done much to earn it, as he never really showed guts in his Iraq "opposition" and that appointment really would signal that Obama just wants Republicans handling the military. So on the Democratic side the obvious choice would be Jim Webb, who would probably run the Pentagon just like Gates did, but I doubt Obama would sacrifice Webb's Senate seat. Also, he's not so good on DADT. Perennial Dem VP-consideree Sam Nunn would probably be a good choice, though he's not so young himself. Very Gates-like, and big on securing loose nukes, which is a plus. He'd probably be an easy confirmee too. I'd guess that former Gen. Tony Zinni would have to be another candidate too--he'd have the stature with the troops as well as a pretty solid record on military intervention, as an Iraq War critic from early on. Also, I'm pretty sure that the James Gandolfini character from In The Loop is based directly on him, so that's cool too. Honestly, I'm not sure who else would be considered for the job, but I'll feel pretty confident if I hear Zinni and Nunn mentioned prominently for the job and not so confident if Clinton's name gets tossed around a lot.

Since we're talking about the Cabinet, I think it would be a good idea for the Administration to make Chris Dodd the next Attorney General if Eric Holder decides to move on, as Dodd will be retiring next year. Dodd has been pretty irritating on some subjects recently (namely this and this), which is why he should never be made Treasury Secretary or Senate Parliamentarian. But the guy has always struck me as a pretty straightforward guy who cares deeply about civil liberties, and appointing him to the Cabinet (which is likely anyway, considering that Dodd and Obama are good friends) would be a decent way of mending fences with some of the progressives that have been frustrated on this particular issue.

2010-08-16T15:32:00.001-07:00

Hey, I wonder what the top story is on Google News. What could it be? Oh, wait, it's exactly the thing I thought it was going to be, that I somehow hoped it would not be.

There's been a meme going around that Harry Reid is the progressive conscience who fought the Administration tooth and nail on health care and financial reform. I would hope this ends that rumor. There's the fact that he's wrong on this, that it won't win him any votes, and that he's backstabbing his party's leader that just make this so ugly. Would Mitch McConnell have shanked Bush like this ever? I think we know the answer to that. Now Obama has to respond or look weak. Plus, there's the fact that this keeps the story going that much longer. I'm just so disgusted with this. While Reid has proven a fairly adept majority leader in many respects he's been the opposite of a profile in courage on anything terror related. See also: Gitmo.

I guess I just need to remember that most of the personnel in the Democratic Party are the same people who were manning it from '01-'05, Reid included. Probably need a few more election cycles to pass before the party actually is led by people who have the right principles.

Short fuses

2010-08-12T15:15:00.000-07:00

Linda Feldmann explains why the GOP's victories this year might not be so long-lasting:

But these numbers present a warning to Republicans: Voters may support them in November and give them big gains, but if they don’t deliver, they could be in trouble. This is particularly so if the Republicans take over at least the House and don’t accomplish much, they could be short-timers.

After all, it’s only been three-plus years since the Democrats took over both houses of Congress, and the pendulum has already swung sharply in the opposite direction.

“The public’s on a really short fuse nowadays,” says Steven Schier, a political scientist at Carleton College in Northfield, Minn. “And it’s because times are bad. We’re at war, the economy is terrible.”

Democratic pollster Peter Hart, codirector of the NBC/WSJ poll, calls it a “JetBlue election.” “Everyone is frustrated,” Mr. Hart told NBC. “And everyone is headed for the emergency exit.”

This might explain why people are so down on a Congress that has been so productive. When action on the #1 priority is this tough to produce, people aren't going to give you as much credit when you tackle #2, #4, etc. But in the long term...

A theory on the media, as inspired by the Cordoba House story

2010-08-11T11:08:00.001-07:00

So CNN did this poll on national sentiment on the Cordoba House, and it's not exactly what one would hope for in this day and age. Why this is more than a local issue continues to elude me. Republicans want it to be a national issue, and CNN is willing to oblige them as always. The news media's coverage of this is as typically awful as one would expect. I don't know if I'd go so far as to call them sociopaths, but there is something off about the way they cover news these days.

As someone who reads stuff in the blogosphere I frequently read anti-media missives (and I've even written a few myself). I don't know if any of these has ever really hit the mark in terms of what's really wrong with the media. At some point I guess it clicked for me. The problem isn't excessive objectivity, as being objective merely means going by the facts. The opposite term is subjective, which is not really a desirable quality in news, though it's getting more popular (Thanks, Glenn Beck!). Additionally, the problem isn't excessive balance, which isn't necessarily a problem since many debates have multiple sides that have valid arguments. The problem is excessive neutrality. Evidently, being neutral is a highly valued journalistic standard these days. I could provide examples but, honestly, neutralism is so dominant in journalism today that I'd have a much harder time finding articles not written in this way.

Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of times where it's entirely proper to be neutral. I'm neutral in the carbon tax vs. cap-and-trade debate because I'm not an expert and both sides make decent critiques of each other. The concept of cap-and-trade is more compelling to me, but I am of the belief that simple concepts don't necessarily make the best solutions, so I remain neutral. There are lots of debates like that. There are also lots that aren't. The media, though, covers them all the same--in essence, the he said, she said approach that conveys data but lacks analysis. I suppose part of this is the courtier aspect of Washingtonians trying to move up in elite circles, but I think the real culprit here is the convergence of news and entertainment. Neutrality was never a journalistic value up until CNN started up, which makes sense since Ted Turner has always been at the convergence of news and entertainment. I often refer to Ed Murrow's takedown of Joe McCarthy here but I do think it's a good example of what journalism should do: it was entirely factual and balanced in the sense that Murrow treated McCarthy's contentions seriously, instead of attacking a straw man. But Murrow was not neutral at all. Nor was Cronkite when he questioned the Vietnam War, something inconceivable in an era when media personalities are fired for asking too many questions before a war starts.

You see, in entertainment, neutrality is a high value since you don't want to alienate potential customers. It's gotten to the point that you almost never see any political content in mainstream shows or films unless it's veiled (Aaron Sorkin is the biggest exception here that I can think of). But starting with Crossfire and going all the way through Larry King to Blitzer, John King and all the current gang at CNN, a new value system asserted itself. That Larry King was ever considered more than a male version of Oprah is exceedingly strange, but I wonder if he won't turn out to be the most influential media figure of our age when it's all said and done. I don't mean that in a good way. I don't know if this was Ted Turner's vision, but it wouldn't really surprise me if it was. The former sultan of AOL Time Warner has always been for mingling news and entertainment. He was, I suppose, the visionary whose vision was perfected with Fox News by Roger Ailes, and is now ascendant throughout the land. Data over facts is essentially what I think this comes down to. And look what it's gotten us.

*Updated to remove some tangential matter unrelated to the main topic.

He's the next Alan Keyes

2010-08-11T10:58:00.000-07:00

Taegan Goddard:

In an interview with the Daily Caller, former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA) says he's "actively cultivating donors, staff and supporters so he'll be in a position to run for president in 2012 as a Republican if he decides to do so by early next year."

Said Santorum: "I'm going through the process of what someone who is seriously considering running would do, in order for when the time comes to decide, I'm in a position that I have a choice."

Or maybe he's the next Sam Brownback, owing to the both of them having weird and vaguely gay last names that create an ironic tension with their upfront homophobia, which lends a comical aspect to their public existence.

In any event, he's not going to win. Like Tim Pawlenty, he has no base. He can't win statewide in Pennsylvania, but he thinks the Alan Keyes route from failed statewide candidate to presidential candidate will work for him where it didn't for Keyes? I don't know what these guys really have to offer, but whatever it is, nobody wants it.

Mike Bennet wins!

2010-08-10T22:51:00.000-07:00

Seems to have been a decent night for Democrats with today's primaries. I was particularly happy that Senator Michael Bennet has won a tough primary contest. Evidently this has become a rather silly intra-progressive fight, but the case for Bennet seems pretty simple to me:

He's got a background running a big-city school system, which will be valuable for decades to come in crafting education policy.
He's quite young for a senator. He's 45 right now, which means he'll ideally have about 30 years to gather seniority and become a force, which compounds reason one.
He's already the incumbent, which gives him a bit of an advantage in a tough election year.

To me, this adds up to a pretty compelling argument. I've long believed that one of the big problems with Congress is that there are too many generalists and not enough specialists, and too many of those generalists are lawyers, which is a mentality that is fine enough when you need to know what the law is or how to read or write it, but that is suited terribly to solving public policy problems. I always go back to H.L. Mencken's argument about how lawyers apply so much energy to such trivial problems (like finding obscure loopholes) that it's the equivalent of the world's finest mathematicians all trying to find the precise odds on a long-shot horse in the Kentucky Derby. This isn't to say that lawyers can't see the big picture, but in my experience they aren't trained to, nor are they encouraged to. I like the idea of people with actual skill sets hanging out in Congress. Plus, Bennet's opponent struck me as a pretty slimy guy, so there's that too.

In any event, I'm happy that Bennet won, and I can only hope that he continues to serve Colorado for some time to come.

A theory on the debate on taxes

2010-08-09T11:30:00.000-07:00

How out of touch is Washington? I don't think there's a clearer place to find the answer than on the debate about taxes. My sense is that there are roughly two groups of any numerical significance in America when it comes to taxes: let's call them the bristlers and the shruggers. The bristlers are the people whose neck hairs bristle when the word tax is uttered. The existence of taxes makes them angry. The shruggers are people whose reaction to taxes is a shrug. They don't like paying taxes and wish they could pay less, but they take the whole thing philosophically and realize that things like roads and bridges don't pay for themselves. It's wrong to view this as a Republican vs. Democrat fight, as I've met quite a lot of Republican shruggers in my day (though no bristler Democrats as of yet). The irony is that many of the bristlers, as we've constantly been reading, benefit enormously from tax-funded programs like Medicare and farm subsidies, but the entire bristler schema is based on an ignorance of government finance and a lack of self-awareness and empathy, so it's not that surprising. My guess is that the shruggers outnumber the bristlers by at least 4-to-1, give or take a few percent. In a normal polity, this would make the Rand Pauls and Mike Pences of the universe a small, laughable fringe, but it turns out that the bristlers are not normally distributed by geography, age, socioeconomic status nor ethnicity, and they all cut in ways that are politically advantageous to their cause. (There is another group of people who actually like paying taxes, but they are very uncommon outside of the wealthier part of the Democratic donor base in my observation.)

It would seem natural enough for the Democrats to become the party of the shruggers, but there are obstacles to that happening. For one, there are some Democrats who come from more bristler-heavy states, and they can't be seen as tax-friendly. There's the campaign finance issue, in which lots of rich bristlers hold undue influence over wealthy shruggers (such as, for example, Warren Buffett). So, you see self-proclaimed deficit hawks like Evan Bayh arguing for budget-busting regressive tax cuts because he represents a "red" state and even though he's not running for re-election, he'll probably run for governor of Indiana in 2012 and he needs to keep in good graces with the money men. It's crazy, but it makes sense according to its own crazy rules. Perhaps one could call it the David Lynch school of tax policy.

So you read something like this, and you just know that Ezra Klein is right, and that Democrats will not hold the line on the Bush Tax Cuts. It's just one of those disheartening episodes where you know the bad guys are going to win because the good guys aren't going to be able to count on the Blue Dogs to have their backs. I guess the only thing that softens the blow is the knowledge that there's now way the GOP will win this battle in the long run just based on the fundamentals. If our current course remains unaltered, we will eventually face a debt crisis that will require cutting spending and/or raising revenue. Democrats generally have no problem raising taxes if necessary, as the health care reform battle proved. Republicans, though, will never support actually cutting entitlement spending. They will definitely never support cutting defense spending. Doing the former would hurt their most voluminous constituency--seniors--and the GOP learned their lesson here after they tried to privatize Social Security and watched seniors vote big for Democratic congressional candidates in 2006. Even the most right-wing Republicans cannot even name where their oft-mentioned cuts will come from. What this means is that the Republicans elected this year will enter office with lots of talk about "cutting spending" but no agreed-upon targets or even proposals to take on numerous powerful interests that are pretty good at protecting themselves. Frankly, it sounds like Clintoncare to me, which failed because the lack of a plan led everyone to try to advocate for their own plans. Democrats interpreted the lessons of that experience correctly in 2007 and unified behind the Jacob Hacker-inspired plan that eventually passed. Evidently Republicans took the wrong lessons from Bush's Social Security loss, and forgot that wishy-washy election themes coupled with aggressive action after the election usually lead to big failures, and this really is a recipe for failure.

In this crowd, he sticks out like a sore thumb

2010-08-06T10:33:00.000-07:00

Steve Benen is surprised that my fellow Serbian-American Sen George Voinovich (R-OH) is speaking sense on taxes. But the truth is that Voinovich has long been one of the few Republicans who has actually been a consistent voice of fiscal realism--what most Republicans honor in the breach is what Voinovich usually honors in the observance. It's the most noteworthy thing about the guy, as his wiki page correctly notes. He really is a penny-pinching fiscal conservative, which makes me think that his getting into office in the first place must have been an accident.

The Democrats actually have a fair shot of winning his seat, as the GOP unwisely ran Bush 43's former trade rep and budget director to replace Voinovich. It's a close race, one that might be helped by the state's Democratic Governor facing another oddly weak Republican candidate who can't stop talking about all the damn rednecks in his state. Still, the irony of one of the only actually fiscally responsible GOPers being replaced by a Bushite in a year when the Republicans are campaigning on the issue is a pretty biting one to me.

2010-08-05T14:15:00.000-07:00

I've always been a fan of Andy Griffith. He's a truly great actor who created one of the best TV comedies in history, right after turning in a complicated, brilliant, occasionally over-the-top and often terrifying performance in A Face In The Crowd, which is suddenly a movie that everyone is talking about. But it's really cool of him to have done this.

He's the political Steven Soderbergh

2010-08-05T10:22:00.001-07:00

Scott Brown did one for them, and now he's doing one for himself.

Big F***ing Deal Dept.

2010-08-04T14:07:00.001-07:00

Prop 8 overturned in Federal Court!