Multi Medium

NYC’s 2010/2012 Election Preview

NY Daily News reports that one of the reasons Bill Thompson narrowly lost his bid for NYC mayor is that only 20% of the city’s 338,000 first-time voters who voted for Obama turned out to vote for him.  Which begs the question: What happens in November, and in 2012, when those voters don’t show up nationwide?  Because I really don’t see any way that Obama’s going to convince them to turn out again after he completely failed to deliver on everything he promised them.

All that optimism, all that enthusiasm, all that, yes, hope, is gone for good, dead by Obama’s own hand.  I wonder if he thinks he’s going to be able to crank it up again somehow – he’s going to be in for an unpleasant shock if he does.

4 comments March 8th, 2010 at 11:31am Posted by Eli

Wanker Of The Day

Blanche Lincoln:

“The larger message being sent to the administration and Congress is: You are with us or you are against us,” said Patterson, Lincoln’s campaign manager. “The left feels frustrated after eight years [of President George W. Bush] their agenda should be at the forefront and should be passed in its entirety in the first year. That didn’t happen and that anger, some of that is being magnified in our race.”

This might – I repeat, might - be a plausible defense for the Obama administration, which can claim that it’s had to make unpalatable compromises because its awesome progressive agenda has been obstructed by Congress, but it is disingenuous at best coming from one of the obstructors herself.

Instead, Lincoln’s campaign manager pretends that his boss is just some kind of innocent bystander, caught up in “the left’s” overall frustration with Congress, and not one of the primary causes of it.

3 comments March 8th, 2010 at 07:10am Posted by Eli

Question Of The Day

Does The Obama Administration Even Want To Win In November?

Johnson’s bafflement is an excellent companion piece to Scarecrow’s.

My take on it is that a Republican-controlled (or Republican + Blue Dog-controlled) Congress gives Obama an excuse to pursue the Republican policies that he apparently wants to pursue anyway.  “Oh gee, I really wanted to do something about healthcare/unemployment/financial shenanigans/global warming/EFCA/DADT, but my hands are tied by all those Republicans.  How about some nice shiny tax cuts?”

What I don’t get is how Obama actually thinks that leading his party into a rout in 2010 and then using that as an excuse to govern like a full-blown Republican is going to win him any votes in 2012.  Maybe he’s counting on the Republicans nominating someone terrifyingly, unelectably insane.  Which is not completely out of the question.

Add comment March 6th, 2010 at 01:11pm Posted by Eli

Epic Win

This. Is. Awesome.

Republicans like a politician who stands up for what he believes — even if he believes the Republican Party is populated by a bunch of “knuckle-dragging Neanderthals.”

The candidate leading the Florida GOP primary to determine who will take on Rep. Alan Grayson, the Democrat who represents the Orlando-based district, is none other than Grayson himself, according to a poll paid for by his campaign. Grayson is a freshman congressman who has drawn scorn from the GOP and has quickly built a nationwide following of progressives.

The poll has Grayson leading the 13 Republicans — among Republicans — with 27.8 percent of the vote. The congressman who mocked the GOP health care plan by saying that it amounts to telling people not to get sick and if they do, to die quickly, received more support than all of the Republican candidates combined.

No GOP candidate scored above 3.7 percent; 57.7 percent said they were undecided.

HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!  Oh yeah, he’s really in Desperate Electoral Peril all right.

I know it’s his own poll, but if the numbers are even close to right it’s hugely embarrassing for the Republicans.  It’s also some pretty brilliant and creative campaign messaging.

1 comment March 5th, 2010 at 11:24am Posted by Eli

Republicans Trying To Level The Midterm Playing Field

I can only assume that the GOP is worried that it might regain control of the House…

House Republicans don’t have an official budget yet. But they have what amounts to a first draft. The official budget will be released in March or April and will be authored by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), the ranking member of the House Budget Committee in consultation with the other Republicans on the Committee. But Ryan has released a budget he’d like. And it’s actually fairly detailed. And if you read it, which we have, you start to wonder why Democrats aren’t making a bigger deal out of it.

What’s in it? A few interesting things.

First, it calls for big cuts in Social Security benefits for everyone currently under 55 years of age. On top of the cuts it also calls for privatizing Social Security.

Basically the exact plan President Bush tried in 2005. Next, it calls for the full privatization and phasing out of Medicare. It’ll be replaced by a system of vouchers in which instead of getting Medicare you get a voucher to buy un-reformed private insurance.

Weirdly, with all that, the draft GOP budget doesn’t get the federal budget into surplus until sometime after 2060, which seems like a pretty long time. But isn’t this sort of a big deal? House Republicans are poised to run in 2010 on slashing or abolishing the two most popular federal government programs — Social Security and Medicare.

Yes, right in the middle of a prolonged recession and right after a stock market crash is a great time to sell Americans on privatizing Social Security.  And 60+% support for the healthcare public option must mean that everyone hates Medicare and wants it destroyed.  And releasing a plan that takes 50 years to eliminate the deficit is especially brilliant when you’ve spent the last year demagoguing about how it’s murdering our grandchildren.

If the Democrats can’t make hay with “Here’s what the Republicans/my opponent wants to do to your retirement if they get elected” messaging in November, they deserve to lose.

P.S. I can’t believe Serious People are still spouting this ridiculous point-missing zombie lie.

Add comment February 4th, 2010 at 07:58pm Posted by Eli

Just What California Needs

Remember what happened the last time Americans elected a failed CEO?  If a candidate is promising to apply their business and leadership skills to public office, that’s not such a great thing if they don’t have any.

Add comment February 4th, 2010 at 11:28am Posted by Eli

This Can Only Be Good For John McCain

To me, what’s most striking about these poll numbers is not that McCain’s overall approval rating in AZ is at 40%, but that the story offers up his 52% approval rating among AZ Republicans as its “but it’s not all bad news for McCain” graf.

Add comment January 29th, 2010 at 09:10pm Posted by Eli

A Modest Proposal On Campaign Finance Reform

Bruce Ackerman and Ian Ayres have a suggestion on how to (mostly) get around the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision:

While Congress can’t issue a broad ban on all companies, it can target the very large class that does business with the federal government and ban those companies from “endorsing or opposing a candidate for public office.”

A 2008 Government Accountability Office study found that almost three-quarters of the largest 100 publicly traded firms are federal contractors. If Congress endorsed our proposal, these companies — and tens of thousands of others — would face a stark choice: They could endorse candidates or do business with the government, but they couldn’t do both. When push came to shove, it’s likely that very few would be willing to pay such a high price for their “free speech.”

The Roberts court is skeptical — to put it mildly — of campaign finance restrictions. But it is still highly unlikely that the justices would strike down a law targeting federal contractors. All nine recognize that Congress may restrict free speech when there is a significant risk of corruption. That risk is obvious when corporate speakers are simultaneously doing business with the government.

(…)

Our proposal requires only a modest extension of existing law. Federal contractors already are not allowed to “directly or indirectly . . . make any contribution of money or other things of value” to “any political party, committee, or candidate.” This provision arguably bars Big Pharma from launching a media campaign in favor of a candidate who supports its special deals, thereby “indirectly providing” the candidate something “of value.” But it doesn’t cover the case in which contractors threaten to spend millions to oppose senators and representatives who refuse their excessive demands. There is a need, then, for a new statutory initiative: The same anti-corruption rationale that may prohibit contractors from spending millions in favor of candidates requires a statutory prohibition on a negative advertising blitz.

IANAL (I am not a lawyer), but this sounds pretty reasonable to me.  Of course, constitutional or not, our corporate-owned Congress still has to pass it.

1 comment January 27th, 2010 at 11:26am Posted by Eli

Harold Ford’s Awesome Plan For Success

Harold Ford Jr. lays out a brilliant four-point plan for how Obama and the Democrats to fix the country and make everyone like them again:

1. Tax cuts.

2. Tort reform.

3. Immigration reform for the right kind of immigrants.

4. Budget cuts.

Oh yeah, I’m sure those will be a big hit with the Democratic base.  I hope he features them prominently in his primary campaign against Gillibrand.

Add comment January 25th, 2010 at 06:57am Posted by Eli

Harry Reid And I Have Something In Common!

Apparently we both want him out of the Senate:

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said late on Friday that he supports Ben Bernanke for a second term as Federal Reserve chairman.

(…)

“While I will vote for his confirmation, my support is not unconditional,” Reid said in a statement. “I know Chairman Bernanke is committed to transparency and accountability, and that is why I will hold him to the highest standards of both.”

So…  Harry is going to support the Bush-appointed Fed chairman who ignored all warnings about the housing bubble which crashed our economy, and who believes that preventing as-yet-nonexistent inflation is more important than his responsibility to lower our 10% unemployment rate? While running for re-election in the state with the second-highest unemployment rate in the country?

Yeah, good luck with that.  His opponent’s campaign ads will practically write themselves.

Add comment January 23rd, 2010 at 03:26pm Posted by Eli

Great Moments In Spin

Newt Gingrich explains that the Citizens United ruling is a huge win for ordinary citizens because rich people and corporations will give you millions of dollars of campaign support to oppose them. Fascinating.

BLOCK: You’re saying that this ruling affects the average citizen expressing his or her voice, as opposed to corporations being allowed to spend freely.

Mr. GINGRICH: Im saying that it allows you to have a middle-class candidate go out and find allies and supporters who are able to help them match the rich. And able to help them match the incumbent. Remember, incumbents run with millions of dollars in congressional staff, congressional franking, congressional travel. And they have all the advantages of being able to issue statements from their incumbent office. And the challenger – the person out there who’s the citizen who’s rebelling, who wants to change things – is at an enormous disadvantage in taking on incumbents.

This will, in fact, level the playing field and allow middle-class candidates to begin to have an opportunity to raise the resources to take on the powerful and the rich.

Is there a Hall Of Fame for spin?

Add comment January 23rd, 2010 at 01:26pm Posted by Eli

Ralph Nader’s Smirking Revenge

It is truly amazing that anyone can look at a shocking Democratic loss in Massachusetts and conclude that it’s a backlash against liberal overreach.  Does anyone really seriously believe that Obama and the Democrats have been too liberal for Massachusetts? Really?  Especially when they’ve fallen far short of enacting the platform they were overwhelmingly elected on?  But if one doesn’t trust logic and common sense, one can always check the polling:

HEALTH CARE BILL OPPONENTS THINK IT “DOESN’T GO FAR ENOUGH”

• by 3 to 2 among Obama voters who voted for Brown
• by 6 to 1 among Obama voters who stayed home

(18% of Obama supporters who voted supported Brown.)

VOTERS OVERWHELMINGLY SUPPORT THE PUBLIC OPTION

• 82% of Obama voters who voted for Brown
• 86% of Obama voters who stayed home

OBAMA VOTERS WANT DEMOCRATS TO BE BOLDER

• 57% of Brown voters say Obama “not delivering enough” on change he promised
• 49% to 37% among voters who stayed home

Oh yeah, that’s a real clear call for centrism, all right.

Here’s what I’m seeing: In 2000, Ralph Nader basically ran on a platform of “Republicans and Democrats are all corporate whores, there’s no real difference between them.”  The economy was in great shape at the tail end of a pro-corporate but generally successful Democratic presidency, so his message fell on deaf ears.  If it ain’t broke, etc.

Then Dubya and his pet Congress subject us to eight years of truly disastrous policy that enriches corporations and wealth at the expense of everyone else.  By 2005, America is thoroughly sick of it and starts voting Republicans out en masse in 2006, culminating in a Democratic president and an overwhelmingly Democratic Congress in 2009, not to mention a frightening economic collapse engineered by years of unconditional corporatism.

And what happened?  Nothing.  This Democratic president and overwhelmingly Democratic Congress continue to coddle, protect, and bail out the same corporations who crashed the economy while doing nothing for their victims.  Americans swept in the Democrats expecting change and reform, and got more of the godawful corporate same.  If ever there was a time for them to be receptive to Nader’s message that both parties are indistinguishable corporate whores, it would be now, when the economy is struggling and the Democrats are following the same corrupt and foolish path as the Republicans (whose awfulness is still very fresh in everyone’s minds).

I don’t know that it will be Nader himself (in fact, I expect it won’t be), but to me it looks like the conditions are ripe for a populist throw-all-the-bums-out third party to make an impact in the 2012 election cycle.  I don’t know whether it’ll be tea partiers from the right (that’d be my bet) or greens from the left, or even some weird coalition of both, but someone is going to capitalize on the “I voted for the Democrats and nothing changed, but I don’t want the Republicans back either” frustration that’s bubbling up out there, mark my words.

1 comment January 21st, 2010 at 11:35am Posted by Eli

Electoral Politics In A Nutshell

If the voters think you’re accomplishing most of what they think you promised to accomplish, you’ll probably get re-elected.  If they don’t, you probably won’t.

Obama managed to charm voters into believing that he had promised more than he actually did, but so far has delivered far less than he actually promised.

Here’s a partial composite list of things that Obama promised, or that those who voted for him think he promised:

• Universal healthcare that doesn’t suck
• Financial reform to restructure Wall Street and punish its malefactors of great wealth
• Jobs/economic stimulus/mortgage relief
• Shifting the tax burden back towards the rich
• Emphasis on green energy and jobs/significant reductions of greenhouse emissions
• Government transparency/restoration of respect for the Constitution and rule of law
• Reduction of lobbyist influence
• Abolition of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell
• Closing of Gitmo
• Withdrawal of troops from Iraq and Afghanistan
• Accountability for Bush administration criminals

I can’t think of a single item on this list that Obama has come even close to achieving, or even made a good-faith effort to achieve.  I’d say that he was comparatively most successful on jobs and economic stimulus, but 10% unemployment isn’t exactly something to brag about.

Obama and the Democrats got their performance review yesterday.  If they don’t start showing some serious improvement in the quality of their work product over the next nine months, a whole bunch of them are going to get fired.

Add comment January 20th, 2010 at 07:23am Posted by Eli

Zombie CW

So let me get this straight: Obama and the Democrats win a decisive landslide election on a message of Change in general and healthcare reform in particular, then proceed to pervert it into a series of capitulations and corporate giveaways… but the reason that a Democrat is struggling to win Teddy Kennedy’s seat in one of the most progressive states in the country against a transparently dishonest scumbag is that Obama is too liberal?

Yes, Ad Nags really does try to make that case, with help from some Republicans and progressive Democratic stalwarts like Evan Bayh and Bob Kerrey.  It’s insane on its face, yet far too many pivotal Democrats (Rahm Emanuel comes to mind) and their consultants buy into this belief that every Democratic defeat is a repudiation of progressivism and every Democratic victory is a vindication of corporate centrism.

And what’s the result?  Every single time, the progressive Democratic base gets demoralized and stays home, and the Democrats get their asses kicked… which they promptly interpret as a sign that their raging liberalism scared off the swing voters and they have to move farther to the right.

If Coakley loses, or even wins by less than 20 points, Obama & Co. should take heed that maybe, just maybe, “Vote for Coakley or forever lose your once-in-a-lifetime chance to be forced to buy shitty private health insurance” is not an inspiring GOTV message, not even if you try to pretend that Teddy would have wanted it that way.

I think there are at least two factors working together in the Democrats’ string of corporate sellouts.  One is that they have absolutely no stomach for taking on the powerful economic elites (which they themselves are in fact members of), and the other is the media red shift wherein right-wing positions are described as “centrist” and broadly popular positions are described as “left” or “far left”.

The media reinforce the Democrats’ belief that their moneyed elite bubble is somehow representative of America, and reassuring them that selling out on healthcare or financial reform is okay because only the far left radical crazy fringe wants real reform, and surely it’s never bad to repudiate or ignore radical crazies, right?

One final point about the difference between Democrats and Republicans and their relationship with their bases: Where the Democrats display so little loyalty or respect for a base they apparently see as embarrassing leftist hippies, the Republicans embrace theirs, at least publicly (of course, thanks to the media, even the craziest of teabaggers are considered merely “conservative” rather than “batshit insane”).

They stroke them, they identify them, and they always make sure they look like they’re fighting for them.  True, they don’t always win (abortion and homosexuality are still legal, after all), but it’s because they don’t have the numbers, not because they compromise their objectives into oblivion.  As I’ve said before and will continue saying, it is better to fight for the right thing and lose than to fight for the wrong thing and win.

Add comment January 17th, 2010 at 02:53pm Posted by Eli

Harold Ford Calls Self A Liar

Who are you going to believe?  Harold Ford?  Or… Harold Ford?

Davidson Goldin, a spokesman for Ford, called the video “distorting” and stressed that if he ran and were elected, Ford would serve as an “independent Democrat.” He likened Ford’s positions on some issues to those of Bill Clinton and Chuck Schumer, and sent a video of Barack Obama speaking in favor of Ford.

“Harold Ford is and always has been a supporter of abortion rights and any suggestion otherwise is a baseless attempt to distort his record, and any group that truly supports abortion rights should have enough self-respect not to resort to lying in an effort to protect an unelected senator,” Goldin went on to charge. Ford has had the support of pro-choice groups in the past, but NARAL issued a statement saying his voting record was not consistent.

“And unlike Kirsten Gillibrand, who uses guns the way some people use Ambien and received an A rating from the NRA, Harold has never owned a gun and received a C rating from the NRA. That speaks for itself,” Goldin said.

Lying then, or lying now?

Add comment January 15th, 2010 at 07:15am Posted by Eli

Scott Brown’s Hysterical Tea Party Amnesia

Wow, how soon they forget…

April 15, 2009:

According to TPM, [Scott] Brown’s own campaign has posted photos of him speaking at the Worcester Tea Party rally as well one of him at another tea party event. Salon’s Mike Madden also discovered that Brown’s campaign website featured a fundraiser thrown for him by tea partiers.

January 2, 2010:

Brown’s Senate campaign hosted a breakfast at the Doubletree Hotel in Westborough, Massachusetts that was sponsored by the group: the Greater Boston Tea Party. According to an invitation obtained by the Huffington Post, attendees were encouraged to donate between $25 and $500, for which they would earn the distinction of being a Patriot, Sons of Liberty, Sam Adams, or American Revolutionary (depending on the size of the donation).

January 13, 2010:

[Brown] also claimed that he was unfamiliar with the “Tea Party movement,” when asked by a reporter.

If Brown gets elected, someone needs to either get the guy a supply of gingko biloba, or one of those cards with his name and address on it – in case he gets lost on his way to the Capitol building.  Why, he’s so forgetful he probably doesn’t even remember that he posed nude for Cosmo!

Epic Credibility Fail.  (Except for the Cosmo thing, which might be a net plus.)

1 comment January 14th, 2010 at 07:21pm Posted by Eli

Kos Explains Why The Democrats Could Use A Little More Purity

Wow, a congressional Democrat supporting a slightly-more-progressive Democratic primary challenger!  It doesn’t sound like a big deal, but it’s actually exceedingly rare.  As kos writes, congressional Democrats are all about protecting their own, no matter how corrupt or disloyal they may be:

Yet for all their troubles in maintaining their united front on the floor of Congress, elected Democrats have remained united on electoral matters. Note how no one came to Ned Lamont’s aid during the 2006 Connecticut Democratic primary, even though he Lieberman was already a cancer inside the Democratic Party. Even corrupt Democrats get a pass, which cost us William Jefferson’s seat in New Orleans, and could’ve proved troublesome in Al Wynn’s Maryland district until the voters solved the problem by electing Donna Edwards instead.

So for the Democrats, it is significant for [Barney Frank] to endorse a primary challenger. He is the chair of the House Financial Services Committee, one of the most powerful, and he’s bucked his establishment to back an insurgent candidate against an entrenched, White House-backing incumbent. Elected Democrats could certainly use some internal pressure for party unity. Gay marriage failed in New York because promised “yes” votes from Republicans failed to materialize. And why did they chicken out? They were all afraid of being Scozzafava’d. DeMint’s support of Doug Hoffman may have cost Republicans the seat, but it preserved marriage discrimination – a tradeoff they would make any day of the week.

We need a little bit of that enforced party unity, and any help we can get from within the caucus helps build credibility for primary insurgents. We need more Barney Franks, particularly one in the Senate, to help provide some much needed tension between elected officials who care about the kind of work Congress does, and a party establishment that is issue agnostic, and cares only about whether an incumbent has an “R” or “D” after their name.

“Joe Sestak is a true Democrat who cares about the working families that have been hit hardest by the failed economic policies of the Bush Administration,” Frank said. “He’ll be a reliable vote for Pennsylvania’s next generation instead of having the same loyal Bush Republican we’ve seen over the past generation. I have to say I don’t think it did our profession any good for someone to announce that he switched parties purely so he could survive.”

That certainly applies in this Pennsylvania Senate race, but Specter isn’t the only suspect Democrat inside our caucus. Far too many are making common cause with Republicans while pretending to be Democrats. A few more primary challenges might convince recalcitrant Democrats to support their party’s top priorities, and a culture that encourages such challenges, even if it angers the DSCC and DCCC, would certainly be welcome, and clearly help Democrats advance their now-stymied policy goals.

Corrupt and conservative Democrats (often one and the same) behave like there are no consequences to their actions because there are no consequences to their actions.  As long as they can continue to be assholes with impunity, they will continue to obstruct needed reforms and make the Democrats look weak at best, corrupt and complicit at worst.

A big tent is fine, but it shouldn’t be so big that it embraces Republicans and crooks, nor so lopsided that its right has more power than its left.

Add comment December 8th, 2009 at 06:19pm Posted by Eli

Who Is This “Harry Reid” Of Whom You Speak?

Wadhams appears to be talking about someone with the exact same name and position, but he’s obviously describing a completely different person…

Dick Wadhams, the Colorado Republican party chairman and campaign manager for Sen. John Thune’s 2004 defeat of then-Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.), has penned a fundraising letter for Republican Sue Lowden’s Nevada Senate campaign.

In the e-mail, sent to Lowden supporters on Thursday, Wadhams wrote that “Daschle was a rank amateur compared to Harry Reid,” the Democrats’ current Majority Leader, whom Lowden hopes to take on in 2010.

“Tom Daschle was a mere obstructionist of the Republican agenda. Harry Reid is the chief architect of the worst parts of the Obama-Democratic agenda,” Wadhams wrote.

Perhaps he’s thinking of the Golden Age Earth-Two Harry Reid, who was actually one of the founding members of the JSA.

Add comment December 5th, 2009 at 03:34pm Posted by Eli

Ross Douthat Wanks About Wonks

Wow, that Ross sure does have an active imagination!  Yesterday he blogged about Lou Dobbs running for president as a “radical center populist”, and the day before that he tried to claim that conservatives aren’t really as anti-intellectual as all that, and might even vote for a thoughtful policy wonk.  No, really!

Matt Yglesias and Isaac Chotiner both suggest that if a Republican politician were to embrace serious domestic policy ideas, Republican voters wouldn’t want anything to do with him. The conservative movement tends to “fetishize stupidity,” Yglesias writes, and believes that there’s “something actually un-American about being thoughtful, having respect for scholarship, or incorporating any kind of nuance into your discussion.” If Sarah Palin and Mike Huckabee “were interested in policy, then they would not be so appealing to the GOP base,” Chotiner argues, adding that since movement conservatism “sneers at intellectuals and elites,” a conservative candidate “who was interested in learning the ins and outs of the welfare state and health care policy is unlikely to ever achieve Palin/Huckabee levels of popularity with the grassroots.”

(So far, so good!)

I would really like to see this theory put to the test. Certainly there’s a strong anti-egghead bent on the Right, and you’re probably never going to see grassroots conservatives swooning for a purely cerebral candidate — a Adlai Stevenson or Bill Bradley type. But it’s possible for a candidate to have the common touch and to know a thing or two about domestic policy (see Clinton, William Jefferson), and I don’t see any evidence that a conservative politician couldn’t profit from trying to pull off that particular two-step.

Then he talks about how Palin (hahahaha) or Huckabee wouldn’t suffer politically if they boned up on policy, and about how popular Gingrich is because he has a reputation as a policy wonk even though Ross himself admits that he really isn’t one.  Which proves only that conservatives like ideologues who masquerade as policy wonks.

[P]recisely because the G.O.P. currently has a reputation for being anti-intellectual, there’s a huge upside for a Republican politician in being identified as that rarest of species — a “conservative with domestic policy ideas.” (For a small-bore example of how this works, look at Paul Ryan, who’s made a substantial name for himself by being one of the few House Republicans willing to get into the weeds on health care reform.) Of course identity politics and symbolic appeals will always matter more than substance, and political careers will never be made on wonkery alone. But even — or especially — in today’s Republican Party, being known as a thoughtful politician seems much more likely to help you than to hurt you.

Okay, some comments:

1) Interesting that Paul Ryan is the only Republican policy wonk Douthat mentions, and he’s not exactly a high-profile figure in the GOP.  Perhaps it’s because Republican policy wonks don’t get elected very often, much less obtain prominent GOP leadership positions?

2) Hey, can someone refresh my memory on what happens every time a conservative with some degree of intellectual honesty criticizes Dubya, or one of the GOP’s other heroes for being incompetent, immoral, or insane?  How does that work out for them?

3) How often do policy wonks of either party get elected?  Dukakis got crushed by a mediocrity, and Gore managed to lose to the dumbest man ever to run for president.  Clinton won despite his wonkery, not because of it.

4) Most people don’t like Republican policies, because they’re mean-spirited and prone to spectacular failure.  Republican candidates win by using emotional appeals and misinformation to camouflage those toxic policies, not illuminate them.

But hey, if they want to try it, I’m all for it.  In fact, I think the Republicans should keep on fielding wonky candidates until they start winning, that’s how committed I am to Ross’s genius idea.

1 comment November 26th, 2009 at 01:11pm Posted by Eli

So Much For “I’m Just Voting My District”…

Okay, so it’s technically only the Democratic primary.  But if the excuse the Blue Dogs and ConservaDems offer up for voting against meaningful healthcare reform is that they have to do it to hold onto their seats, some primary losses sure would make that excuse look foolish (and also, good riddance).

I don’t have much of an expectation that conservative Democrats will vote for healthcare reform (or financial reform, or climate change reform, or…) out of conscience or a desire to do the right thing, but if they do it out of fear, I can live with that.  Although I’d still rather see them gone, even if it means they’re replaced by real Republicans instead of real Democrats.  Just so long as the Democrats have enough members left to hold onto their majorities so we don’t have to put up with frivolous investigations and impeachment attempts every five minutes.

Add comment November 20th, 2009 at 07:14am Posted by Eli

Who Are You And What Have You Done With Sprinkles???

Wow, Liz Sidoti actually writes that we shouldn’t read too much into it if the Republicans win some of today’s off-year elections.  But this is my favorite part right here:

“Right now there’s no central Republican leader to turn to, and there’s no central Republican message,” conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh told Fox News on Sunday. “The Republican message is sort of muddied. What do they stand for? Right now it’s opposition to Obama.”

…Says Mr. “I Hope He Fails”.

Add comment November 3rd, 2009 at 07:17am Posted by Eli

Paul Krugman Speaks For Me

It is a very telling indictment of our present-day political system that Richard Nixon was probably to the left of many Democrats:

[T]he Nixon era was a time in which leading figures in both parties were capable of speaking rationally about policy, and in which policy decisions weren’t as warped by corporate cash as they are now. America is a better country in many ways than it was 35 years ago, but our political system’s ability to deal with real problems has been degraded to such an extent that I sometimes wonder whether the country is still governable.

As many people have pointed out, Nixon’s proposal for health care reform looks a lot like Democratic proposals today. In fact, in some ways it was stronger….

(…)

We tend to think of the way things are now, with a huge army of lobbyists permanently camped in the corridors of power, with corporations prepared to unleash misleading ads and organize fake grass-roots protests against any legislation that threatens their bottom line, as the way it always was. But our corporate-cash-dominated system is a relatively recent creation, dating mainly from the late 1970s.

And now that this system exists, reform of any kind has become extremely difficult. That’s especially true for health care, where growing spending has made the vested interests far more powerful than they were in Nixon’s day. The health insurance industry, in particular, saw its premiums go from 1.5 percent of G.D.P. in 1970 to 5.5 percent in 2007, so that a once minor player has become a political behemoth, one that is currently spending $1.4 million a day lobbying Congress.

That spending fuels debates that otherwise seem incomprehensible. Why are “centrist” Democrats like Senator Kent Conrad of North Dakota so opposed to letting a public plan, in which Americans can buy their insurance directly from the government, compete with private insurers? Never mind their often incoherent arguments; what it comes down to is the money.

(…)

Every desperately needed reform I can think of, from controlling greenhouse gases to restoring fiscal balance, will have to run the same gantlet of lobbying and lies.

I’m not saying that reformers should give up. They do, however, have to realize what they’re up against. There was a lot of talk last year about how Barack Obama would be a “transformational” president — but true transformation, it turns out, requires a lot more than electing one telegenic leader. Actually turning this country around is going to take years of siege warfare against deeply entrenched interests, defending a deeply dysfunctional political system.

In other words, both Republicans and Democrats used to be animated more by their competing visions of what was best for America than by blind loyalty to their corporate campaign donors.  The institutionalized corruption has become so deep and so pervasive that Congress is now almost totally incapable of putting the country, the Constitution, or even the planet ahead of the corporations.  And the results are as predictable as they are disastrous.

4 comments August 31st, 2009 at 08:52pm Posted by Eli

Way Past The Last Straw

It’s not exactly news that both parties in this country are far too captive to corporate interests, but here’s yet another data point:

The FCC’s broadband task force is tasked with developing our national broadband policy. This is a project that FCC Commissioner Michael Copps ranks of the highest importance:

(…)

And so, because our government is run by corporations and for corporations even when it is controlled by Democrats, a telecom industry shill, Scott Wallstein, was named as economics director of that task force.  From a source close to the process, in the extended entry I proivde a thorough background on Wallstein’s industry connections and long history of fighting against American consumers:

[Exhaustive and depressing listing of pro-telecom wankery]

Snark aside, WTF?! Too many Democrats keep letting foxes into the henhouse. How many of our policies have to be dominated by bad-faith industry negotiators before we realize that continuing to give industry a seat at the policy table will never allow us to break away from our corporate kleptocracy? There better be a huge policy pay-off for consumers coming from this, but I am not holding my breath.

The legislative happenings of 2009 have brought the need for publicly financed elections and severe lobbying restrictions much closer to the forefront of my political thinking.  I don’t know how much support publicly financed elections might have in Congress, but there are good reasons to think that the situation will get worse before it gets better. The Supreme Court recently heard a case that could strike down the ban on corporate contributions to federal candidates.  As a party, we really need to start dumping bipartisanship and adopting a more populist attitude.

Amen on the need for publicly financed elections, but the trick is to get a majority (or supermajority) of incumbents to vote in favor of leveling the playing field for their challengers.  The campaign finance panel at Netroots Nation offered some encouragement, in that a lot of congresscritters are sick of spending huge chunks of their time begging for money instead of legislating or talking to their constituents (then again, a lot of them probably consider that a plus).

The public financing orgs like Change Congress and Public Campaign are also working on publicly shaming corporate mercenaries like Ben Nelson (it definitely got under his skin, but I’m not sure how much real impact it has either on him or his voters) and supporting public financing initiatives at the state level.

I think that last approach actually has the most promise, even though it’s a very long-term strategy.  I like the idea of building up a bench of progressive pro-public-financing state legislators who will be tomorrow’s senators and representatives, although there’s no guarantee that they won’t get corrupted as soon as they reach the federal level.

But until the money pipeline between corporations and elected officials is counterbalanced, our government is going to make the wrong decisions and hire the wrong people again and again.

Add comment August 30th, 2009 at 01:36pm Posted by Eli

Deja Vu

Senate Guru points to some encouraging poll results (caveat: Rasmussen):

13.  What’s that number?  It’s the gap between Specter and Congressman Sestak in the latest Rasmussen Reports poll.  Specter’s lead over Congressman Sestak is only 47-34 according to Rasmussen.  Rasmussen’s last poll, in June, showed the 19-point deficit, a 51-32 result.

Rasmussen also reminds us that Specter still remains “much better known” across the state than Congressman Sestak.  In other words, Congressman Sestak still has plenty of room to grow in terms of name ID as his campaign gets underway, but has already cut his deficit by a third.  Also, this is the very first non-Franklin & Marshall poll (F&M’s numbers were relatively very low for both candidates) to show Specter under 50%.

(…)

This poll is bad news for Specter and great news for Congressman Sestak – not just because it shows Congressman Sestak closing the gap, but also because it adds credibility to his campaign.  Specter winning is not remotely a foregone conclusion.  The more that PA-Dem primary voters recognize that, the more open they’ll be to Congressman Sestak’s candidacy, and the less power the Ed Rendell machine will have to stop the political dam from breaking.

This reminds me a lot of Lamont’s campaign against Lieberman three years ago.  Most CT Democrats were desperate for an alternative to Lieberman, and all Lamont really had to do was make sure they knew who he was, and could see him as a viable, more progressive alternative.  Of course, the problem in CT was that Lieberman was able to run as an independent and get the benefit of the Republican vote, where PA affords Specter no such luxury.

It is probably also worth noting that outside of the Democratic party establishment (feh), Specter’s Democratic support is almost certainly a lot thinner than Lieberman’s was.  Lieberman was a Democratic senator (in name, at least) for 18 years, whereas for Specter it will be closer to 18 months.

My prediction is that Specter will attempt the same play Lieberman used in CT: Pretend to be a lot more progressive than he actually is, than revert to form immediately after the election.  Again, though, decades of being an actual Republican will make that a lot harder for him to pull off than it was for Joementum.  Fingers crossed.

Add comment August 13th, 2009 at 09:23am Posted by Eli

Cargo Cult Democracy

There was a great letter in yesterday’s NYT, lamenting just how far American democracy has fallen:

Six moderate/conservative senators from the smallest states will dictate the terms of health care reform, or whether there will be reform, to the rest of the American populace.

These senators oppose single-payer, even a public option, and are obsessed with the “cost” argument. Polls, however, consistently indicate that an overwhelming majority of Americans want either single-payer or a public option and are not so concerned with the cost if health care is delivered.

An even larger majority wants major, fundamental health care reform.

We tout our “democracy” throughout the world, and at every election cycle its praises are sung, yet a handful of senators acting outside the mainstream, apparently in line with their small constituencies, can thwart the will of the vast majority of Americans, denying in the process, or limiting, a fundamental right of all: a healthy life.

The only part of that last paragraph that I would quibble with is the assumption that these six senators’ rural constituencies are as stubbornly opposed to the public option as they are.

But I’m more interested in the larger point: We brag about how great our democracy is, we use it as an excuse to do whatever we want overseas because it’s in the service of our fantastic democracy and sharing its wonders with the rest of the world, but the truth is that we are a democracy in name only.  Like the Pacific cargo cultists, we build the structures and follow the routines of democracy, but the actual democracy is long gone.

We hold free and fair elections, wherein we vote for the candidates who spend the most money and package themselves in the most compelling way and get the most flattering media coverage, with substantive policy hardly a factor at all.  Or we vote for the candidate whose district has been gerrymandered to ensure that the same party wins all the time, no matter how badly it performs.  Or our votes are nullified by dodgy electronic voting machines or suppressed through fraud and  intimidation.

We elect presidents and congressmen to represent our interests, who instead do the bidding of the corporations who gave them the money to buy our votes.

We have a code of laws and a brilliant, enduring Constitution, but our presidents and judges ignore and distort them when it suits their purposes.  And if the president gets caught, Congress just ignores it, flails impotently, or makes it retroactively legal.

That’s not democracy; we’re just going through the motions.  Real democracy would mean real accountability, which would mean a lot less security for those in power.  But as long as we have a political system which ignores the masses and rewards selfishness and amorality in the ruling elite, it’s hard to see where reform is going to come from.  It’s a catch-22, really – the system is designed to produce a neverending supply of exactly the kind of politicians who will fight to the death to preserve it.

Add comment August 1st, 2009 at 02:28pm Posted by Eli

What. I’ve. Been. Saying.

I’m pleasantly surprised that such a bill has even been drafted:

What with Congress taking up high-stakes issues such as health care reform, bank re-regulation and a new energy policy, the case for public financing of congressional elections has never been so obvious.

It takes a lot of money to run a modern Senate or House campaign, and lawmakers now have to compromise themselves by personally pleading for contributions from big-money interests. Also, the massive amount of time members must devote to fundraising makes them less effective.

One way to get cleaner elections and better government is for Congress to adopt a Connecticut-style reform being pushed by Democratic U.S. Rep. John B. Larson of East Hartford and Rep. Walter Jones Jr., Republican of North Carolina. Senate sponsors are Democrats Dick Durbin of Illinois and Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania.

A hearing on the “Fair Elections Now Act” will be held by the House Administration Committee today. We heartily support Mr. Larson’s initiative.

The bill would create a voluntary program and would work like this: Participating candidates for the House and Senate would have to raise a large number of contributions, not to exceed $100 each, in order to qualify for public funding. Qualified House candidates would receive $900,000 in Fair Elections funding split 40 percent for the primary and 60 percent for the general election. Qualified Senate candidates would receive $1.25 million plus another $250,000 per congressional district in their states to take into account population differences. That funding, too, would be split 40-60. Qualified candidates would also be eligible to receive additional public funds if they continued to raise small donations from their home states.

The constant money chase, and corporations’ ability to pony up millions of dollars in campaign donations without batting an eye, has made our government completely corrupt.  Just look at the impact the telecom industry had on retroactive immunity for warrantless wiretapping, the impact the financial industry had on the bailout, the impact the energy industry had on the cap-and-trade bill, and the impact the insurance industry is having on healthcare reform.  The public good has been pretty obvious in each case, and it’s been overridden to favor corporations over citizens or even the rule of law.

This bill is exactly what we need, but I see two problems:

1) I don’t see any mention of presidential campaigns.  An independent Congress is great, but I don’t want a corporate-owned president.  We’ve had pro-corporate presidents since at least 1981, and yes, I’m including Obama.

2) I still don’t see how we’re going to get a majority of incumbents to vote for a system that favors incumbents.  The only possible motivations are overwhelming public demand, which I don’t see, and fatigue at having to constantly ask for money, which could be a real factor.  But when it comes down to it, I think most congresscritters are willing to do just about anything to hold on to their power and prestige.

Add comment July 30th, 2009 at 07:27am Posted by Eli

Franken Musings

1) The Coleman campaign kinda reminds me of the invasion of Iraq.  They declared victory prematurely, pissed off the natives, and poured massive quantities of money and resources down a black hole rather than admit defeat.  Of course, in this case the only fatalities were Norm’s political career, and maybe Tim Pawlenty’s.

2) Looking forward to the Republicans caterwauling about how the MN Supreme Court engaged in judicial activism by declaring the candidate with the most votes to be the winner.

3) Looking foward to Harry Reid explaining why you just can’t get anything done without 67 votes in the Senate.

2 comments June 30th, 2009 at 09:57pm Posted by Eli

This Explains A Lot…

(From Superpoop)

1 comment June 25th, 2009 at 11:23am Posted by Eli

Moderate Republican Governor Flees To China

Interesting move, this:

Utah Gov. Jon M. Huntsman Jr. (R) will be introduced today as President Obama’s choice as ambassador to China, a source familiar with the decision said last night.

Huntsman, 48, was mentioned this spring as a potential Republican contender for the White House in 2012, and Obama’s former campaign manager recently suggested that he is a rising force in the GOP.

(…)

Huntsman was elected in November to a second term as Utah’s governor, drawing 70 percent of the vote. He served in the George W. Bush administration as deputy U.S. trade representative from 2001 to 2004 and, for President George H.W. Bush, was ambassador to Singapore. He is an expert on China, and he speaks Mandarin Chinese fluently.

Huntsman has been getting informal advice from national political consultants, helping to stoke rumors that he might be positioning himself for a run at Obama in 2012.

On the surface, this certainly appears to undermine any hopes Huntsman might have of running for president.  It certainly has not been well-received by the wingnut base.

But maybe Huntsman has a plan: An ambassadorship, especially an ambassadorship to such a pivotal country, will seriously boost Hunstman’s credibility on foreign policy, which is typically the Achilles’ heel of most governors not named Bill Richardson.

Beyond that, he may also be making the calculation that there will inevitably be a Republican backlash against the hard-right extremism which has destroyed the GOP’s image and made its candidates all but unelectable.  Huntsman will be well positioned as the Reasonable Bipartisan who can Reach Across The Aisle and Work With Democrats to Get Things Done. (Preferably in 2016 rather than 2016, since unless things are going really badly, he’s probably smart enough not to want to run against an incumbent Obama)

If the GOP can put the crazy base back in the box by 2016, this could be a genius move by Huntsman, and if the dead-enders are still running the party in 2016, well, he was never going to get past the primary anyway.

1 comment May 17th, 2009 at 11:44am Posted by Eli

Run, Joe, Run!

I really liked Sestak’s answers in yesterday’s FDL Blue America session.  Not only was he more progressive than I thought, but he also refused to be intimidated by either Democrats or Republicans.  Here’s his response when I asked him what he’d say to Reid or Rendell if they asked him to drop out:

I will probably say the same thing I said to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee when I informed them that I was getting into the 7th District Race 3 years ago, and they told me “they don’t want me”…and called back the next day to say that again, saying they already had someone else in the race. I said I had called to inform them, not to ask permission, although I respected their opinion. I do respect the Democratic leadership but this is really about us in PA and how it affects the nation. While we may disagree, I think we can still do it respecting one another.

And here’s what he said when asked whether the possibility of a less insane Republican candidate like Tom Ridge would affect his decision to run:

I honestly believe that you run for something, not against someone. Therefore, any decision I make will be predicated on running for the right things, not because of who else is in the race.

I also liked his response when asked what would dissuade him from running:

If Arlen Specter truly embraces the principles and policies necessary for good governance and the economic, health, energy/environment, education, and defense securities needed by Pennsylvanians and by our nation…and we believe he will stick to them for the full 6 years.

So unless he’s completely gullible and clueless, he’s running.

Add comment May 4th, 2009 at 07:09am Posted by Eli