Dropping Pretenses

Well, at least they are now admitting that this is not about budgets or fiscal responsibility. It’s about breaking unions, breaking Obama and winning the 2012 election:

This was just the final step in removing any doubt about the true nature of this fight. There was the announcement that Crossroads GPS, an independent campaign group founded by former George W. Bush political guru Karl Rove, among others, launched a $750,000 cable television ad buy blistering President Obama and public sector unions, with the Wisconsin battle as the hook and clearly painting it as being about breaking the unions. (As a side note, the ad contained assertions about union pay that even their ostensible source—a libertarian Cato Institute—said were misleading.)

Then there was Scott Fitzgerald, the state senate GOP leader, admitting to Fox News that the battle was about crippling the unions. He said:

“If we win this battle, and the money is not there under the auspices of the unions, certainly what you’re going to find is President Obama is going to have a much difficult, much more difficult time getting elected and winning the state of Wisconsin.”

Presumably that relates to fixing the state budget somehow. (And as an aside: Really? A great American drama is being played out before us and one of the characters is named Scott Fitzgerald? Awesome.)

It’s been fascinating to watch this political striptease, as prevarication after prevarication is stripped away, laying bare a naked political power grab. Poll after poll after poll showed Americans in general and Wisconsites in particular opposed Walker’s plan—and most especially his union-busting proposal. It was almost as it these polls focused and distilled the issue to its core.

Yes, this is what we Lefties have been saying all along. When we tried to tell the Teanutties that they were being played by corporate interests bent on a power grab, they said oh no! Not us! We really care about government spending!

Yeah, right.

So while Wisconsin is center stage for this class struggle, make no mistake: the battle is being waged everywhere. Here in Tennessee, and in Ohio, and in Michigan and Virginia and everywhere else. It’s not about budgets or the size of government. It’s about political power, specifically taking it away from the people and giving it to the wealthy corporate elite. It’s about making sure workers no longer have a voice and the Democratic Party no longer has a major fundraiser. That’s what this has always been about. Pure, unadulterated political power.

I mean hello, people. What does it say that the Wisconsin Republicans are running to Washington D.C. to collect their money from a big-time D.C. lobbyist, BGR Group? Doesn't that just say it all right there?

And it’s about President Obama. POTUS has been taking a lot of heat for backing away from a campaign vow to walk the picket line to support unions. It’s funny because the right is hilariously trying to claim the Wisconsin recall effort has been organized by the White House, when Obama can’t distance himself fast enough from the biggest event to affect American workers of his presidency.

Oh, I know, he needs to worry about Libya and the budget debate and there’s a trip to the UK coming up and blah blah. He doesn’t want to make it look like he’s involved in a state issue like worker’s collective bargaining rights. Well, sorry dude, but you are involved because this is all about defeating you in November 2012. The White House needs to wake up and smell the coffee. This is about Obama, the Wisconsin Republicans have said so. It’s about the 2012 election. It’s about breaking the president and breaking the Democratic Party. It’s about politics, it always has been. So wake the fuck up and put some skin in the game. You can’t pretend you’re not involved when you’re one of the main reasons this is happening in the first place. This is about you. This is about the Democratic Party.

Get your shit together, Democrats. They’ve come for you. What are you going to do about it?

It Will Be Different This Time, Honest!

I swear, the narrative coming out of Democratic Party circles as Republicans take over the House of Representatives is driving me nuts. The message we’re hearing repeated everywhere is that “now Republicans have to lead,” and “governing is oooh so different from campaigning,” and “put up or shut up”, or as Rep. Anthony Weiner told Face The Nation:

"It's their ship to run now," he said. "That's the responsibility."

No, it’s not! It’s totally not! Because, they’re Republicans, which means they can do whatever the fuck they want and no one ever calls them on it, ever. Like, when Peggy Noonan famously claimed in a 2008 Wall Street Journal op-ed that “At least Bush kept us safe,” which neatly overlooked Nine-Fucking-Eleven, the anthrax attacks, Hurricane Katrina, etcetera, etcetera. Heh heh, we all know that shit was Clinton’s fault!

Or how about the time Karl Rove wrote, also in the Wall Street Journal, that President Obama’s stimulus package is “the biggest peacetime spending increase in American history,” forgetting that it’s not peacetime, asshole, we’re still embroiled in the two wars started under your watch.

In a sane world, someone over at the Wall Street Journal might have pointed these things out before running these pieces to begin with. But this is not a sane world, this is a world where Republicans are allowed to get away with saying and doing whatever they want. Republicans are Teflon, Democrats are glue. When will the Dems figure this out?

You know, you can never, ever say anything about what a budget-buster the Iraq War has been without someone pointing out, “Well, Democrats voted for it toooooo!” Yeah, but they wouldn’t have if a) Republicans weren’t fearmongering 24/7 about smoking guns being mushroom clouds, b) Republicans weren't given free rein to question the patriotism of anyone who had the temerity to doubt the Bush Administration’s war rationale, and c) Bush Administration officials, in collusion with the media, hadn't personally threatened and intimidated war critics like Valerie Plame and Joseph Wilson. So get over your damn selves.

Yeah, we all know this routine. As long as there is one liberal within 30 yards of a bad decision, that is the person who is getting the blame. Wake up, Democrats.

Democrats never, ever remember this stuff. They never remember that the media is not liberal, that the networks and cable news bots are infatuated with sniffing Republican shorts and will rarely call Republicans on their lies, spin and revisionist history.

I mean, I don’t recall hearing a lot of media hacks rushing to correct the lies of Rush Limbaugh, who claimed Obama tanked the economy as payback for racism. This only makes sense if you are insane, and also if you forget who was president in fall 2007, when the economy actually crashed. Remember how John McCain was going to suspend his campaign and rush to Washington to fix the economy?

Ah yes, but the Democrats took the Senate in the fall 2006 elections, so everything that happened after that is their fault! Heads we lose, tails they win.

Already today we are seeing Republicans rewrite their brand-new House rules to suit their agenda. You know, like how deficits matter except when they don’t, which would be when pushing for war and tax cuts and pretending that a repeal of healthcare reform won't add $230 billion to the deficit.

Got it, Democrats? It’s always Republican Rules. IOKIYAR is the guiding principle of modern American governance. Republicans can get away with everything and anything, Democrats cannot.

So don’t be pushing this pablum about how “Republicans have to govern now.” No, they don’t! They just have to show up on some Sunday morning bobblehead show and mouth some bumper sticker bromide about Freedom and Real America and What The American People Want and blargheddy blargh. It's not like anyone in the media, save maybe Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, ever holds their feet to the fire.

This will only change if Democrats finally grow a spine and really wise up and make a big stink about this hypocrisy. And that won't happen until they stop caring about what Tweety and David Broder think, and start really pushing back.

But I don't hold out much hope.

Courage & Anger

Frank Rich’s column yesterday, “Gay Bashing At The Smithsonian,” brings to mind an issue which has troubled me for some time. And that’s the issue of courage.

Rich discusses the removal of the late artist David Wojnarowicz’s work from an exhibit at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery. He writes:

When his mentor and former lover, the photographer Peter Hujar, fell ill with AIDS in 1987, Wojnarowicz created a video titled “A Fire in My Belly” to express both his grief and his fury. As in Haring’s altarpiece, Christ figures in Wojnarowicz’s response to the plague — albeit in a cryptic, 11-second cameo. A crucifix is besieged by ants that evoke frantic souls scurrying in panic as a seemingly impassive God looked on.

This is the piece that was originally included in the Smithsonian’s exhibition, "Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture," which is advertised as “a serious examination of the role sexual identity has played in the creation of modern American portraiture.” The National Portrait Gallery yanked “Fire in My Belly” from its exhibit in early December after the Smithsonian caved to a manufactured piece of outrage which I daresay few Americans even heard about.

Back to Rich:

Like many of its antecedents, the war over Wojnarowicz is a completely manufactured piece of theater. What triggered the abrupt uproar was an incendiary Nov. 29 post on a conservative Web site. The post was immediately and opportunistically seized upon by William Donohue, of the so-called Catholic League, a right-wing publicity mill with no official or financial connection to the Catholic Church.

[...]

It took only hours after Donohue’s initial battle cry for the video to be yanked. “The decision wasn’t caving in,” the museum’s director, Martin E. Sullivan, told reporters. Of course it was. The Smithsonian, in its own official statement, rationalized its censorship by saying that Wojnarowicz’s video “generated a strong response from the public.” That’s nonsense. There wasn’t a strong response from the public — there was no response. As the museum’s own publicist told the press, the National Portrait Gallery hadn’t received a single complaint about “A Fire in the Belly” from the exhibit’s opening day, Oct. 30, until a full month later, when a “public” that hadn’t seen the exhibit was mobilized by Donohue to blast the museum by phone and e-mail.

The museum caved. They caved. Why?

Time and again we see groups (and politicians) cave in the face of such obviously manufactured political theater. Where is the courage? Who thinks capitulation is a winning strategy, that it does nothing more than ensure future fake campaigns?

Why was Shirley Sherrod asked to resign so quickly last summer? Why was Van Jones thrown under the bus? Why do our Democratic leaders and institutions cave to the right wing noise machine, time and time again?

Why do they act so afraid that some pundit somewhere is saying something mean about them?

The fact that Republicans are allowed to do the same (or worse) without any pearl-clutching in the media proves how politically motivated these “fauxtrages” are. It’s all about framing, fear-mongering, indulging in stereotypes and retreading that well-worn path allowing the majority to pretend it is a persecuted minority, thus redirecting anger to a more politically expedient target.

Yes, it pisses me off. And with all of that swirling around in my head I turned the page and read Ishmael Reed’s op-ed piece in the same issue of the New York Times (expanded upon at blogs like my second home, The Swash Zone). Apparently, progressives calling for President Obama (and other Democrats) to show some backbone in the face of unprecedented GOP obstructionism need to STFU because we simply don’t understand what it’s like to be a black person in America:

One progressive commentator played an excerpt from a Harry Truman speech during which Truman screamed about the Republican Party to great applause. He recommended this style to Mr. Obama. If President Obama behaved that way, he’d be dismissed as an angry black militant with a deep hatred of white people. His grade would go from a B- to a D.

What the progressives forget is that black intellectuals have been called “paranoid,” “bitter,” “rowdy,” “angry,” “bullies,” and accused of tirades and diatribes for more than 100 years. Very few of them would have been given a grade above D from most of my teachers.

Um, here’s a news flash for you: President Obama has already been dismissed as an angry black militant with a deep hatred of white people. Or haven’t you been listening to Glenn Beck, the very same right wing commentator who cost Van Jones his job? Were you paying attention when Ben Stein came out and called then-candidate Barack Obama an angry black man on Fox News in 2008? No? Well, we progressives were, and we countered those accusations every time. Where were you?

Look, the “angry” label is nothing new, nor is it unique to black intellectuals. Maybe you weren’t paying attention when Republicans called Hillary Clinton “too angry” to win a presidential election in 2008. Karl Rove called Al Gore “one angry dude.” Howard Dean was too angry to be president in 2004 and here he is screaming after a primary win to prove it! We’re “the angry left,” and voters “don’t elect angry candidates,” as former RNC Chair Ken Mehlman famously told ABC News. (For some reason anger isn’t a negative for the Tea Party, though -- despite their guns and Town Hall shouting matches and hanging representatives in effigy. IOKIYAR.)

I get that there is a strategy among those in power exploiting cultural stereotypes and stoking fear of the “angry black male” to oppress black advancement in this country. That's the same reason we hear women are too emotional and gays are pedophiles and all Muslims are terrorists. We all have our baggage and yes, some people’s baggage might be heavier than others. But that doesn’t mean we capitulate to it. Caving to the whims of the hate machine which makes these erroneous claims does not make them go away. It enables them!

This is standard issue right wing framing. Liberals have been labeled “angry” (even “too angry”) for decades, and guess what, we are angry. We were angry when protestors rioted at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago and we were angry when we protested the Vietnam War and we were angry when we burned our bras in the 1970s and we were angry when we protested apartheid in the 1980s and we were angry when we protested the WTO conference in Seattle in 2000. Hell we were so angry over the stolen election in 2000 and subsequent Bush presidential misdeeds that we created a bumper sticker about it, which the Tea Party has conveniently co-opted.

It’s okay to be angry. Angry people get things done. I just never understood why being angry was supposed to be a bad thing, anyway. Just because the RNC says it is?

So no, I’m not going to tell Democrats not to be angry because Tweety might have a sad or Joke Line may wring his hands about frothy-mouthed liberal bloggers. Getting angry is okay, if you are fighting for your principles.

This is where courage comes in. Getting back to Ishmael Reed’s op-ed, I have to say I was mighty offended when I read this:

Unlike white progressives, blacks and Latinos are not used to getting it all. They know how it feels to be unemployed and unable to buy your children Christmas presents. They know when not to shout. The president, the coolest man in the room, who worked among the unemployed in Chicago, knows too.

Well damn, there’s a stereotype for you! Here’s a news flash for Mr. Reed: not all white progressives are used to getting it all, either. And I’ll be damned if I’ll be lectured on stereotypes by someone who can’t even recognize one when it pops out of his own keyboard.

Stand up and show some backbone, Democrats. Don’t cave to the right wing noise machine. Don't agree to a political approach which neuters liberal outrage, and only allows conservatives to get angry. Every time you do so progress takes a step back. Every capitulation emboldens the opposition. It's OK to be angry and it's even better to use that anger to harden your resolve.

And I guarantee you that the Republicans are going to say mean things about you. You can take that to the bank. You know what? They're going to say mean things anyway.

The Problem With Pragmatism

Thinking about the scold we Lefties got from President Obama the other day, and the scorn he got from us in return, and the criticism bloggers and journalists are heaping upon each other as they pick a side, it all seems to boil down to one thing: When it comes to policy-making in modern-day Washington, you either think something is better than nothing, or you think nothing is better than something.

If, like President Obama and some of our Democrats, you think something is better than nothing, then compromises on the tax bill and healthcare reform and the stimulus package and Afghanistan and GITMO are acceptable, pragmatic actions. But if you take the long view, then such pragmatism does more harm than good. Sometimes, nothing is better than something.

Or, to put it another way: if you have a blister on your thumb, then amputating your arm is definitely a radical, foolhardy move. Unless you’re a masochist, you will opt for a Band-Aid instead. But say you’re Aron Ralston, and you aren’t dealing with a blister but instead are trapped beneath a boulder. In that case a Band-Aid is useless and foolish; amputating your arm to save your life is the pragmatic, albeit drastic, solution.

The trick in politics is knowing when you have a blister and when you are trapped by a boulder. And some of us progressive-types are saying the Democrats are trapped by a boulder right now. What’s at stake isn’t simply a piece of legislation here and there or even an election or two, it’s the entire legacy of the New Deal. And perhaps the sooner everyone wakes up to that reality, the better.

Three weeks before President Obama threw a bucket of cold water on the liberal base, James K. Galbraith articulated the conundrum that is the Obama presidency in a speech ominously titled, “Whose Side Is The White House On?”

The historian and economist said:

On the topics that I know most about, the administration is beyond being a disappointment. It’s beyond inept, unprepared, weak, and ineffective. Four and again two years ago, the people demanded change. As a candidate, the President promised change. In foreign policy and the core economic policies, he delivered continuity instead. That was true on Afghanistan and it was and is true in economic policy, especially in respect to the banks. What we got was George W. Bush’s policies without Bush’s toughness, without his in-your-face refusal to compromise prematurely. Without what he himself calls his understanding that you do not negotiate with yourself.

[...]

The president deprived himself of any chance to develop a narrative from the beginning by surrounding himself with holdover appointments from the Bush and even the Clinton administrations: Secretary Geithner, Chairman Bernanke, and, since we’re here at Harvard, I’ll call him by his highest title, President Summers. These men have no commitment to the base, no commitment to the Democratic Party as a whole, no particular commitment to Barack Obama, and none to the broad objective of national economic recovery that can be detected from their actions.

This is all correct, and there’s more ... lots more. Go read Galbraith’s entire speech. He outlines point-by-point how the Obama Administration failed by advocating weak policies, by campaigning as a man of the people then siding with the banks and Wall Street.

The question is, what do we do now? Where do we go from here? Galbraith and others believe we are now lodged behind a massive, conservative boulder, and Band-Aids -- pragmatic, legislative compromises -- do more harm than good. If the Democratic Party is going to continue to exist as a political force, then they need to start showing they stand for something. That may mean some legislative failures to score some ideological wins.

Stupid? Maybe, if you’re talking about some legislative initiatives. But the country faces huge challenges right now. Big battles require big actions. And with every compromised, pragmatic vote, Democrats saddle themselves with Republican baggage. They lose the argument. George W. Bush launched his disastrous, budget-busting war of choice in Iraq, but Democrats voted for it too, and there we are. Learn that lesson, Democrats.

In two years no one will remember that the Republicans were being really mean on tax cuts. They’ll just remember that when the Democrats had majorities in the House and Senate and the White House, they gave millionaires a tax cut that isn’t offset by spending cuts. So the Republicans will also remind everyone that Dems added 900 bazillion jillion dollars to the deficit, because that’s how our narrative works. Republicans rule the media, and I promise you we’ll suddenly be a nation of fiscal hawks again when it comes time to spend money on things like Social Security and Medicare and social safety nets.

That’s how it works when you have one political party bent on destroying the greatest achievement of another political party.

Here’s Galbraith’s take:

What is at stake in the long run? Two things, mainly, in my view. First, it seems to me that we as progressives need to make an honorable defense of the great legacies of the New Deal and Great Society — programs and institutions that brought America out of the Great Depression and bought us through the Second World War, brought us to our period of greatest prosperity, and the greatest advances in social justice. Social Security, Medicare, housing finance — the front-line right now is the foreclosure crisis, the crisis, I should say, of foreclosure fraud — the progressive tax code, anti-poverty policy, public investment, public safety, and human and civil rights. We are going to lose these battles– get used to it. But we need to make an honorable fight, to state clearly what our principles are and to lay down a record which is trustworthy for the future.

Beyond this, bold proposals are what we should be advancing now; even when they lose, they have their value. We can talk about job programs; we can talk about an infrastructure bank; we can talk about Juliet Schor’s idea of a four-day work week; we can talk about my idea of expanding Social Security and creating an early retirement option so that people who are older and unemployed or anxious to get out of the labor force can leave on comfortable terms, and so create job openings for younger people who, as we’ve heard today, are facing very long periods of extremely aggravating and frustrating unemployment; we can talk about establishing a systematic program of general revenue sharing to support state and local governments, we can talk about the financial restructuring we so desperately need and that we’ll have to have if we are going to have a country which has a viable private credit system and in which large financial power is not constantly dictating the terms of every political maneuver.

We are not going to get these things, but we should have a clearly defined program so that people know what they are. And then, frankly, as was said earlier today, said most elegantly by Jeff Madrick, in the long run we need to recognize that the fate of the entire country is at stake. Its governance can’t be entrusted indefinitely to incompetents, hacks, and lobbyists. Large countries can and do fail, they have done so in our own time. And the consequences are very grave: drastic declines in services, in living standards, in life expectancies, huge increases in social tension, in repression, and in violence. These are the consequences of following through with crackpot ideas such as those embodied in the Bowles-Simpson deficit commission, as Jeff Madrick again outlined, such notions as putting arbitrary limits on the scale of government, or arbitrary limits on the top tax rate affecting the wealthiest Americans.

Yes. Yes, yes and more yes. Dear God, Democrats, but yes.

As the old addage goes, if you don’t stand for something you’ll fall for anything. Dear God, Democrats, quit falling for anything! Stand for something! You may not get it but you will have gained something else: your spine. Your right to Leadership. And you will have defended your legacy.

You will need these things moving forward. Galbraith’s speech is sobering, even depressing. He does not paint a picture of lollipops, puppies and rainbows. He says, indeed, that “we are heading now into a very dark time.” I believe he’s right.

Someone -- I don’t remember who, I think it may have been a commenter over at Balloon Juice -- pointed out that what people are really angry about is the realization that Washington is irreparably broken. Obama came to Washington promising to change the way things are done and he has failed miserably. With both houses of Congress and the White House, people hoped that partisan gridlock and party-over-country politics were history.

That didn’t happen because it was already too late. We can’t fix things the old-fashioned way. We need to wake up and smell the oligarchy, adjust our sails, and move forward accordingly.

"I Remember"

Wow. Powerful ad.



(h/t, Brilliant At Breakfast.)

“We Were The Messengers ... We Were Your Friends ... We Were Trying To Look Out For You”

See if we do that again. Scapegoating your own base for when you lose elections is really, really uncool.

Apparently the base being pissed off has been spun into the base not voting. I’m not sure where that’s coming from, but I’d say the base is going to vote. They may hold their nose and vote Democrat, they may vote third party or write-in. But the people you need to worry about showing up to vote in November is not the base, it’s the vast number of people who usually don’t vote in midterms -- the people you need the base to devote their weekends to reaching.

Hurling insults at the very people you need to knock on doors the next four weekends is not going to help your cause.

Why I Am Not Sufficiently Enthusiastic

No one can rant like Athenae:

You know what else dampens the fuck out of my enthusiasm? Talking all the goddamn time about how insufficiently enthusiastic I am. I mean, quit bitching about how I'm not excited and go fucking do some stuff to get me excited. God.

Yeah, I can dig that. You know what dampens the fuck out of my enthusiasm? Shit like this:

Senator Mary Landrieu, Democrat of Louisiana, said Thursday that she would block confirmation of President Obama’s new budget director until the administration lifts the moratorium on deep-water oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico.

Ms. Landrieu, a steadfast supporter of the oil and gas industry, said that although she believes that Jack Lew is qualified to lead the White House Office of Management and Budget, she will place a hold on the nomination as long as the drilling pause is in place. The moratorium is set to expire on Nov. 30, although Department of Interior officials have hinted that it may be lifted sooner.

Setting aside for a moment the fact that the moratorium affects just 33 rigs while thousands in the Gulf of Mexico chug merrily along, let me just say: WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU THINKING?! You’re going to hold hostage a key nomination presented by the President who is a member of your own fucking party over 33 oil rigs? After your state has just been devastated by the country’s worst oil spill? Ever?

Son. Of. A. Bitch.

Hey Democrats: This is why I’m not busting my hump hosting house parties and writing checks and making phone calls and knocking on doors for you. What kind of caucus is this? Can you not get your shit together for one goddamn month?

The buzzword of this election season is “enthusiasm gap,” and you’ve got an angry and disillusioned Democratic base, yet this is the perfect time for Mary Landrieu--who is not up for re-election--to step forward and demand obeisance? On her pet issue which the Democratic base deplores? Seriously?

Are you fucking serious?

I’m so over this shit I could spit. Instead of calling me "fucking retarded" or bemoaning the fact that I'm not sufficiently enthusiastic to volunteer for your GOTV campaign and spend my weekends knocking on doors, maybe you should go fucking do some stuff to get me excited. Like, for starters, telling Mary Landrieu to save her pity party over 33 deepwater oil rigs for after the election.

Jesus.

They Will Never Like You

Jonathan Bernstein's alarm bells go off in response to rumors that President Obama will replace Lawrence Summers “with somebody from the business community--i.e., a current or former CEO” in order to “disarm critics.” Bernstein writes:

But getting back to the main point here: this is a remarkably stupid plan, if true. It will not "disarm" critics who say that Obama is reflexively anti-business, any more than having Bob Gates at Defense "disarmed" critics of Obama's approach to terror -- indeed, actually expanding the war in Afghanistan and Pakistan and killing a lot of terrorists didn't slow down those who were intent on claiming that Obama was some sort of secret bin Laden sympathizer.  It doesn't work like that.  Critics will say what they will say, and it mostly doesn't matter, and at any rate there's nothing you can do about it.  What you can do, however, is have a well-run White House and do your best to have a well-run government.

This cannot be stated often enough, loud enough, or broadcast widely enough.

Let me point out something very obvious which Bernstein missed: the "critics" which the Obama Administration is supposedly trying to disarm are conservative ones. Apparently no one gives a crap about left wing critics. I know, y’all are shocked.

And yes, this is incredibly, stunningly stupid. Dear, sweet Democrats: conservatives will never, ever like you. NEVER. EVER. Quit trying to “please” them with your policies. Just do your shit and be done with it.

Bernstein writes:

Now, if these reports are simply a nod to an important constituency on the way to choosing whoever is the best available man or woman for the job, well, no harm done.  But if the administration is really more concerned about the short-term reaction to the selection -- how it plays in the press, rather than how it will help the president govern as well as possible -- then it's both a terrible mistake and a sign of real screwed up priorities.  It will certainly be interesting to see which it is.

Oh, I’m pretty sure we know which one it is. I think we’ve seen politics trump policy pretty much repeatedly, on everything from GITMO and terror trials and the anemic stimulus to the bungled healthcare "reform" and Wall Street "reform." And this is the great failure not just of President Obama but the Democratic Party in general.

Look, people: You cannot govern under a fear of criticism. The Republican Party wants back in power. They twisted the president’s Nobel Peace Prize into a negative. Conservatives criticized the president partaking of Sunday communion. Does that not tell you something?

Rush Limbaugh will NEVER like you! Sean Hannity will always say mean things about you! Mitch McConnell will always cast aspersions on your motives and character. This is as sure as the sun rising in the East each morning. And if there isn’t something real these people can criticize, they will make shit up. Hell, they’ll make shit up anyway. So quit trying to please the very people whose entire relevance as a political force is based on hatred of you. President Bush did whatever he wanted because he was resolute, and resolute trumps wrong every single time. Learn a lesson here, people.

During the primaries my biggest concern about Obama was that he wouldn’t have the spine to fight off conservative criticism and fulfill his campaign promises. My biggest concern about Hillary Clinton was that Clinton Derangement Syndrome would dominate our politics once again -- the “Clinton is a serial rapist” and "they-killed-Vincent-Foster" conspiracy crap. Turns out I was right about the former and wrong about the latter. The conspiracy crap is just as bad if not worse than it was in the Clinton years, but the Obama Administration has shown itself completely unable to deal with it.

The Party Of Tax Cuts For Millionaires

So now the Democratic Party is the party of tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires? When the hell did that happen?

Washington (CNN) – Thirty-one House Democrats, most of whom face tough re-election bids this fall, have signed a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer urging them to extend expiring tax breaks for all income levels, including the wealthy.

Apparently this happened when a few Democrats started to wet their pants over the prospect of losing re-election. These 31 House Democrats want to give millionaires and billionaires tax cuts that will add $700 billion to the deficit that they claim to care so much about. Apparently the conventional wisdom is that a Bush Tax Hike® (hey, he’s the one who designed them to expire this year, remember?) is not a good idea during a down economy.

I just have one question for you people: if giving the nation’s upper 2% of income earners a tax cut was such a brilliant economic stimulus, why the fuck are we in this mess to begin with?

Paul Krugman did a nice piece explaining why high end tax cuts don’t deliver enough “bang for the buck.” If Krugman is too much of a Dirty Fucking Hippie for you, let me direct you to Moody’s:

Tax cuts in 2001 and 2003 under President George W. Bush were followed by increases in the saving rate among the rich, according to data from Moody’s Analytics Inc. When taxes were raised under Bill Clinton, the saving rate fell.

So if the goal is economic stimulus, giving rich people a tax cut won’t do the trick.

But it doesn’t matter if this is good policy or not, because this isn’t about policy. This is about politics. This is about 30+ Democrats in the House who are scared they are going to lose re-election. That’s all these things are ever about: the politics, not the policy. And this is why the Democrats are in trouble. Because if we had people in Washington worried more about governing, not getting re-elected, then maybe we’d have some actual workable policies in place, not more Republican-lite crap. Maybe our economic stimulus would have been stronger and maybe our recession would have been over and maybe people would be back at work and maybe we wouldn’t be talking about letting “Bush-era tax cuts expire” but instead talking about the coming Bush Tax Hike® and maybe those 30+ Democrats wetting themselves over losing re-election might actually be in a stronger position today because the economy is stronger.

But that’s my alternate hippie liberal fantasyland. In the real world we have Democrats who think governing like Republicans is the surest way to success. Despite the fact that time and time again they are proved wrong, they keep doing it.

What a strange world we live in.

[REMINDER]: The tax cuts were set to expire so Congress could pretend they won't add to the deficit:

One of the most notable characteristics of EGTRRA is that its provisions are designed to sunset, or revert to the provisions that were in effect before it was passed. EGTRRA will sunset on January 1, 2011 unless further legislation is enacted to make its changes permanent. The sunset provision sidesteps the Byrd Rule, a Senate rule that amends the Congressional Budget Act to allow Senators to block a piece of legislation if it purports to significantly increase the federal deficit beyond a ten-year term. The sunset allowed the bill to stay within the letter of the PAYGO law while removing nearly $700 billion from amounts that would have triggered PAYGO sequestration.

It was a dodge, plain and simple. So does the deficit matter or doesn't it? Who among the Teanuts wants to take that one?

Why We Suck

What Jonathan Bernstein said:

Democrats and their supporters, I would think, shouldn't be talking about "expiring tax cuts."  They should be talking about Republican tax increases, passed by Republicans in 2001 and 2003, and scheduled to go into effect soon.  And then, instead of talking about "extending" GOP tax cuts, the Democrats should be talking about the Democratic tax cuts, or the Obama tax cuts, that they want to pass.  You know, to replace the Republican-passed tax increase.

That’s exactly right. Democrats suck at framing, we all know this, and the whole “extending tax cuts” thing just plays into the existing frame of Republicans as tax decreasers, Democrats as tax increasers. Even though it’s not reality, we all know what matters isn’t what’s true but what feels true.

I’ve played into the “extend the tax cuts” narrative too, we all have, and that’s because we don’t have a George Soros-funded, hierarchical, institutionalized establishment organization drilling talking points into peoples' heads until we become like politi-Zombies robotically repeating the same phrase on every talk show until it's thoroughly drilled into the collective unconscious.

Instead, my e-mail inbox is filled with a dozen different messages from a dozen different groups all day, every day. We don’t have that laser-focused, cult mind-set. Because we are not an organized political party. We are Democrats.

Earlier this week I talked about how language slants polls. The fact that we are talking about the “Ground Zero Mosque” instead of the “Park51 project promoting moderate Islam” is no accident. Of course, one phrase is clunky and unwieldy; the other is generates an emotional response that is good for TV ratings.

Bernstein says these issues don’t matter and are merely "annoying” and “sloppy.” I disagree. I think it matters a lot because these things shape the media narrative and the media narrative shapes public opinion.

None of this is new, of course. We’ve been talking about this since George Lakoff told us not to think of an elephant. That was, what, six years ago? What’s annoying and sloppy is that we’re still ceding the discourse to the right wing spin machine. We're still on defense. That we still don’t have a better mechanism for presenting our arguments to the public.

And that is why we suck.

Jumping The Shark

Eugene Robinson points out what we Lefties have been saying for some time: the Republican Party has gone batshit insane.

The Republican Party's candidate for governor of Colorado believes that bicycle paths are "part of a greater strategy to rein in American cities under a United Nations treaty." The party's Senate candidate in Nevada wants to privatize Medicare and Social Security -- and has called for the United States to withdraw from the U.N., though not because of the bicycle conspiracy. And the GOP's Senate candidate in Connecticut once climbed into a professional wrestling ring and kicked a man in the crotch.

Who slipped the crazy juice into the Republican Party Kool-Aid? Every time I hear a new crazy conspiracy theory from the far right -- Sarah Palin’s death panels, or Michelle Bachmann’s FEMA camps -- I think, “this one, surely, we can ignore, right? Nobody will take this one seriously?” And then it’s Topic A on the Sunday morning bobblehead shows.

So let’s talk Terror Babies. Apparently the theory originated with Texas Republican state legislator Rep. Debbie Riddle and has a believer in Texas Congressman Louie Gohmert, R-Crazytown. Gohmert is a birther, so it's no surprise he bought this tall tale.

The idea is that Islamic terrorist groups are impregnating women and sending them to the U.S. on tourist visas to have their babies here so they will be born U.S. citizens. The women and their infants then return to their home countries, where they raise their children to be America-hating terrorists. Twenty years later these America-hating young people sail across our borders as U.S. citizens, whereupon they wreak havoc upon the homeland.

Umm ... yeah. I think I saw that movie already. It stars Angelina Jolie and she totally kicks ass!

Seriously, are you people smoking crack? Send pregnant women over here to birth terror babies? Why on earth would any terrorist go to all that bother? They could just leave the pregnant women at home and send their America-hating spawn over to here on tourist visas -- skip the middle woman. And guess what: they don’t even need to wait 20 years! They can do it right now!

ZOMG!!11!!!!1!!!ELEVEN!!!

Someone grab an extra large box of Adult Depends, Republicans all across Texas are wetting themselves as you read this. What a bunch of Nervous Nellies.

If you haven’t yet watched this video of an incredulous Anderson Cooper trying to get Gohmert to substantiate his “terror babies” conspiracy theory, you are in for a treat:



Seriously, Democrats? You're losing to these people? The Republican Party has gone off the deep end, spouting some of the craziest crap this side of Alex Jones' Prison Planet. All you folks need to do is sit back and look like the sanest people in the room. Unfortunately, too few Democrats have stood up and called bullshit when they saw it; maybe, like me, they didn't believe "birtherism" and "death panels" and "FEMA camps" and "Obama is a secret Muslim" would be taken seriously. You guys need to learn what I've learned: nothing is too crazy for America these days. Time to play some hardball.

Anyway, with both the GOP and Democratic Party polling high “unfavorable opinion” numbers, I wonder if that won’t mean voter apathy for the midterms, especially among independents?

In which case, the Democrats better plan on engaging their base, if it’s not too late already. A sane energy and climate bill might be a good place to start.

Very Unprofessional

[UPDATE] 2:

What Olbermann said.

-----------------------------

[UPDATE]:

Rep. Keith Ellison (Minn.) calls for Robert Gibbs to resign.

Dems are in disarray, as usual. News flash: This is how we roll. I don't know why the White House thought liberals would be more like the rubberstamp Republibots who defended the Bush/Cheney torture & war show.

Maybe they thought we'd be like those idiots who were silent when the Patriot Act was signed and warrantless wiretap deals were signed, and then when a Democrat enters the White House they suddenly rediscover civil liberties. You know, those folks with the "silent no more" signs and their tricorn hats with the tea bags dangling off the corners? Hey it's not our fault you guys were silent during the Bush/Cheney years when your jobs were shipped overseas and your civil liberties were taken away. "Silent no more," maybe, but you're still hypocrites.

C'mon. That's not who we are. When we liberals smell bullshit we speak out, no matter which party it's coming from. It's kinda what I love about us. We have integrity. You don't like it? Try not selling us bullshit and telling us it's filet mignon. Sure I'd have loved some Canadian-style healthcare, but I understand why we wouldn't get it. Thing is, you never even tried. And no, thank you very fucking much, but I won't be happy with a healthcare "reform" that demands I buy insurance from a private, for-profit industry which has not shown itself interested in my health at all, but rather my wallet. Without any kind of non-profit, public option, what you have given us is a bailout of the insurance industry--the one industry which least needs it.

You don't like me pointing this out? Fuck you.

Quit telling me to clap louder. Instead, try listening to us for a change. You might learn something.

/rant

------------------------------------

I'd say the Democratic National Committee picked the wrong day to call and ask me for $1,000.

I'd also say this was a completely bone-headed move in an election cycle marked by a pronounced enthusiasm gap.

Dear Democrats: I have just one question for you guys. Are you trying to fuck up the next election? Because you're sure acting like it.

Echo Chamber Populism

E.J. Dionne’s column in today’s WaPo is excellent. Dionne looks at the New York Times/CBS News survey of the Tea Party “movement”--I use quotation marks because is a gathering of angry people who aren’t sure what and why they’re mad or what to do about truly a “movement”?--and he makes some really strong points. For one thing, he points out that

This must be the first "populist" movement driven by a television network: Sixty-three percent of the Tea Party folks say they most watch Fox News "for information about politics and current events," compared with 23 percent of the country as a whole.

Yes, thanks for noticing. We liberals have been saying this all along.

Dionne also points out that Tea Partiers hold beliefs that are actually far outside the mainstream of America:

The poll asked: "In recent years, do you think too much has been made of the problems facing black people, too little has been made, or is it about right?" Twenty-eight percent of all Americans -- and just 19 percent of those who are not Tea Party loyalists -- answered "too much." But among Tea Party supporters, the figure is 52 percent, almost three times the proportion of the rest of the country. A quarter of Tea Partiers say that the Obama administration's policies favor blacks over whites, compared with only 11 percent in the country as a whole.

So race is part of this picture, as is a tendency of Tea Party enthusiasts to side with the better-off against the poor. This puts them at odds with most Americans. The poll found that while only 38 percent of all Americans said that "providing government benefits to poor people encourages them to remain poor," 73 percent of Tea Party partisans believed this. Among all Americans, 50 percent agreed that "the federal government should spend money to create jobs, even if it means increasing the budget deficit." Only 17 percent of Tea Party supporters took this view.

Asked about raising taxes on households making more than $250,000 a year to provide health care for the uninsured, 54 percent of Americans favored doing so vs. only 17 percent of Tea Party backers.

Again, this reaffirms what we lefty types have been saying for the past year now: that the Tea Party is the same wackadoodle far right fringe we’ve always had whose ideas are far outside the mainstream. They are pissed because they lost an election and are out of power and that happened because, I repeat, they are a far right wackadoodle fringe outside the mainstream.

See folks, this is echo chamber populism: a group of people who talk only to each other, who get all of their information from like-minded sycophants, whose news and information and views are formed inside a bubble. It’s warm and cozy in the bubble but it’s also not reality. No wonder they believe they are some kind of majority and something went terribly, terribly wrong for them to not have their viewpoints codified in the halls of power.

Feeding this belief is a mainstream news media which covers every fart and belch at a rate of one reporter for every three Tea Party convention participants, and which repeats the spin that this is just a mainstream group of folks because to do otherwise is an admission they were foolish to jump aboard the bandwagon to begin with.

Sorta reminds me how the media was all like, "America fuck yeah!" during Shock & Awe and then when Iraq was revealed to be a huge lie they were all like, "What? Who? Us? Why we'd never be so irresponsible!" Except for a handful of Jake Tapper-types who said maybe they could have done a little better job of reporting in the run-up to the Iraq War. But, bygones!

But I digress. Anyway, Republicans will pander to this group because that’s how they roll, but Democrats need to run far and fast from the Tea Baggers.

Writes Dionne:

Democrats face problems not from right-wingers who have never voted for them but from a lack of energy among their own supporters and from dispirited independents and moderates who look to government to solve problems but have little confidence in its ability to deliver.

Ayyy-fucking-men to that. The biggest mistake Democrats at any level -- local, state, or nationally -- could make is to try to run to the right. Liberals needs to be energized and motivated, and independents and moderates need to see that there is, in fact, a reasonable alternative to the fringe wackadoodles that the Republican Party is busy sucking up to.

Lessons Learned

Like everyone else, I have a lot of thoughts about the healthcare bill’s passage. I’ve made no secret of my dislike for the bill, calling it a “crap sandwich” on numerous occasions and observing that without a public element, it is indeed the very definition of fascism.

But regardless, it has passed, and it is what it is. I’m not popping champagne corks or high-fiving my fellow liberals. I’m glad that we have a good start toward curbing insurance company abuses, that finally the people have a little more leverage against a for-profit system that makes millions of dollars off of denying people access to what is supposed to be the best healthcare system in the world.

I do think this marks a good opportunity for both Republicans and Democrats to learn a few lessons. I’ll start with the Republicans, who were shameless in their lies and fearmongering about death panels and socialism, egging on their unhinged base to the point where we had Congressmen hung in effigy, a Parkinson’s patient taunted, a Civil Rights icon called “nigger” and a gay Congressman called “faggot.” You guys really humiliated yourselves in your race to the bottom, and don’t think the vast majority of Americans who don’t waltz around in tri-corner hats didn’t see your shenanigans and find them repulsive.

It wasn’t just protestors who seemed dangerously unhooked from reality, but Republicans in Congress. I caught just a little bit of the debate over the weekend, enough to see Republican Rep. Marsha Blackburn lament that “freedom has died a little bit today,” which is really rich coming from someone who:

• Voted NO on requiring FISA warrants for wiretaps in US, but not abroad. (Mar 2008)
• Voted YES on removing need for FISA warrant for wiretapping abroad. (Aug 2007)
• Voted YES on allowing electronic surveillance without a warrant. (Sep 2006)
• Voted YES on continuing intelligence gathering without civil oversight. (Apr 2006)
• Voted YES on making the PATRIOT Act permanent. (Dec 2005)

So, ya know, don’t talk to me about the death of freedom when you want the government to eavesdrop on peoples’ phone conversations without a warrant. You’re living in your own little world, lady, where “freedom” is defined on some pretty bizarro terms, and I sure don’t want to go there with you.

Former Bush speechwriter David Frum has this to say to the Republicans:

At the beginning of this process we made a strategic decision: unlike, say, Democrats in 2001 when President Bush proposed his first tax cut, we would make no deal with the administration. No negotiations, no compromise, nothing. We were going for all the marbles. This would be Obama’s Waterloo – just as healthcare was Clinton’s in 1994.

Only, the hardliners overlooked a few key facts: Obama was elected with 53% of the vote, not Clinton’s 42%. The liberal block within the Democratic congressional caucus is bigger and stronger than it was in 1993-94. And of course the Democrats also remember their history, and also remember the consequences of their 1994 failure.

Frum called the healthcare bill’s passage a “huge win for the conservative entertainment industry” because Limbaugh gets to keep his angry listeners and he gets to keep them angry by telling them lies about Democrats wanting to abort your babies and haul grandma off to a death panel. This is good for Limbaugh’s ratings and his advertisers, but it’s not good for the Republican Party either.

Frum is absolutely right. The entertainment wing of the Republican Party -- Limabugh, Hannity, Glenn Beck and, yes, Sarah Palin -- can only succeed when their listeners are enraged and uninformed. They operate in an alternate reality created by talk radio and FOX News. They parade around with signs referring to themselves (with no irony whatsoever) as the “Silent Majority,” and use “I am the mob” hashtags on Twitter.

Unfortunately, their alternate reality doesn’t make room for a few hard truths, which Frum points out: that Obama was elected with 53% of the vote, and the Democratic congressional caucus is bigger and stronger than when Clinton was president. And also the fact that polls have been back and forth on the healthcare bill, but those showing high negatives included people like me, dirty fucking hippies who wanted socialized medicine and are pissed we aren’t getting it. And that individual components of the healthcare bill, like an end to pre-existing conditions, are actually popular .

You folks created a fantasy world, so don’t come crying to me when the cold light of reality crashes your tea party.

And to Democrats I have to say, you guys blew it big time, even as you celebrate your historic victory. How in the hell did you let the opposition present a massive expansion of our private, for-profit health insurance system as socialism? Hello? How many times did we hear Republican politicians and pundits repeat, robotically, the scripted talking point about a “massive government takeover of healthcare.” I mean look, John Boehner is still doing it. How many times did we hear that fallacy and the Chuck Todds, Jake Tappers, Joe Scarboroughs, Chris Matthews’ etc. never once said: hey wait a minute, that’s not true.

How many times are the Democrats going to let their message get away from them before they figure out how to deal with this? How long before they figure out that the so-called “liberal media” is not your friend and they won’t correct the record and report facts, they operate solely on the level of opinion?

Get on message, people. I don’t expect Democrats to be robots and read off a script like the Republicans do, we aren’t that disciplined or that brain-dead, but for crying out loud, there is no way in hell an expansion of a private, for-profit business is anything close to “government run healthcare.” When you hear that kind of BS about future legislation, please in God’s name, call them on it!

Anyway, that’s enough ranting for now. I’m glad the sideshow is over ... for now.

Republicans Are Rubber, Democrats Are Glue

Rep. John Shaddegg, R-AZ, says he supports single-payer:

When Shuster accused Republicans of supporting insurers, Shadegg balked.

"No we don't! You guys keep saying that, but I'm not the guy pushing the bill that says we should compel people to buy insurance from the for-profit guys. That's the Democrats," he said.

Then, after some back and forth with Shuster: "I would support single-payer."

"You would support a government-run medical system?" Shuster asked.

"Absolutely," Shadegg said. "I would support forcing American insurance companies to compete. Right now they have a monopoly."

Shaddegg is lying, of course: last fall he likened healthcare reform to “full on Russian gulag, Soviet-style gulag health care”. It doesn't matter though. It doesn't matter that he's shamelessly confused single payer with the public option. It doesn’t matter because he’s just repeating the new talking point, which is this:

“I'm not the guy pushing the bill that says we should compel people to buy insurance from the for-profit guys. That's the Democrats."

So this is how it’s going to be. Democrats get pwned again by the Republican message machine. Only this time, the Democrats are going to find it awfully hard to counter the pro-health insurance company label because it is correct. If this healthcare bill passes (and I suspect it will), Democrats will force people to buy insurance from private, monopolized, for-profit health insurance companies, without competition from the public sector. It's true.


So expect to hear more of this line in the ensuing months and years. Shaddegg was first out of the box but I guarantee you, he won’t be the last. We live in a nation of amnesiacs, where constant repetition of talking points in the echo chamber rewrites history on a daily basis. Now we hear that 9/11 happened on Clinton’s watch and the economic decline happened on Obama’s watch. And now the Democrats have been pwned by the right wing message machine once again.

It doesn't matter that the Republicans were being really mean and shouty people with racist signs showed up at town hall meetings and elites on the Washington Post and New York Times editorial pages had big sads and things like single payer and the public option were called "socialized medicine" and "communist" and "fascist" all at the same time. No one will remember that, all they will remember is that we were forced to eat a shit sandwich and don't think for a moment that the Republicans won't make Democrats own it.

By trying to do what was expedient, instead of fighting for what was right and what would actually work, the Democrats have saddled themselves with the “pro-health insurance company” label. They have forgotten (if they every knew it to begin with) that when it comes to the message wars, Republicans are rubber and Democrats are glue. Whatever Republicans say about Democrats sticks.

By refusing to put single payer on the table, we never got to have that debate (though as I’ve said, we’ve been fighting anti-single payer arguments with the Tea Shouters and their “no socialized medicine” messaging). Now Democrats have the pro-health insurance company albatross hanging around the necks--health insurance companies, probably the most universally reviled business in this country.

Way to go, guys.

(h/t, Kleinheider)

Resistance Is Futile

Once again, I repeat: if you aren’t reading Harper’s, you’re wasting your time.

April’s cover story, The Vanishing Liberal: How The Left Learned To Be Helpless (subscription only, getcha one), is a case in point. It traces liberal movements going back to the 1870s, points to globalization in the 1990s for its current woes, and arrives at this assessment of President Obama and the Dems:

Whereas the Populists’ soapbox lecturers or the Progressives’ magazine exposés or FDR in his radio “fireside chats” explained the way of the world to the people and argued for why and how that way must change, Obama—like most Democratic leaders—concedes that the way of the world is wrong but tells us why it must stay that way because, some time in the past, powerful interests decreed it so.

Thus we are told that single-payer or a public option may be a good idea but that private insurance companies are simply too well–ensconced for reform. Afghanistan may be hopeless, but we have already committed to it. The power of the people is never activated, nothing much is asked or required of us, even as thugs overrun congressional town-hall meetings.

Instead, the party that claims to represent all progressive interests in this country proceeds with its impervious, self-interested agenda. The administration’s stated priorities for the near future are to balance the budget before a deep recession has abated and to commit the nation to a long-running war in a dysfunctional Asian country that we neither understand nor care about—thereby promising to repeat, simultaneously, the two worst mistakes made by liberal presidents in the past seventy-five years. As for the long term, the White House will form a commission bent on cutting “entitlements,” such as Social Security and Medicare, that are the bedrock of retired Americans’ prosperity.

This situation has most sentient folks on the left deeply disturbed -- hell, I was just chatting with my 78-year-old mother-in-law on the phone 20 minutes ago and she said in her sweet Southern way, “the only thing I’m mad at Obama about is that I just don’t understand why he didn’t open Medicare up to everybody and be done with it.” Indeed.

And the money quote:

Obama, the congressional Democrats, and most of our politicians at every level now maneuver within political confines defined by financial and military interests they cannot conceive of challenging.

The Tea Party is in no better shape:

No one is going to abolish the Federal Reserve, or the income tax, or Social Security and Medicare; if they did, small businesses and working people would be trampled beneath the corporate entities bent on their exploitation.

Liberalism is dead, the “great, forced opening of the past 130 years” it spawned has ended. And a true reformist movement? Good luck with that.

Hate to piss in peoples' Wheaties but even if healthcare reform passes, we're still doomed.

Adding .... All is not completely lost, of course. But the point of the article is to show how liberalism has been reborn repeatedly throughout history by appealing to new constituencies -- farmers, workers, immigrants, blacks, women, gays. A place was made at the table for those who had been excluded from the halls of power; now, the "ruling elite" is one of

unparalleled diversity, and includes unprecedented numbers of women, minorities, and individivuals who have worked their way up to power on brains and determination alone, usually without having inherited connections or wealth. It is a meritocracy much like the one long envisioned by many liberal reformers--and it has decided to capitulate, reap its considerable rewards, and draw the ladder up after it.

In this environment it will take a massive effort to bring that ladder down again. Will it happen? I just don't know.

What Brown Can Do For Us

While Scott Brown’s win in Massachusetts last night has prompted much soul-searching and teeth-gnashing among Democrats (and high-fiving among Republicans) at the very least it provided one more piece evidence that Republicans are still always wrong.

How so? I’m referring to this:

[...]CNBC's "Mad Money" host Jim Cramer says that Scott Brown's Massachusetts Senate win tonight will mean a "gigantic rally" is in store for stocks tomorrow.

Ooops. Not so much.


And then there’s this from ABC News at 1 pm yesterday:

The Dow Industrials are up almost 100 points at this hour and traders say the potential for a Republican to win Ted Kennedy’s senate seat is behind the rally.

Double oops.

And my utmost favorite:

Fox and Friends Suggests Brown Win Will Boost Your 401k (VIDEO)

Not yet!

The stock market has been tanking today. And I do mean tanking. Is it because of Scott Brown? Of course not. Reuters blamed bank results and earnings reports from IBM. The AP blames China. In other words, the usual smoke-and-mirrors voodoo magic bullshit that causes stock market fortunes to rise and fall on the tiniest sneeze from some far-flung corner of the financial world.

But Republicans peddling that whole “vote Republican and get rich” meme are looking a little silly today. One thing Brown did not do for us today is rally the stock market.

Cold comfort, yes, but there’s that.

And here’s something else I’m sick of hearing. I’m tired of hearing how the Democrats have now lost their filibuster-proof majority, which seems to be all the mainstream news media can talk about. Ohmygosh that glorious super majority that did us all so much good for the past year, what will we do without it?

Puh-leeze. When did we ever have a super majority? Here’s “Party Of Joe” Joe Lieberman threatening to join a GOP filibuster. And here’s Democrat Ben Nelson threatening to filibuster the post-conference healthcare bill if it’s not to his liking. Here’s Ben Nelson again threatening to filibuster healthcare reform if it doesn’t have the Stupak Amendment. Oh lookie, here’s Democrat Blanche Lincoln threatening to filibuster the public option.

And here are eight Democratic Senators joining the GOP in support of the filibuster on cap and trade.

So give me a break. When members of the supermajority decide they aren’t getting enough attention and threaten to filibuster their own party's key legislation just because, you know, they can, then we’ve got a bigger problem than how many D's and R's are in the Senate.

Democrats need to grow a pair. I’m sure the predictable result from the Scott Brown win will be that Democrats conclude they need to be even more “Republican light.” Already Jim Webb has called for a halt to all healthcare votes until Brown is seated. And this makes me very sad, because it tells me Democrats have no fucking clue as to what's happening in the country.

I don’t think Scott Brown's win was a “referendum on healthcare reform” so much as it was a "referndum on the status quo." For one thing, Massachusetts already has universal healthcare which is in many regards far superior to that which the rest of the country would get if healthcare reform were to pass. So near as I can tell the federal healthcare legislation wouldn’t affect people in Massachusetts one bit.

I think more than anything people are tired of the status quo. Brown was an unknown state senator, from a party that had not held that Senate seat for an entire generation. People want change, and in Massachusetts that was Scott Brown. In another state it could be someone else, from a different party.

People are frustrated. They want Washington to work again. We were promised change with President Obama and we didn’t get it. We were promised an end to lobbyists running our government and we didn’t get it--the healthcare bill proved that.

So to the Democratic Party I send you a cautionary piece of advice: either lead, follow, or get the hell out of the way. Your epic fail in Massachusetts signals a problem far bigger than just being too liberal or too conservative. You were handed the reins government and you promptly twiddled your thumbs. We've got the same corporate control of government and our discourse that we had under Bush. That is what people are tired of. We're tired of banks and insurance companies and Wall Street brokerages getting all sorts of wonderful legislative boons that ordinary citizens never get.

So people are frustrated and they want someone, anyone, different. Remember the root of populism isn't left or right, it's people. So, dear Democrats, focus on things that help actual people and you might be okay. Continue to bend and scrape before the mulitnationals and, well, see ya.

Screw Healthcare Reform & The Horse It Rode In On

On the crap sandwich we are being presented that is supposed to represent healthcare reform, Atrios nailed it yesterday:

Once it passes they will own all of it, not just the reforms. Republicans will turn every health insurance horror story in a story about how the Dems' HCR is a tremendous awful horrible failure, whether or not it has anything to do with specific reforms enacted.

This is exactly right. So I am absolutely, completely befuddled as to why anything that represent real reform is being blocked by Senate Democrats.

I simply don’t understand this apparent determination to gut healthcare reform at all costs. The two biggest problems with our current healthcare system--high cost and lack of access for millions of people--are being gutted right and left:

• Importation of drugs from overseas, which would lower costs? No way. Pharmaceutical companies don’t like it, so it’s a no-go.

• Eliminating caps on insurance benefits? Of course not! Someone facing a catastrophic illness like cancer or severe brain injury--something requiring loads of expensive hospitalization and rehab--should still face bankruptcy and financial ruin under the “new” rules.

• Real competition for insurance companies in the form of a “public option”? That’s crazy talk! Insurance companies must be allowed to maintain their monopoly to provide whatever service it is they perform -- and I’m still unclear as to what that is, since they no longer pool risk but seem to exist simply to skim their profits off the top.

• Repealing the antitrust exemption insurance companies have enjoyed since 1945, limiting competition and keeping costs high to consumers? Not yet! We’re still holding out on that one, though.

Listen, the healthcare bill sucks. It’s worse than bad because near as I can tell, it’s nothing more than a big handout to insurance companies, which in my opinion is an industry that has outlived its usefulness. Listen, insurance folks: You’re supposed to pool risk and keep costs low. You aren’t doing that, in fact, you’re doing the opposite. You’ve become a little scam fleecing hardworking people of their life savings. And you act as if you are completely unable to change your most egregious policies yourself, begging Congress to come in and pass a law against them.

What the hell?

Anyway, Democrats need to get a fucking clue. What they are expending so much time, energy, money and effort on sucks. Not because it’s “socialism” or “government-run healthcare” but because it doesn’t change a damn thing. And we’re going to come out of this nine months of town brawls and hanging Congress critters in effigy and divisive political angst and agita with a healthcare system that is still broken. I'm absolutely dumbfounded.

And excuse me, but the Republicans are no better, in fact, they're worse. They're throwing up roadblocks right and left, even trying to tell us that the system we have now is just super, in fact, is so much better than what people in other countries have. How stupid do you think we are?

Republicans and Democrats alike have come at it from opposite directions but they seem to have arrived at the same place: keep the broken system we have now. A privileged elite are making far too much money off the scam to change it.

If you ask me, it’s better to have no healthcare bill at all right now. Because it’s not worth the paltry “reforms” we’re being presented. I’d rather not have an individual mandate forcing people to buy costly private health insurance when that health insurance still caps benefits, is exempt for any competition, and the only piece of candy we’ve been presented is eliminating pre-existing conditions. Nice but not worth it.

So everyone who is asking me to call my Senator asking them to support the healthcare bill: No. My Senators are Republicans and they are not going to support it anyway. They aren’t supporting it for all the wrong reasons but we at least have arrived at the same place.

Democrats: you screwed up. BIG time.

Epic FAIL, Democratic Party Edition

[UPDATE]:

Braisted sums it up: "Find a better candidate!" Amen.

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There were a few of them yesterday.

First, there’s Ty Cobb’s loss in the Dist. 62 house race, epic because the one-vote Republican majority in the Tennessee State House just got broadened to two. I don’t live in the 62nd but anyone who has paid the slightest attention to local blogs knows that Cobb was such a hard-right conservative that in a sane world he’d run as a Republican. He even got the endorsement of Tennessee Right To Life over the Republican candidate Pat Marsh, who ultimately won. [Adding: I forgot to mention this morning that Pat Marsh, the Republican candidate, used to be a Democrat but switched parties. So this is what passes for a Republican victory in Tennessee. Go figure.]

So, what have we learned, Democrats? The TNGOP is gloating:

"During this election, Democrats consistently touted their candidate’s conservatism in an effort to appeal to voters across the district.

“Democrats tipped their hand in this election and demonstrated that their strategy to get their candidates elected is to have them run as Republicans,” continued Devaney.

Well, that’s how it appears. Is it because, as TNGOP Chair Chris Devaney claims,

“... Democrats know they have to run as Republicans because the American people are rejecting policies being pushed by liberal Democrats at the local, state and federal levels.”

because that’s how it looks. But I don’t think so. I don’t think the American people have rejected Democratic policies. I do think the American people reject running a candidate indistinguishable from the Republican, especially in a special election where folks need to be motivated to get out and vote. Ty Cobb was not that candidate.

You need to offer people a clear choice and focus on issues that people really care about, not this "values" crap that doesn't put food on the table or create one job. Why is that so hard to understand?

I will say, despite a flood of e-mails and phone calls asking me to knock on doors, work the phone bank, and volunteer my time in GOTV activities yesterday, I did not lift one finger to help elect Ty Cobb. Note to Democrats: please do not call me up and ask me to help elect a man who doesn’t believe in what are supposed to be bedrock Democratic principles.

And speaking of, fat lot of good that Tennessee Right To Life endorsement did. So can we finally stop caring about endorsements from these groups? Voters sure don’t care.

On the national level, we have the “success” of the Baucus Bill which in my view is another epic FAIL. As Eclectic Radical noted in comments last night:

Max Baucus himself deliberately chose to aim for broad bipartisanship by writing a watered down bill and failed to hit his goal.

Yes indeed. That’s because some conservative Democrats forgot the goal is healthcare reform not bipartisanship; they came up with a crap sandwich of a bill and still got just one Republican vote.

Major FAIL.

So, where do we go from here? Well, let me suggest that party people need to get off this “Democrats need to start looking and acting like Republicans” kick. Let’s support those candidates who embrace solid Democratic Party policies and see what happens.

And how does all of this jibe with my earlier comments about Rep. Jim Cooper? Well, Jim Cooper is no Ty Cobb, for one thing. But maybe if we stopped acting like Republican-light is the direction the Democratic Party needs to go, folks like Jim Cooper wouldn’t feel the need to tack to the right, either.

I dunno, just a thought.

I’ve Done My Job

This throw-away comment from John Aravosis pretty much sums up how I feel about Senate Democrats these days:

Just a quick reminder to Democrats in the Senate: You have a filibuster-proof majority. You asked us all help you get there last fall during the elections -- and we helped. Now, do something with that filibuster-proof majority.

You know, I wonder if the Democrats in D.C. really get it? Because my e-mail in-box is still overflowing with fundraising pleas from the DSCC, DCCC, DNC, you name it. I’m still getting phone calls from these folks. And I sorta feel like I’ve done my job. I donated and held house parties and made phone calls and went door-to-door and registered voters and fundraised and wrote letters to the editor and did all of that crap that was asked of me. I’ve been doing it for the past six or seven years. And I’m done.

Time for you to do YOUR job and deliver some results. I expect a good, strong healthcare bill, and a strong national energy policy that solves our carbon problems.

The right are basically non-existent as an opposition. All they can do is stamp their feet and whine and basically act like spoiled adolescents. As Krugman noted, the Republicans’ ends-justify-the-means tactics are no different from when Clinton was president except in one fundamental way:

The only difference now is that the G.O.P. is in a weaker position, having lost control not just of Congress but, to a large extent, of the terms of debate. The public no longer buys conservative ideology the way it used to; the old attacks on Big Government and paeans to the magic of the marketplace have lost their resonance.

So, Democrats in Washington, if you can’t deliver the healthcare reform we need and expect under a perfect storm of conditions then you don’t deserve power.

And if you fail us now, you aren’t getting another penny from me, or one more minute of my time. And I’m not the only one.