Tag: 2012

The Republican leader of the House actually said that ‘this is not the time for compromise.’ And the Republican leader of the Senate said his main goal after this election is simply to win the next one.
I know that we’re in the final days of a campaign. So it’s not surprising that we’re seeing this heated rhetoric. That’s politics. But when the ballots are cast and the voting is done, we need to put this kind of partisanship aside – win, lose, or draw.
In the end, it comes down to a simple choice. We can spend the next two years arguing with one another, trapped in stale debates, mired in gridlock, unable to make progress in solving the serious problems facing our country. We can stand still while our competitors – like China and others around the world – try to pass us by, making the critical decisions that will allow them to gain an edge in new industries.
Or we can do what the American people are demanding that we do. We can move forward. We can promote new jobs and businesses by harnessing the talents and ingenuity of our people. We can take the necessary steps to help the next generation – instead of just worrying about the next election. We can live up to an allegiance far stronger than our membership in any political party. And that’s the allegiance we hold to our country

Barack Obama. Nice dream. Never going to happen. Plan accordingly.

Delusion, Failure, Recrimination

Jonathan Chait ably describes the Republican cycle:

The loop begins with Republicans gaining power on the basis of promising to cut unspecified programs, or perhaps programs accounting for a tiny proportion of the federal budget. That is the stage of the cycle we are currently in. Then Republicans obtain power and have to confront the fact that most spending programs are popular, and so they must choose between destroying their own popularity by taking on programs like Medicare, or failing to materially cut spending. So they settle on tax cuts instead of spending cuts. Then eventually their supporters conclude that they have been betrayed by their leaders, and cast about for new leaders with the willpower to really cut spending this time.

I’d add that even if they zeroed the entire non-defense discretionary budget they’d still be less than halfway to balance. And that’s before they formalize the permanent status of the Bush tax cuts and inevitably start adding in new tax cuts, which, of course, never have to be budgeted or paid for.

That the previous paragraph is news to most Americans is why the Democrats fail. And, just to name one, the elimination of the NIH and NSF through this zero budgeting process would basically doom the United States to second or third tier status in science, research, and development for decades, if not forever. So there’s that.

But let’s not talk details.

Delusion, Failure, Recrimination

A Discontinuous Discussion

Mike Lee, (likely: R, Utah): Our current debt is a little shy of $14 trillion. And I don’t want it to increase 1 cent above the current debt limit and I will vote against that. [A Government shutdown is] an inconvenience, it would be frustrating to many, many people and it’s not a great thing, and yet at the same time, it’s not something that we can rule out. It may be absolutely necessary.
Alex Seitz-Wald (ThinkProgress): [Disgraced] Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich’s government shutdown in 1995 was disastrous; it ended up costing taxpayers over $800 million in losses for salaries paid to furloughed employees, delayed access to Medicare and Social Security, and caused a ‘[m]ajor curtailment in services,’ including health services, to veterans.
Eric Cantor (R, VA, Minority Whip): No. I don’t think the country needs or wants a shutdown. [We in the GOP] have to be careful [pursuing our agenda such that we’re not] seen as a bunch of yahoos.”
Lemkin: I wouldn’t worry about that, Cantor; that hasn’t cost you a thing yet and presupposes a MSM that, you know, gives a shit about objective reality. Mark it: government will be shut down early 2011.

On Consensus

President Obama: [Democrats need to have an] appropriate sense of humility about what we can accomplish; [to that end, I pledge to] spend more time building consensus.”
Mitch McConnell, (R, KY): The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.

The Rodeo Clown

lemkin:

This is why you have to point out O’Donnell’s foolishness early and often: [paint other Tea Klanners with her foolishness, blah blah blah]

jasencomstock:

This is not true.  We are not having a constitutional debate between lawyers.  Rush Limbaugh is not going to change his mind on this, neither is O’Donnell- just as you are not going to change your mind on this, or the 2nd amendment, or the 10th.  For the most part, the vast vast majority of Americans are not going to change their minds either. 

“Every man, wherever he goes, is encompassed by a cloud of comforting convictions, which move with him like flies on a summer day.”

A large segment of the population wants to believe this and you cannot take it from them by pointing it out. 

This is indeed precisely where we disagree, but for different reasons (I think, anyway). We don’t need to convince (nor, as you point out, are we going to) the Limbaughs and Palins of the world; and but also I feel like these sorts of unreachable Tea Klan true believers are a relatively small fragment of the population; low-information voters, on the other hand, can be swayed by the red meat that those same individuals peddle, but (and more importantly) I’ve found that those low-info voters also deeply understand various foundational concepts implicit to the country or, more accurately, to our national conception of civics and civic duty. Importantly, they also make up most of the electorate. And these same low-information folks might well holler “hells yeah!” at a “Taxed Enough Already!!!” chant, but would recoil in horror if they really understood the full depth of the fundamental changes these folks want in how the country would operate and the foundational ignorance of many of its most prominent proponents.
You can pick off huge numbers of folks that are simply angry, but don’t buy the whole line; but to do so: you have to be having that conversation. Constantly, but also respectfully. Otherwise they’ve got nothing to compare these Tea Klan positions to. The Tea Klan is all fired up; the Democrats are sitting quietly talking about comparative top marginal tax rates over time. By consistently and firmly pointing out the idiocy, you begin to pick off topics near and dear to the Tea Klan. They simply can’t be mentioned anymore because the audience will tune-out, sigh, or laugh. Inoculation is key, though: people have to approach some new Tea Klan candidate armed with some basic and memorable information they’ve retained from the last time these folks were out on the hustings. Thus you progressively and inevitably marginalize and ultimately eliminate as a political force the Tea Klan (by taking away its rhetoric and, essentially by equating said rhetoric with foolishness or hard-hearted and ultimately unamerican concepts) and, in large part, you deeply wound the GOP itself for its role in enabling these crazies.
After all, we must never forget that polls show the GOP is (still) historically unpopular. There are reasons for that, and they extend well beyond “party of Bush” type recent history. We need to call attention to the darker veins of this stuff early and often. That the national party apparatus is constantly afraid to do so is precisely why they fail.

Looking at You, Nevada

jonathan-cunningham:

Raise the minimum wage to a living wage.

I think this, more than anything else, is what truly explains the electoral map:

They are almost the same (though inverted) image, with the exceptions of the Nevada/Utah/Texas WTF are they thinking™ lunacy corridor (and the fact that CO is lately a genuinely purple state, seemingly awakening from a long and careless slumber). And, honestly, Nevada’s current and indefensible Tea Klan tendencies are indeed a reflection of this: we’ve got Reid and still can’t get economic reforms going in this state.

It is not and may never be clear to me why all the Democratic “strategists” in the employ of the national party apparatus are so seemingly oblivious to the fact that we live in a polarized nation, but not polarized along any of the lines they parrot…polarized along the “I can afford to live where I do” and “I have to work three jobs just to buy my dollar’s worth of potted meat product and still keep myself and my family off the streets” lines. This is the real and only issue. It drives everything, most definitely including the Tea Klan.
Yet strategists and their candidates almost never pay more than lip service to the idea of it; more often than not, it’s dismissed entirely in service of better enabling the lives and fortunes of plutocrats.

That the term “working poor” now basically defines the middle class in this country is the real, existential issue. And still nobody but nobody ever wants to talk about it, much less do anything.

The Rodeo Clown

This is why you have to point out O’Donnell’s foolishness early and often:

Are you telling me separation of church and state’s in the First Amendment? It’s not. Christine O’Donnell was absolutely correct – the First Amendment says absolutely nothing about the separation of church and state.“
–Rush Limbaugh

And he’s right…if your requirement for Constitutional legality is based on applying some sort of misguided Biblical Inerrancy to the Constitution and its legal meanings, then you’re going to be disappointed re: church and state. This is, not coincidentally, also why the very same Tea Klanners see a major difference between:

separation between church and state

–and–

separation of church and state

These are seen as completely different statements. And one of those two is coming at you straight from Hitler. And you want the facts to matter?
That the establishment clause of the first amendment implicitly creates a separation between church and state is unimportant to the Tea Klan. They are reading this as the literal string of words and most definitely not for any deeper meaning. We don’t want to cast our lot in with a bunch of pointy-headed lawyers, now do we? The words separation, of, church, and state do not appear. Period. Furthermore, "In God We Trust” is on the currency; the Tea Klan worships Lord Jesus, so that word “God” must mean Christian God and not, say, Tiamat, God of Chaos. That it was put there relatively recently is utterly unimportant: the facts do not matter. It is there; we are a movement made up of Christians, therefore the US must be an inherently christian nation, (because some of the founders were, in fact, Christians) and thus we should be, on that basis, ruled by christian laws, morals, and ideals.

Look, the Tea Klan has about 10 preferred narratives. You’re not going to beat any of them based on the facts or some sober assessment of the deeper meanings of the Constitution and its amendments. The facts simply do not matter.
The only way you beat these memes is by linking them inextricably in the minds of the broader populace with outright lunacy. As soon as anyone starts talking about nullifying the 17th amendment, you need a large fraction of the population to link that with nuts like O’Donnell and instantly, reflexively turn off. Oh, 17th amendment again, that is a rube’s issue, this person must be a nut just like that know-nothing O’Donnell. Wait, didn’t I hear Sharon Angle talking about that same crap? That makes me uncomfortable, no matter how strong she is on the menace of Social Security. Hey, why is the GOP nominee for President yapping on about the 17th amendment just like that crazy woman did? Thus ends the Tea Klan.

In their darkest moments, White House aides wonder aloud whether it is even possible for a modern president to succeed, no matter how many bills he signs. Everything seems to conspire against the idea: an implacable opposition with little if any real interest in collaboration, a news media saturated with triviality and conflict, a culture that demands solutions yesterday, a societal cynicism that holds leadership in low regard. Some White House aides who were ready to carve a new spot on Mount Rushmore for their boss two years ago privately concede now that he cannot be another Abraham Lincoln after all. In this environment, they have increasingly concluded, it may be that every modern president is going to be, at best, average.

The Education of President Obama – NYTimes.com (via brooklynmutt)
Well, then, might I suggest all of you that feel this way: go do something else. Seriously, and right now. Because you’ve got at least two more years of a term to do something with up there, and it’s not going to get any easier. If you thought the GOP was going to greet you with a big palm parade upon your arrival to DC, you haven’t been watching. If you think a GOP-led House or (may the Gods forbid) a GOP Congress is suddenly going to get interested in policy, let alone serious policy of any kind, then you haven’t been watching. Maybe a life in politics isn’t for you after all, you self pitying, ever defeated children.
tl;dr: Better Democrats, please.
Source: The New York Times