Here’s an idea: MAKE THEM VOTE

…the best way for Dems to nationalize the elections right now is for Congress to hold a vote on whether to extend the middle class tax cuts. If Dems did this, it would reinforce the national strategy that Dems already have in place: Making the case that a vote for the GOP is a vote to return to the Bush policies that ran the economy into the ground.

Indeed, we’re finally seeing polling evidence that voters are beginning to buy the core Dem message that the GOP wants nothing more than a rapid restoration of Bush’s policies. Is it an accident that this is happening right when the debate over the Bush tax cuts is dominating the news? Doubtful. And holding a vote on whether to extend the middle class tax cuts would dramatize the contrast between the national parties even more cleanly, forcing lawmakers to go on record choosing between Obama tax policy and Bush tax policy. Put simply, there is no better way of driving home the Dems’ core message than to hold this vote.

[An] increasing share of national income [has] gone to the top 1 percent of earners since the 1970s, when their share was 8 percent to 9 percent. In the 1980s, it rose to 10 percent to 14 percent. In the late-’90s, it was 15 percent to 19 percent. In 2005, it passed 21 percent. By 2007, the last year for which complete data are available, the richest 1 percent were taking more than 23 percent of all income.
The richest one-tenth of 1 percent, representing 130,000 households, took in more than 11 percent of total income in 2007.
That does not leave enough spending power with the rest of the population to sustain a flourishing economy.

Bob Herbert discussing Robert Reich’s book Aftershock.
Generic GOP response to everything but the last line: So what?
Generic Democrat response to everything: If we just move those deck chairs to this side, and these to that…
Generic Population response, living it, far too busy to read about it: inchoate blood rage.
Making the current situation any clearer?

This is why | Exhibit 4,252

Eager to bridge a daunting enthusiasm gap, Democratic National Committee Chairman Tim Kaine recited a list of President Barack Obama’s accomplishments Wednesday to an auditorium packed with George Washington University College Democrats.

It came as he unveiled a new website, a new logo and a new slogan for his party: “Change That Matters.”

Wow, this sort of crazy, “out of the box” “thinking” will really “move” the public and reassure them that The Democrat is “here to lead.” Just wait ‘till the GOP sees this unstoppable package of Democratic Fury.

After all, who needs to go around rocking the boat by pushing policy and an eat-shit, GOP legislative calendar built on top of concrete and popular ideas when you can reboot the web design?

This is why they fail.

This is why | Exhibit 4,251

“The Bush tax cuts are sunsetting by design, due to legislation that almost the entire Republican leadership supported,” one senior House Dem leadership aide says. “President Obama and the Democrats want to implement the `Obama tax cuts for the middle class.’ It provides a nice contrast between what the current administration is proposing and what Republicans did in the past.”

“We’re kicking it around,” adds one senior Senate Democratic aide.

You should have been “kicking it around” in January of 2009. Or earlier. What the fuck do you think a legislative majority is for?

This is why they fail.

Honestly, nobody deserves to lose as much as this lot does. Just completely beyond belief.

Maybe they should take a meeting on it and form an exploratory commission to establish the Blue Ribbon Panel of 2012 sometime in early December. Nothing but time, after all.

(h/t The Plum Line)

Economic Policy Institute gives us a simple chart:

38.7% of all of the income growth accrued to the upper 1% over the 1979-2007 period: a greater share than the 36.3% share received by the entire bottom 90% of the population.

Those in the top 10% of the income scale received 63.7% of all the income growth generated over the 1979-2007 period. In contrast, the bottom 20% of all earners saw such a small share of income growth – just 0.4% – that it barely shows up on the included pie chart.

Let’s repeat: over the last ~30 years, the top 10% got about 60% of all income growth. Everybody else: not so much.
There should be no speech, no appearance, no utterance, no anything involving any Democrat anywhere a camera, microphone, or goodly crowd may gather that does not include this chart. Every time, every day, every hour between now and November.

Don’t hold your breath.

There’s no point in trying to do something good if it’s met with enormous resistance from a lot of folks.

Howard Dean, on the Park 51 Islamic community center

If this is what he truly believes, then really, to hell with him. (via savingpaper)

Agreed. This quote is so astonishing, it’s hard to believe it hasn’t been Breitbarted. But it hasn’t. If this building which, amongst many other features, also contains a prayer room isn’t broadly popular, then it shouldn’t be built and the First Amendment can go fuck itself along with the spirit of most of the rest of the Constitution.
Remember, this is coming from the man who proclaimed himself a representative of the “Democratic wing of the Democratic Party,” largely in direct response to this kind of horse shit. Assuming that quote is still operative, then we can only conclude that the Democrats now are entirely made up of Clintonian triangulators: never take a stand, never push for an idea, and never, ever lose sight of what is polling well, regardless of how that may fit with what you know to be right. Work instead to make progress around the margins, and always be willing to compromise even that if that’s what it takes to please Our Republican Overlords. And they wonder why Democratic enthusiasm is down. And think we’re all on drugs.
There really is no hope anymore. Total collapse, popular uprising, military coup…whatever it is, something is going to happen, but whatever that future something is it doesn’t seem likely to include a rebirth of a governing philosophy from either side that isn’t based upon rank ignorance and limbic-system politics. This is how empires crumble.

It’s up to Republicans to decide if they agree with this strategy. Do they want an issue or do they want us to get it done quickly?

Jim Manley, spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.
Statements like this boggle the mind. Welcome back from Mars, Jim, how has the weather been on The Red Planet? Much rain since your arrival there in the early-70s?

Profiles in Compromise

tl;dr: Deval Patrick should be whisked away to Washington DC as executive legislative adviser to The Democrat caucus. The man knows how to run a compromise.

Ense petit placidam sub libertate quietem

We here in the People’s Republic of MA (like innumerable other rubes around Our Republic) seem to believe that if we cast our lot into the already saturated “high end” casino market that all Our Problems will be solved, preferably overnight.
In fact, Governor Deval Patrick tried to run a plan along these very lines through the General Court (what serious people know to be the actual name of our legislative branch) pre-meltdown.
But before we get to the rest of the story, let’s just get out of the way that Lemkin firmly believes MA will, no matter how the exact terms of the legislation turn out, be left with a single, already run down on opening day “racino” (e.g. some cheap-o brand™ slot machines in a temporary out-building clumsily tacked on to an existing track for the horsey racing. Suffolk Downs, perhaps. For those of you scoring at home, we’re now two years and counting on this particular semi-crazed belief.)

First Compromise

Being a state full of legislative do-nothings who want to do nothing that might possibly rock the boat and, if possible, not even build or look at or refer to the boat lest it also be rocked by one or some of those actions, naturally did nothing about the governor’s casino proposal. It was an early and stinging defeat for the then-new and popular governor facing, uh, stern opposition from a General Court massively dominated by his own party…
But, what do you know, then-Speaker (one Salvatore DiMasi) more or less got dragged off in manacles (seemingly) as a direct result of this inaction.

Second Compromise

So the meltdown. Like many states, about 190 trillion dollars has come out of teacher pay, bridge spackle, food for babies, and most definitely libraries. Unlike many states, MA actually has a well managed rainy day fund, though any and every use of same faces seemingly daily disputes about whether or not this crisis is, in fact, a rainy day. Anywho, interest in all that “free money” from casinos is unsurprisingly revived.
Hey, I was for it before I was for it, says Governor Patrick. Let’s dust of old dusty here and run it through again: the original plan called for three casino licenses put up for competitive bids; we can now set about arguing over the wheres and hows.
New Speaker Robert DeLeo sees a golden opportunity right there in his very own district: Suffolk Downs can get slots! Perhaps even in a ramshackle “temporary” outbuilding! Lots of arguing ensues. Sooner or later, a deal emerges that lays out a surprisingly evenhanded compromise: one racino (that will be put out for bid, thus ensuring some extra revenue) plus, of course, the original three casino resort licenses (and all the aforementioned wheres and hows).
Then: Surprise! DeLeo sees to it that the legislation arrives on Patrick’s desk with provisions for two, count ‘em TWO racinos. Since there would then be no bidding (as exactly two existing tracks want to add slots), this is a direct handout that costs the Commonwealth at least some amount of money and further dilutes an already diluted gambling audience that we plan to dilute some more and then laugh all the way to the bank about. But surely the governor will wilt like a Typical Democrat, take his medicine, and get his long beloved three casinos at the seemingly small expense of two (dread) racinos.

The Reply

Now, what do you imagine happened? We all know that The Democrat is the undisputed king of still accepting a compromise even after the terms compromise itself are rescinded to the point of mockery (usually this boils down to promised GOP support that evaporates and but so the GOP-demanded provisions are left in there anyway). Well, it turns out we’ve got a version of the line item veto here. So Deval dusts off old dusty: not one but two racinos are removed from the bill. What is essentially his initial three casino plan is returned to the General Court. Take it or leave it. One can only assume the word “motherfuckers” figures in there somewheres.

DC could learn a lot from this man.

Filibusted

jasencomstock:

“I think we should retain the same [filibuster] policies that we have instead of lowering it…. I think it has been working.”

—

Sen. Daniel Akaka (D-Hawaii)
Better Democrats™ please. (via lemkin)

Well don’t get rid of the fucking thing now. the Democrats are going to be a c-hair away from losing the senate this fall, and will most certainly lose it in 2012 (I think republicans only have to defend something like 9 seats that election).

They’d just be beating the rush. The first thing the Republicans will do upon retaking the Senate is eliminate the filibuster. To add insult to injury, they’ll point to their own obstructionism as evidence of the system’s failure. And won’t be challenged by the media in any way shape or form; quite the contrary, any Democrats making a complaint will be painted as “sore losers” who, as usual, want to ignore clear mandates from the American people.

I think we should retain the same [filibuster] policies that we have instead of lowering it…. I think it has been working.

Sen. Daniel Akaka (D-Hawaii)
Better Democrats™ please.