Tag: frames

Jasen Comstock: S is for Senate

jasencomstock:

I want the Bush tax cuts to expire, totally. They were passed through reconciliation and designed to be temporary. If you are some butthurt citizen moaning about your missing $75* a year and a half from now in your tax return, you can blame the Republicans for designing a tax cut that was designed to last ten years.

Same here. Though the real play it seems to me would have been to come to the press conference the other day and say:

“The Bush tax cuts are and were a failed policy. Those days are over. Here are the Obama tax cuts, tied to expire as economic growth and recovery takes place over time (such that the deficit and debt impact will be minimized and limited to this period of crisis for the nation), and valued at the exact same amount as the entire Bush tax cuts, but pointed entirely at small business, start-ups, and those individuals and families earning below $250k/yr.”

You then torment the GOP every day between now and then about why they’re against tax cuts. What could be wrong with tax cuts?
Whether or not they pass: the GOP loses. Instead, and as usual, the administration and the Democratic party at large engages the GOP on their turf, and using the GOP’s own framing. Even if something gets done, the credit (such as it is) goes to Bush. When they expire, the blame goes to Obama. Yet these are the ground-rules “our side” chooses again and again.
Jasen Comstock: S is for Senate

brooklynmutt:

American politics “seem to be getting worse because, sorry to say it, people get stupider and stupider every election cycle.” – Bill Maher

See, I would simply say “This is why we fail.”
Obama should have, at every speech (or, at the very least: every other speech) beaten home the essential failure and utter depravity of the previous administration and its numerous supporters and enablers in the Congress. People shouldn’t be able to hear the word “Boehner” (as just one example) without thinking of failed policy and economic destruction.
Instead, we got “small-ball, make-nice, compromise on everything and the GOP will come on board.” Boy, that worked out well. Boehner can come right out and say he wants to continue (or resume) Bush policies exactly as before without the least fear; quite the contrary: he’s treated as a big thinker. This is why we fail.

Republicans Slip From Unprecedented Lead to a Tie in Gallup Survey

jasencomstock:

notthatkindagay:

Democrats and Republicans are now tied in Gallup’s weekly tracking of voter preferences, just a week after Republicans took an unprecedented l0-point lead.

[…] I think Gallup did this on purpose to tell Washington DC to get off Gallup’s nuts about the generic ballot.

I think we just need better cross-tabs. “Among likely voters who are sure Obama is a US citizen…” and “among likely voters who believe Iraq attacked America on 9/11” would be two very interesting ones. That or sample size needs to go up considerably. When you have subgroups as dutifully uninformed as we do, you have to make serious allowances or change your methodology.

Republicans Slip From Unprecedented Lead to a Tie in Gallup Survey

If the GOP wins the House, the probability that this “liberal-overreach” narrative will be Beltway CW is roughly 100%

Glenn Greenwald, basically right but forgetting that this will be the narrative if Dems hold the House but lose seats, lose no seats, or win every seat contested in 2010. This IS the narrative. Period.

I happen to think that liberals should be open to Social Security cuts as part of a balanced package of deficit reduction.

Jonathan Chait, spewing the purest form of horseshit possible.
Social Security is not in crisis. All our problems should be like Social Security. Social Security is a rounding error in comparison to the demands of Medicare and Medicaid going forward.
Rest assured, though, The Democrat will engage this issue on the inevitable “savagely cut programs, don’t touch the tax tables or military spending” terms that the GOP demands (and will get) and will thereby set the Overton Window such that the leftmost possible position is that of merely not eliminating the social safety net completely. And wonder why all of us on drugs out here abandon them come 2012.

Five Easy Tweets(es)

Looking at how Ruth Marcus addresses Boehner’s nonsensical output in her column this morning, dare I say that I see signs of actual progress. Perhaps even the Villagers are growing tired (and maybe even a little afraid) of the GOP’s shtick?

There are times when I flirt with the notion that the country would be better off with divided government.

She starts, ominously and predictably enough, with some Serious Person boilerplate: the compromise position on anything is always superior, even when one side’s position is empirically better relative to some definable long-term metric. But, for once, she quickly rights the ship, and this opener proves to be simply Reese’s Pieces for the many Broderians reading her piece on their homeworld:

The man who would be speaker outlined his agenda Tuesday in a speech to the City Club of Cleveland – economic policy reduced to, literally, five easy tweets. The Ohio Republican offered up a depressing blend of tired ideas, tired-er one-liners (“We’ve tried 19 months of government-as-community-organizer”) and cheap attacks. The cheapest: calling for the firing of Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and economic adviser Larry Summers.

[…]

[Boehner says “job-killing” twelve] times, actually. As in “job-killing tax hikes,” “job-killing bills,” “job-killing agenda,” “job-killing federal regulations.” This is bumper-sticker politics, not a real economic plan. I’ve been skeptical that Democrats would get much political traction with their argument that the Republican agenda is just George W. Bush recycled, but speeches like Boehner’s make me rethink.

Even those two paragraphs appearing on the WaPo Op/Ed page would be cause enough for a minor celebration. But, being a professional, she saves her best for last:

The argument for immediate spending cuts is hard to square with the argument against tax increases. If the latter is harmful – a disaster, in Boehner’s words – then surely the former is as well. “When Congress returns, we should force Washington to cut non-defense discretionary spending to 2008 levels – before the ‘stimulus’ was put into place,” Boehner says. This would be more convincing if he were willing to identify specific cuts. It is, even more, an enormous dodge. Stimulus spending is a sliver of the long-term fiscal problem.

Democrats – and the country – would benefit from a responsible opposition party. I’m still looking for evidence of one.

So am I. But there are two important points in here, both of which being concepts that almost never see the light of day in the MSM:

  1. That you can’t say that massive non-military spending cuts are critical, but that any and all tax increases are unthinkable.
  2. That tax-hikes would be a disaster, but that we need not ever worry about the fiscal impact of said non-tax-hikes at all, and that we may furthermore consider them “free” is nonsensical on its face.

Getting those two simple concepts into wide and repeated circulation: a big deal. Now, of course, when Obama returns from vacation to fire his cabinet, well, that’s something else.

Pundits blame the victims on Obama Muslim myth

southpol:

[…] Dave Weigel came the closest, writing that “At some point it became acceptable to question Obama’s American-ness, which naturally begged the question of whether he was a secret Muslim… and the WorldNetDailys, tabloids, and Drudge Reports of the world were ready to keep begging that question.”

This is the Overton Window in action. Republicans have a host of beyond-far-right outlets to scream and holler relentlessly about whatever their preferred issue of the day is and Democrats never, ever employ a similar tactic with the left. A year-long, sustained chorus about single payer, for instance, simply didn’t materialize. The left wing is either too pragmatic or too cynical with regard to their chances on these issues. That and the Democratic leadership repeatedly lets the GOP determine the talking points; e.g. Boehner is reportedly going to call for the firing of all Obama economic advisers. When The Democrat engages him on that ground, his ground, and they will, the ultimate outcome will then be that some of the advisers have to go or, at best, take a severe public dressing down. All good outcomes for the GOP in an election year.
Whether or not they should go is quite beside the point. You are allowing your opponent to set the agenda and define the margins that contain what will be viewed by the David Broders of the world as the “sensible and serious” solution. Again and again.
This is precisely why Rep. Alan Grayson is such a valuable and yet underutilized asset. With a dozen people like him talking about Cheney’s blood-drenched teeth (or what have you) and a few media outlets doing likewise, suddenly the true moderate position, or even one (gasp!) marginally to the left of center, looks awfully sensible. Instead of using Grayson in this way, the modern Democrat runs and hides from him and others, going so far as to extract the occasional tearful apology when some genuinely affecting truth leaks out. This is the primary failure of leadership in the Democratic party, and nothing will change until this does.
The facts do not matter; presentation and framing is everything. You, the Democrat, are fighting an organized party, its dedicated propaganda outlet that happens to be a wildly popular source of “news,” and a distributed right-wing noise machine on web and talk radio that reliably sets the discourse for the rest of the MSM. You’d better bring your A-game and act like you’re in a 24/7 campaign for your political life. And they never do.

Pundits blame the victims on Obama Muslim myth

Sherroditus

So, we’re entering week two of an event that, thanks to quick thinking, White House officials nipped in the bud and transformed into a one day story.

On the plus side: this OpEd from EJ Dionne is superlative. I don’t share his optimism, but he points out what strikes me as the key facet linking the Sherrod narrative to a much larger issue:

The Obama team did not question, let alone challenge, the video. Instead, it assumed that whatever narrative Fox News might create mattered more than anything else, including the possible innocence of a human being outside the president’s inner circle.

The Facts Do Not Matter. While still folding like a cheap suit, at least the administration seems to have internalized (and fumblingly tried to act upon) this basic tenet of today’s media complex. And that’s the thing that really differentiates the Sherrod dust-up: the fairly counter-intuitive notion that the true facts of the story not only emerged but were covered and became the ongoing core storyline employed by the MSM. This rarely happens.
I’d argue that this is because the truth was suitably damaging to the administration while the “lie” in the matter rather inconveniently put on display the deeply dysfunctional brand of “news” that FOXnews peddles and furthermore highlights a larger media establishment that not only ignores but frequently rushes to defend such behavior.
A truly agile administration would have used this rare opening. Indeed, they should be waiting for such an opportunity, with tightly produced packages ready to drop at the first sign of FOXnews’ exposed flank. Instead, they fired Sherrod. This is why they fail.
But, getting back to the novelty of having a truth emerge from the fiction and actually manage to become the narrative, for how long have we lived with other convenient lies like:

  • Al Gore says he invented the internet
  • Unlike Americans, Al Gore wears four-button suits
  • Al Gore said he discovered Love Canal
  • Al Gore says he was the basis of Love Story
  • Al Gore wore earth tones because a woman told him to

That the first of these is actually mentioned by Dionne is as shocking as it is unusual. Polite people never mention these facts.
Admittedly, these examples are merely a smattering from the Al Gore section of the Convenient Media Storybook. There are many more, and innumerable sections; Social Security is soon to be insolvent, tax cuts have always paid for themselves, and etc… Al Gore makes an interesting case because the man has been out of Presidential politics since he was elected President back in Campaign 2000. These and other lies about him still appear on a daily basis in the mainstream press. But, of course, these things cut both ways. The Church of the Savvy tells us that both houses are always equally flawed. False equivalency is the stock and trade of the business. So let’s give equal time and run down all the manifold lies that are repeated daily about disgraced former Speaker Newt Gingrich:

  • –

The typical evolution of stories like Sherrod’s goes something like this:

  1. Wrong but convenient and story-making non-fact is put “out there.”
  2. Serious people like Cokie Roberts and Juan Williams pick it up and uncritically repeat it
  3. Truth of matter emerges on A19. Is ignored. Derided as too complicated, booooo-ring, or “old news.”
  4. When directly challenged with (3), serious people like Cokie will haltingly agree with its ultimate veracity, but continue to treat (1) as fact because it’s “Out there.” And then proceed to recall (1). Forever.

The Sherrod case is playing out very differently. Not only did the reality emerge, it was accepted and propagated. Dionne continues:

The traditional media are so petrified of being called “liberal” that they are prepared to allow the Breitbarts of the world to become their assignment editors. Mainstream journalists regularly criticize themselves for not jumping fast enough or high enough when the Fox crowd demands coverage of one of their attack lines.

This is true to a point, however he’s either forgetting or just avoiding the key lie. The key myth that makes it all possible: that the MSM is, in and of itself, liberal. A false attribution, but one that is (surprise, surprise) frequently repeated. This is what movtivates the fear of being called liberal. It’s the frame that drives NPR to run stories worrying over three hours of clearly differentiated msnbc editorial programming alongside 21 hours of straight news (three of which are dominated by a former Conservative member of Congress) whilst merrily whistling past the fact that FOXnews runs a 24/7 propaganda mill, complete with “serious” stories like the entirely false notion that the Obama Justice Department categorically refuses to prosecute black men; it would be one thing if this nonsense was limited to FOXnews, but it is not. Dionne picks up this thread:

Thus did Post ombudsman Andrew Alexander ask this month why the [Washington Post] had been slow to report on “the Justice Department’s decision to scale down a voter-intimidation case against members of the New Black Panther Party.” Never mind that this is a story about a tiny group of crackpots who stopped no one from voting. It was aimed at doing what the doctored video Breitbart posted set out to do: convince Americans that the Obama administration favors blacks over whites.

[…]

Now, [Bush Justice Department official J. Christian] Adams is accusing the Obama Justice Department of being “motivated by a lawless hostility toward equal enforcement of the law.” This is racially inflammatory, politically motivated nonsense – and it’s nonsense even if Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh talk about it a thousand times a day. When an outlandish charge for which there is no evidence is treated as an on-the-one-hand-and-on-the-other-hand issue, the liars win.

Again, Dionne soft-pedals it. It’s not just Hannity saying this during “editorial” hour; it’s the entire “news” operation on FOXnews doing it. Presenting it as fact. Repeatedly. Which, for unclear reasons, positively compels the rest of the MSM to do likewise and ponder why they didn’t report on this falsity more aggressively and sooner without ever pausing to consider that the story is baseless and more often than not invented out of whole cloth. Thus do people like Drudge, Limbaugh, Beck, and O’Reilly become the assignment editors for the MSM. Many say the world is round. Others say it is flat. Opinions differ.

Thus does the nation die at the hands of invincible ignorance.

We could have waited all day. We could have had a media circus. But we took decisive action and it’s a good example of how to respond in this atmosphere.

White House Deputy Chief of Staff Jim Messina, reputedly speaking favorably about the White House’s reaction to the Sherrod situation.
You know, he’s right. Instead of a one day tempest in a teapot, with whose outcome you could hound and cow like-minded media Rethuglicans indefinitely, you created a weeks- or months-long, possibly even permanent eruption of fear, uncertainty, and doubt amongst your staunchest supporters, all of whom now think the absolute worst of you: that you have no spine, never did, and never will. This makes you useless to them, by the by.
Well done.

Letter to the President

This is how you are perceived:

Even before his unemployment checks ended, Dwight Michael Frazee’s days were filled with the pursuit of any idea that could earn him a buck. But few are working out, and now his nights are filled with dread.

[…]

Frazee, who is married and has a 5-year-old daughter, is in a financial free fall with no safety net.

“My life has been total stress. I sleep maybe four hours a night, worrying about money,” he said. “I understood the president and Congress had to stabilize the banks, get Wall Street going. I figured something would be done for middle-class Americans, that they couldn’t abandon us. But I was wrong.”

“President Obama talks a lot about making the victims of the gulf disaster whole, but what about the victims of this economic disaster?” Frazee said. “Nowadays, he seems mostly concerned with image. Now, he doesn’t want to be seen as a big spender. But people need help.

Please do note that at no point does Mr. Frazee mention the Republicans, "the party of No,” filibusters, Code Brown, and even deficits only come up tangentially.
When you lose control of the House come November, your advisers will most likely hide behind a lot of nonsensical crap along the lines of “the facts are on our side.” If you believe them, even for a second, then this is why you will fail. The facts do not matter; perception is everything.

You needed to be out there every day for over a year now framing the GOP as the obstruction to economic progress and primary engine of pain and suffering in the streets of America. That the GOP wants Mr. Frazee and everyone like him to Go Die in the Streets. Everyone in your party needs to be doing the same thing. None of you are, even now. None of you even seem vaguely aware of the issue in the abstract. This is why you fail.