Tag: messaging

There is no policy that President Obama has passed or proposed that added as much to the deficit as the Republican Party’s $3.9 trillion extension of the Bush tax cuts. In fact, if you put aside Obama’s plan to extend most, but not all, of the Bush tax cuts, there is no policy he has passed or proposed that would do half as much damage to the deficit. There is not even a policy that would do a quarter as much damage to the deficit.

Ezra Klein – Putting the $3.9 trillion extension of the Bush tax cuts in context (via southpol)
Yep. And, if you’re The Democrat, you shall never speak of this. Ever. Too complicated, apparently.
Source: Washington Post

Can I Finish? Can I Finish?

We can’t let the people who’ve been hit hardest by this recession and who we need to create the jobs that will get us out of it foot the bill for the Democrats’ two-year adventure in expanded government.

–Mitch McConnell

May as well unpack this idiocy, since I know there not a living Democratic strategist or seat-holder that will deign to do so.

We’re apparently meant to believe that those

“who’ve been hit hardest by this recession”

are uniformly located in that >$250k/yr bracket. And, I guess it’s true, Time tells us that:

A wealthy Boston matron has forsworn her weekly massage and canceled the family’s spring skiing trip to Utah.

A West Coast tycoon has sold one of his two yachts. A socially prominent Manhattan couple has switched from vintage to nonvintage champagne, while some of their affluent friends provide only California jug wine—in Waterford decanters. A Los Angeles millionairess, Elsie Pollack, now features chili at her dinner parties; another wealthy hostess has replaced cut flowers with synthetic centerpieces. A Chicago industrialist has turned in his Cadillac for a relatively miserly Mercedes 220 with a diesel engine that gets up to 32 m.p.g.

So they pretty much may as well commit suicide rather than face those living conditions. We can only assume that the lower-income individuals still blessed with jobs are likewise switching to different $70,000 cars with marginally better gas mileage. Or, I guess, we can look at silly things like the proportional tax rates by income, courtesy New York Times:

My God, it’s almost as if the poor (and relatively poor) are and have been bearing most of the weight of running this country (as measured by proportion of income) for a long time now. Who knew?!? We’re also meant to forget they are the group more likely to have lost homes, jobs, and every thing else as a direct result of this downturn. And will be more likely to end up in a lower-wage, lower-opportunity job as a result of long-term unemployment. But pity the very rich. They’ve had to get new cars and switch wines.

Then there’s this:

“the Democrats’ two-year adventure in expanded government.”

Has government increased in size over the last two years? Over the last 50 as a share of GDP? Again, let’s go to the charts, this one courtesy of Econobrowser, showing the non-defense consumption and gross investment (by government) as a share of GDP:

Astounding! How will the Republic survive that kind of Socialistic tidal wave?

This is why they fail.

Brian Williams, Fucktard

“Jon [Stewart] has chronicled the death of shame in politics and journalism,” says Brian Williams, the NBC Nightly News anchor who is a frequent Daily Show guest. “Many of us on this side of the journalism tracks often wish we were on Jon’s side. I envy his platform to shout from the mountaintop. He’s a necessary branch of government.

I see, so being the Nightly News anchor for a major network, which recently drew 8,040,000 viewers and regularly leads the "National Nightly News” pack, doesn’t actually constitute a “platform” to “shout from the mountaintop.” Then what the fuck is it for? I’d seriously like to know.

Stewart, on the other hand, gets “about 1.8 million viewers each night.” What a mountaintop he has. Truly the envy of someone with more than 8 times as many viewers; more than Stewart, CNN, FOXnews, msnbc, and probably a few other notables combined in that time slot. Every night. But that doesn’t constitute a “mountaintop” from which to do silly things like inform people with rigor and insight. Oh my no. That sort of thing only happens over on Comedy Central where the corporate overlords apparently aren’t quite so twitchy about letting a little actual information seep into the nightly colorcast. Which is fine by Williams, if these quotes are to be believed.

This attitude, this ceaseless and unstoppable form of pseudo-intellectual nihilism is killing the country. Measurably. It’s what Krugman calls “Invincible Ignorance.” Oh, and that kooky rube Stewart knows about it and has long recognized it:

The pettiness of it, the strange lack of passion for any kind of moral or editorial authority [from the MSM], always struck me as weird. We felt like, we’re serious people doing an unserious thing, and they’re unserious people doing a very serious thing.

Brian Williams, case in point. Pettiness and lack of passion of any kind incarnate. Tonight on NBC Nightly News!

[All quotes from this excellent profile]

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.

Boehner’s Deficit

Rep. Boehner called for bipartisan cooperation on two new proposals: First, to pass a spending bill now at the 2008 level and second, to extend the current tax rates for two years.

Lest you think this was just another case of unsubstantiated example-making, rest assured that Boehner not only wants to continue Bush policy, he wants to continue it exactly, right down to the spending levels in place when W finally scuttled out of office. He provides no context as to why, how this helps the budget deficit long-term, or anything else for that matter. I’m seriously not sure he’s aware that those are even issues worth considering.
Left out entirely, of course, is the fact that while spending on a 2008 budget would be a smaller line item in comparison to 2010 or projected 2011 levels, keeping the full tax cuts puts us on the hook for vastly more deficit spending and, of course, spiraling debt. This is, apparently, completely okay. After all, one need not pay for tax cuts, or even budget against them in terms of available revenue. They are free. Always were, always will be.

Even as he says all this stuff, he goes so far as to call it all a “compromise.” Which, Webster’s apparently will tell us is when the GOP gets whatever it wants and the Democrat agrees to give it to them. This, by the way, is also a principle the GOP is on record as being the only acceptable way for Obama to govern: as a seat-warmer until a GOP President can be elected. No other changes allowed, voters be damned. All this with an apparently straight face. And is not challenged by the media or laughed at and mocked by the public at large. Or even by a back-bench Democrat.

This is why we fail.

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.

So basically, here’s what this election comes down to. [The GOP leadership is] betting that between now and November, you’re going to come down with amnesia. They figure you’re going to forget what their agenda did to this country.

Barack Obama, giving a textbook example of “too little, too late” in his labor day speech.
My friend, if you had hammered this message home in every speech you gave from Inauguration Day forward, you might have had a chance. Instead, you went with “look forward, not back.” Which is great if you live in a fantasyworld in which the GOP is willing to pragmatically play ball with you. They are not and never were. And you and your advisers still haven’t worked that out.
But I’m sure the new GOP majority in the House will also take up a look-forward stance, and bypass all the usual investigations into your Christmas card lists and so forth. They are, after all, serious pragmatists with the best interests of the common man at heart.
Source: whitehouse.gov

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

Never confuse “plan” and “scenario”

Alyssa Battistoni notes the creeping cost of “privatization” (read: funding cuts) that is resulting in kids being sent to school with their own toilet paper because the school will not be providing any:

The worst-case scenario, though, is that reduced public spending on essential goods and services will continue to hollow out our infrastructure and reduce our capacity to meet the needs of most Americans. And that rather than have a real conversation about which public goods we consider essential and what we’re willing to do to pay for them, we’ll gradually starve core programs until working- and middle-class Americans grow accustomed to a lower standard of living while better-off Americans pay out of pocket for benefits that everyone once enjoyed.

We’ll leave aside her usage of “backdoor privatization” in this context and just say that this is not some worst case scenario, but rather is a succinct encapsulation of the GOP “roadmap” for America’s “future.”
However: if you’re explaining, you’re losing; let’s instead get all Democrats saying this rather elegant formulation (from Natasha Chart):

Because nothing says ‘superpower’ like when your public schools can’t afford toilet paper.

Cheap and effective.