Tag: Politics

Why We Fail

Jonathan Chait looks over Paul Ryan’s economic proposals, notes their direct and admitted lineage to the pop-philosophy of Ayn Rand, and the worshipful treatment it receives at the hands of many in the right, including Ryan himself. He furthermore folds in the lunatic ravings of Jonah Goldberg (author of Liberal Fascism, which makes the stunning, transitive “discovery” that American liberals like social programs, the Nazi party was made up of National Socialists, thus American liberals are Nazis) and opines:

They’re written by people who don’t understand liberalism and the left at all, and are thus unable to present liberal ideas in terms remotely recognizable to liberals themselves. The specific lack of understanding lies in an inability to grasp the enormous differences between American liberalism and socialism or communism, seeing them as variants on the same basic theme.

[…]

The result is a tendency to see even modest efforts to sand off the roughest edges of capitalism in order to make free markets work for all Americans as the opening salvo of a vast and endless assault upon the market system.

Um, no. We are not talking about any lack of understanding here, unless you count “willful lack of understanding used towards cynical goals” as falling under that rubric. If anything, they understand liberalism all too well. The work of Jonah Goldberg et al. is entirely predicated on making fantastical statements with little or no logical underpinning in the cynical hopes of selling a few books to the choir. Period. No different from Ann Coulter or, for that matter, Glenn Beck, though his brand of hucksterism veers more towards that of a TV preacher hawking prayer rags than actual “political thought” insomuch as you can call the Goldberg-style spew “thought.”
Their weapon is precisely in understanding that the Left will dutifully take these ideas up, just as Chait does here, as though they are seriously offered, based on serious thought, are entirely legitimate points of view, and thus worthy of serious discussions and/or use as the basis of policy negotiations going forward. By doing so, the Left signals that, far from being abject lunacy, these are the points of discussion and arguments for the political class, and thus are the goalposts ever moved rightward.

It’s the logical fallacy of “when did you stop beating your wife?” writ large, and the right uses it relentlessly and with disheartening effectiveness. Say: “Well, the Democrat isn’t a Nazi because…” and you’ve already lost, no matter how the thought ends; you’ve implicitly agreed that there is some reason to make a Democrat/Nazi connection and/but here are the rational arguments against such a thesis. This is horseshit. Induce laughter at the mere idea, the immense foolhardiness of it all, and you’ve won. Same idea goes for Palin, and all the rest of this anti-intellectual crowd. They must find themselves automatically marginalized from “Washington Society” until such time as something rational emerges from their festering maw. More than anything, they crave the attention. That is why it must be removed.

That the progressive or liberal thinkers in this country continue to entertain Goldberg et al. as rational, serious contributors to the dialogue of this country going forward is precisely how you lose. I agree that you can’t just ignore them, but you must never, ever imply that there’s even a grain of truth to what they are saying; they must, therefore, be made objects of derision. Their output is, after all, utter foolishness. You may as well let reports of Bat Boy in the Weekly World News drive Medicaid policy and coverage limits. As Rachel Maddow recently noted:

They are not embarrassed. Charging them with hypocrisy, appealing to their better, more practical, more what’s-best-for-the-country patriotic angels is like trying to teach your dog to drive. It wastes a lot of time, it won’t work, and ultimately the dog comes out of the exercise less embarrassed for failing than you do for trying.

When these folks move to stop efforts to “sand off the roughest edges” they are not moving to compromise. They do not begin with “the best intentions.” They are moving to destroy, utterly, the progressive position and are willing to do so by any means at hand; and, they are not embarrassed. They don’t care how they look in the process, because their treatment thus far has shown that how it looks won’t matter. Not long-term. This is why they never apologize, never compromise, and never even bother to negotiate in good faith. It is because they fear no reprisal of any kind. So there’s no cost to these actions.
You, the progressive, must be prepared to move as ruthlessly. That the left’s first impulse is, inevitably, to find the “serious person” middle-ground is precisely why the country ends up with policies far to the right of the position of most Americans on any given issue. That this policy is then called “centrist” is precisely what is systematically making it harder and harder to even “sand off the roughest edges,” precisely because yesterday’s far-right position is today’s tomorrow’s “sensible, centrist compromise.” And, to add insult to injury, recent history has found Democrats coming to the table already having given away anything resembling a center-left policy; thus, any “compromise” made to push a bill through only results in de facto GOP legislation. Which, of course, they proceed to filibuster anyway.

The Democrats have got to start re-framing everything, every issue, soup to nuts. It won’t come easily, and it won’t be a short term project. Yes, this will also mean doing politically uncomfortable things like prosecuting Bush administration law breakers. But, more to the point at hand, it means screaming out every hour of every day of every week for the next decade or so, relentlessly and unavoidably, the moral, intellectual, and ultimately patriotic bankruptcy of the right. The American people need to be so sick of hearing about this stuff that they want to cry. Then, a few years after that, we’ll find that the polity have quietly and progressively become inoculated to the sort of brazen bullshit routinely peddled today such that they will simply not listen to it anymore, will react negatively and automatically to it, and the various outlets of today’s noise machine will gradually find themselves ignored. Accordingly, the right wing noise machine will cease to exist. Simple demographic shifts in the country will help, but the Left must act as well.
You can see faint instances of this in the last election. Noun/verb/9.11 and several other right-wing memes simply didn’t hold sway over voters anymore; all the while, users of these levers were made to look all the worse as the public finally saw at least some elements of the emperor’s new clothes. Unfortunately, those changes came about organically or accidentally for the most part. The Democrats need to see to it they begin to come about systematically.
This means message discipline. Part of the problem of the W-induced Democratic tidal wave was that it returned the Democrats to control before they had spent sufficient time in the wilderness to hone their message, to feel, deeply, the fierce urgency of now such that, when power came, they acted. Ezra Klein, commenting on Democratic resistance to using reconciliation to finish health insurance reform legislation, notes:

At this point, Democrats have passed health-care reform bills through the two legislative chambers charged with considering them. The president stands ready to sign the legislation. The roadblock is that 41 Republicans have sworn to use a parliamentary maneuver to obstruct any effort to smooth out differences between the bills. It’s pretty clear who’s stepping outside the traditional workings of the process here. Yet Democrats have allowed the other side to make it look like they’re the ones who are bending the rules! It’s completely astonishing.

It’s not astonishing, Ezra, it’s simply how things are done by the Left in D.C. today. Everything, and I mean everything that progressives get up to in this country needs to be aimed at this long term goal: re-framing the tenor of the political discourse in this country. Nothing in the near term matters as much as resetting the frame for political discussion back to where it was pre-Reagan. Nothing. You start with the lowest hanging fruit: jobs, bankers, Wall Street. The GOP literally has no defense to offer in these arenas. Make them pay for it.

Smaller government: Federal employment grew by 61,000 during Reagan’s presidency—in part because Reagan created a whole new cabinet department, the department of veterans affairs. (Under Bill Clinton, by contrast, federal employment dropped by 373,000).
Smaller deficits and debt: Both nearly tripled on Reagan’s watch.
Lower taxes: Although Reagan muscled through a major tax cut in 1981, he followed up by raising taxes in 1982, 1983, 1984 and 1986. In 1983, in fact, he not only raised payroll taxes; he raised them to pay for Social Security and Medicare. Let’s put this in language today’s tea-baggers can understand: Reagan raised taxes to pay for government-run health care.
Then there’s plank number five: Reaganite candidates must “oppos[e] amnesty for illegal immigrants.” Really? Because if you look up the word “amnesty” in Black’s Law Dictionary, you’ll find a reference to the 1986 bill that Reagan signed, which ended up granting amnesty to 2.7 million illegal immigrants.
Then there’s foreign policy. Plank number six demands that candidates back the surges in Iraq and Afghanistan. But what did Reagan do in his biggest confrontation with jihadist terror? When Hezbollah murdered 241 U.S. servicemen in Beirut in 1983, the Gipper didn’t surge; he withdrew the remaining American troops, and fast.
Plank number 7 calls for “effective [read military] action to eliminate” Iran and North Korea’s nuclear programs. But Reagan condemned Israel’s 1981 preventive strike against an Iraqi nuclear reactor.
And plank number nine requires steadfast opposition to abortion. Yet two of Reagan’s three Supreme Court nominees voted to uphold Roe v. Wade.

Peter Beinart on the “Reaganite” purity test modern fucktards so desire.

And if you look at the policies that we’ve seen over the course of this year from the administration and his Democratic colleagues in Congress, they’re all these leftist proposals.

John Boehner ®, House minority leader, who clearly took to heart the President’s words about corrosive and nonsensical framing of Obama’s center-right legislative record as some sort of “Bolshevik plot.”

I have enough faith in my fellow creatures in [the United States] to believe that when they have got over the delirium of the television, when they realize that their new homes that they have been put into are mortgaged to the hilt, when they realize that the moneylender has been elevated to the highest position in the land, when they realize that the refinements for which they should look are not there, that it is a vulgar society of which no decent person could be proud, when they realize all those things, when the years go by and they see the challenge of modern society not being met by the [Republicans] who can consolidate their political powers only on the basis of national mediocrity, who are unable to exploit the resources of their scientists because they are prevented by the greed of their capitalism from doing so, when they realize that the flower of our youth goes abroad today because they are not being given opportunities of using their skill and their knowledge properly at home, when they realize that all the tides of history are flowing in our direction, that we are not beaten, that we represent the future: then, when we say it and mean it, then we shall lead our people to where they deserve to be led!

Aneurin Bevan [lightly edited to contextualize], to the British Labour Party in 1959, following their general election defeat. Wow.

How quickly we forget

ryking points out weakness in the Democrat by noting that:

— The GOP had at most 55 Senators during Bush’s presidency

Yeah, but where are the accomplishments? What was W’s healthcare? What historic game-changer did the man manage to pass? Certainly not what he tried hardest to do with his “political capital”: Social Security Privatization. The link notes these “accomplishments”:

– John Ashcroft nomination
– Iraq war resolution
– Repeated Iraq funding resolutions
– 2001 & 2003 tax cuts
– Patriot Act
– Alito
– John Roberts
– Medicare Part D

Pretty weak tea there. Let’s knock off the low hanging fruit first: Americablog and ryking seem to be forgetting that, back in them days, a President was deemed capable of choosing who would serve in his cabinet; anyone not utterly and plainly incapable or actively serving time in prison was generally passed along through without much of a fight. Thus Ashcroft (Brownie, Gonzales, Bolton, and a host of others. Seriously, it’s not hard to understand: GOP Presidents are given wide latitude in their appointments by Democratic Senators. Democratic Presidents are not afforded this luxury by the GOP Senate). Obama, specifically, is not allowed even the most controversy free, obviously overqualified appointments; all of them have been subject to secret holds and as many time-wasters and cloture votes as are possible to throw up. And that’s leaving aside the furor over (previously and entirely) non-controversial advisory roles (aka the Czars).Do the Democrats or our Liberal Media hold the GOP to any of this? Why, of course not. Any time there is a microphone around, a Democrat should be screaming into it that the GOP is killing babies because it won’t approve [insert name]. All the time, every time. Only then will things begin to change. But we hold ourselves above all that, apparently.

The tax cuts broadly fit under the same aegis: give the “winner” what he wants. Elections have consequences: The GOP was in charge of all three branches, it is they who should set policy (speaking here in the extremely broad strokes of Our Media Elite; you know, like Cokie Roberts). Democrats, mind you, are never afforded such a luxury, and furthermore forget said poor treatment “the next time around,” immediately sucking up to the furthest right-wing opponents they can find in the hopes of “rekindling bipartisanship.” Idiocy, but undeniable.

9/11/01 and the spectre of mushroom clouds being our wakeup call led to Iraq and the Iraq votes. Honestly, given the volume and velocity of the lies in and around that debate, it’s amazing any kind of push-back was managed, much less a successful one. Not that we’re going to investigate any of that, of course. Gotta keep ourselves focused on the future! That way it’s easier to repeat the past in four years. But, once we’re in Iraq, you’re not going to vote against the troops, are you? Why do you want to kill our troops? The votes follow. And continue to this day. However, the GOP is now merrily allowed to vote to kill our troops. The media: zzzzzzzzzzzz. Boooooooooring. Old news.

Roberts played his role perfectly. Exactly what in his confirmation hearings seemed so far right as to warrant a filibuster? Again, anyone from the right-wing of American politics is allowed wide latitude on appointments. Plus, by the time you got to Alito you had the Gang of 14, whose ranks included many of the right-wing Democrats now giving insurance reform fits. So a filibuster there, though widely discussed (and, IIRC, attempted), was functionally never possible. You couldn’t hold 41 votes against a cloture with those 14 avowed non-participators. That was the point. All of whom, by the way, completely lost interest in judicial filibusters right after Obama won the election. Amazing. The media has certainly put this whole thing into the memory-hole and so have ryking and Americablog, apparently.

Which leaves us with Medicare Part D. Broadly framed, Medicare Part D gets at a core Democratic issue: making health services affordable to as many as possible. Is it so hard to imagine why Bush peeled off lots of Democrats with such a move? This is the fundamental Achilles heel for the Democrat, something we touched on earlier today. Namely:

if a given piece of policy is flawed but ultimately in service to the greater good, then the Democrat will vote for it over their several reservations.

Republicans, however, show no such compunction. Obama and the Democratic Congress could offer them the complete elimination of the IRS and all non-tariff tax revenues and the GOP would lock-step against it. Period. Not invented here, so fuck off. This is ultimately and not coincidentally what Lieberman and his ilk are counting on:

I won’t be killing the bill, because these left-wing do-gooders will be too focused on getting something passed, no matter how fractional and/or dysfunctional the final product might be because of my actions

There is no point in the process where a Rockefeller or Brown will simply say “fuck it, I’m going to Wisconsin” and walk away. Thus, without a credible, bill-killing threat to sit on, it is the left that constantly is forced to give away while the right is constantly operating on the expectation of taking away that which the left most prizes. To the Liebermans of the world, it boils down thusly:

The more Kos and MoveOn squeal, the more likely it is we’re onto something that needs to be excised.

He said as much. What is needed, as Matthew Yglesias notes, is legislation that swings for the progressive fences but can be allowed to fail. Then you can bludgeon Senators X, Y, and Z over their murder of said (popular) bill; use that energy to launch a primary challenge from the left or unseat a Republican. Bank reform (which is what Yglesias suggests) might be a good one. But again, you need something that the left can walk away from. So, basically, it can’t be good policy but has to play in the media as though it is the best possible policy.

Good luck with that.

If the Republican party gets back to that [conservative] base, I think our party is going to be stronger and there’s not going to be a need for a third party, but I’ll play that by ear in these coming months, coming years.

Sarah Palin, discussing whether or not she’ll run as a third party candidate.

File under: oh, God, please please please please. Best possible outcome.

Obama and his Telepromter

squashed:

jgh writes,

Since when do politicians not read from Teleprompters? Obama has written many of his own speeches. I’m unsure of what this talking point is supposed to be about.

Can somebody help?

I think it’s mostly the logical paradox of a man who these folks a priori distrust and despise (for an assortment of reasons that are left as an exercise for the reader) being quite capable of delivering a speech, more or less on demand, that’s as good as anyone’s heard out of an American politician in quite some time. So he’s merely a speech reader, likely a secret illegal immigrant from Kenya, and etc… That he (on several occasions) largely wrote the speech, or when that devil the teleprompter is on occasion non-functional and said speech was delivered entirely from memory never seems to enter into these calculations. After all, these are the same people that think Bill Ayers ghost-wrote Obama’s books based on the joint use of “crazy” words like “ontological” or some-such.

What bothers me most, though, is that these same folks are the ones systematically referring to W. Bush as a tragically misunderstood genius…who, on teleprompter, mind you, gave us such quotes as:

put food on your family

vulcanize society

make the pie higher! make the pie higher!

just to name a few. So, if Bush presumably couldn’t reliably read a speech properly, and definitely couldn’t give a canned one “off the cuff” either, then exactly where on the intellect scale does he rank relative to Obama, the putative “reader”?

And, going beyond that, how do you square the “he’s only reading” canard with Obama’s own, oft-criticized press conferences (which the press finds soooooo boring, natch), in which he departs on a 30 minute disputation about policy concerns relevant to some sub-issue of the question? No teleprompting there. Secret earpiece, no doubt.That or an ancient form of Kenyan mind-control that makes us think he’s answering at length. Again, square this with Bush’s press conference performance which generally involved a chuckle, a reference to the nickname of the questioner, and the odd personal attack on a blind man for wearing sunglasses.

All this before you even begin to consider that running for President requires, absolutely requires the candidate to give innumerable speeches off-prompter, every day, with YouTube lurking in the wings 100% of the time. But we won’t consider that either, apparently.

Cheap Premise

The Atlantic and author Christopher Hitchens, trying to declare Western Civilization dead because Jon Stewart pokes fun at our political discourse (and out-polls his Serious Journalism counterparts in the “most trusted” category while doing it), goes completely off the deep end intellectually just two paragraphs in:

And if any one thing undid Governor Palin as a person who could even be considered for the vice presidency, it was the merciless guying of her manner and personality by Tina Fey.

Uh, no. If any one thing undid Governor Palin, it was her brazenly obvious lack of qualifications for that job coupled with an obvious absence of the sort of desire or drive needed to get her ready in the several months available prior to the general election (or, for that matter, her debate with Biden). Her unceasing reliance on “You Betcha!” and other equally trenchant bits of commentary in the face of any and all questions is what created, powered, and was ultimately the thing that resonated in the Tina Fey bit. Fey was simply the person most visibly pointing out that the emperor has no clothes. The imitation was so effective that viewers couldn’t help but realize that there was nothing else in there but the scare quotes, nonsensical rambles, and the closing catch-phrases. Had Palin been an unquestionably qualified (but green) candidate with a similarly idiosynchratic library of quips and old-fashioned truisms, she still would have been mocked, just as any national political figure’s most obvious tics are mocked, but simultaneously would have been accepted as an otherwise serious player on the national scene, admittedly one with a folksy shtick. Big deal. Suggesting otherwise is the real infantilization of the American discourse. And Jon Stewart and his ilk aren’t the ones responsible for any of that. Makes you wonder why his “Trust” numbers are so high.

Right Germany

Rick provides nice followup to this bit of Lemkin wisdom in a New Yorker piece:

…it’s not as if German conservatives are a bunch of crazy far-right nihilists. This is not the Republicans we’re talking about. Both the CDU and the FDP recognize the urgency of global warming. Neither of them has a problem with gays. (The FDP’s leader, soon to be foreign minister, is the country’s other openly gay political bigwig.) Nor do they have a problem with allowing a woman to end a pregnancy if she feels she must, or with telling kids to use condoms if they can’t resist having sex, or with the theory of evolution, or with gun control—or, for that matter, with “socialism.” The vast majority of Germans, including most CDU voters and probably even most FDP voters, have no desire to junk the basic architecture of German social welfare, which, of course, is mainly the creation of the SPD. That’s another reason the SPD found it so difficult to get fired up and ready to go.

Thanks, Rick!