This is an incrementalist time, and the crucial thing is to get the increments right. The economic crisis and the two wars that Obama inherited make this difficult for our embattled president–and the fierceness of the opposition, which I don’t think he expected, makes things even harder. Obama certainly believed everything he said about reconciliation; he thought that he could at least take the edge off the bitter partisanship of Washington politics. Obviously he hasn’t been able to do that, and now every step forward, including the small steps, will require a bloody fight. Meanwhile, the costs of the stimulus and of the wars leave the President very little money for social experiments. He has to move forward with health care and the environment and education even if he can only move slowly, much more slowly than he hoped. This is one form of incrementalism, and what is important is that each move open the way for further moves–no dead ends!
But there is another kind of incrementalism that we need to think about, on the margins, alongside the big issues. I mean things like putting some aggressive liberal/leftists on the National Labor Relations Board, or pushing through small changes in the labor laws that would make union organizing easier, or using federal funds in small amounts to strengthen the kinds of community organizations that the president once worked for, or creating a liberal/left version of Bush’s “faith-based welfare”–enabling local communities, unions, and different sorts of NGOs, as well as churches, to organize family services and mutual aid. This sort of thing is base-building for the future. It can be very quiet and still be effective; its point is simply to loosen the “limits of progressive governance,” so that a Democratic president years from now can do more than Obama can do today.
Liberalism is the American version of social democracy, but it lacks a strong working-class base, party discipline, and ideological self-consciousness. None of these are in the offing, but we need to be aware of what we are missing, and we need to begin at least the intellectual work of making up for it.
This is old news, but ignored the first time. It’s attempting a comeback:
THE first President Bush has told his son that hopes of peace in the Middle East would be ruined if a war with Iraq were not backed by international unity.
Drawing on his own experiences before and after the 1991 Gulf War, Mr Bush Sr said that the brief flowering of hope for Arab-Israeli relations a decade ago would never have happened if America had ignored the will of the United Nations.
He also urged the President to resist his tendency to bear grudges, advising his son to bridge the rift between the United States, France and Germany.
It’s clear Bush doesn’t give a damn about the world or the American public, but is his own father now irrelevant?
The diaries come first. We love to do this for you. Reading today: vcmvo2, Louisiana 1976, Alfonso Nevarez, dopper0189, Got a Grip, jennyjem, with jlms qkw editing.
Tonight we are honored to bring you this group of diaries covering an exceptionally eclectic group of topics:
epjmcginley writes lovingly and evocatively about pruning trees properly, and how that process also applies to the two very human traits in Forgiveness and Redemption. (vcmvo2)
Daveparts shines a “magical” light on some of the troubling words uttered by a “Democrat” recently appointed to the Federal Budget Deficit Commission in Long Ago and Far Away. (dopper0189)
yomamaforobama visits “the world’s greatest deliberative body”, and unlike good legislation manages to survive the trip in Yo Mama and Lilleyhope Do The Senate. (Alfonso Nevarez)
Polling and Political Wrap-Up, 3/10/10 | read this item
Rasmussen, presumably on accident, releases a poll that shows exceptionally good news for Democrats, but then returns to form in the Granite State. The DCCC unveils a target list of sorts in the form of their first round of “Red to Blue” nominees. The electoral picture in Western PA gets a lot clearer today, while the electoral picture in the Lone Star State gets a little less so.
Those are just a few of the headlines on this, the Wednesday night edition of the Wrap…..
THE U.S. SENATE
FL-Sen: Poll Confirms Extremely Dire PPP Senate Poll For Crist In case the campaign of Florida Governor (and Senate aspirant) Charlie Crist was eager to dismiss yesterday’s brutal PPP poll as an isolated outlier, they might have some trouble. Tonight, a new poll by Insider Advantage/Florida Times-Union backs PPP up, showing Marco Rubio with a 60-26 lead over Charlie Crist in the Republican Senate Primary.
IL-Sen: Rasmussen Gives Giannoulias Lead (….no, really!) This one defies easy explanation. Just a day after Rasmussen became the first pollster to give downstate Republican legislator Bill Brady a lead over incumbent Governor Pat Quinn (and a ten-pointer, at that!), they turn around and say that Democratic Senate nominee Alexi Giannoulias has gained nine points on GOP nominee Mark Kirk. Whereas Ras once had Kirk staked to a six-point edge, it is now a three-point lead for Giannoulias (44-41).
NV-Sen: GOP Cries Foul Over Tea Party Candidate This was somewhat predictable: one of the GOP candidates vying for the right to battle Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is claiming that the newly qualified “Tea Party” candidate is a fraud. Jon Ashjian has taken a few shots from GOPers who are convinced that (as polls somewhat confirm) his entrance into the race will split the protest vote and allow Harry Reid a greater chance of victory. Danny Tarkanian, who is one of the leading GOPers in the Senate field, argues that “Nobody in the Tea Party knows who he is. He didn’t know any of the principles of the Tea Party.”
NH-Sen: GOP Dilemma–Is The Darling of Their Base Unelectable? Rasmussen, while showing pretty soft numbers for Democrat Paul Hodes in their latest poll in the Granite State, nevertheless release some numbers that are not quite what the conservative pollster might hope for. It is not a secret that the right flank would love to see former gubernatorial candidate Ovide Lamontagne as the GOP nominee to take on Hodes in this open-seat Senate contest. But Lamontagne, according to Ras, is the only Republican that Hodes currently leads (42-38). Meanwhile, both Kelly Ayotte and businessman Bill Binnie have sizeable leads over Hodes, according to the GOP-friendly pollster.
TX-Sen: What Becomes of The Electorally Brokenhearted? Fresh off of a disappointing thumping at the hands of Rick Perry (which included his topping 50% of the vote and avoiding a potentially expensive runoff), Kay Bailey Hutchison is apparently contemplating her next move. Remember that KBH had originally promised to resign her Senate seat in advance of her gubernatorial primary bid. Then, in the latter half of 2009, she relented, saying pressing Senate business would keep her in the chamber until after the primary. Even then, she implied her resignation would still take place. That now appears less certain, which leaves several potential Senate candidates (Republican Michael Williams and Democrat John Sharp come to mind) very much in limbo.
WA-Sen: Murray Has Leads Over All Announced GOP Challengers Rasmussen heads back into Washington this week, to check on the status of Senator Patty Murray and to continue their recruitment of two-time GOP gubernatorial candidate Dino Rossi. Ras, as they did a few weeks back, shows the Democratic incumbent easily defeating the current crop of Republicans who have announced Senate bids, with margins ranging from 11-19 points. But Ras takes great pains to point out that if Rossi would enter the fray, he would start the race with a three-point edge (49-46) over Murray.
THE U.S. HOUSE
GA-07: Reed To Stay On Sidelines For 2010 Elections Ralph Reed, who when he headed the Christian Coalition in the 1990s was arguably one of the most influential conservatives in America, is not going to make a political comeback in the battle to replace outgoing GOP Rep. John Linder. Insider politics are apparently a stronger suit for Reed than electoral politics–his one foray into that realm was a double digit defeat at the hands of Casey Cagle in 2006 in a statewide bid for Lt. Governor.
PA-12: Democrats Avoid Divisive Battle In Murtha Seat A few days after some comments by one of her staffers made it seem inevitable that she was intending to fight until the bitter end, former Democratic state treasurer Barbara Hafer pulled the plug on her bid for Congress in the seat occupied until last month by Congressman John Murtha. This almost certainly ensures that former Murtha staffer Mark Critz will be the Democratic nominee both in the May 18th special election and the November general election.
VA-11: GOP Candidate Claims Poll That Shows Him Winning Rematch When Republican businessman Keith Fimian challenged Democrat Gerry Connolly for the open seat in NoVa’s 11th district in 2008, he wound up being on the losing end of a double-digit verdict (55-43). This time around, according to an internal poll by McLaughlin Associates for the GOP candidate, he claims he is in the lead. The poll (which comes with the customary caveats about internal polling) shows Fimian up on Connolly by five points (40-35).
RACE FOR THE HOUSE: DCCC Unveils The Target List In a sign that the Democrats will be playing at least some offense in this election cycle, they named a baker’s dozen of candidates to their inaugural edition of this cycle’s Red to Blue list. Eleven of the races are in GOP-held seats, and a pair of Democrats running in challenging open seats were also added to the list. The districts being challenged are: CA-03 (Ami Bera), CA-45 (Steve Pougnet), DE-AL (John Carney), FL-12 (Lori Edwards), IL-10 (Dan Seals), KS-04 (Raj Goyle), NE-02 (Tom White), OH-12 (Paula Brooks), PA-07 (Bryan Lentz), PA-15 (John Callahan), SC-02 (Rob Miller), TN-08 (Roy Herron), and WA-08 (Suzan DelBene).
THE GUBERNATORIAL RACES
MA-Gov: Ras Polls Bay State, Finds Patrick Still Leading Chalk this one up as Rasmussen being Rasmussen. While they peg the general dynamic of the race as confirmed by other pollsters, they are considerably more optimistic for the GOP. They have GOP businessman Charlie Baker within three points of incumbent Democrat Deval Patrick (35-32), while Dem-turned-Indie Tim Cahill languishes at 19%. Ras confirms one trend, though: Christy Mihos is a far less electable choice for the GOP. With him in the race, Cahill moves into second (35-30), with Mihos back in the teens.
MI-Gov: Non-Ras Poll Looks At Wide-Open Gubernatorial Primaries Amazingly, it appears there are pollsters working in America OTHER than the crew at Rasmussen. Local pollsters Denno-Noor went into the field in Michigan to look at the crowded primaries for Governor. On the GOP side, they find conservative Congressman Peter Hoekstra out in front with 28% of the vote. A surprise second was businessman Rick Snyder, who parlayed a rather endearing TV ad campaign into 18% of the vote and sole possession of 2nd place. The disappointment for the GOP has to be Attorney General Mike Cox. The one time presumed nominee trails badly, running a distant third with only 12% of the vote. On the Democratic side, it is wide open: a whopping 56% of the field is undecided. State House Speaker Andy Dillon (13%) and Lansing Mayor Virg Bernero (11%) are the only Dems in double digits. Interestingly, the pollsters also look at a potential 2012 Clash of the Titans between Democratic Senator Debbie Stabenow and former GOP Governor John Engler. They have it as a tossup, with Engler up by a single point (42-41).
SC-Gov: Ras Hits Primary Circuit and Sees Wide Open Races Rasmussen departs from their normal GOP-friendly general election polling and puts together a poll on the multi-candidate primaries on either side of the coin in the battle to replace the disgraced Mark Sanford as Governor of South Carolina. On the Democratic side, it is a total mishmash, with four candidates ranging from 12-16% of the vote. The co-leaders (if you can call them that) are state Education head Jim Rex and state Senator Vincent Sheheen at 16%. Meanwhile, the GOP side is only slightly less congested, with state Attorney General Henry McMaster at 21%, followed closely by Lt. Gov Andre Bauer at 17% and Congressman Gresham Barrett at 14%.
WI-Gov: Walker’s New Ad Missing Key Element It’s early in the campaign cycle, but this is my favorite “whoopsie!” moment of the campaign thus far. Scott Walker, the Milwaukee County Executive and likely frontrunner for the GOP nomination for Governor, is on the air with a new biographical/introductory ad where he talks about his own sense of fiscal discipline, right down to making his own lunches. Charming to be sure, but his ad omits one key factoid: the small detail that he is running for Governor. Walker’s ad-man might want to mix that in somewhere during the next ad blitz.
Markos to Rush: Want libertarian health care? Try Somalia. | read this item
Last night on Countdown, Markos joined Lawrence O’Donnell to discuss the current state of play on health care reform, including Rush Limbaugh’s hilarious claim that if reform passes, he’ll move to Costa Rica.
As Markos pointed out, if Rush really wants a libertarian health care system, he oughta give that libertarian paradise of Somalia a shot. Costa Rica, after all, has a ’socialized’ system…and for Rush, that just won’t do.
Markos also took on Dennis Kucinich for opposing health care reform, comparing Kucinich’s brand of politics to that of Ralph Nader, summing it up in just one damning word: ineffective.
Instead, we should answer Question 9 by checking the last option — “Some other race” — and writing in “American.” It’s a truthful answer but at the same time is a way for ordinary citizens to express their rejection of unconstitutional racial classification schemes. It’s a truthful answer but at the same time is a way for ordinary citizens to express their rejection of unconstitutional racial classification schemes. In fact, “American” was the plurality ancestry selection for respondents to the 2000 census in four states and several hundred counties.
Guess what region those four states come from? But that question refers to “ancestry”, which is kind of funny because all those southerners lied about being Native Americans. Claiming “American” as a race is a whole new level of dumb.
But it shouldn’t be a problem for the Census. Anyone writing in “American” as race is obviously white.
No Curbs for 'Radical Experiment'? | read this item
Shielding Americans from banksters and likeminded rip-off artists is only one small piece of needed financial reform. Out-of-control executive compensation, overly large financial institutions, insane derivatives trading, a Federal Reserve System apparently incapable of basic regulatory enforcement, and levying of a securities transaction tax all require attention. Political obstacles make all these difficult changes to make, but an independent Consumer Financial Protection Agency seemed likely, once upon a time, to be a provision of the Restoring American Financial Stability Act that all but the most bank-beholden Congresspersons could get behind. As it turns out, the eagerness to gut the CFPA has enough Senate knife-wielders to make the agency, in the word of Barney Frank, a joke.
No surprise. By November, more than 1500 lobbyists had registered on Capitol Hill to have their say on this legislation, from credit-card companies to car dealers, from hedge-fund operators to payday lenders, everybody who might have a consumer-scamming shell-and-pea game at risk got into the act.
That didn’t stop the House from including a watered-down but still independent consumer protection agency in its legislation. But Sen. Richard Shelby soon made it clear that a standalone agency like the House bill’s was out of the question. So lame-duck Sen. Christopher Dodd, chair of the Senate Banking Committee, has sought to find a compromise by putting some version of the CFPA under the Fed, the very entity that failed so miserably in its regulatory, disclosure and consumer-education efforts in the run-up to the financial crisis that gave birth to the Great Recession.
Quite a number of Senators, Sherrod Brown, Chuck Schumer, Jeff Merkley and Jack Reed, among others, rightly think a Fed-based consumer agency is ludicrous. Which leaves the nation where it is on a number of other important pieces of legislation, up the creek without enough paddles. That is, unless it gets some focused grassroots attention. Up until now, however, most of the attention has been directed at health insurance reform
On MSNBC Tuesday night, Chris Hayes of The Nation took a look at the issue through the eyes of Heather McGhee, Washington director of the public research and advocacy organization Demos.
An excerpt:
McGhee: We have to realize that Republicans and all people in Congress have more than one set of constituents. They have the voters who are paying attention sometimes, and the donors and the lobbyists who are paying attention all the time. And they’ve been swarming Congress for the past year, ever since the financial crisis trying to weaken and ultimately kill the Consumer Financial Protection Agency.
Hayes: So those banks that have been trying to kill this thing, and they’ve been going at it with hatchets from the very begiininng, what is it they’re so afraid of? Why are they fighting so hard against it?
McGhee: What we’ve seen is over the past 30 years there’s really been a really radical experiment in financial deregulation across the board. But at the consumer level there’s just a new Wild West situation out there where the banks, the payday lenders, the rent-to-own stores, the used auto dealers have just basically had very little oversight. And they’ve profited from that regime.
Hayes: Right …
McGhee: The financial crisis has absolutely shown that that was not only bad for consumers, it was bad for Wall Street, it was bad for the entire country. And they know that the jig is up unless they can beat down a consumer protection agency. …
And so we’ve got backroom deals right now. We’ve really got … Senator Dodd really wants to make a deal and he’s going to give away, I think, a real opportunity to make a very clear contrast and say “Hey! This is what the Democratic Party stands for, and it’s you and your family, your retirement savings and your home.” Republicans are trying to gut investor protections, consumer protections. they’re trying to stand up for the subprime lenders and the payday lenders. I mean, this should be a very easy political fight. So, I think if we can make that political fight more visible to the American people, and it’s really just starting to heat up, then I think we’re going to have a stronger hand to get this consumer agency passed.
To be sure, creating safer marketplaces is not about protecting consumers from all possible bad decisions. Instead, it is about making certain that the products themselves don’t become the source of the trouble. This means that terms hidden in the fine print or obscured with incomprehensible language, unexpected terms, reservation of all power to the seller with nothing left for the buyer, and similar tricks and traps have no place in a well-functioning market.
How did financial products get so dangerous? Part of the problem is that disclosure has become a way to obfuscate rather than to inform. …
In a recent memo aimed at bank executives, the vice president of the business consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton observed that most bank products are “too complex for the average consumer to understand.”
Rahm Emanuel famously said that crises shouldn’t be wasted. Indeed, they are and should be the cradle for making big and long-needed changes in the way our political and economic system operates because nothing gets reformed in less anxious times. However, wasting the financial crisis seems to be exactly the outcome of efforts to give hoi polloi a smidgen of leverage against hoi oligoi in the next decade or so of the 21st Century.
None of what’s been proposed is radical or anything like the supposed “socialism” that Republicans and their media mannequins keep caterwauling about. Too bad it’s not. But just getting our leaders to enact even an ultra-modest reform ending the most egregious financial deceptions and rip-offs would appear to be a tough enough task.
Are your Senators on board? You might give them a call to find out.
Beck on his narrative malfunction: It's all Massa's fault | read this item
So Glenn Beck is trying to paper over his dimwitted, overly-credulous embrace of Eric Massa’s conspiracy claims by…blaming Massa.
On his radio show today, Glenn Beck lit into former Rep. Eric Massa (D-N.Y.) for his disastrous, rambling appearance on the Tuesday episode of Beck’s Fox News Show.
“America, have you ever heard of a 50-year old man having a tickle-fight — five men tickling each other so hard that they can’t breathe?” said Beck. “I think we found out who he is — someone who can’t be trusted to tell the truth about his life.”
The thing is, Glenn Beck never should have believed Massa in the first place. From the very start, Massa’s story didn’t add up — but it fit neatly into Beck’s narrative about the Obama Administration and Democrats in DC, so Beck fell for it.
But even now, even after Eric Massa’s admission that he engaged in tickle fights with staff members, Glenn Beck is refusing to fully concede that Massa’s wild allegations were bunk. Amazingly, Beck is still leaving the door open to the possibility that Eric Massa is a victim of a grand conspiracy:
Beck indulged the “possibility” that somebody “got to” Massa and turned him — at the very least, said Beck, the former congressman “lied” in a pre-interview.
Sigh. I know this will be hard for Glenn Beck to believe, but sometimes a sleazy congressman is just a sleazy congressman. Outside of Glenn Beck’s imagination, there is no conspiracy. There’s just a gullible radio host with a television show on Fox.
Beck may be on top of the world right now, but if keeps on being this sloppy he’s going to experience the same career arc as did Morton Downey, Jr.: a fast rise…followed by an even faster fall.
House Republicans Repudiate Michael Steele | read this item
The Party of No finally found something to say yes to:
The House passed legislation Wednesday that would ban misleading mailings designed to appear they’re from the Census Bureau, following criticism that Republican groups were sending fundraising letters using the census name. [...]
The legislation passed 416-0 …
It looks like 170 House Republicans were willing to shelve their obstructionism for one day to stick it to Michael Steele, given that the bill came about because of:
… a fundraising mailing from Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele … The fundraising letter comes in the form of a “survey,” a frequently used device for partisan fundraising, but this one has a twist: calling itself the “Congressional District Census,” the letter comes in an envelope starkly printed with the words, “DO NOT DESTROY OFFICIAL DOCUMENT” and describes itself, on the outside of the envelope, as a “census document.”
House Republicans would willingly say no to mother’s milk for newborns if they could, but they say yes to putting the kibosh on what was described as “among the RNC’s most lucrative fundraising initiatives”?
Forty-One Pro-Choice Republican Senators | read this item
Boy, Republicans will go to any length to maintain their status as the Party of No:
All 41 Republican Senators vowed in a letter today to do everything in their power to kill Democrats’ health care legislation and vote en bloc against procedural motions Democrats want to use to fix the health reform bill passed Christmas Eve by the Senate.
This would include a scenario where the Republican Senators oppose language championed by anti-abortion rights Democrats in the House and side instead with abortion rights defenders. [...]
“So you’d be voting with Barbara Boxer on an abortion measure?” a reporter asked Sen. Tom Coburn, the OB-GYN and Oklahoma Republican who vehemently opposes abortion rights, at a press conference this afternoon. Boxer, a California Democrat, is a vehement supporter of abortion rights.
“Yes I would. I certainly would,” Coburn said, clarifying that he would oppose a procedural motion in the Senate to allow the stricter ban on federal funding for abortion from being added to the Senate health reform bill.
A couple of things here … first, it looks like Bart Stupak was just tossed under a bus driven by his erstwhile pals across the aisle. And second, add this to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s (R-KY) earlier concern trolling and you can see just how desperate Republicans are to stop a health care bill from reaching the President’s desk.
Wavering and outright obstructionist Democrats need to ask themselves why, if passing health care reform is such an electoral loser like the GOP claims, why are they doing everything in their power to keep it from happening. And more importantly, why are those Democrats helping them?
