Shields and Brooks 10/15/2010

Sleepy Mark Shields and David "Bobo" Brooks did their regular Friday Political Wrap segment - which I've been known in less charitable moments to call the Shields and Brooks Clown Show - on Friday's PBS Newshour on the Citizens United era of corporate money gushing freely into political races and President Obama's bizarre interview with the New York Times' Peter Baker. Bobo thinks that there's nothing new or especially disturbing about the Citizens United environment, and anyway he says that the Democrats did it first (of course!). He is disappointed in the lack of substantial self-reflection in Obama's interview, i.e., Obama hasn't decided he fully embrace every aspect of the Republican Party's program that he was elected running against in 2008. He later starts rambling about how Obama seems to be one of our most self-reflective Presidents, and then realizes as he says it that he's stepping on his previous comment and backpedals. Mark rouses himself from his afternoon stupor to express justifiable astonishment that Obama just before the mid-terms elections would give an interview saying essentially, oh, well, we're gonna lose big-time but it's not our fault. Transcript at Shields and Brooks on the Tea Party's Message, Obama's 'Shovel Ready' Jab. Tags: 2010 elections, barack obama, democratic party

Are progressives intending to "teach the Democrats a lesson"?

Robert Parry thinks so. And he argues against the notion in The 'Teach-the-Dems-a-Lesson' Myth Consortium News 10/15/2010 by recounting at some length Republican skulduggery back to 1968.

He cites real examples of something like this occurring, notably Ralph Nader's Green Party in 1980:

To this day, very few Nader supporters will admit that they contributed to Bush’s tainted victory, although it should be obvious that Nader’s votes in Florida – if most would have gone to Gore – would have put the election too far out of reach for Bush to steal.

A Gore presidency also would have taken the country in a far different direction. Most significantly, he might have made significant progress in getting the United States to face up to the crisis of global warming, an existential threat to mankind that Bush studiously ignored.

His column is a good explanation of the dilemma of groups, especially on "the left", who dissent in significant ways from the policies of both Democratic and Republican Parties. It's the blessing and the curse of a two-party system that an alternative party can only succeed on a national scale by destroying one of the two major parties and replacing it in the two-party system.

The only time that occurred in US history was with the Republican Party in the 1850s, which displaced the Whig Party. Despite all the changes and controversies and ideological fluctuations since then, the US today still has the same two major parties it had in 1856. (The earlier Federalist Party wasn't displaced by a different party; rather, it just blew away into the dustbin of history.)

Parry's historical sketch is useful. But, in an uncharacteristic moment for him, he builds his premise for 2010 on what seems to be quicksand. The only people he mentions from "the Left" actually wanting to "teach the Democrats a lesson" in 2010 by seeing the Republicans gain Congressional seats are these: "If my e-mail inbox is any indication, many American progressives plan to use the Nov. 2 election as an opportunity to 'teach the Democrats a lesson' by either not voting or casting ballots for third parties ..."

Third parties always get a certain number of votes. I've haven't seen any polls indicating an upsurge of voter support for any third parties this year, "left" or any other kind. And among even the Democrats most critical of the Obama Administration's shortcomings on health care reform, financial regulation and the Afghanistan War - criticisms which I share - I don't know of anyone pushing for an election boycott or third party protest voting. No labor unions that I've heard of. None of the major progressive bloggers, like Digby or the folks at Daily Kos or even those at Firedoglake, whose Jane Hamsher is often mentioned as one of Obama's harshest critics on "the left." Not The Nation magazine, or The American Prospect, or Salon, or In These Times. Not Howard Dean or Russ Feingold or Dennis Kucinich or Barbara Lee or Michael Moore.

In other words, if these is some large sentiment among progressives for "teaching the Democrats a lesson" at the polls in two weeks, it's remaining remarkably well-concealed. On the contrary, labor is pushing to get out the vote. All the other progressives outside the usual third-party political ghetto are worried sick that discouragement among Democratic-leaning voters will give the Republicans control of the House of Representatives. And have been begging the national Party to get aggressive with something - jobs programs, a foreclosure moratorium, anything plausible - to energize the Democratic base to go to the polls.

Those concerns are far from imaginary. Charlie Cook reports in House Flips. Senate Doesn't. The National Journal Magazine for 10/16/2010 (accessed 10/15/2010):

Democrats who were trailing by more than a few percentage points remain behind, but by smaller margins. Although Republican strategists are hardly panicking, they are noticing the tightening. As one Republican strategist put it, Democratic voters were so demoralized that their intensity had only one way to go, and that was up. Democrats still have a formidable challenge in getting their sympathizers to the polls, but their task may not be as difficult as it appeared a few weeks ago, when Democratic voters were even more despondent. [my emphasis]

Jesse Zwick reports in With Voting Rights Groups Reeling, New Registrations Decline Washington Independent 10/15/10 on the lag in registering new voters this year. He writes:

A four-year wave of attacks on voter registration drives, both in terms of state laws that either shut down voter registration drives or made it too onerous to do it, and other public attacks have certainly had an effect,” said Wendy Weiser, director of the Brennan Center’s Voting Rights and Elections Project. ...

The most obvious cause for the decline in voter registration is the shuttering of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN. At its height, ACORN had a budget of close to $35 million and was credited with registering approximately half a million voters in 2008 alone. Amid allegations from conservative activists that the group engaged in widespread voter fraud, Congress voted last fall to defund ACORN, which received approximately a third of its budget in the form of government grants. The rest of the group’s funding soon dried up, and ACORN was forced to cease operations at its approximately 75 field offices soon thereafter.

And the fact is that the Congressional Democrats facilitated the sleazebag smear of ACORN by running from the organization like scared rabbits when that bizarre punk James O'Keefe made his fraudulent video "sting" of the group. The Democrats are just rolled too easily on things like that. And that can't blame that one on "the left."

The Republicans' voter-suppression efforts that Zwick's article describes are right out of the old segregationist playbook. And they have become standard operating procedure for the Reps. The Democrats have got to start showing more fight in protecting voter rights. If it hurts their feelings to hear anyone say that, I would hope losing to Republicans hurts their feelings even more.

Tags: 2010 elections, democratic party, robert perry

What James Galbraith says about the Catfood Commission

Economist James Galbraith has some very relevant and practical suggestions about what President Obama should do on immediate economic policy, as reported by Jane Hamsher in James Galbraith: What Obama Could Do Now FDL Action 10/15/2010.

He's dead right about the Catfood Commission:

The President should announce that cuts in Social Security and Medicare benefits are off the table for the lame-duck session, and thereafter. He should point out that the mandate of the Bowles-Simpson Commission, which is published on their web-site, did not authorize it to opine on the finances of the Social Security or Medicare systems. For this reason alone, should the Commission include recommendations to cut Social Security benefits (such as by increasing the nominal retirement age) for the alleged purpose of maintaining balance in Social Security finances, the President should urge Congress to refuse to take up such a recommendation. [my empahsis]

Every Democratic Senator and Representative should also be making the same commitment.

To quote Joan McCarter again on the subject, As Joan McCarter points out, "an awful lot of Dems are staking their races on protecting Social Security. If they manage to eke out their majorities in 2010 after making the promise to protect it, the surest way to destruction of the party in 2012 is cutting Social Security." (What the Fiscal Commission is supposed to be doing Daily Kos 10/11/2010)

Tags: social security

What is the White House's "Oh, well, only so much we can do" position about?

I'll start this post with a suggestion for Democrats cringing at the continuing fecklessness of the Democratic national leadership in this year's election: listen to some of Jerry Brown's debates with eMeg Whitman. Jerry is a reminder that there still is such a thing as a high-profile Democrat who is willing to straightforwardly defend the rights of labor and immigrants, to attack malfeasant banks and greedy rich people, and to defend public services as vital to society and the economy. Who talks like a real Democrat, in other words. And, at this point, he's leading in the polls despite eMeg's outspending him with $120 million-plus of her own money. Trust me, it will cheer you up.

The Obama Administration, on the other hand, continues to make the Democratic base wonder what the [Cheney] they are doing.

There is the Administration's unwillingness to aggressively take the side of homeowners being foreclosed on in a situation of mass fraud by the banksters. (Eric Dash and Nelson Schwartz, Bankers Ignored Signs of Trouble on Foreclosures New York Times 10/13/2010; Susie Madrak, As Mountain Of Foreclosure Fraud Evidence Grows, National Media Has Decided It's Really More Of An "Oops!" Crooks and Liars 10/14/2010)

There is their decision to drop the deepwater drilling moratorium in the Gulf of Mexico over a month early, announced three weeks before the fall elections. That in the face of evidence that the damage of the BP spill is far greater than BP and their partners in the Energy Department are willing to acknowledge. (Kate Shepard, Obama Admin. Drops Drilling Moratorium Mother Jones 10/12/2010; Julia Whitty, BP's Deep Secrets Mother Jones Sept-Oct 2010)

Then there is the jaw-dropping Peter Baker article, Education of a President New York Times Magazine 10/12/2010, based on interviewing Obama and White House officials, in which Obama comes off as resigned to a huge Democratic setback in the November elections and still talking the Pollyanna hope that he can work constructively with the Republicans the next two years. To put it mildly, he's not exactly sounding the charge to beat back the Republicans in the elections less than three weeks away now.

With most of the country reeling from unemployment and foreclosures, with the last year and a half having given dramatic evidence that economists like Paul Krugman who urged Obama to go for a much bigger stimulus more focused on job-creating efforts (aid to states and localities, more emphasis on direct spending and less on tax cuts), here is what Obama regrets about the stimulus, according to Baker's article:

While proud of his record, Obama has already begun thinking about what went wrong — and what he needs to do to change course for the next two years. He has spent what one aide called “a lot of time talking about Obama 2.0” with his new interim chief of staff, Pete Rouse, and his deputy chief of staff, Jim Messina. During our hour together, Obama told me he had no regrets about the broad direction of his presidency. But he did identify what he called "tactical lessons." He let himself look too much like "the same old tax-and-spend liberal Democrat." He realized too late that "there’s no such thing as shovel-ready projects” when it comes to public works. Perhaps he should not have proposed tax breaks as part of his stimulus and instead "let the Republicans insist on the tax cuts" so it could be seen as a bipartisan compromise. [my emphasis]

If it had just looked more bipartisan... Wow! Just, wow!

For a reality check on this big spending binge, see Krugman himself, Hey, Small Spender New York Times 10/10/2010.

How can the following not sound like throwing in the towel before the November election?

These days, Obama has been seeking guidance in presidential biographies. He is reading, among others, "The Clinton Tapes," Taylor Branch’s account of his secret interviews with Bill Clinton during the eight years of his presidency. "I was looking over some chronicles of the Clinton years," Obama told me, "and was reminded that in ’94 — when President Clinton’s poll numbers were lower than mine, and obviously the election ended up being bad for Democrats — unemployment was only 6.6 percent. And I don’t think anybody would suggest that Bill Clinton wasn’t a good communicator or was somebody who couldn’t connect with the American people or didn’t show empathy."

In the fall of 1994, things were even better than Obama recalls: unemployment was in fact 5.6 percent. If the feel-your-pain president had trouble when the economy was not nearly as bad as it is now, with 9.6 percent unemployment, then maybe the issue for Obama is not that he is too cool or detached, as some pundits say. When the economy is bad, even the most talented of presidents suffer at the polls. “There is an anti-establishment mood,” Rahm Emanuel, the former Clinton aide who served as Obama’s first White House chief of staff, told me before he stepped down this month. “We just happen to be here when the music is stopping.”

And this kind of talk can't do anything more than feed the shallow minds of star pundits like David Broder, Gail Collins and Maureen Dowd:

In their darkest moments, White House aides wonder aloud whether it is even possible for a modern president to succeed, no matter how many bills he signs. Everything seems to conspire against the idea: an implacable opposition with little if any real interest in collaboration, a news media saturated with triviality and conflict, a culture that demands solutions yesterday, a societal cynicism that holds leadership in low regard.

That sounds like whining even to me. Just imagine where Maureen Dowd will go with that. She'll be making snotty comments about it for the next 10 years.

The Baker article is full of stuff like that. It's headache-inducing to even try to imagine what the White House thought they were doing with this. My worry is that this is a prelude to the December report of the Catfood Commission which is almost certain to recommend Social Security Phaseout. If the White House is looking to lay the groundwork for embracing Social Security Phaseout - to show fiscal responsibility, bipartisan goodwill, yadda yadda - this article helps do that.

But that would not only be the triumph of neoliberal ideology and Beltway Village conventional wisdom at their worst producing a really bad policy. It would also be politically disastrous for the Democrats. As Joan McCarter points out, "an awful lot of Dems are staking their races on protecting Social Security. If they manage to eke out their majorities in 2010 after making the promise to protect it, the surest way to destruction of the party in 2012 is cutting Social Security." (What the Fiscal Commission is supposed to be doing Daily Kos 10/11/2010; see also her post, Pre-catfood commission, Seniors preparing to cut back on food 10/12/2010.)

But in the strange atmosphere in which our star pundits live, Obama looks like a rabid partisan and a flaming class warrior on those occasions when he sounds like a real Democrat: David "Bobo" Brooks and Gail Collins, Obama, the Attack Dog New York Times 10/13/2010. Of all the remarkably clueless things Bobo has written and said over the years, this has to be near the top in terms of cosmic cluelessness: "The second reason Obama’s behavior is depressing is that it shows that the administration is getting mentally captured by the lefty blogosphere." What, is Joe Lieberman posting now at something called Lefty Blog? Lady Collins chimes in that Democrats are weenies, a perennial favorite charge for Beltway Pod Pundits.

For Peter Baker, following the sacred script of High Broderism in which if things are between the alleged extremes of the left and the right, it must be juu-uust right, says:

The policy criticism of Obama can be confusing and deeply contradictory — he is a liberal zealot, in the view of the right; a weak accommodationist, in the view of the left. He is an anticapitalist socialist who is too cozy with Wall Street, a weak-on-defense apologist for America who adopted Bush's unrelenting antiterror tactics at the expense of civil liberties.

Or, maybe one of those side's is talking like stark raving Birchers and crackpots and taking what comes out of Rush Limbaugh's mouth as reality, and the other is, uh, not doing that. The Republicans have become experts at exploiting this shallow-minded weakness of the mainstream press of creating false equivalencies to set up the High Broderist balance they fell is compulsory. Our star reporters and pundits, though, despite imagining themselves as salt-of-the-earth types in touch with the Real Americans, they also love to strike the pose of standing above such petty policy judgments as, say, whether the health care reform can actually work reliably in the absence of a public option.

David Corn comments on the article in Obama's Inconvenient Interview Mother Jones 10/14/2010. I quoted in a previous post from Digby's Inclusion Hullabaloo 10/13/2010 which deals with Obama's quotes in the interview about the happy prospects of bipartisan cooperation with the Republicans after the November elections.

Tags: 2010 elections, barack obama, democratic party

Managing expectations? Or undercutting Democratic Congressional prospects in November?

This is a puzzling and troubling report by Peter Nicholas and Christi Parsons, Obama reshapes administration for a fresh strategy Los Angeles Times 10/06/2010. It reads like stenography, and David Axelrod was on the record in supporting the basic message:

As President Obama remakes his senior staff, he is also shaping a new approach for the second half of his term: to advance his agenda through executive actions he can take on his own, rather than pushing plans through an increasingly hostile Congress.

A flurry of staff departures and promotions is playing out as the White House ends a nearly two-year period of intense legislative activity. Where the original staff was built to give Obama maximum clout in Congress, the new White House team won't need the same leverage with lawmakers.

"It's fair to say that the next phase is going to be less about legislative action than it is about managing the change that we've brought," White House senior advisor David Axelrod said in an interview.

This sounds like: forget about the Employee Free Choice Act. And comprehensive immigration reform. And tougher financial regulations. And don't even think about adding that public option to health care reform.

It's also probably not a good wager to bet that Obama and the Senate Democrats will push to abolish the filibuster rule.

Is the White House consciously trying to cut the Congressional wing of the Democratic Party loose in hopes that will increase Obama's re-election chances? Are are they just blundering along with this stuff?

Tags: 2010 elections, barack obama, democratic party

Gideon Levy on Peace Process: "I don't know if it's time to lose hope"

Tags: israel, palestinians

Democrats: don't they even want to win?

I'm sure most of them do. It's just that, like I heard Michael Moore say on Larry King Live a few minutes ago, that the Democrats seem to get up every morning and say, hey, it's not looking sure enough that we're going to lose, so what can we do today to screw things up?

Dropping the deepwater drilling ban a month early, and three weeks before the election? After the BP oil gusher created one of the biggest corporate disasters in history? As though it weren't bad enough that the Dems seem to be trying to forget the BP disaster as quickly as possible, the Obama Administration takes this action to remind everyone that they just want to forget it as quickly as possible and let the oil giants get on with creating the next Gulf-killing disaster.

Forty-nine states investigating the foreclosure crisis - and the Administration assures us that their priority is to protect the banks. That would be the banks that the public bailed out last year, the banks that crashed the world economy the year before that, and the banks that the Administration supposed "stress-tested" last year to let them go back to their bad practices as quickly as possible make sure they were sound.
The phrase "never missing an opportunity to miss an opportunity" comes to mind.(But hope springs eternal; maybe this is a good sign: David Dayen, Elizabeth Warren Heads to Ohio, Hotbed for the Foreclosure Fraud Crisis FDL News Desk 10/13/2010)

Digby just picked up on this stunner of Obama talking about how he was sure he would be able to get along with those nice Republicans after the election no matter what happens and they would be able to find common ground, etc. (Inclusion Hullabaloo 10/13/2010)

Digby is understandably gobsmacked:

He's going to need Christine O'Donnell to cast a spell on the Teabag Republicans because that's the only way they are going to do anything remotely bipartisan. Even if he agreed to reduce millionaires' tax to zero and barnstorm against gay marriage and abortion, they would not help him. They want to beat him, not govern.

If Obama goes too far in trying to appease these people, he'd better hope to hell the Republicans run the Palin/Paladino ticket because that will be his only hope for reelection.

I don't think he's a dumb person so I'm hopeful that this is pre-election spin designed for political purposes. I'm not sure what those are, but I simply can't believe that he's serious after what we've seen.

Tags: 2010 elections, barack obama, democratic party

Money, politics and policy: health care edition

Matthew DoBias, Health Groups Do Balancing Act With Donations National Journal 10/09/2010

Overall, contributions from trade associations representing doctors, hospitals, and drug manufacturers are all leaning heavily toward Democrats. Yet, while avoiding direct confrontations with their Democratic allies in the health care fight, the groups are tilting toward Republicans in open-seat Senate contests -- signaling that they might be preparing for a post-midterm world in which Republicans will control more of the agenda.

The clear tilt of donations toward incumbent Democrats represents an extension of the handshake deal that the hospital, physician, and pharmaceutical lobbies made with Obama to support his approach to health care reform.

In July 2009, three of the nation's most influential hospital groups, including the American Hospital Association and the Federation of American Hospitals, trumpeted a deal to accept more than $155 billion in Medicare and Medicaid cuts to help finance the reform effort. In return, they agreed to back the Democratic-led effort to reshape the health care industry. That commitment remains apparent -- to a point -- in the way they are distributing their campaign dollars this year.

The wording isn't clear there. It sounds like the industry made a concession, and then out of gratitude for being allowed to make the concession, made another one. It doesn't explain the role of the individual mandate and the public option.

But for each of these groups, this cycle's pattern marks a shift from their traditional approach. [The pharmaceutical lobby] PhRMA has been closely identified with Republicans over the past decade; until earlier this year, it was led by former Rep. Billy Tauzin, R-La. From 2000 through 2006, while Republicans controlled both Congress and the White House, PhRMA directed about three-fourths of its congressional contributions toward Republicans. The Federation of American Hospitals also had leaned strongly to the right, directing nearly two-thirds of its giving toward the GOP. So did the AMA: In each election from 2002 through 2006, it directed at least three-fifths of its contributions to Republicans.

Almost without exception, the groups this year have avoided contributions to Republicans challenging incumbent Democrats who voted for reform. The AMA PAC, for instance, hasn't contributed to any such challenger except Eric Wargotz, a Republican physician who hasn't displayed a pulse in his race against Sen. Barbara Mikulsk of Maryland. And AMA has contributed to her campaign as well.

AHA and PhRMA have also shied away from contributing to Republicans challenging incumbents who voted for the legislation. The four PACs have contributed to a long list of embattled Democratic supporters of the bill, from Sens. Michael Bennet of Colorado and Harry Reid of Nevada to Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas, who held up her vote until the 11th hour before ultimately supporting the package. [my emphasis]

But now that the industry has the individual mandate and the public option is out, it seems pretty clear what the answer to the question posed at the end of the following passage will be:

The broadest measure of health industry support sends a similar message of qualified allegiance. Individual contributors who identify themselves as part of the health care sector have donated close to $321 million to congressional campaigns, according to an analysis by the Center for Responsive Politics. And they have split their donations almost exactly in half between Democrats and Republicans.

For Democrats, this bifurcated pattern of support for incumbents and a tilt to open-seat Republican challengers leaves the largest question unanswered: If a new GOP majority tries to repeal or block the law in 2011, will the industry defend the law or join in the campaign to raze it?

Tags: 2010 elections, health care reform

Background on the Ecuadorian coup attempt

This Real News Network report by Ecuadorian filmmaker Oscar León, "Ecuador: Failed Coup or Institutional Crisis?" 10/07/2010, gives some valuable background on the revolt against the serious but short-lived democratic government in Ecuador.



Tags: ecuador

James Barnes on "Barack Obama's Southern Problem"

James Barnes writes in The National Journal on "Barack Obama's Southern Problem" 10/09/2010:

In the past two national elections, Democrats have made gains at lower levels [in the South], too, winning congressional races in rural areas as well as suburbs. And Barack Obama took Florida, North Carolina, and Virginia -- a state that hadn't gone Democratic since Lyndon Johnson carried it in 1964.

By energizing black voters and minimizing losses among whites, Obama seemed to find a winning formula for getting Democrats back in contention in the South. But this year, the Democratic momentum may be dramatically reversed as white voters in the region seem to be recoiling from the legislation that Congress's Democratic majorities have produced, not to mention from the president himself. [my emphasis]

Does it have anything to do with race?

Democratic and Republican operatives agree that in the South, the main issue in the midterm elections is white animus toward Obama, which has translated into a strong reaction against Democratic congressional candidates. According to a poll conducted between August 25 and September 6 by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center, 65 percent of likely white voters in the South say they plan to vote or are leaning toward voting for a Republican candidate in the midterm elections, compared with only 30 percent who said they would favor a Democrat.

That 35 percentage-point gap in the South dwarfs the margins that Republicans hold over Democrats in other regions. Likely white voters in the East favor Republican congressional candidates over Democrats 50 percent to 40 percent; in the Midwest, the GOP's advantage is 52 percent to 40 percent; and in the West, it's 55 percent to 39 percent.

"The thing that differentiates the South from the other regions is the intensity -- the absolute intensity -- of the dislike of Obama," said Democratic pollster John Anzalone, who is based in Montgomery, Ala., and conducts surveys on congressional races in and outside of the South. [my emphasis]

It could be just a coincidence that the part of the country which imposed racial segregation for seven decades has a much disproportionate number of whites opposed to the Democrats in general and President Obama in particular. It could also have something to do with the Republicans' decades-long Southern Strategy of appealing to white voters' racial fears and resentments.

More on white voter demography in the South, which could lead someone to wonder whether the categories of "conservative Republican white Christians" might overlap heavily with "white people who really don't like blacks very much":

Republican pollster Whit Ayres explained that voters who identify themselves with the GOP "are just more conservative, and the lurch to the left [in Washington] bothers them more." He noted that in Southern states, at least a plurality of Republicans now identify themselves as "very conservative" as opposed to "somewhat conservative," which wasn't always the case in the 1990s.

Although social issues are generally far from the forefront in this campaign year, cultural roots may be one factor behind the Southern unease with Obama. White voters in the South are far more likely to identify themselves as evangelical Christians than their counterparts in any other part of the country. According to the Pew survey, 46 percent of Southern white voters said they are evangelicals, compared with 27 percent in the Midwest, 22 percent in the West, and just 13 percent in the East. And among white evangelical voters in the South, Obama's job-approval rating stands at an abysmal 21 percent, and his disapproval rating is 75 percent. That's about the same as in 2008, when the National Election Pool exit poll found that only 21 percent of white evangelical Protestants in the South had supported Obama. He hasn't lost evangelicals; their backing for him just still trails abysmally. [my emphasis]

Democrats, not surprisingly, are cautious on this issue, probably too cautious, as they often are:

Democrats explain Obama's liability with white voters in the South as a mix of revulsion toward Democratic activism and even a hint of racial backlash, with an emphasis on the former. "Whether it's the perceived aggressive liberal agenda or the manifestation of race, they clearly place their displeasure right in Obama's lap," said Democratic pollster Anzalone. "You very rarely see unfavorable [ratings] that high."

It's also important to remember that there have been bright spots for the Dems in the South:

During the past few election cycles, Democrats have made gains in picking up House seats in the South. Since 2002, they have won races in 15 congressional districts represented by a Republican and held onto them going into this campaign. Overall, Democrats currently represent 64 of the region's 145 districts. But their net gain since 2002 has been only five seats because they also sustained defeats in 10 districts. Six of those losses came in Texas, thanks to the Republican redistricting plan inspired by former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, then the state's most powerful member of Congress, that pushed Democratic incumbents onto shaky terrain.

And as Democratic progressives have been pointing out, Blue Dogs are the most vulnerable, even after the Obama Administration bent over backwards on issues like health care reform to cater to the Blue Dogs:

Many Democratic candidates in the other 40 or so districts are bracing for a GOP surge at the ballot box that won't be met with any countervailing surge in minority-voter support. Democrats suspect that the most likely seats to fall will be those Southern rural and small-town districts, where voters more naturally lean conservative. Even though Democratic incumbents occupying those seats often have conservative stands on the Second Amendment, abortion, and gay marriage, that may not hold much sway with an electorate unhappy with Obama and the Democratic leadership in Congress. [my emphasis]

The Louisiana Senate race raises the perennial question of just what kind of values really matter to self-described conservative Christian "values voters":

At one point, Democrats had hopes that Sen. David Vitter, R-La., might be vulnerable after he acknowledged that he had been a client of an escort service in Washington that was a front for prostitution (he sought forgiveness from his wife and his constituents in an emotional public address). His opponent, Rep. Charlie Melancon, a conservative Democrat representing the state's Cajun parishes, has a two-minute television ad reminding Louisianans of the issue and accusations that Vitter had patronized hookers in New Orleans. But even that hasn't inoculated Melancon from GOP attacks that he voted for health care reform, which has a hold on many Louisiana voters this year.

"Their decision is between a whore-loving Republican or an Obama-loving Democrat," said Anzalone, who is Melancon's pollster. "That's what the race is coming down to. That shows you the power of the animosity of white Southerners against what they perceive is going on in Washington, D.C." [my emphasis]

Barnes notes only in passing the potential influence that Latino votes may have in the November elections, which will be one of the most interesting things to watch: "The growing Hispanic population in those states makes Florida Democrat Sink a viable contender and gives former Houston Mayor Bill White a fighting chance in Texas to unseat Republican Gov. Rick Perry, still the favorite."

Tags: 2010 elections, us south, white racism

US-Pakistan relations

Juan Cole has been keeping his readers at Informed Comment up to date on the US conflict with Pakistan over drone strikes in Pakistan. Pakistan had closed the Khyber pass to US supply traffic after a number of drone strikes. A number of trucks were blown up by Taliban fighters while they were waiting for renewed permission to go into Afghanistan, which Pakistan has now granted. Cole gives some background:

Pakistan closed the crossing to trucks transporting goods for NATO & the US after a September 30 incident in which US helicopter gunships made incursions into Pakistani territory and then fired missiles at a Frontiers Corps checkpoint, apparently mistaking the scouts for Taliban. Two scouts were killed and four wounded. Pakistani nerves were already raw because of unmanned drone strikes on Pakistani territory. US President Barack Obama and Gen. David Petraeus appear to have decided to push for more hot pursuit missions into Pakistan from Afghanistan, and this decision was absolutely unacceptable to the Pakistani military, as well as to the public. When the Frontiers Corps scouts were killed, Chief of Staff Gen. Ashfaq Kayani appears to have felt the moment opportune to nip the 'hot pursuit' doctrine in the bud by closing the main NATO transport route and reminding Washington just how badly it needs Pakistani good will. [my emphasis]

Cole believes that Pakistan's action looks like a successful pushback against the US policy:

The US and NATO were forced into uncharacteristic apologies to the Pakistani government, over which Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani and President Asaf Zardari waxed lyrical, and which appear to have mollified public opinion somewhat and to have saved face for the Pakistani elite. My guess is that the US has given representations to Kayani that no uncoordinated hot pursuits will be launched into Pakistan from Afghanistan by the US military.

In fact, In fact, Interior Minister Rahman Malik openly threatened the US and NATO after the apology was issued:: "Pakistani forces are capable of defending the sovereignty of the country and in case of any incursion in future, they will use any option in response."

To add insult to injury, the Pakistani government is considering imposing a tax on the NATO supply trucks. The huge trucks tear up the roads and do represent a cost to the government.

And he notes that this is another reminder that there really are limits to American power:

The whole affair reveals how weak Bush's wars have made the US. In 2001 Bush officials could just threaten to reduce Pakistan to rubble if it did not turn on the Taliban and join the Bush "war on terror."

Now, with the US bogged down in Afghanistan and Iraq and in the wake of 9 years during which the US military was shown supremely vulnerable to unconventional military tactics, no such threat directed at Islamabad would be taken seriously. The US genuinely needs Pakistani help. The threats are being issued in the opposite direction, and the US military is the party that is being forced to swallow its pride and make an about-face on policy. [my emphasis]

Tags: afghanistan war, pakistan

The problem with putting the foxes in charge of the other foxes: Hank Paulson edition

I really should read McClatchy News more often than I do. Their reporting on foreign has stood head and shoulders above most other national news organizations in the US for years.

This report by Greg Gordon, with video included, How Hank Paulson's inaction helped Goldman Sachs 10/10/2010, reminds us how destructive and corrupting the phenomenon of regulatory capture can be, when the regulators have a perceived self-interest in giving the industries they regulate a pass. After serving for eight years as the CEO executive of investment bank Goldman Sachs, Paulson became Bush's Secretary of the Treasury.

During Paulson's first 15 months as the treasury secretary and chief presidential economic adviser, Goldman unloaded more than $30 billion in dicey residential mortgage securities to pension funds, foreign banks and other investors and became the only major Wall Street firm to dramatically cut its losses and exit the housing market safely. Goldman also racked up billions of dollars in profits by secretly betting on a downturn in home mortgage securities.

"No one was better positioned . . . than Mr. Paulson to understand exactly what the implications of his moving against the (housing) bubble would have been for Goldman Sachs, because he knew what the Goldman Sachs positions were," said William Black, a former senior thrift regulator who delivered the harshest criticism of the former secretary.

Paulson "knew that if he acted the way he should, that would have burst the bubble. Then Goldman Sachs would have been left with a very substantial loss, and that would have been the end of bonuses at Goldman Sachs."

The rampant misconduct, corruption and blatant violations of law by the Cheney-Bush administration should have already been thoroughly investigated by the Democratic Congress and by Obama's Justice Department. Obama's Look Forward Not Backward policy on turning a blind eye to even criminal acts by the preceding administration has been thoroughly misguided.

Tags: bush administration

Upton Sinclair's 1934 campaign

This is a video describing the historic California Democratic primary campaign of Upton Sinclair in 1934. He lost the Governor's race to Republican Gov. Frank Merriam. But his campaign remains an important piece of the history of grassroots democratic reform movements in the US:



Tags: california politics, upton sinclair

George Lakoff and value "frames" (2): Al Gore on reason and democracy

Continuing from my post yesterday on linguist George Lakoff's ideas for the Democrats on political communication, my biggest concern about his basic message is the implication of his arguments that reason is largely if not wholly dispensable in democratic electoral politics.

Al Gore titled his 2007 book on his concerns for the present and future of American democracy The Assault on Reason (2007). And he refers back to the Enlightenment roots of the US Constitution to emphasize that democracy assumes and expects that reason can, at the end of the day, form the basis of the voters' choices and their understanding of critical issues. Lakoff argues that this Enlightenment perspective is a disadvantage for the Democrats in politics.

Gore does speak with considerable personal authority on this subject since he won the Presidential election of 2000. And he points out that "unhealthy combinations of concentrated political and economic power" can severely distort the public debate by promoting false but self-interested claim on public policy issues. Gore is emphatic in stating that this confounding of reasonable and factual discussion of important issues goes to the heart of democracy as such:

The derivation of just power from the consent of the governed depends upon the integrity of the reasoning process through which that consent is given. If the reasoning process is corrupted by money and deception, then the consent of the governed is based of false premises, and any power thus derived is inherently counterfeit and unjust. If the consent of the governed is extorted through the manipulation of mass fears, or embezzled with claims of divine guidance, democracy is impoverished. If the suspension of reason causes a significant portion of the citizenry to lose confidence in the integrity of the process, democracy can be bankrupted. [my emphasis]

Gore's level of concern doesn't seem to have diminished since 2007. This past month, speaking at a university Business-School in Iserlohn, Germany, he emphasized against that democracy in America is in real danger from the outsize influence of big money in the electoral and political processes.

Lakoff has been focusing on the immediate partisan communication issues, urging the Democrats to look at ways to market themselves more effectively. But marketing more effectively within a severely corrupted informational environment doesn't solve the problem that Gore identifies: democracy depends of the possibility for reasoned, fact-based discussion and argument. Even if the Democrats can win elections by better messaging within that environment and its constraints, it doesn't save democracy.

President Obama addressed this problem in relation to this year's Citizens United Republican Supreme Court decision opening the floodgates to corporate-funded political advertising in his 09/18/2010 radio address.



After several minutes of searching on the White House site, I was unable to find an official transcript of that speech. The Bush White House website actually was more user-friendly than Obama's in that way.

To his credit, Obama has spoken a number of times about the destructive influence of the Citizens United decision. In his 2010 State of the Union Address (SOTU), he said:

With all due deference to separation of powers, last week the Supreme Court reversed a century of law that I believe will open the floodgates for special interests –- including foreign corporations –- to spend without limit in our elections. (Applause.) I don't think American elections should be bankrolled by America's most powerful interests, or worse, by foreign entities. (Applause.) They should be decided by the American people. And I'd urge Democrats and Republicans to pass a bill that helps to correct some of these problems.

Sadly, his response to it so far has been fairly modest, though the DISCLOSE Act was a first attempt to rectify the damage. It passed the House but was shot down twice in the Senate - because of the filibuster rule that allows the Republicans to block virtually any law with 41 votes out of 100.

I'm not letting the Democrats off the hook on this, though: The filibuster rule is a bad rule, further amplifying the less democratic aspects of the Senate. The Senate can abolish it with a majority vote, and the Democrats have a big majority in the Senate. This outgoing term of Congress would have been an excellent chance to get rid of that rule and pass legislation like the DISCLOSE Act. They didn't even try.

But, as is often the case, Obama's words on this subject are well put.

From January 23, just after the ruling:

But this week, the United States Supreme Court handed a huge victory to the special interests and their lobbyists – and a powerful blow to our efforts to rein in corporate influence. This ruling strikes at our democracy itself. [my emphasis]

This ruling opens the floodgates for an unlimited amount of special interest money into our democracy. It gives the special interest lobbyists new leverage to spend millions on advertising to persuade elected officials to vote their way – or to punish those who don’t. That means that any public servant who has the courage to stand up to the special interests and stand up for the American people can find himself or herself under assault come election time. Even foreign corporations may now get into the act.

I can’t think of anything more devastating to the public interest. The last thing we need to do is hand more influence to the lobbyists in Washington, or more power to the special interests to tip the outcome of elections. [my emphasis]

From July 26:

Because of the Supreme Court’s decision earlier this year in the Citizens United case, big corporations –- even foreign-controlled ones –- are now allowed to spend unlimited amounts of money on American elections. They can buy millions of dollars worth of TV ads –- and worst of all, they don't even have to reveal who's actually paying for the ads. Instead, a group can hide behind a name like "Citizens for a Better Future," even if a more accurate name would be "Companies for Weaker Oversight." These shadow groups are already forming and building war chests of tens of millions of dollars to influence the fall elections.

Now, imagine the power this will give special interests over politicians. Corporate lobbyists will be able to tell members of Congress if they don't vote the right way, they will face an onslaught of negative ads in their next campaign. And all too often, no one will actually know who's really behind those ads. [my emphasis]

And, in fact, groups like the Chamber of Commerce are already drawing on funds that include not only US corporate but foreign donations to run "independent" ads against Democrats in this year's elections.

From August 21:

As the political season heats up, Americans are already being inundated with the usual phone calls, mailings, and TV ads from campaigns all across the country. But this summer, they're also seeing a flood of attack ads run by shadowy groups with harmless-sounding names. We don’t know who's behind these ads and we don't know who’s paying for them.

The reason this is happening is because of a decision by the Supreme Court in the Citizens United case – a decision that now allows big corporations to spend unlimited amounts of money to influence our elections. They can buy millions of dollars worth of TV ads – and worst of all, they don't even have to reveal who is actually paying for them. You don’t know if it's a foreign-controlled corporation. You don't know if it's BP. You don't know if it's a big insurance company or a Wall Street Bank. [my emphasis]

For my January posts on the Citizens United decision with further links, see Activist Supreme Court gives corporations even more power to dominate politics 01/23/2010 and Republican judicial activism in Citizens United 01/27/2010.

Georg Lakoff blogs sporadically at the Berkeley Blog. Recent posts include Why are so many people about to vote against their interests? 09/16/2010 and Obama’s missing moral narrative and the intimidating right-wing message machine 06/01/2010.

Lakoff has some valuable suggestions about Democratic messaging, particularly his cautions against reinforcing Republican frames. But this is only one part of the Democrats' challenge in their political messaging. And it has to be understood in the existing context of the influence of big money in political advertising and propaganda via conservative think tanks, of the hold of neoliberal economic ideology on the Democratic leadership, and the collapse in the quality of mainstream journalism, especially TV news where most Americans get most of their news.

I'm all for the Democrats improving their messaging. But that problem is enough to solve the problems facing American democracy in the current informational environment.

Tags: citizens united decision, democratic party, george lakoff, republican party