Joe's Prediction

Republicans Tell Americans: No, You Don't Have the Right to Vote

2011-09-11T21:00:00.000-07:00

I've written a great deal on the blog about how changing population demographics in America threaten the future of the Republican party. If the GOP is going to make an effort to appeal to only to the very rich and to white "Christian conservatives," then it is eventually going to be swamped by the increasing majority of Americans who are not part of the Republican party's narrowly-defined base. For example, in 2010, that most Republican of years, Democrats in California swept the election at all levels. Why? According to a recent study of voter registration trends in that state, "The ethnic populations are dominating -- or at least representing a much larger share of the younger voters -- and they are less likely to be registering as Republicans."

The Republican party is well aware that the percentage of Americans making up their party's base is shrinking, and they're attacking the problem in a number of different ways. Unfortunately, none of these efforts involves moderating their extremist, frequently bigoted views, or actually trying to appeal to the interests of minorities. Thanks to the conservative Supreme Court's Citizens United decision, Republican-friendly groups now dominate independent expenditures on elections. The Republican leader of the Wisconsin state Senate openly admits that the GOP's union-busting efforts are designed to help Republicans win, saying that if, "the money is not there under the auspices of the unions, certainly what you’re going to find is President Obama is going to have a much difficult, much more difficult time getting elected and winning the state of Wisconsin."

Republicans have also been very successful in gerrymandering legislative districts to their advantage. They particularly love the part of the Voting Rights Act that makes it illegal to deliberately re-draw a legislative district to lower the minority share of the votes. Republican are only to happy to pack all the minority voters in a state into the smallest possible number of districts. That of course guarantees that Republicans will win every other district. And of course even with the minority vote in America carefully contained, Republicans don't want more minorities in the country, so they've adopted the most hard-line anti-immigrant policies possible. Then of course there's the simple tactic of running on the platform, "government doesn't work," then deliberately running the government as badly as possible. George W. Bush, I'm looking at you.

But even with all of these weapons at their disposal, Republicans are still worried enough about their ability to unfairly manipulate elections that they've had to dust off one of the oldest, saddest tactics of all: suppressing voter registration.

The New York Times has a good summary of the situation: "Less than a year before the 2012 presidential voting begins, Republican legislatures and governors across the country are rewriting voting laws to make it much harder for the young, the poor and African-Americans - groups that typically vote Democratic - to cast a ballot."

"Spreading fear of a nonexistent flood of voter fraud, they are demanding that citizens be required to show a government-issued identification before they are allowed to vote. Republicans have been pushing these changes for years, but now more than two-thirds of the states have adopted or are considering such laws. The Advancement Project, an advocacy group of civil rights lawyers, correctly describes the push as "the largest legislative effort to scale back voting rights in a century." "Anyone who has stood on the long lines at a motor vehicle office knows that it isn’t easy to get such documents. For working people, it could mean giving up a day’s wages."

Republicans like to pretend that the new voter ID laws sweeping the country are a response to a real problem with voter fraud. According to Republican Kansas Governor Sam Brownback, his state's new voter ID law is necessary to “ensure the sanctity of the vote.” But as the Times article linked above points out, "Kansas has had only one prosecution for voter fraud in the last six years. But because of that vast threat to Kansas democracy, an estimated 620,000 Kansas residents who lack a government ID now stand to lose their right to vote."

In some cases however, Republicans are honest enough to admit that the new laws are not at all a response to a voter fraud problem. In Indiana, Jerry Bonnet, general counsel for the secretary of state, has admitted that the state had little evidence of in-person voter fraud before lawmakers passed a 2005 voter ID law there. And the effect of the new Indiana law? Well, in 2008, a dozen elderly nuns were turned away from the polls for lack of picture IDs.

An editorial in USA Today has pointed out that there is little difference between the new voter ID laws and the Jim Crow tactics that kept blacks from voting in the south for generations. "There is also ample reason to doubt the sincerity of states that say they will provide IDs. When Georgia imposed an ID law in 2005, courts barred the state from charging for them, calling such fees a poll tax - an unconstitutional tactic once used by segregationists to keep blacks from voting. But given the true motive behind such laws, it's likely that states will find other ways to make the IDs hard to get." Former President Bill Clinton agrees, recently saying, "There has never been in my lifetime, since we got rid of the poll tax and all the Jim Crow burdens on voting, the determined effort to limit the franchise that we see today."

And guess what? Having made it a requirement to get a photo ID to vote, Republicans are wasting no time in making it as difficult as possible to acquire an ID, particularly in areas with a high percentage of elderly voters, young voters, students, minorities and low-income voters.

And finally, I'm sad to say that the cynicism behind Republican voter suppression goes beyond just being a tactic to win elections. It's actually a point of their philosophy.

You might think this article from the hyper-conservative American Thinker, Registering the Poor to Vote is Unamerican must be satire. Sadly it is not. "Registering them to vote is like handing out burglary tools to criminals. It is profoundly antisocial and un-American to empower the nonproductive segments of the population to destroy the country."

I'm not sure what to say about the above quote. But the first thing that occurs to me is how odd it is to equate being poor in America with being "unproductive." Are the retail clerks in America's Wal-Marts, virtually all of whom live below the poverty line despite being employed full-time, "unproductive?" Perhaps we should return to the days when only the owners of large tracts of land qualified as voters.

So to review, Republicans won't trust you to vote if you're young, old, non-white, poor, Muslim, homosexual, urban or an elderly nun living in Indiana. According to Sarah Palin, only those 18% of people living in small towns are part of "real America." I guess pretty soon Republicans will only need about a dozen limousines to transport the remaining Americans for whom they don't have complete and utter contempt.

They Liked Ike. But They Don't Like These Guys

2011-07-03T18:00:00.000-07:00

Whatever you wanted
What could it be?
Did somebody tell you
That you could get it from me?
Is it something that comes natural?
Is it easy to say?
Why do you want it?
Who are you anyway?
-- Bob Dylan

Nevada is the only state that allows voters to select "none of these candidates" in statewide elections. The dozen or so Republican candidates for the 2012 Presidential nomination should be glad of this fact. According to an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, less than half of Republican primary voters say they are satisfied with their current crop of presidential candidates.

Put it another way. In the state of Tennessee, President Obama is not exactly popular. In 2008, he actually lost to his Republican opponent by a bigger margin than did John Kerry, that French-looking Yankee liberal did, in 2004. The Tennessee Republican party produced some of the most vicious, racist attacks on Obama in 2008, and, apparently, the voters there were just fine with that. Well, consider this recent poll conducted by Vanderbilt University. It shows that if the election were held today, Obama would beat all of the announced Republican candidates, most of them by a wide margin.

In a post last October, I offered a run down of the pros and cons of each Republican Presidential candidate. Time for an update. Here are your Republicans, more or less in order of their current standing in the polls.

Mitt Romney
Announced candidate? YES
PRO: Remains (just barely) the front-runner, has the biggest grassroots organization.
CON: As the front-runner, is taking the most flack from the other candidates. In 1993, the Republican position on health care was an individual mandate to buy care from a private insurer. Since both President Obama and Governor Romney passed legislation of this kind, most Republicans have decided that an individual mandate is the mark of the antichrist or something.

Rick Perry
Announced candidate? NO
PRO: Governor of Texas is a good job to have if you want to run for President.
CON: Republicans mostly won't vote for a guy they think might be gay. Has suggested Texas might secede from the Union again.

Michele Bachmann
Announced candidate? YES
PRO: Terrific speaker. Has accomplished a lot in life.
CON: Is patently insane. Claims she had no desire to be in politics, but God insisted. Frequently makes bold misstatements of fact, then insists that those misstatements are true. (A skill learned from Sarah Palin.) Has called for the media to investigate which Congressman are "un-American." Is deeply homophobic.

Rudy Giuliani
Announced candidate? NO
PRO: People vaguely remember that they liked his leadership style after 9/11.
CON: Has more skeletons in his closet than Bela Lugosi. Enjoys cross dressing. Ran for President in 2008, and his candidacy went over like a lead balloon.

Sarah Palin
Announced candidate? NO
PRO: If she does something, cable news will give her 24 hours of coverage. If she does nothing, they'll give her 48 hours of coverage.
CON: This article says it all: Michele Bachmann is the candidate Sarah Palin was supposed to be.

Herman Cain
Announced candidate? YES
PRO: The Democrats are running a black guy? We can do that too.
CON: Is more racist than some Klansmen.

Tim Pawlenty
Announced candidate? YES
PRO: His combined quotient of bigotry, homophobia and plain-crazyness are much lower than most of the other candidates.
CON: Absolutely nothing has gone right with his candidacy.

Jon Huntsman
Announced candidate? YES
PRO: Is somewhere between 3 times and 20 times as smart as the other candidates.
CON: Lacks conservative credentials. And I think this summarizes his candidacy pretty well: "There’s a reason he barely has a pulse in the polls. He speaks so softly that even his aides sometimes have trouble hearing him at events. He is making civility a cornerstone of his campaign, at a time when Republican voters are ravenous for red-meat conservative policies, and an epochal showdown with Obama."

Others
Just a comment that I'd like to thank Newt Gingrich (and Sarah Palin as well) for sort-of-but-not-really running for President and thus soaking up a lot of money and media air time that would otherwise go to the legitimate candidates.

To summarize, Republican primary voters may not be united on what they want in a Presidential nominee. But they are fairly united in what they don't want: any of the candidates they've seen so far.

Welcome to Wal-Mart America: Low-Wage Utopia

2011-05-08T19:00:00.000-07:00

A few years ago, author Thomas Frank interviewed Kansas Republican state Senator Kay O'Connor as part of what would become the best book of the decade on politics, What's the Matter with Kansas?. O'Connor offered some very interesting ideas on solving America's problems. First and foremost, we should start funneling public money into sending children to parochial rather than public schools. Then, "these better schools will produce good workers, that will become attractive to more businesses, that will move in to get these good workers, who will work for lower wages because [they're] from poverty families. They aren't expecting eighty thousand a year. They're content to work for six, eight, ten dollars an hour."

Are Kay O'Connor's views typical of conservatives? Well, some of her ideas proved a little far out even for Kansas Republicans. For example, in 2001 O'Connor suggested that it was a bad idea to give women the right to vote. But for confirmation that O'Connor's philosophy of America as a place where workers should neither need or desire decent wages, we need look no farther than America's largest employer, Wal-Mart Corporation.

In recent years, a full-time sales clerk as Wal-Mart was paid about a $1,000 less than the federal poverty line for a family of three. Founder Sam Walton was never one to mince words when describing how his business operates, "I pay low wages. I can take advantage of that. We're going to be successful, but the basis is a very low-wage, low-benefit model of employment."

A recent article on CNN.com suggests what might be some of the problems with the Wal-Mart model of, "work full-time, but don't get paid enough to live on." The article, entitled, Wal-Mart: Our shoppers are 'running out of money' by Parija Kavilanz suggests that the more than one out of every three Americans who shop at Wal-Mart every week are struggling to make ends meet because of rising gasoline prices.

"We're seeing core consumers under a lot of pressure," (Wal-Mart CEO Mike) Duke said at an event in New York. "There's no doubt that rising fuel prices are having an impact." Wal-Mart shoppers, many of whom live paycheck to paycheck, typically shop in bulk at the beginning of the month when their paychecks come in."

There are two points I'd like to make in regards to the Wal-Mart philosophy. The first is economic in nature. There's a very old doctrine in this country of keeping wages at rock-bottom even when corporate profits are booming. The responsibility of a manager is to make money for the stock holders, not to worry about the country's standard of living. I know there's no hope of getting people like Mike Duke to care, from a moral standpoint, that the people who work for him live in poverty.

But suppose on the other hand, it's Wal-Mart's bottom-line that's being threatened? Has Mr. Duke ever asked himself, "Hmm, we sell consumer goods. Maybe if we paid people a little more, they wouldn't be so devastated by economic downturns and spikes of inflation, and then they could buy more stuff at Wal-Mart. Then we'd make more money and not have to worry so much about recessions either!"

Put it another way. When profits are high, but wages low, most people will be untouched by "economic booms" and continue to eke out a life on the edge of bankruptcy. Investors will then funnel their high profits into speculation rather than expanding production of consumer goods. This will cause investment vehicles to become overvalued. Eventually, investors become uneasy and start cashing in, causing markets to plummet, businesses to fold, massive job losses and a general economic crash. In the 1930s, it was the stock market that was overvalued, and when it crashed, we called it, "The Great Depression." In the 2000s, it was primarily real-estate that was overvalued, and when speculation in "the housing bubble" crashed, we called it, "The Great Recession."

As long as we allow unregulated free-markets, otherwise known as, "letting a handful of people get super rich while screwing everyone else," the boom and bust cycles will continue. But here's the second point I want to make about the Wal-Mart way of doing business and the falling standard of living in America. It's only happening because Americans are letting it happen.

Returning to What's the Matter with Kansas, Thomas Frank wrote quite eloquently about how the response to tough economic times has changed in America over the years.

"The blue-collar, heavily unionized city of Wichita used to be one of the few Democratic strongholds in the state; in the nineties it became one of the most consistently conservative places of them all, a mighty fortress in the wars over abortion, evolution, loose interpretation of the Constitution, and water fluoridation.

Not too long ago, Kansas would have responded to the current situation by making the bastards pay. This would have been a political certainty, as predictable as what happens when you touch a match to a puddle of gasoline. When business screwed the farmers and the workers—when it implemented monopoly strategies invasive beyond the Populists’ furthest imaginings—when it ripped off shareholders and casually tossed thousands out of work—you could be damned sure about what would follow.

Not these days. Out here the gravity of discontent pulls in only one direction: to the right, to the right, farther to the right. Strip today’s Kansans of their job security, and they head out to become registered Republicans. Push them off their land, and next thing you know they’re protesting in front of abortion clinics. Squander their life savings on manicures for the CEO, and there’s a good chance they’ll join the John Birch Society. But ask them about the remedies their ancestors proposed (unions, antitrust, public ownership), and you might as well be referring to the days when knighthood was in flower."

In other words, once upon a time, American workers were ready to fight for their economic rights. Today, Americans are storming the palaces of the rich, shouting, "We will cut your taxes."

Roger Ebert discussed these same issues recently in a great article entitled, The One-Percenters.The article notes that Wall Street has been duping investors and wrecking the economy, all while voting itself record bonuses. And the public's response?

"What puzzles me is why there isn't more indignation. The Tea Party is the most indignant domestic political movement since Norman Thomas's Socialist Party, but its wrath is turned in the wrong direction. It favors policies that are favorable to corporations and unfavorable to individuals. Its opposition to Obamacare is a textbook example. Insurance companies and the health care industry finance a "populist" movement that is manipulated to oppose its own interests. The billionaire Koch brothers payroll right wing front organizations that oppose labor unions and financial reform. The patriots wave their flags and don't realize they're being duped.

Consider taxes. Do you know we could eliminate half the predicted shortfall in the national budget by simply failing to renew the Bush tax cuts? Do you know that if corporations were taxed at a fair rate, much of the rest could be found? General Electric recently reported it paid no current taxes. Why do you think that was? Why do middle and lower class Tea Party members not understand that they bear an unfair burden of taxes that should be more fairly distributed? Why do they support those who campaign against unions and a higher minimum wage? What do they think is in it for them?"

There's no doubt about it. Even as corporate profits have continued to rise and wages fall, and even as we've watched executives pay far less in taxes while their compensation skyrockets as they busy themselves wrecking the economy, millions of American workers have bought into a philosophy that enlists them into fighting against their own interests. So how did it happen? Well, it's no surprise that our corporate-owned media is relentlessly pushing pro-corporate viewpoints. Another reason, I believe, is that the work people do today doesn't create worker solidarity. There's something about the factory work of the 20th century that brought people together in a way that the cubicle-based data-entry work of the 21st century does not.

The battle for workers' rights in America seems to be over at least for now. The workers have surrendered and gone over to the other side. Our best hope seems to be in the country's changing population demographics. There's a lot of people coming to America, and a lot of recent arrivals who are raising a lot of kids. And for the most part, those immigrants come from places that believe in something besides corporate profit.

Why Yes, Donald Trump is the Perfect Candidate

2011-04-17T19:00:00.000-07:00

Public Policy Polling found this past week that Donald Trump is leading the Republican field for the 2012 Presidential nomination. In fact, Trump bested other potential Republican candidates by a substantial margin, scoring 26% in the poll compared to only 17% for former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee and 15% for former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney. Hard to believe, but Trump is being talked about in conservative circles as someone who can actually beat Obama.

What can I say? Just this: Thank you, thank you Donald Trump for stealing the spotlight from the legitimate candidates and bringing your special brand of insanity to the 2012 race. It's hard for me to pick which aspect of Donald Trump's potential candidacy is most amusing. For example, there's the fact that I've seen several sources refer to Trump as an "unconventional candidate." Unconventional? Really? Well, let's see. He's an old white guy, born to obscene wealth, who professes to be Christian, who's thrice-married, and who has run his personal fortunes into bankruptcy several times. Sounds like a completely conventional Republican candidate to me.

I'm also enjoying watching Tea Party Republicans back yet another candidate who is wildly unpopular with the general public, and thus has no chance of winning should he get the Republican nomination. In 2010, we watched the Republicans give away elections they could have won by nominating wacko candidates in key Senate races like Christine McDonnell in Delaware and Sharron Angle in Nevada. Before they nominate Donald Trump for the Presidency, Republicans might want to consider the fact that just 28 percent of the public have a favorable opinion of him, while 46 percent have an unfavorable opinion.

Trump seems to know exactly how to get the support of the tea-bagger wing of the Republican party. He's chosen to make President Obama's birth certificate the cornerstone of his incipient candidacy. Here's a couple of quotes from Trump on the issue. He noted that, "you have no doctors that remember, you have no nurses," who have come forward to verify that Obama was born in Hawai'i. In the very same interview, Trump also said, "The governor of Hawaii says, ‘Oh, I remember when he was born 50 years ago.’ I doubt it. I think this guy should be investigated. I doubt he remembers when Obama was born. Give me a break! He’s just trying to do something for his party." (For the record, Governor Abercrombie of Hawai'i knew the Obamas when the future President was born in 1961.)

Now, did you catch what Trump actually said in the interview? If witnesses to Obama's birth don't come forward, it's evidence of a conspiracy. However, if witnesses DO come forward, it's ALSO evidence of a conspiracy.

The icing on the cake is that the more Trump hogs the Republican microphone, and the more he plays to the "birther" wing of the party, the more he drags the (slightly) less crazy candidates down with him. As Stephen C. Webster of Raw Story recently noted, "For their part, Republican leaders have largely dismissed the conspiracies has frivolous at best and damaging to the party at worst, but because the fictional narrative had been so propelled by conservative media and many leading Republicans, it seems to have stuck. Now some in the Republican Party are having difficulty confronting the issue, and some even appear to be afraid of offending the so-called "birthers." For example, are Republican legislators in Arizona gearing up to remind voters that Obama has presided over chronic high unemployment, and that he has not fulfilled some of his promises? Nope. Thanks to Donald Trump's inspiration, they're busy trying to pass a "birth certificate" requirement for future Presidential candidates.

Don't give up, Donald. You're just the kind of leader the Republican Party needs.

Those Pesky Immigrants Just Won't Vote Republican

2011-03-29T20:45:00.000-07:00

In my last post I noted that Republican leaders are going to lot of trouble to attack immigrants, and telling a lot of lies while doing it.

There are three small reasons, and one really big reason, why the GOP's leaders are trying to frighten voters with the idea that immigrants are coming to America to either soak up public services at taxpayer expense or to overthrow the Constitution.

The three small reasons are genuine ignorance, prejudice, and short-term political gain. Let's take for example the recent attempts by Republicans to gin up fear of Muslims in the United States. Sharron Angle was the Republican nominee for the Nevada Senate race in 2010. Last October, Angle claimed that the town of Frankford, Texas had been overrun by Muslims who had then imposed Sharia (the code of conduct of Islamic religious law) on the town. I'm sure it was genuine ignorance that led Angle to make this statement, as the town of Frankford does not exist.

But consider Newt Gingrich's statement this week that he fears for the future of his grandchildren because, "I am convinced that if we do not decisively win the struggle over the nature of America, by the time they're my age they will be in a secular atheist country, potentially one dominated by radical Islamists and with no understanding of what it once meant to be an American." Is Newt genuinely prejudiced against Muslim immigrants, or is he just trying to whip up support for a possible run for the Presidency? Probably a little of both.

But the real reason why Republicans feel to the need to stop immigration by any means necessary is not because they genuinely believe that immigrants will bankrupt the country or destroy American culture. The real reason is that they recognize that immigration will destroy the Republican party. The GOP is a white-Christians-only-club, and America's immigrant population is not made up of white Christians.

Consider the implications of the most recent census. In 2000, there were 35 million Hispanic Americans. By 2010, that number had jumped to 56 million. In the 2008 election, Obama carried Hispanic voters by a ratio of better than 2 to 1 over John McCain. And turnout by the rising population of Hispanic and other minority voters made all the difference in the outcome of that election.

In a 2009 article in The National Journal entitled Demography and Destiny, Ronald Brownstein gave a great analysis of the 2008 vote: "Start by considering the electorate's six broadest demographic groups -- white voters with at least a four-year college degree; white voters without a college degree; African-Americans; Hispanics; Asians; and other minorities.

Now posit that each of those groups voted for Barack Obama or John McCain in exactly the same proportions as it actually did. Then imagine that each group represented the share of the electorate that it did in 1992. If each of these groups voted as it did in 2008 but constituted the same share of the electorate as in 1992, McCain would have won. Comfortably.

Consider these facts. Then consider that in the next forty years, America's Hispanic population will nearly triple from 56 million to 150 million. Harold Meyerson of the Washington Post summarized the implications nicely in an article last month entitled, "Will the GOP embrace immigration reform or continue to ostracize key voters?"

"Read the census data that have been coming out over the past couple weeks and you're compelled to a stark conclusion: Either the Republican Party changes totally, or it has a rendezvous with extinction.

What the census shows is that America's racial minorities, aggregated together, are on track to become its majority. The Republican Party's response to this epochal demographic change has been to do everything in its power to keep America (particularly its electorate) as white as can be. Republicans have obstructed minorities from voting; required Latinos to present papers if the police ask for them; opposed the Dream Act, which would have conferred citizenship on young immigrants who served in our armed forces or went to college; and called for denying the constitutional right to citizenship to American-born children of undocumented immigrants."

Chris Cillizza, also of the Washington Post, this week made comments along the same lines as Meyerson, noting some of the hard numbers that make the Republican party's future prospects look grim: "And if looking back is worrisome for GOP strategists, looking forward is downright frightening.

Of the nine states where the Hispanic population grew by 100 percent or more between 2000 and 2010, McCain won seven of them: Alabama, Arkansas, Kentucky, Mississippi, South Carolina, South Dakota and Tennessee. That means that what had been reliably red states for decades are slowly — or not so slowly — seeing huge growth among what, for the moment, is a reliably Democratic constituency.

Add to that the fact that the four states with the country’s largest Hispanic population — California, Florida, New York and Texas — will account for 143 electoral votes for the next 10 years. That’s more than half of the electoral votes a candidate needs to be elected president. California and New York already are reliably Democratic, while Texas remains, for now, reliably Republican. Florida has been pivotal in the past three presidential elections and is likely to be again in 2012."

The Republican party can do a lot of things to rig the system in its favor. Disenfranchising minority voters. Gerrymandering legislative districts so that Democrats don't have a chance. Using the appalling Citizens United decision to pour enough corporate money into the system to buy every election. Busting public unions so that Democrats lose a traditional bastion of support.

But in the long run, a "whites only" club is not going to be able to control democracy in America.

Republicans to Immigrants: For Hate's Sake, I Spit My Last Breath at Thee

2011-03-26T22:15:00.000-07:00

Republicans Senators Rand Paul of Kentucky and David Vitter Lousiana want to change the Constitution. But they're not likely to tell you the real reason why. Rand and Vitter have proposed a constitutional amendment to get rid of birthright citizenship for the children of illegal immigrants.

From their press release: "Citizenship is a privilege, and only those who respect our immigration laws should be allowed to enjoy its benefits," said Sen. Paul. "This legislation makes it necessary that everyone follow the rules, and goes through same process to become a U.S. citizen.

Vitter and Paul do not believe that the 14th Amendment confers birthright citizenship to the children of illegal aliens, either by its language or intent. This resolution makes clear that under the 14th Amendment a person born in the United States to illegal aliens does not automatically gain citizenship."

Before I dive into the ulterior motives for this proposal, I want to make a few comments on the logic of the proposal itself, and the history of the Republican party's hatred of immigrants.

Point one: The Fourteenth Amendment begins, "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside." To suggest that this language does not mean that everyone born in the United States is a citizen is the linguistic equivalent of suggesting that 2 + 2 = 5.

Point two: The press release suggests that a newborn with no say about where he or she is born might have failed in his or her duty to "respect our immigration laws."

Point three: The comments in the press release actually kill the argument that Paul and Vitter are making. If it's true, as they claim, that the language and intent of the Fourteenth Amendment do not confer citizenship on illegal immigrants born in the US, then all they need to do is to take their argument to the Supreme Court. By proposing an Amendment to overturn the Fourteenth Amendment, they're essentially admitting that their argument is wrong.

Republicans have been trying to redefine birthright citizenship for some years now. Paul and Vitter's proposal is, in fact, just a new spin on an old campaign. Consider this 2006 article written by Rand Paul's father Congressman Ron Paul, Rethinking Birthright Citizenship.

According to Ron Paul, if illegal immigrants couldn't count on having their children born in this country becoming citizens, they wouldn't sneak over the border and run up hospital bills at public expense, and then stay in this country and use other pubic services.

"Hospitals bear the costs when illegal immigrants enter the country for the express purpose of giving birth. But illegal immigrants also use emergency rooms, public roads, and public schools. In many cases they are able to obtain Medicaid, food stamps, public housing, and even unemployment benefits. Some have fraudulently collected Social Security benefits."

In reality, what illegal immigrants contribute to this country far exceeds what little they consume in public services. According to a recent study at the University of Southern California, the state's foreign-born residents are more likely than the native-born to have jobs, and they put more into the economy than they take out of it. The study also found, "that immigrants contribute 32 percent of California’s gross domestic product and 27 percent of total household income — the basis for the researchers’ conclusion that they give more to the economy than they get from it."

Another key conclusion from the study: illegal immigrants’ net contribution to California may be higher than that of legal immigrants, due to the fact that illegal immigrants usually accept lower wages and have less access to public services.

In other words, the reality of what illegal immigrants contribute to this country and what they receive in return are the exact opposite of what Ron Paul claims. Consider for example, the relationship between illegal immigrants and the social security system. In order to obtain work, illegal immigrants usually obtain fraudulent social security numbers. This means they pay social security taxes without any hope of later receiving benefits. Just how big is this contribution? In 2005, the Social Security Administration estimated that illegal immigrant workers in the United States were providing the system with a subsidy of as much as $7 billion a year.

So if illegal immigrants work hard, pay taxes and receive little in the way of public services, just why is it that Republicans hate them so much? Is it just pure prejudice against brown people? Well, not exactly. In my next post, I'll explain further.

Palin and the GOP: When the Sideshow Becomes the Show

2011-01-23T21:30:00.000-08:00

Take a look at Jesse Jackson's campaign platform from 1984. Three decades later, it's still a great expression of progressive ideals. From public works programs, to creating single-payer health care, to reducing the military budget, Jackson's platform is more relevant and needed today than it was even during the Reagan years. Maybe if the Democratic Party had adopted some of Jackson's platform in 1984, they wouldn't have lost the election by 18 points.

I want to say some good things about Jesse, because unfortunately, I'm about to compare him to Sarah Palin.

I've heard it said that one of the problems with the 1984 Democratic campaign was that after Walter Mondale secured the nomination, Jesse Jackson continued to soak up so much media attention that if you didn't know better you'd think that Jackson was the nominee rather than Mondale.

Consider what that means. Here it is a Presidential election year, and the person who always seems to be the one speaking on behalf of the Party is someone who is not an elected officeholder, Party official or candidate. Jackson ignored his responsibility to step away from the microphone.

Today, I'm reminded of these lessons every time Sarah Palin starts spewing her latest nonsense. From the media coverage she gets, you would think that Palin is one of the most -if not the most- important person in the Republican Party, rather than someone who very briefly held public office and who now has a favorability rating of 33%.

Sarah Palin wants the spotlight and microphone, and the major media in the country is only too happy to oblige. The massive coverage of her hateful remarks following the tragic shootings in Tucson brought this into focus. As Russ Douthat of the New York Times noted,

"Palin decided that what the country really needed was for her to use the day set aside for mourning (assassin Jared) Loughner’s victims to make a speech complaining about her own victimization. (Or as she put it, rather more pungently, the “blood libel” being leveled by her critics.) Which, needless to say, gave the press exactly the excuse it needed to continue its wall-to-wall Palin coverage for another 48 hours."

"Palin, meanwhile, officially despises the “lamestream” media. But press coverage — good, bad, whatever — is clearly the oxygen she craves."

"To the media: Cover Sarah Palin if you want, but stop acting as if she’s the most important conservative politician in America. Stop pretending that she has a plausible path to the presidency in 2012. (She doesn’t.) Stop suggesting that she’s the front-runner for the Republican nomination. (She isn’t.)"

It also quite clear that many Republicans realize the damage that Palin is doing to their party. I thought Kaili Joy Gray of dailykos.com summarized the situation nicely,

"It isn't how many times her name is mentioned on cable news or in the columns of Very Serious People like (the Washington Post's Dana) Milbank. The problem is how those Very Serious People cover her every nonsensical utterance as if it were a legitimately debatable point within our political discourse, as if her accusation that the president wants to establish "death panels" to kill grandmothers is a valid counterpoint to healthcare reform...The problem is the media's addiction to false equivalence, to balance every point with a contrary one, regardless of its validity."

"It isn't surprising that many Republicans want the media to ignore her. Last week, former Bush speechwriter David Frum said "She should stop talking — now." William Kristol, who has been one of her staunchest supporters, was critical of how she has responded to the Tucson shooting, and advised her to instead "deal with things that are at a sort of presidential level.""

One more observation from 1984. There was a reason why Jesse Jackson managed to steal the limelight from Walter Mondale all the way to election day. Love him or hate him, the public found Jackson a lot more interesting than the actual Democratic nominee for President.

The Republican Party is going to have a similar problem in 2012, assuming that Palin is not going to get the Presidential nomination. In terms of the amount of interest the various potential Republican candidate are generating on the internet, Nate Silver of the New York Times notes, "Ms. Palin’s search traffic, since the start of 2010, is roughly 16 times that of Mitt Romney, 14 times that of Newt Gingrich, 38 times that of Mike Huckabee, and 87 times that of Mr. Pawlenty. (It is about six times greater than these other four candidates combined.)"

Elect Democrats, Get Republican Government

2011-01-01T17:00:00.000-08:00

I'm glancing through my copy of Pulitzer Prize winner Paul Krugman's book The Conscience of a Liberal. The paperback edition, published just as President Obama was about to take office in 2009, includes this optimistic observation:

"The old Democratic majority was a weak coalition of Northern liberals and southern conservatives. The new majority is much more solidly progressive, largely because it was achieved despite the disappearance of the Dixiecrats. Meanwhile, the Republican party, having taken over the South, has lost the rest of the country and has largely been reduced to a Southern rump... Indeed it's a good bet that the remaining non-Southern Republicans in Congress, especially in the Senate, will prove relatively accommodating out of fear for their own reelection prospects" (my emphasis).

Wow, early 2009 seems like such an innocent time now. Republicans prove accommodating? Dream on. The GOP quickly adopted a policy of total opposition and obstructionism. Politically, this policy was a big success. In the 2010 elections, Republican voters turned out in droves, while disillusioned Democrats stayed home. It's not that the country wasn't ready for progressive change, it's just that disappointment over the state of the economy and promises not kept meant that Democrats were not about to get a ringing endorsement in the midterms.

I've heard it said that even when the Republicans are out of power, they act like they're in power, and when the Democrats are in power, they act like they're out of power. During the last two years, the Republicans used the Senates cloture rules like a sledgehammer. The results speak for themselves. More than 400 bills passed by the House were never taken up by the Senate. Nearly one out of every nine federal judgeships remain vacant. Dozens of Presidential nominees have been held up in the Senate, even though there are no substantive objections to most of them. A single Senator – Richard Shelby (R-AL) – was able to hold up 70 Presidential nominees, including the top intelligence officers at the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security, because he was upset about possible elimination of some pork barrel spending in his state.

I had originally outlined this post as a report card on two years of government by President Obama and the Democratic Congress. But again, it's the Republicans who have defined everything that's happened in the last two years. How can the President worry about immigration reform and climate change legislation, when thanks to Republicans he's just inherited the worst economy since the Great Depression, two failed wars, the largest budget deficit ever, and the imminent collapse of America's banking and automobile industries? Combine all this with a Republican congressional caucus dedicated to seeing that none of these problems actually get solved, and it's a miracle the country survived. Mr. President, Senator Reid, Speaker Pelosi, thank you.

2016 Senate Predictions

2010-12-18T16:00:00.000-08:00

Forecasting Senate races six years ahead of time? Yep, that's what we do here. As of this writing, Democrats control the Senate 53 to 47. It is however likely that in either 2012 or 2014 Republicans will win control of the upper house of Congress. Presuming that the GOP has a modest majority in the Senate heading into the 2016 elections, the chances of Democrats winning it back are pretty good. Most of the vulnerable incumbents will be Republicans first elected in 2010.

If you'd like to read what I wrote about this same class of Senators the last time they were up for reelection in 2010, click here.

Races are categorized as either likely or unlikely to be competitive. This post will be updated continuously through election day.

Competitive races:

Arizona
Rating: Leans Republican hold
Republican: John McCain (incumbent)
Democrat: ?
Overview: In 2000, John McCain was asked whether he might run for President in 2008. McCain's response: "by 2008, I think I might be ready to go down to the old soldiers home and await the cavalry charge there." McCain of course did run for President in 2008, and managed to win another Senate term in 2010. By 2016, will he finally be ready to go gently into that good night? I certainly hope so. McCain has long since gone from moderate, to conservative, to plain crazy. In an open seat race in Arizona, anything can happen. The state's electorate seems to have multiple-personality disorder, giving Barack Obama a healthy 45% of the vote in 2008, then turning around and electing loony xenophobe Jan Brewer as Governor by a comfortable margin in 2010.

Colorado
Rating: Leans Democratic hold
Democrat: Michael Bennet (incumbent)
Republican: ?
Overview: Former school superintendent Michael Bennet was the surprise appointee to replace retiring Senator Ken Salazar in 2009. Bennet turned out to be a more adept politician than anyone expected, winning a full term in his own right in 2010 even though he was widely expected to lose to Republican Ken Buck. Note: Joe's Prediction forecast that Bennet would win.

Florida
Rating: Leans Republican hold
Republican: Marco Rubio
Democrat: ?
Overview: What will it take to beat Rubio in 2016? It won't be easy. Maybe if Florida continues trending blue in national elections, and we nominate a strong candidate, and, -oh, I don't know-, maybe if by 2016 the Castro brothers are dead, and Cuba is free, so that the hispanic vote in Florida is less likely to vote Republican? Like I said, it won't be easy.

Georgia
Rating: Likely Republican hold
Republican: Johnny Isakson (incumbent)
Democrat: ?
Overview: Isakson should be vulnerable. He's not particularly popular or well-known, but it's been many years since Democrats won a high-profile race in red-state Georgia.

Illinois
Rating: Toss up
Republican: Mark Kirk (incumbent)
Democrat: ?
Overview: Kirk squeaked into office in 2010 by defeating a damaged-goods Democrat in a very Republican year. He won't be able to count on that kind of good fortune in 2016, when Illinois will probably turn out much stronger support for Democratic candidates.

Indiana
Rating: Leans Republican hold
Republican: Dan Coats (incumbent)
Democrat: ?
Overview: Coats was a retired Senator turned lobbyist in 2010 when the GOP scraped him up to run after the surprise retirement of Democratic Senator Evan Bayh. This suggests that in 2016, he'll be ready to retire again. In a Presidential election year, Indiana is likely to go Republican, suggesting that even if this were an open seat race, Democrats would face an uphill climb.

Iowa
Rating: Leans Republican hold
Republican: Chuck Grassley (incumbent)
Democrat: ?
Overview: Grassley was first elected to public office in 1958, the same year Ford introduced the Edsel. Coincidence? Long a quiet, dignified and relatively moderate figure, by 2009 Grassley had become the point man for the Republican party's disingenuous, fear-mongering campaign to destroy health care reform. He's also started going a little nuts over any kind of criticism. If he retires, this race is a toss up.

Kentucky
Rating: Likely Republican hold
Republican: Rand Paul
Democrat: ?
Overview: Paul is controversial enough to suggest that his reelection bid will be at least sort of competitive. A top-tier candidate like Democratic Governor Steve Beshear might be able to beat him, but the odds are always going to be against the blue team in Kentucky.

Louisiana
Rating: Likely Republican hold
Republican: David Vitter (incumbent)
Democrat: ?
Overview: Here's what I wrote about Vitter heading into the 2010 elections. It's still a pretty good summary of the Senator and his future prospects: "Vitter is the only Republican ever to be popularly elected as a U.S. Senator in Louisiana. The principal obstacle to Vitter's reelection bid is the recent revelation that during the 1990's through about 2001, he was enjoying the services of a number of prostitutes. And by prostitutes, I mean women who had sex with Vitter for money, not K Street Washington lobbyists. Another Christian conservative holier-than-thou hypocrite. The good news is that possibly Vitter will face a stiff primary challenge, and even if he survives he might be too damaged to win another term. The bad new is that Louisiana is the one red state that is arguably getting redder, and Vitter's approval numbers really aren't that bad (in Louisiana it seems, corruption in politics is like hot sauce in New Orleans cuisine)."

Missouri
Rating: Leans Republican hold
Republican: Roy Blunt
Democrat: ?
Overview: Let me be blunt on Blunt. He's probably the most conservative member of the Senate. Blunt is a "birther," a distinction even the rabidly-right wing Jim DeMint doesn't have. In 2010, I thought the Democratic candidate, Secretary of State Robin Carnahan, would probably be able to beat him. But Carnahan ran a surprisingly bad campaign, and Blunt defeated her by a huge margin. He will not be easy to defeat in 2016.

Nevada
Outlook: Leans Democratic hold
Democrat: Harry Reid (incumbent)
Republican: ?
Overview: The 2010 Nevada Senate election was the greatest show in politics. First came Democrats suggesting that Senate Majority Leader Reid was so unpopular, he couldn't be reelected no matter who the Republicans nominated. Next came a likely opponent in the form of Republican Sue Lowden, who suggested that people should attempt to pay their medical bills by bartering chickens. Finally, The GOP nominated Sharron Angle, a nutty, Scientology-friendly lightweight who once endorsed bringing back prohibition of alcohol. On election day, Nate Silver, the most respected prognosticator in the business, gave Angle an 83% change of winning. Joe's Prediction, however, correctly called the race for Reid. Ah, the memories. Ok, on to 2016. Reid will never be popular, and he's not getting any younger so this will likely be one of the most competitive races of the year.

New Hampshire
Rating: Leans Republican hold
Republican: Kelly Ayotte
Democrat: ?
Overview: Ayotte ran an impressive campaign in New Hampshire's open-seat race in 2010. In 2016, she'll first have to fend off challenges from the right to win renomination. Next, there's the fact the that 2016 is a national election year, and the last time New Hampshire had one of those, the Democratic Presidential nominee won by nearly 10%. To win, Ayotte will probably need some voters to split their ticket.

North Carolina
Rating: Leans Republican hold
Republican: Richard Burr (incumbent)
Democrat: ?
Overview: North Carolina is the state that likes to replace its Senators rather than reelect them. Due to a series of deaths, retirements and electoral defeats, Burr is the seventh man to hold this seat since 1975. And if 2008 is any indication, North Carolina is now a swing state in national elections. Burr however rallied from poor polling numbers to win in 2010, and he probably has the inside track in 2016.

Oklahoma
Rating: Likely Republican hold
Republican: ? (incumbent Tom Coburn retiring)
Democrat: Congressman Dan Boren?
Overview: Thank God the craziest, most obstructionist Senator in America will finally be retiring. Can Democrats find a candidate conservative enough to win in Oklahoma? Difficult, but not impossible.

Ohio
Rating: Leans Republican hold
Republican: Former Congressman Rob Portman
Democrat: ?
Overview: In 2010, Ohioans elected former President George W. Bush's budget director as their Senator. Sort of like electing a pyromaniac as your Fire Chief. Any way, Ohio votes Republican more often than not, meaning Portman will probably win another term.

Pennsylvania
Rating: Leans Republican hold
Republican: Pat Toomey (incumbent)
Democrat: ?
Overview: 2010 saw a lot of painful defeats for Democrats. On election night, it looked like Democrat Admiral Joe Sestak was going to win a surprise victory in Pennsylvania. But when all the votes were counted, Pat Toomey, former President of the anti-sanity PAC Club for Growth, won the day. Republicans however cannot count on 2016 being as favorable to them as 2010 was. Toomey is vulnerable to any top-tier Democratic recruit.

Washington
Rating: Likely Democratic hold
Democrat: Patty Murray (incumbent)
Republican: ?
Overview: Republicans talked a good game about beating Murray in both 2004 and 2010, then nominated terrible candidates to run against her. Murray should win a fifth term without a problem.

Wisconsin
Rating: Toss up
Republican: Rob Johnson (incumbent)
Democrat: ?
Overview: This one is painful for me to write about, so I'll just quote myself from my comments on 2010's race between incumbent Democrat Russ Feingold and Rob Johnson: "So it's come to this. Russ Feingold, one of the smartest, most decent members of the Senate might lose to Rob Johnson, a man with no public policy experience who lies about his own background as he accepts the federal handouts that he claims to despise. What more is there to say? ...I just wish that if Russ is going to lose, it didn't have to be to such a completely meritless candidate."

Races unlikely to become competitive:

Alaska: Republican Lisa Murkowski incumbent. Outlook: Unbeatable. Lost the GOP primary to Tea Bagger Joe Miller in 2010 and won the election as a write-in. Forget about it.

Alabama: Republican Richard Shelby incumbent. Outlook: Elected as a Democrat in 1986 and 1992, switched parties in 1994. What a jerk. Shelby will be 82 in 2016, but even if he retires, Alabama isn't exactly trending blue.

Arkansas: Republican John Boozman incumbent. Outlook: Boozman is a formidable politician, to say the least. One thing Republicans have not done well in the last few elections cycles is to offer serious challenges to incumbent Democratic Senators, yet Boozman stomped Blanche Lincoln by an incredible 21 percent in 2010.

California: Democrat Barbara Boxer incumbent. Outlook: Boxer won with a 10-point spread in that most Republican of years, 2010.

Connecticut: Democrat Richard Blumenthal incumbent. Outlook: Blumenthal has made some controversial statements that have threatened to derail his career, but he's a pretty safe bet to win another term.

Hawaii: Democrat Daniel Inouye incumbent. Outlook: Can Inouye really run for another term at age 92? Quite possibly. In any case, this seat is unlikely to go red.

Idaho: Republican Mike Crapo incumbent. Outlook: With a name like Crapo, it has to be good.

Kansas: Republican Jerry Moran incumbent. Outlook: Quiz question: Who was George McGill? Answer: Mr. McGill was the last Democrat elected to the Senate from Kansas. That was in..get ready...1932!

Maryland: Democrat Barbara Mikulski incumbent. Outlook: Mikulski will be 80 in 2016. Even if she doesn't run, the Maryland GOP hasn't exactly been on a hot streak for the last few years.

New York: Democrat Chuck Schumer incumbent. Outlook: Schumer has become one of the most respected and powerful Senators in party history.

North Dakota: Republican John Hoeven incumbent. Outlook: Even as a freshman Senator running for reelection, Hoeven is probably the safest bet of the year.

Oregon: Democrat Ron Wyden incumbent. Outlook: The Oregon GOP has been on life support for a number of years now.

South Carolina: Republican Jim DeMint incumbent. Outlook: DeMint believes that gays should not be able to teach in public schools. I believe I'll be happier the less time I spend thinking about Jim DeMint.

South Dakota: Republican John Thune incumbent. Outlook: Democrats didn't even bother to field a candidate against Thune in 2010.

Utah: Republican Mike Lee incumbent. Outlook: Why does Utah even bother to hold statewide elections?

Vermont: Democrat Pat Leahy incumbent. Outlook: Leahy is a big fan of the Grateful Dead. Any attempt to defeat him for reelection will also be dead on arrival.

The 2010 Election (Let's Get This Over With)

2010-11-14T21:00:00.000-08:00

It wasn't easy writing about the 2010 campaign for month after month with a growing sense of doom. And as Led Zeppelin sang, "The pain of war cannot exceed the woe of aftermath." Sigh. Ok, let's do this thing.

What went wrong, in one sentence: Any time unemployment is hovering near 10%, the people in power are going to lose the next election.

What went wrong, encapsulated in a single race. The open-seat race in Pennsylvania featured Republican Pat Toomey versus Democrat Joe Sestak. Toomey won 51% to 49%. A CNN/Time poll just before the election showed Toomey leading by four among likely voters, but Sestak winning by four among registered voters. So that means they polled a bunch of people who said they preferred the Democratic candidate, but who also said that they weren't voting this year. In races all over the country, Democrats faced this same problem.

Again, Democrats stayed home due to disappointment with the President and Congress over the economy. But that was only the tip of the iceberg. Democrats are disappointed about a lot of other things that the President and Congress didn't deliver. This subject deserves, and will get, a whole post of its own sometime soon right here on this blog.

Some other observations

Democrats aren't likely to get the House back in 2012
So maybe Obama will win in two years, and Democrats will flip the 20-odd seats they need to recapture House? Yes, it's possible. In fact, if Sarah Palin is the nominee, I'd almost guarantee it. But there are three reasons why Republicans are likely to keep the House for a few years. First, it's always the case that after the House changes hands, the survivors in the losing party retire in large numbers. Just wait and see; a bunch of House Democrats, finding that it's no fun to be in the minority, will move on to greener pastures (meaning they'll retire to take high-paying lobbying jobs). That means a bunch of open-seat races next time around, some of which will be juicy targets for the Republicans. Second, the decennial redistricting of the House happens next year, and it couldn't come at a worse time for Democrats, who just handed a bunch of state legislatures and Governor's offices over to the Republicans. That means the Republicans will totally control the redistricting process in a lot of states, and will naturally draw up the new districts so as to eliminate as many Democrats as possible. Lastly, in 2010 we saw corporate groups pour money into elections, mostly to the benefit of Republicans. Get ready to see that as a permanent fixture of American democracy.

Tea Party candidates were a disaster in statewide elections
Given a choice between semi-sensible conservatives and totally wacko Tea Party candidates as their nominees, Republicans mostly went for the tea baggers, and cost themselves a lot of races and a ton of money. Specifically:
* The GOP cost itself the Senate seats in Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware and Nevada by nominating tea baggers over more electable and only marginally less conservative candidates.
* The Republicans also chose tea baggers over more electable candidates in Florida and Kentucky. And while they won those races, they were forced to spend many millions of dollars that they would not have had to had they chosen nominees with broader appeal.

The biggest losers: Blue Dog Democrats
If you're not familiar with the Blue Dogs, they are House members, "identifying themselves as moderate-to-conservative Democrats committed to financial and national security and favoring compromise and bipartisanship over ideology and party discipline." The majority of the Blue Dogs lost their reelection bids this year; 27 went down to defeat and 26 survived. I've generally been an advocate of the Blue Dogs, because I'd rather see swing districts won by conservative Democrats than conservative Republicans, and because it's good to have debate within the Democratic party.

Unfortunately, for the past two years the Blue Dogs have foolishly sided with Republican nonsense more often than with their own party's agenda. As Markos said, the brunt of Democratic losses in the House were, "felt by the very same people who helped obstruct the Democratic agenda, who fought middle class tax cuts and the Public Option, and who fueled the "Dems are divided" narrative. We'll get rid of the hypocrites who, like their Republican BFF's, scream about "fiscal responsibility" while fighting desperately to cut taxes on the wealthiest." Now do you get it, Blue Dogs? If you want Democrats to vote for you, you're going to have to consider supporting the Democratic agenda. You're not going to magically win election by getting the votes of "conservative independents" or something.

I'm amazed to say this, but it was Senator Harry Reid, in his race against Tea bagger Sharron Angle, who showed Democrats how to win in a tough year like 2010. That is, to energize supporters by continuing to support and defend the Democratic agenda and the party's accomplishments. As Michael Blood of Huffington Post wrote, "Reid pointed to Angle's proposal to privatize Social Security as a defining contrast between them. He calls it one of the great government programs in history."

And finally: Congratulations, Governor Quinn
Governor Pat Quinn of Illinois trailed in all the polls right up to election day. I never met him personally in the years I worked in Illinois politics, although I knew some of the people who worked for him. Quinn is one of the nicest, most decent public servants in America, and I'm very pleased he was able to beat the odds and win election to a four-year term.

On to 2012. We're going to need more than hope.

Can Republicans now buy every election?

2010-11-07T14:00:00.000-08:00

Ladies and gentlemen, democracy is for sale. And the corporations buying our democracy are only interested in one thing: electing Republicans who want to eliminate taxes and regulations on corporations and Wall Street.

In January of 2010, the US Supreme Court ruled 5-4 in the case of Citizens United v Federal Election Commission that the government may not ban political spending by corporations in candidate elections.

As the New York Times said the day after the decision, the ruling, "overruled two precedents: Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce, a 1990 decision that upheld restrictions on corporate spending to support or oppose political candidates, and McConnell v. Federal Election Commission, a 2003 decision that upheld the part of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 that restricted campaign spending by corporations and unions.

The 2002 law, usually called McCain-Feingold, banned the broadcast, cable or satellite transmission of “electioneering communications” paid for by corporations or labor unions from their general funds in the 30 days before a presidential primary and in the 60 days before the general elections."

To recap, this disastrous decision by the Court means that corporations and other groups can not only spend an unlimited amount of money on electioneering, but also that they don't have to reveal the source of their funding. Suppose that a Saudi Arabian prince wants to give millions to the US Chamber of Commerce to run attack ads on a Congressman from New York. He's now perfectly free to do so. And guess what? The Chamber of Commerce doesn't have to tell anyone where they got the money to run the ads.

I recommend this article from USA Today for text and graphics that demonstrate the huge boost that Republicans got in 2010 from "outside groups" thanks the the Citizens United decision.

"Conservative spending has topped $187 million this year, up from $19.6 million in 2006, the last midterm election,"

"In the 48 House contests in which outside groups spent a combined $1 million or more, Republicans won two-thirds, a USA TODAY analysis of election results and campaign reports shows. In one Upstate New York district, conservative groups such as American Crossroads, the Tea Party Express and the 60 Plus Association bought $2.8 million in negative ads attacking freshman Democratic Rep. Scott Murphy on health care, helping Republican Christopher Gibson win 55% of the vote."

Here's another way to look at this year's spending by outside groups, as detailed in the same article. The top four groups, led by the US Chamber of Commerce and groups formed by Karl Rove and Wall Street hedge fund moguls spent a total of $97 million, virtually all of which went to Republicans. The Service Employees International Union, which gives money principally to Democrats, was a distant 5th with $15 million spent.

Last year, I wrote about how Democrats are gradually gaining an inherent advantage in electoral politics due to the country's changing population demographics. To summarize those observations, the Republican party derives nearly all of its support from suburban college-educated whites and rural whites with less than a college education. And because those two groups are making up a smaller and smaller percentage of American voters, it's becoming harder and harder for Republicans to win elections. I mention this because the Citizens United verdict may be just what the doctor ordered for Republicans to combat the Democrats' increasing demographic advantage. Most elections are won by the side who raises and spends the most money. So if corporations are going to start giving Republicans a blank check every year, then Republicans are going to win.

The conservative corporate-backed groups who bought so many elections this year like to claim that they are striking, "a decisive blow for freedom."

But isn't it a funny sort of "freedom?" We're already familiar with the "freedom" of corporations to rely on Americans as their principal consumer market, while refusing to give Americans good jobs. As I noted in September, corporate profits in America are currently near their all time high, even as unemployment continues to hover near 10%. Corporations also insist on the "freedom" to take all the advantages that America has to offer while giving nothing in return. Exxon-Mobile, for example, routinely makes about $1 billion dollars in profit per week and pays zero income taxes in this country, due to its off-shore incorporations. Then of course there's the insistence on "freedom" from government regulation, even as episodes like the sub-prime credit crisis continue to prove that deregulation leads to disaster.

Now cap all of those "freedoms" with the "freedom" to buy elections, and to tell no one where the money came from. Isn't it great to be free?

2011 and 2012 Gubernatorial Predictions

2010-11-06T22:00:00.000-07:00

Most recent updates: 07/03/11: WA

Three states will hold their gubernatorial elections in 2011 and eleven will in 2012.

Delaware 2012
Rating: Likely Democratic hold
Democrat: Jack Markell (incumbent)
Republican: ?
Overview: Markell has had a very successful first term in office and should cruise to victory in blue-state Delaware.

Indiana 2012
Rating: Leans Republican hold
Republican: Mitch Daniels (incumbent) or Congressman Mike Pence?
Democrat: Former Senator Evan Bayh?
Overview: This is shaping up to be the most interesting of the 2012 races for Governor. Incumbent Daniels may not run, opening the door for rising Republican star Mike Pence. Former Senator Bayh may weigh in for the Democrats, who can expect a good turnout in Indiana in 2012. One of the biggest surprises of 2008 was President Obama's victory over John McCain in the Hoosier State.

Kentucky 2011
Rating: Leans Democratic hold
Democrat: Steve Beshear (incumbent)
Republican: State Senate President David Williams?
Overview: (1/16/11) Democrats are never going to have an easy time in red-state Kentucky, but I've yet to see any bold predictions that Republicans are going to topple Beshear this year. His polling numbers are solid.

Louisiana 2011
Rating: Likely Republican hold
Republican: Bobby Jindal (incumbent)
Democrat: ?
Overview: (1/16/11) Huge numbers of Democratic voters left Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina and never went back. Given the state's hard swing to the right, the Louisiana Democratic Party is having a difficult time finding candidates willing to be sacrificial lambs in statewide elections.

Mississippi 2011
Rating: Likely Republican hold
Republican: Lt Governor Phil Bryant (Haley Barbour term limited)
Democrat: Hattiesburg Mayor Johnny Dupree?
Overview: (1/16/11) Phil Bryant is a very seasoned politician, and about as close to a sure-fire winner as you'll ever see in an open-seat race with a contested primary.

Missouri 2012
Rating: Leans Democratic hold
Democrat: Jay Nixon (incumbent)
Republican: Lt. Governor Peter Kinder?
Overview: This one is tough to gauge. President Obama nearly carried Missouri in 2008, but he is not currently popular is this part of the country. That may prove troublesome for incumbent Democrat Jay Nixon.

Montana 2012
Rating: Toss up
Democrat: State Attorney General Steve Bullock? (incumbent Brian Schweitzer term limited)
Republican: Former state Senator Cory Stapleton?
Overview: This open-seat race is anybody's game, but the northern plains are more friendly to Republicans.

New Hampshire 2012
Rating: Likely Democratic hold
Democrat: John Lynch (incumbent)
Republican: ?
Overview: Lynch emerged victorious in 2010 against a tough Republican challenge. Things will probably be easier in 2012 when he seeks a third 2-year term.

North Carolina 2012
Rating: Leans Democratic hold
Democrat: Beverly Perdue (incumbent)
Republican: ?
Overview: Governor Perdue's approval ratings are nothing to write home about. She's likely to face a stiff Republican challenge. Many were shocked when President Obama carried North Carolina and Perdue won a toss up race in 2008. Can it happen again?

North Dakota 2012
Rating: Likely Republican hold
Republican: Jack Dalrymple (incumbent)
Democrat: Former Congressman Earl Pomeroy?
Overview: Dalrymple has just inherited the Governor's office from Senator-elect John Hoeven. He'd have to screw things up pretty badly to not win a term in his own right in conservative North Dakota.

Utah 2012
Rating: Likely Republican hold
Republican: Gary Herbert (incumbent)
Democrat: ?
Overview: I had a dream where a Democrat won a statewide race in Utah. I also had a dream where it rained White Castle cheeseburgers. It's 1,600 miles from my house to the nearest White Castle.

Vermont 2012
Rating: Likely Democratic hold
Democrat: Peter Shumlin (incumbent)
Republican: ?
Overview: Shumlin won a very close open-seat race in 2010, but he probably has an easy path to reelection in 2012.

Washington 2012
Rating: Leans Democratic hold
Democrat: Congressman Jay Inslee (incumbent Christine Gregoire retiring)
Republican: State Attorney General Rob McKenna
Overview (11/6/10): In 2004, after multiple recounts, Christine Gregoire beat Dino Rossi by 129 votes out of more than 2.7 million cast. 2008 saw a wild rematch against Rossi, in which she beat him easily one day after the Seattle Post-Intelligencer all but guaranteed victory for Rossi. Gregoire may or may not run for a third term in 2012. The likely Republican candidate is already known however; Attorney General Rob McKenna has been grooming himself for the job for years.
(7/3/11) A new poll shows Inslee with a 3-point lead over McKenna. Unless something happens to Inslee late in the game that causes voters to abandon him, this race is already over. Obama crushed McCain in my home state by 17 points in 2008, and the number of crossover votes that McKenna might get from Obama voters in 2012 is nowhere near the number he would need to win this race.

West Virginia 2012
Rating: Leans Democratic hold
Democrat: Earl Ray Tomblin (incumbent)
Republican: Congresswoman Shelley Moore Capito?
Overview: As President of the West Virginia Senate, Tomblin inherited the Governor's mansion after Governor Manchin was elected to fill the remainder of the late, great Robert Byrd's Senate term. Tomblin was a member of the state Senate for 30 years. Presuming he wants to win a term as Governor in his own right, he's going to need his high name recognition and a lot of other resources, as President Obama is likely to lose West Virginia by a substantial margin.

2010 Election Predictions

2010-10-30T14:00:00.000-07:00

US SENATE
Current Senate, 111th Congress: 59 D, 41 R

Prediction: Senate, 112th Congress: 54 D, 46 R

Republicans to pickup AR, IN, ND, PA and WI.
Notes: I'm predicting Democratic holds in Illinois (open), Nevada (Harry Reid) and Colorado (Michael Bennet). These three races are essentially tied, and I might be wrong on all of them. Democrats have some chance of turning a Republican seat in Alaska or Kentucky and a chance of holding Pennsylvania. But don't count on it. The loss of Russ Feingold in Wisconsin is devastating. I'm sure I'll have more to say about that later.

US HOUSE

Current House, 111th Congress: 256 D, 179 R

Prediction: House, 112th Congress: 228 R, 207 D

I've never tried to predict the House on a seat-by-seat basis before, so here goes:

Republican gains: AL-2, AR-1, AR-2, AZ-1, AZ-5, CA-11, CO-3, CO-4, FL-2, FL-22, FL-24, GA-2, GA-8, IL-11, IL-14, IN-8, IN-9, KS-3, LA-3, MD-1, MI-1, MI-7, MO-4, MS-1, MS-4, NC-2, NH-1, NH-2, NM-2, ND-AL, NV-3, NY-20, NY-29, OH-1, OH-6, OH-15, OH-16, OR-5, PA-3, PA-7, PA-8, PA-10, PA-11, SC-5, TN-4, TN-6, TN-8, TX-17, TX-23, VA-2, VA-5, WV-1, WA-3, WI-7, WI-8.
Democratic gains: AZ-3, DE-AL, HI-1, IL-10, LA-02, WA-8.

Notes: GOP to gain 49 seats. I've carried a torch just as long as I could for the Democrats to hold onto the House. The pundits and markets however are unanimous on this one: the GOP will gain the 39+ House seats it needs to win control.

The race for control of the House is all about the rust belt. The key to Republican gains this year is the fact that the GOP is going to pick up the Governor's offices in Iowa, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin and possibly in Illinois. Four of those six races are not even close, and that means that incumbent Democrats down the ticket are going to suffer.

House Democrats got some help in New York with the collapse of Republican Carl Paladino's candidacy for Governor. A poll in late September showed Paladino within 6 points of Attorney General Andrew Cuomo. But that was before a series of homophobic remarks by Paladino left his campaign in freefall, so that by late October the New York Times was showing a 35-point lead for Cuomo. Before Paladino's collapse, many pundits had been predicting that Republicans would pick up at least 4 and possibly as many as 8 Democratic House seats in New York. Now I'm betting that the GOP won't pick up more than 2 seats.

GUBERNATORIAL

Democrats to pickup CA, CT, HI, MN, FL and VT.
Republicans to pickup IA, KS, ME, MI, OH, OK, NM, PA, TN and WI.
Independent to pickup RI.

Notes: The races in Florida, Oregon and Vermont are all extremely close, but I'm making the same call as Nate Silver of the New York Times on all three, so I'm probably in good shape. The controversial pick here is that Governor Quinn will hold on in Illinois. I just don't believe that the Illinois GOP has a strong enough get-out-the-vote machine to win.

2012 Presidential Diary: #3 - The Republican Field

2010-10-23T16:30:00.000-07:00

I want to wrap up this first series on the 2012 Presidential contenders, so that I can get on with making my final predictions for the mid-terms and writing about the subsequent fallout.

Here's the current gallup poll on preferences for the Republican nomination in 2012:

Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney: 19%
Former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin: 16%
Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee: 12%
Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich: 9%
Texas Congressman Ron Paul: 7%
Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty: 3%
Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour: 3%
Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels: 2%
Indiana Congressman Mike Pence: 1%

Since I don't think Sarah Palin will run, I'm guessing that one of these men will be the Republican nominee. Here are the strengths and weaknesses of each candidate.

Mitt Romney
PRO: Romney finished second in the 2008 primaries. This means that he already has a nationwide network of supporters set up if he wants to run again. Also, the Republican nomination has traditionally gone to whichever candidate seems to be "next in line." For example, Ford got the nomination in 1976 by narrowly defeating Reagan who got the nomination in 1980 by narrowly defeating Bush who got the nomination in 1988 etc. Romney looks great on tv.
CON: Being the former one-term Governor of "Taxachusetts" does not resonate with a lot of today's Republican faithful. He holds a number of moderate positions on the issues that are an anathema to the dogmatic Tea Party of today. Also, Christian conservatives are cool on Mormons.

Mike Huckabee
PRO: Huckabee is the only candidate who has already run for President and who identifies strongly with the white, southern, evangelical Christians who most despise President Obama.
CON: Huckabee is old news. He really did surprisingly badly in his 2008 run for the nomination. He's also developed a taste for making controversial comments that seem "un-Presidential," and he has some skeletons in his closet from his days as Governor of Arkansas.

Newt Gingrich
PRO: He is considered to be some kind of intellectual leading light by many on the right. God knows why. He has a knack for giving fiery speeches.
CON: Where to begin? His rock-bottom popularity among the general public? That fact that he was driven out of Congress in 1998 by fellow Republicans? His three marriages? His many, many scandals?

Ron Paul
PRO: Paul is beloved by millions of libertarians and tea-baggers.
CON: Paul will be 77 in 2012; that's too old for comfort. He is also despised by party big-wigs who aren't too pleased by Paul's stunts like holding a "rival" convention for himself while the Republican convention was going on in 2008.

Tim Pawlenty
PRO: Pawlenty is intelligent. He is scandal-free.
CON: Pawlenty is very boring. Conservatives consider Minnesota to be the "land of 10,000 taxes." He has zero identity with the Christian right.

Haley Barbour
PRO: Barbour is a very smart fellow who has brought many good jobs to the impoverished state of Mississippi.
CON: Americans expect their presidential candidates to look good on tv. Barbour has what we call "a face made for radio."

Mitch Daniels
PRO: A quiet but effective executive leader.
CON: Did I mention that Daniels is quiet? Few people know who he is. Also, he has a comb-over that Newsweek has described as "borderline delusional."

Mike Pence
PRO: Well, let's look at the Republican check list. Is he a gray-haired, white male over 50? Yes. Is he of northern European descent and Protestant religion? Yes. Does he live 1,000 miles from an ocean? Yes. Ok, he's qualified to be the nominee.
CON: Mike who?

Good luck, gentlemen (but not too good).

2012 Presidential Diary: #2 - Sarah Palin

2010-10-16T10:00:00.000-07:00

"She is not going to be president and will not be the Republican nominee unless the party wants to lose at least 44 states." - George Will of the Washington Post, writing about Sarah Palin earlier this year.

There is much about the life of former Governor Sarah Palin that makes me jealous. To be able to make or break the careers of both entrenched and budding politicians merely by offering or withholding an endorsement of their campaigns. To have one's political views ghostwritten into bestselling books. To make speeches to adoring fans. To appear, or choose not to appear, on any tv network at any time. And to make more than a million dollars a month without actually working for a living. Now there's a life that I would love.

And if I had that life, would I abandon it to run for President? To spend 18 hours a day on the campaign trail? Just so I can get the toughest job in the world, being President of the United States? No, I don't think I would. And what if I get the nomination, then lose the election? Then I'd be the object of scorn and the butt of jokes, and I'd probably languish into obscurity. No, I wouldn't be interested in that.

Nor do I don't think Sarah Palin will give up the life she has to run for President. Yes, she's been teasing conservative leaders about running, but I don't think she's serious. And not just because she'd be giving up her gravy train life to run for the nation's highest office.

Sarah Palin may never have read a newspaper, but I'm confident that she has some idea what her popularity numbers look like. What they look like, in fact, are the approval numbers of someone who couldn't win a national election if her opponent was a flu virus.

In November of 2009, Palin had an public favorability rating of 43%, unchanged from a year earlier when she'd been the Republican nominee for Vice President. But jumping forward another year, we find that today her approval rating has plummeted to just 22%.

It's a strange contrast. With just a wave of her hand, Sarah Palin destroyed the career of fellow Alaskan Senator Lisa Murkowski by endorsing her obscure primary opponent Joe Miller. Yet at the same time, Palin has the approval of only 44% of voters who identify as Republicans.

Palin may not enjoy widespread approval among conservatives, but what she does have is the support of the Republican party's most devout activists. This means that she could probably get the nomination in 2012 if she wants it. The nomination doesn't go to the candidate who people think is the most electable, or even the most popular. It goes to the candidate whose supporters show up to vote in the primaries and caucuses.

And in 2010 at least, the Republican primaries are being dominated by Tea Party activists, a group with which Palin is closely aligned. And one thing's for sure: the Tea Party decides which candidate to back based on orthodoxy, not on electability. Case in point: this year's Senate race in Delaware, where popular Republican Congressman Mike Castle appeared to be lock for the GOP nomination and victory in November. That was until an endorsement by Sarah Palin secured the nomination for crazy wing-nut Christine O'Donnell. Palin and the Tea Party would rather lose the seat to the Democrats than see a Republican who might not be 100% conservative win. Perhaps they'll take the same approach to the Presidential race in 2012. We can hope so.

2012 Presidential Diary: #1 - How Obama Would Lose

2010-10-10T15:30:00.000-07:00

The 2012 Presidential race will begin to unfold as soon as the 2010 mid-terms are concluded. I've decided to jump the gun a little and write my first 2012 diary. It's going to be a long time before we know who Obama's opponent will be. But one thing we do know: the 2012 race will probably be decided by the same swing states that decided each of the past three Presidential elections.

So if Obama were to lose, what would it look like? Let's begin by looking at the 2008 electoral map of Obama's 365 to 173 victory over McCain.

Next, we consider the 2010 census, which will shift some electoral votes, principally to the sunbelt and Republican-friendly territory. Texas, for example, may gain 4 more votes. If Obama carries exactly the same states and districts that he did in 2008, he's likely to win 6 fewer votes overall, for a 359 to 179 victory.

That means that the Republicans have to find 91 more electoral votes among the blue areas in the map above. So how would they manage to accomplish this?

First of all, if the Republicans are going to win, it means that they're going to carry all the serious red-state territory that Obama narrowly won in 2008. That means Indiana, North Carolina, Virginia and Nebraska's 2nd district, which Obama carried by 1.0%, 0.3%, 6.3%, and 1.2% respectively.
That boots the GOP tally by 40 to 219. They need 51 more.

They can get half of that by winning Florida, which Obama carried by 2.8%. If the Republicans carry Florida, then it gets easy. They just need to carry one more large swing state and one smaller one. For instance, adding Ohio and New Mexico would give them exactly 270.

Without Florida, it gets harder for the GOP, but not impossible. They following combinations would do it: The states they won in 2008, plus IN, NC, VA, NE-2 and,

"Revenge of the rust belt scenario:" The GOP carries Ohio, Pennsylvania and Michigan, winning 273 to 265.
-OR-
"Looks like 2000 scenario:" The GOP carries Colorado, New Mexico and Nevada out west, while also carrying two of Obama's rust belt states (OH, PA and MI).

Of course the Republicans need to do all this without losing any states they won in 2008. I'm inclined to think that Obama would have carried Arizona had not favorite-son John McCain been the GOP nominee. Hopefully the Republicans will just make it easy for Obama by nominating Sarah Palin. But that's a topic for another day.

Obama and Keynes - Government Must Do what the Private Sector Can't

2010-10-03T22:30:00.000-07:00

As I wrote in my last post, Republican congressmen love to slander President Obama's economic policy as "Keynesian." Considering how few people know who Keynes is, they might get the impression that he is Obama's budget director or something. Actually, John Maynard Keynes was a British economist who died 64 years ago. (Note: The President's budget director is Peter R. Orszag. No one really knows who he is either.)

Keynes was writing about the problems of the Great Depression and how government should address them in the early 1930s, and his work came to the attention of the Roosevelt administration. Keynes met and corresponded with President Roosevelt, and his ideas helped shape New Deal economics and have been influential in American economic policy ever since.

Keynes favored interventionist policies for tackling a recession. His theories challenged the earlier neo-classical economic paradigm, which had held that provided it was unfettered by government interference, the market would naturally establish full employment equilibrium. He believed that demand, not supply, is the key variable governing the overall level of economic activity. In a state of unemployment and unused production capacity, one can only enhance employment and total income by first increasing expenditures for either consumption or investment. Without government intervention to increase expenditure, an economy can remain trapped in a low employment equilibrium. Thus Keynes called for government to stimulate demand in times of high unemployment, for example by spending on public works.

The New Deal of the 1930s demonstrated that Keynes was correct. The Roosevelt administration raised taxes and spent lavishly on hiring the unemployed to rebuild the country's infrastructure, something that the Hoover administration had refused to do earlier in the Depression. The contrast in results could not be starker. Under the conservative policies of Hoover, GDP fell 28% in the first three years of the Depression. Under Roosevelt, in just three years GDP grew by more than 10% per year so that by 1936 American productivity had surpassed 1929 pre-crash levels.

In 1978, Keynes' demand-side ideas were at the heart of the Humphrey–Hawkins Full Employment Act, which specified that unemployment rates should be not more than 3%, and that the government should create a reservoir of public employment if the private sector fails to meet employment goals. (Hey, this law is still in effect, so where's the reservoir of public employment?)

Belief in demand theory has also long been something that has crossed partisan political lines. Even President Nixon said, "I am now a Keynesian in economics." More recently, Greg Mankiw, a former chairman of George W. Bush's Council of Economic Advisors, has said he used "Keynesian logic" in designing his tax cuts. "The idea that demand is an important driver of the economic cycle" -- that's Keynesian -- "is uncontroversial."

Pulitzer Prize winner Paul Krugman has recently discussed America's economic problems as having strong parallels to the crises of the 1930s, and recommended Keynesian solutions similar to those used to fight the Great Depression. This past July, Krugman called for more federal stimulus, saying, "The most effective things you can do, in terms of actual bang for the buck, is actually having the federal government go out and hire people," he said. "We are deep in the hole here, and you need to be unconventional to get out of it."

More recently, Krugman has noted that the chief problem with President Obama's economic stimulus is that it hasn't been large enough in scope:

"President Obama’s economists promised not to repeat the mistakes of 1937, when F.D.R. pulled back fiscal stimulus too soon. But by making his program too small and too short-lived, Mr. Obama did just that: the stimulus raised growth while it lasted, but it made only a small dent in unemployment — and now it’s fading out."

"And just as some of us feared, the inadequacy of the administration’s initial economic plan has landed it — and the nation — in a political trap. More stimulus is desperately needed, but in the public’s eyes the failure of the initial program to deliver a convincing recovery has discredited government action to create jobs."

So what, exactly, is it that the government needs to do to get the economy moving? I thought Michael Moore summarized it neatly in a call to action last week:

Announce a New 21st Century WPA.
"Who's hiring? THE GOVERNMENT IS HIRING!" Put together a simple plan to hire enough people to repair our roads, fix up our aging schools, and rebuild our infrastructure. Fund this by taxing the richest 1 percent who have more financial wealth than 95 percent of Americans combined! Unemployment will drop to 5 percent. Can you pass it? Well, you sure can't unless you try! And as you're trying, announce that you will force the Republican senators (who until now simply have had to say they "intended" to filibuster in order to kill a bill) to have to actually filibuster! Make them stand on the floor of the Senate and read from the phone book 24/7. They won't last a day. And America will see them for who they really are.

The WPA was of course the Works Progress Administration, which employed millions of Americans in the late 1930s. It included construction of public buildings and roads, and operated large arts, drama, media, and literacy projects. It fed children and redistributed food, clothing, and housing.

Or we can always go with the Republican plan to fix our economic problems: do nothing.

Demand-side Economic Policies Work. Will Anyone Notice?

2010-09-28T19:15:00.000-07:00

Some recent comments from Republicans on President Obama's efforts to stimulate the economy:

"We do not have the luxury of waiting months for the president to pick scapegoats for his failing stimulus policies." - U.S. House minority leader John Boehner

"The president will use the Labor Day holiday as the launching pad for yet another government stimulus effort, another play called from the same failed Keynesian playbook." - Congressman Eric Cantor

"The point is that the Obama Keynesian-on-steroids has not worked," - Senator John McCain

"The Keynesian experiment, which was more spending, has failed to produce jobs." - Congressman Paul Ryan

Ok, so here's a couple of questions:
1. These Republicans claim that the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, otherwise known as the Stimulus, failed to create jobs and to promote investment and consumer spending. Are they correct?
2. Who is Keynes, and what has he got to do with it?

I'm only going to tackle the first question in this post. Here are some comments on the stimulus from various smart persons.

From the New York Times: "officials from both the Bush and Obama administrations have trumpeted how the government’s sweeping interventions to prop up the economy since 2008 helped avert a second Depression."

"In a new paper," economists Alan S. Blinder, a Princeton professor and former vice chairman of the Fed, and Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, "argue that without the Wall Street bailout, the bank stress tests, the emergency lending and asset purchases by the Federal Reserve, and the Obama administration’s fiscal stimulus program, the nation’s gross domestic product would be about 6.5 percent lower this year. In addition, there would be about 8.5 million fewer jobs, on top of the more than 8 million already lost; and the economy would be experiencing deflation, instead of low inflation."

Hey, not bad! Here's some more, from Reuters: "The massive U.S. stimulus package put millions of people to work and boosted national output by hundreds of billions of dollars in the second quarter (of 2010), the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said on Tuesday. CBO's latest estimate indicates that the stimulus effort, which remains a political hot potato ahead of the November congressional elections, may have prevented the sluggish U.S. economy from contracting between April and June. CBO said President Barack Obama's stimulus boosted real GDP in the quarter by between 1.7 percent and 4.5 percent, adding at least $200 billion in economic activity." "It raised employment by between 1.4 million and 3.3 million jobs during the second quarter of this year, CBO estimated."

Sounds like the stimulus accomplished quite a lot. Anything else? From USA Today: "President Obama's stimulus package saved jobs — but the government still needs to do more to breathe life into the economy, according to USA TODAY's quarterly survey of 50 economists. Unemployment would have hit 10.8% — higher than December's 10% rate — without Obama's $787 billion stimulus program, according to the economists' median estimate. The difference would translate into another 1.2 million lost jobs."
Furthermore, the stimulus did a lot of good things besides helping the economy, as even conservative Time Magazine is willing to admit: "For starters, the Recovery Act is the most ambitious energy legislation in history, converting the Energy Department into the world's largest venture-capital fund. It's pouring $90 billion into clean energy, including unprecedented investments in a smart grid; energy efficiency; electric cars; renewable power from the sun, wind and earth; cleaner coal; advanced biofuels; and factories to manufacture green stuff in the U.S."

"The stimulus is also stocked with nonenergy game changers, like a tenfold increase in funding to expand access to broadband and an effort to sequence more than 2,300 complete human genomes — when only 34 were sequenced with all previous aid. There's $8 billion for a high-speed passenger rail network, the boldest federal transportation initiative since the interstate highways. There's $4.35 billion in Race to the Top grants to promote accountability in public schools, perhaps the most significant federal education initiative ever — it's already prompted 35 states and the District of Columbia to adopt reforms to qualify for the cash."

Fantastic! So is there any down side? Only that President Obama is really, really bad at doing things that are popular as well as useful. He cut taxes for 95% of Americans. Not popular. He passed dramatic reforms in health care. Not popular. The same goes for the stimulus. As Alan Blinder notes, "It seems that more Americans believe that "Barack Obama's economic policies," (according to a new poll) "have made economic conditions worse (29%) than better (23%), and another 35% of Americans think his policies have "not had an effect so far.""

So it was a bittersweet moment yesterday when President Obama signed the Small Business Jobs Act. A Republican wave at the ballot box this year will put an end to demand-side economics in Congress. Welcome back, supply-side.

In my next post, I'll be talking some more about demand-side versus supply-side, and who this mysterious Keynes person is.

Some Myths About the Tea Party that Aren't Myths

2010-09-19T14:00:00.000-07:00

The most significant phenomenon in politics this year has been the ability of conservative "Tea Party" activists to secure nominations for largely unknown right-wing candidates. These candidates have repeatedly defeated incumbent Republicans and candidates supported for office by the party's establishment institutions such as the National Republican Senate Committee.

In six Senate races this year, Alaska, Colorado, Delaware, Florida, Nevada and Utah, the Republican party has attempted to rally support around an experienced and relatively moderate incumbent or new candidate only to see that candidate fall in the party primary to a far more strident and less-experienced challenger.

The pundit world is abuzz with all kinds of commentary regarding what these developments mean. For my two cents, I want to discuss an article about the Tea Party that appeared in the Washington Post last month that talks about what the Tea Party is and what it is not.

I'm only going to address two points in Dave Weigel's article, Five myths about the 'tea party.' These are the "myths" that the Tea Party is racist, and that it hurts the Republican party. Here we go:

Weigel myth #2: The tea party is racist.
"Yes, there are racists in the tea party, and they make themselves known. But tea party activists usually root them out."

Here Weigel suggests that although a couple of Tea Party leaders have used racist rhetoric, the party at large is not racist because those leaders were shown the door after making their racist thoughts public. Well I'm sorry, but the fact that the party excommunicates leaders who embarrass them in public doesn't necessarily mean that the party faithful actual disagree with the ideas of those leaders. After all, the people who joined the Springboro, Ohio tea party did so even though the party's organizer is the kind of person who uses Twitter to send messages like, "Illegals everywhere today! So many spics makes me feel like a speck. Grrr. Wheres my gun!?"

Digging a little deeper, we find a survey by the University of Washington Institute for the Study of Ethnicity, Race & Sexuality, which suggests, "that people who are Tea Party supporters have a higher probability of being racially resentful than those who are not Tea Party supporters," according to Christopher Parker, who directed the study. "The Tea Party is not just about politics and size of government. The data suggests it may also be about race."

Weigel myth #4: The tea party hurts the GOP.
"Rep. Bob Inglis (R-S.C.), who lost his primary race to a tea party-backed candidate, has made the media rounds to accuse the movement and some of its heroes, such as Glenn Beck, of poisoning politics."

"But in every political cycle there are "bad" candidates who say the wrong things -- and with the right electorate, they still win. The tea party movement is giving Republicans a dream of an electorate, one in which surveys find more GOP-inclined voters enthusiastic."

Now here's where I really take issue with Mr. Weigel. First of all, his line of reasoning is spurious. His conclusion is that if conservatives seem very energized this year, it must be because of that Tea Party you've been hearing so much about. I see no reason to believe that conservatives are any more energized this year than they would be in any year in which the country is holding a mid-term election while we have a Democrat in the White House and while we're having severe economic problems.

Second of all, (and the heart of the matter) is that the Tea Party IS hurting the Republican party is a number of ways, all of which I will be glad to describe in loving detail.

1. Tea Party nominees support ideas that are not popular with the public at large.
Most or all of the candidates that the tea party has helped to nominate support the following ideas:
* Extend all of the Bush tax cuts for the very wealthy.
* Repeal the new Health Care Law.
* Replace Medicare with vouchers.
* Amend the Constitution to deny citizenship to children of illegal immigrants.
* Privatize social security.

Ok, here's the problem: the American public does not, in fact, support ANY of this agenda. President Bush made social security privatization the cornerstone of his second term in office, and the idea went over like a lead balloon. Sure, a lot of Tea Party candidates are going to win this year. But if they give the Republican caucuses in Congress a core of elected officials whose ideas are deeply unpopular, the only reasonable conclusion is that Tea Party candidates are doing the Republican party serious, long-term damage.

2. The Tea Party has instigated Civil War among Republicans.
In one corner of the metaphorical boxing ring, we have the National Republican Senate Committee, who have taken great pains to promote experienced, popular, and relatively moderate candidates for this year's competitive Senate races. In the opposite corner, we have the Tea Party, Sarah Palin and Senator Jim DeMint, who have been extremely successful in undoing all of the work of the NRSC by securing nominations for office for right-wing nut jobs whose ideas are unpopular with the electorate at large.

All of this has resulted in a situation where, (1.) the Republican party is wasting millions of dollars in resources fighting primary battles, so those resources aren't available to fight Democrats and (2.) we have a lot of bitter recriminations among conservatives themselves. Karl Rove and Sean Hannity attacking each other? Wow.

3. The Tea Party will cause the Republicans to lose elections, even in 2010
The most prominent supporter of Tea Party candidates among Republican elected officials is Senator Jim DeMint of South Carolina, who said, "I would rather have 30 Republicans in the Senate who really believe in principles of limited government free markets, free people, than to have 60 that don't have a set of beliefs."

Apparently, DeMint wasn't kidding. He's been a supporter of political upstart Christine O'Donnell, the right-wing candidate who won a surprise victory over popular moderate Congressman Mike Castle for the GOP's Senate nomination in the open-seat race in Delaware. Now, in all of the other major Tea-Party-versus-Republican-establishment primary battles this year, the resulting victories by Tea Party candidate have not necessarily harmed the party's prospects for victory in November.

But in Delaware, it's a different story. Mike Castle was virtually certain to win Joe Biden's old Senate seat for the Republicans, while O'Donnell is almost certainly a loser versus Democrat Chris Coons in November. It's even possible that failing to win this race with cost Republicans control of the Senate.

The message from Tea Party Republicans is clear. They aren't interested in building a majority coalition of conservatives and moderates. They also aren't interested in tempering any of their more strident views in order to broaden their appeal. In the long run, this is not a strategy that leads not to power, but to oblivion.

American Corporations Profit, Lose Souls

2010-09-12T15:00:00.000-07:00

81% of Americans rate the US economy as "poor." With unemployment at above 9%, that's not surprising.

So who's to blame for the fact that people can't find jobs? Consider the following statistics:

September, 2006: Corporate profits: $1.6 trillion. Unemployment: 4.4%
July, 2010: Corporate profits: $1.6 trillion. Unemployment: 9.6%

If big business was in trouble, it would be understandable that they would not be hiring. However, the truth is that American corporations are refusing to add new jobs to their payrolls even as they enjoy very robust profits.

Republicans are claiming that the reason that businesses are not hiring is because of the "uncertainty" created by "new government regulations." But I don't think those claims stand up upon examination. Consider this Washington Post article by Neil Irwin,

"What role is government policy playing in fostering corporate caution?

The executive class in the Chicago region is none too pleased with many of the policies of President Obama, their former hometown senator. They criticize his willingness to let Bush-era tax cuts expire at year's end for households that make over $250,000 and allow the capital gains tax rate to increase. They dislike aspects of his landmark health-care law, and some fear that the financial overhaul legislation enacted this summer will make it harder for them to get loans.

"Congress has been very tough on businesses," said Jason Speer, chief executive of Quality Float Works of Schaumburg, Ill., which makes the industrial equivalent of toilet ball floats, items that sell for up to $1,200 and are used to measure water levels in farm and industrial equipment. The company also makes the metal balls that go on the top of flagpoles.

Fundamentally, executives objected to Obama's policies on the grounds they would make the United States a less competitive place to operate in the long run.

But when Speer and other executives were pressed on the role that tax and regulatory policies play in hiring, they drew only vague connections. Speer said his decision whether to hire is driven primarily by demand for his products. Orders are coming in strong enough that he is running about 20 hours a week of overtime. So he is weighing whether to hire two or three additional manufacturing workers.

None of the executives interviewed linked a specific new government initiative with a specific decision to refrain from hiring."

So to summarize:
During the first year of Obama's Presidency:
1. Quarterly growth in GDP rose from a rate of minus 6.8% to plus 5.4%,
2. Corporate profits increased by more than 50%.
3. The economy went from hemorrhaging nearly one million private sector jobs per month to positive growth in the number of private sector jobs.
4. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose about 18%.
5. The federal government bailed out the automobile and banking industries, saving them from widespread liquidation.

Does that sound to you like an environment that is, "very tough on businesses"? Let's face it, businesses are not hiring because they don't have to. And it's not difficult to discern the chain of thought among corporate executives: If businesses refuse to hire, then unemployment stays high, which causes angry voters to put the Republicans back in power, who then protect tax breaks and an unregulated business environment.

Of course, as the sub-prime lending crisis demonstrated, businesses don't actually prosper in an environment of deregulation, but that's a story for another day.

Prop 8 overturned! (Hey Republicans, Aren't You Outraged or Something?)

2010-08-08T22:40:00.000-07:00

Judge Vaughn R. Walker has overturned California's Proposition 8, which narrowly outlawed marriage equality in California in 2008.

From the Judge's decision: "Proposition 8 fails to advance any rational basis in singling out gay men and lesbians for denial of a marriage license. Indeed, the evidence shows Proposition 8 does nothing more than enshrine in the California Constitution the notion that opposite sex couples are superior to same-sex couples. Because California has no interest in discriminating against gay men and lesbians, and because Proposition 8 prevents California from fulfilling its constitutional obligation to provide marriages on an equal basis, the court concludes that Proposition 8 is unconstitutional."

Hooray for equality! Now, back to your regularly scheduled politics.

I've long maintained on this blog that the movement among conservatives to stop marriage equality has always been based on prejudice and the desire to raise a lot of money rather than any rational argument. This seems to be something that Republicans are increasingly willing to admit to themselves.

The GOP response to Judge Walker's ruling has actually been fairly muted. Why aren't they screaming from the rooftops for a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage, as they have in years past? For a couple of reasons it seems. First, as the article linked above documents, many Republican leaders are saying that they want to make jobs and the economy the focus of their campaign this year, rather than hot-button social issues.

I applaud Republicans for this. Quite seriously, I'm gratified that conservatives would rather campaign on important economic issues rather than the old mantra, "God, guns and gays." But there's also some cynicism behind Republican loss of interest in gay marriage as an issue.

The Politico reported this week that Republican Congressman Peter King, "said that in terms of social issues, the raging controversy over the Arizona border laws is providing more than enough ammunition for Republicans in key districts. “The Arizona immigration law is there, there’s no reason to be raising an issue of gay rights” as a wedge, he said." Yeah, attacking gays is so 2008. Now it's brown people. Nate Silver has some great comments on Congressman King's remarks and what they mean:

"Of course, cynicism over gay rights is nothing new in Washington. Did the Bush administration, for example, which arguably used gay marriage ballot initiatives to propel themselves to victory in Ohio and other key swing states in 2004, ever really have a deep ideological commitment to the issue? It seems unlikely, now that the admirable Laura Bush has spoken in support of gay rights, and Dick Cheney has, more or less, as well."

"The muted reaction to Wednesday's Proposition 8 verdict is understandable, for Machiavellian political reasons. If the country is divided about 55/45 on gay marriage, as it now appears to be, the negative intangibles attendant to going after the issue -- voters from the far right end of the political spectrum to the far left regard it as a distraction from more pressing matters like the economy -- might well outweigh any narrow political gain. Perhaps in a way this is a sign of progress: if the divide were more like 65/35, as it was a few years ago, the calculus might well be different."

Apparently, if the times they are a changin', Republicans are prepared to change with them, if they see an advantage. I'm glad that California's own Governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger now supports marriage equality. But the way he's shifted positions on the issue has been a little goofy. He twice vetoed gay marriage legalization after passage by the state legislature, saying it was wrong to overturn a 2000 ballot amendment prohibiting same-sex marriage in California. So, it's not ok for the elected legislature to overturn a ballot prop, but it is ok when a judge does it? Weird.

One more observation. There is actually an issue on the Democratic side of the aisle where we've seen the party back away from a once cherished idea as that idea has become less popular. That issue is the assault weapons ban. The ban was in affect from 1994 to 2004, and President Obama campaigned on having it renewed. Once in office however, both the White House and the Democratic Congress both abandoned the idea as a political loser, and an unnecessary distraction from the rest of the President's agenda.

Gun control is the rare issue where Democrats and Republicans seem to be meeting in the middle. Democrats are no longer calling for an assault weapons ban, and Republicans aren't calling for the repeal of the Brady Bill, which has stopped 2 million illegal gun purchases since 1994. Perhaps we'll see the same phenomenon on marriage equality: the incredible prospect that Republicans as well as Democrats will finally decide that gay Americans are real human beings.

If America Has a Problem, Destroying Social Security is the Answer

2010-08-01T15:30:00.000-07:00

People say the Republican party is out of ideas? HA! Have you heard about social security privatization? You have? Oh, good. Then you're aware that it's the solution to any government problem you can name. Has been for years.

In 2005, President Bush went on the road to sell social security privatization to the public. And for once, the Bush magic failed. Unlike the major policy initiatives of Bush's first term (give tax cuts to plutocrats, start unnecessary and unwinnable wars), social security privatization went over like a lead balloon with the American people. The privatization scheme featured some of the many, many low points of the Bush administration. For example, as part of this campaign, Bush disparaged U.S. Treasury bonds. "There is no trust fund, just IOUs," the President said. Bush also suggested that without changes, the social security system would eventually face bankruptcy.

Critics were quick to point out the flaws in the Bush plan. One, his claims about the solvency of social security were false. Two, his privatization plans didn't actually do anything to improve the system's long-term solvency. So why was Bush so adamant to convince Americans to adopt a non-solution to a non-problem? Because good government is boring. Destroying the New Deal, now that's exciting!

It has always been a Republican goal to repeal everything the Franklin Roosevelt administration did to put the brakes on robber-baron style capitalism. Over the years, they've had many successes. For instance, the recent "subprime" credit crisis can be traced directly to the 1999 repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933, which had forced commercial and investment banks to remain separated. It was the repeal of Glass-Steagall that led to banks that are "too big to fail."

But while so much of the New Deal has been destroyed, social security remains untouched. It's the biggest, strongest and most popular pillar of the progressive framework set up for the country in the 1930s. That drives Republicans crazy, and that's why they can't leave the privatization idea alone.

You might think that the public's total rejection of the Bush scheme might make privatization plans go away for a while. Not so. They came back from the dead just a few months ago, as part of the Republican response to the Democratic health care bill. I find this headline interesting, because it's so accurate: "Rep. Paul Ryan to introduce alternative to health care.." Yep, Republican plans are an alternative to health care all right, no doubt about it.

The Republican alternative to the Democratic health care bill would not have insured anyone, nor reformed the system in any way. Instead, it would have been a giveaway in the form of tax breaks to a small percentage of the population wealthy (and healthy) enough to buy insurance and health care out of pocket. Oh, and one more thing: it would offer, "workers under 55 the option of investing over one third of their current Social Security taxes into personal retirement accounts."

So, Republicans failed to destroy social security in the name of "health care reform?" No problem! Just bring back the same plan yet again as a solution to America's budget problems. Republican Congressman's Paul Ryan's "Roadmap for America's future" would,

"reduce income tax rates on high-income households, including those earning above $633,000, while raising taxes on a significant portion of middle-class families. It would also eliminate income taxes on capital gains, dividends and interest, while abolishing the corporate income tax, the estate tax and the alternative minimum tax. Ryan's Roadmap would also privatize a substantial portion of Social Security, discontinue the Children's Health Insurance Program and end traditional Medicare and Medicaid by replacing these programs with a voucher system that recipients would gradually be weaned off of and onto purchasing their own private health care which, according to Ryan, would provide "low income Americans with financial resources to buy their own health care coverage like everyone else."

I could probably write several articles on why Congressman Ryan's "roadmap" would be a national catastrophe, but let me put that aside. My point in mentioning the plan is this: it's clear that Republicans are not really planning to campaign on it, or to to make it the law of the land if they win control of Congress. As Mark Schmitt of the American Prospect noted this week,

"the only serious plan they have, Rep. Paul Ryan's "Roadmap for America's Future" gets no stronger endorsement than "It's a pretty good list of options" from (House minority leader John) Boehner, and Ryan himself apparently told an audience at the Brookings Institution that Republican candidates were "talking to their pollsters, and their pollsters are saying, 'Stay away from this.'" That's not surprising, since the plan privatizes Social Security, turns Medicare into a voucher program, and raises taxes on the middle class. But it's the only actual plan they've had since the beginning of the Obama administration."

Furthermore, Schmitt notes that in contrast to the ambitious Republican Congress of the 1990s,

"The current Republican Party lacks a similar basic, manageable agenda. It's all or nothing. And the GOP no longer seems to have the capacity to get policy plans developed into legislation that is written, negotiated, and signed into law. The GOP has made a political choice to cut off a lot of its policy capacity. That's why it has no budget plans other than Ryan's super-unpopular one. It's why it didn't come up with any meaningful alternative to health reform. It's not because Republicans are dumb -- although Boehner and his allies were no match for Nancy Pelosi in a battle of tactics and determination -- but because offering an alternative would mean negotiating, finding areas of agreement and disagreement."

So there you have it. Republicans love the power, prestige and wealth that comes from getting elected to Congress. But they have no interest in creating a well-run government, because that would involve being pragmatic and making compromises, not to mention a lot of time away from the golf course. These people are not public servants. They're dogmatic chatterboxes who love taking your money and giving you absolutely nothing in return.

Do Republicans want to govern?

2010-07-29T22:30:00.000-07:00

Type "Republican 2010 agenda" into google, and you know what you get? A lot of links to articles discussing whether Republicans will ever get an actual agenda. This seems strange to me. People running for office must have some idea of what they want to do to make government work and improve the lives of Americans, right?

Or not. This article by Richard E. Cohen appearing in Politico does a reasonable job summarizing the lack of focus to be currently found among Republicans, who allegedly have a shot at getting control of Congress this year.

"Republicans want to assure voters that they will change direction if they take control of the House in November... Yet there will be no grand agenda rollout on the Capitol steps in Washington this fall, as Republicans did with the Contract With America in 1994."

Cohen makes an interesting point when discussing the very few things that the Republican leadership has been willing to say about the detail of their policies.

"those details fall short of compelling economic policy — and some of the grass-roots concepts will need to be reined in by Republican leaders.

On the America Speaking Out website, some of the leading ideas for job creation are outside the political mainstream, including elimination of minimum-wage laws and deportation of all illegal immigrants."

"Grass-roots concepts" that "will need to be reined in by Republican leaders"? Brother, you ain't kidding. Out in the heartland, Republicans have ideas all right. And I don't think it's an overstatement to say that those ideas are more about dogma than they are about problem solving.

House members Michele Bachmann and Steve King are two of the leading lights of the tea party movement. They have, quite literally, no legislative agenda. According to Bachmann, if Republicans will the House in November, "all we should do" is subpoena and investigate the Obama administration. Asked by reporters what specific laws he'd offer as a legislator carrying the tea party banner into the House, Steve King said the only thing he could think of was, "a law requiring members to cite the Constitution when sponsoring legislation."

Some of the other great ideas Republican leaders have to offer:

* Social security might have a long-term solvency problem? Force people to work until they're 70, and deny benefits to people with other income. Or just abolish social security.

* Racial strife a problem in America? Condemn the Civil Rights Act. (Until your opinions become unpopular. Then apologize for airing your views on television. After all, what right does the public have to know where candidates for public office stand on the issues?)

* Big Oil spilling petroleum all over the place? Time to deregulate the oil industry.

* Religious prejudice still troubling Americans? Announce that Islam is a cult.

* A woman who becomes pregnant as a result of rape cannot obtain access to abortion? It's God's will.

* Scientists say that human activity is causing climate change that will have catastrophic effects? Announce that global warming doesn't exist.

* Controlled substances still an issue? Suggest the prohibition of alcohol. Wait...WHAT?!

To summarize, what Richard Cohen says in his article on the GOP agenda (or lack thereof) is a lot like what David Broder said in the Washington Post article I wrote about earlier this month. Specifically, that the Republicans need to "reign in the crazies." From what I can tell, journalists like to think that there's some kind of divide between the uninformed, kooky grass-roots elements of the Republican party and it's more sensible, serious leadership. But again, take a look at the source of opinions on the issues that I have linked above. You'll find House minority leader John Boehner, and high-profile Senate recruits Sharron Angle and Rand Paul. The good-government Republicans are all long retired. (There really is a lot of money in lobbying you know.)

The Republican party would be great, if it weren't for all those Republicans

2010-07-12T00:00:00.000-07:00

There's an old Monty Python sketch that satirizes the tendency of mass media dilettantes to offer super-simplified solutions to complex problems:

How to Rid the World of all Known Diseases

John Cleese: "...this week on 'How to do it' we're going to show you how to play the flute, how to split an atom, how to construct a box girder bridge, how to irrigate the Sahara Desert and make vast new areas of land cultivatable, but first, here's Jackie to tell you all how to rid the world of all known diseases.
Eric Idle: Hello, Alan.
John Cleese: Hello, Jackie.
Eric Idle: Well, first of all become a doctor and discover a marvelous cure for something, and then, when the medical profession really starts to take notice of you, you can jolly well tell them what to do and make sure they get everything right so there'll never be any diseases ever again.
John Cleese: Thanks, Jackie. Great idea. How to play the flute. (picking up a flute) Well here we are. You blow there and you move your fingers up and down here.
Graham Chapman: Great, great, Alan. Well, next week we'll be showing you how black and white people can live together in peace and harmony, and Alan will be over in Moscow showing us how to reconcile the Russians and the Chinese. So, until next week, cheerio.

I thought of this sketch this week when I read a Washington Post article by David Broder entitled, "Buidling a More Positive Tea Party?"

To quote Broder's thoughts on the strategy the Republican party should take, "Building a majority coalition will require a strong, sensible platform. And a clear separation from the kooks and cranks who sank both (Democrat William Jennings) Bryan and (Republican Barry) Goldwater."

Broder's thoughts on the GOP are based on the conclusions of an article entitled Populism, American Style by Barry Olson of the American Enterprise Institute. Mr. Olson believes that like the backers of Barry Goldwater in 1964, the tea party folks represent a point of view that will be, "viewed as odd and frightening by most voters," and that they might come across as, "wanting to lead victims in a violent battle against an implacable enemy." David Broder agrees with Olson when the latter suggests that the Republican party needs to take the more Reaganesque approach of avoiding, "the classical-populist trap of vilifying... political adversaries as outright enemies."

Maybe Broder and Olson are right about the desirability of a less strident course for the Republican party. But I'm afraid that in order to do what the two authors are suggesting the party would have to ignore most of its voter base, clamp a lid on its most hard-working and enthusiastic activists and show the door to its newest and most talked-about candidates. Do Olson and Broder think that the tea baggers are just an exceptionally vocal fringe element within the Republican party, and that most Republicans actually hold more moderate views? This is hardly the case. First of all, a recent Gallup poll lead that organization to suggest that, “Whether Tea Party supporters are a voting segment that is unique and distinct from the more traditional Republican conservative base, however, appears questionable.” Second of all, a recent poll of Republicans does not tend to suggest that the party is overflowing with sensible moderates whose opinions are in sharp contrast to the more radical tea baggers:

Only 42% of Republicans are confident that President Obama was born in the United States. 63% believe he is, "a socialist." 31% believe that Obama is, "a racist who hates white people."

Well, polls can indicate a lot of strange things, depending on how the questions are worded. Let's move on and take a look at what leading Republicans are saying today, and compare their statements to GOP policies of the past.

On immigration:
1984: President Reagan, "I believe in the idea of amnesty for those who have put down roots and lived here, even though sometime back they may have entered illegally."
2010: Senator Orrin Hatch condemns an Obama speech on immigration, calling it, "cynical political pandering," designed to, "give backdoor amnesty to illegal immigrants."

On the United Nations:
1956: The Republican platform calls for America to, "vigorously... support the United Nations."
2010: Both the Republican platform of Texas and wildly popular Congressman Ron Paul advocate the withdrawal of the U.S. from the U.N.

On the environment:
1970: President Nixon proposes legislation to create the Environmental Protection Agency.
2010: Republican Sharron Angle, the party's nominee for Senate in Nevada, and Rand Paul, the party's nominee for Senate in Kentucky, call for the EPA to be abolished.

On minimum wage:
1960: The Republican platform counts as an achievement its efforts to raise the Federal minimum wage.
2010: Tom Emmer, a leading candidate for the GOP's nomination for the gubernatorial race in Minnesota, call for lowering the minimum wage. Both Glenn Beck and John Stossel, leading conservative persons, have called for an end to the federal minimum wage.

On unemployment insurance:
1960: The Republican platform hails the GOP's success in extending unemployment insurance.
2010: Sharron Angle claims that extending unemployment insurance has, "spoiled our citizenry." Former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay claims extending unemployment benefits, "keeps people from going and finding jobs."

And everything else:
1952: Future President Eisenhower: "Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes that you can do these things. Among them are a few Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or businessman from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid."
2010: A tiny splinter group? Do you know any Republicans who agree with anything Eisenhower said in that quote?

And the more moderate Republicans that Broder and Olson are looking to for the party's salvation? Sorry, but they've already lost their bids for office to the tea baggers.

Senator Bob Bennett of Utah, who was denied renomination by the Republican party this year in favor of a more conservative candidate: "As I look out at the political landscape now, I find plenty of slogans on the Republican side, but not very many ideas," Bennett told The Ripon Society. "Indeed, if you raise specific ideas and solutions, as I’ve tried to do on health care with [Oregon Democratic Sen.] Ron Wyden, you are attacked with the same vigor as we’ve seen in American politics all the way back to slavery and polygamy; you are attacked as being a wimp, insufficiently pure, and unreliable."

South Carolina Congressman Bob Inglis was also denied renomination this year in favor of a tea party candidate. From the Atlanta Journal-Constitution: "Inglis’ refusal to join in on the Obama-bashing of the far right played a big role in his landslide defeat on June 22. Leading up to the election, he frequently challenged voters who questioned the president’s citizenship or patriotism. At one town hall meeting, he was jeered for saying that (Glenn) Beck, a Fox News Channel host, is a divisive fearmonger. . . . Inglis said he was shocked during the health care votes as he watched protesters jeering Rep. John Lewis, a Georgia Democrat who was beaten as a leading civil rights activist in the 1960s."

In conclusion, it's too late for "sensible" Republicans to separate themselves from, "the kooks and cranks." I'm afraid the inmates are already running the asylum.

Give 'em Enough Rope

2010-07-03T17:45:00.000-07:00

It's become apparent that the best tactic for Democrats heading into this year's elections is to give Republicans lots of air time. Lately, if you hear the GOP leadership speaking one minute, you'll hear it apologizing and backpedaling the next.

When the Republicans were in ascendancy in the 1990s and 2000s, I recall that one thing they did well was to stay on message. In 1994, you didn't see conservatives touting the Contract for America on Monday, then backing away from their remarks on Tuesday. In 2000, it was clear that every Republican operative appearing on the cable news stations to spin nonsense about the recount in Florida had been given exactly the same talking points.

Today, things are different. For example, both GOP House leaders John Boehner and Joe Barton have found themselves on the defensive for their recent statements. As Rick Horowitz of the Janesville Gazette writes,

"Could John Boehner and Joe Barton really be undercover Democrats?...

With tens of thousands of barrels of oil spewing into the Gulf every day, with incalculable damage being done to the water and to those who rely on it for habitat, for livelihood, Joe Barton makes a public show of apologizing to the spewers. He’s “ashamed,” he announces to the cameras, that the Obama White House has secured a commitment from BP to set aside $20 billion to help make the region whole again.

A “shakedown,” Joe Barton calls it, as Republican strategists cringe. Who in his right mind—or even his far-right mind—would say such a thing? Would align his party with the spewers, and against the victims?

And then comes Boehner. With the jobless rate still high, with the economic recovery still faltering, with people coast to coast desperate for help, John Boehner weighs in. John Boehner sits before a camera and compares the financial-reform legislation nearing passage in Congress to “killing an ant with a nuclear weapon.”

“An ant.” That’s how John Boehner characterizes the financial meltdown, as Republican strategists start popping Valium by the fistful. Who in his right mind—or even his far-right mind—would say such a thing?"

But for John Boenher, remarks on financial reform were only one of several recent attacks of foot-in-mouth disease. The past few days have also seen him suggest that the retirement age for social security benefits should be raised to 70, and that those with other income should receive not benefits at all. These remarks will hardly endear him to America's most powerful voting block, senior citizens. Last but not least was Boehner's criticism of a new tax on tanning beds. That comes as pretty funny coming from a guy who's so in love with artificial tanning that he looks like an overgrown Oompa Loompa.

RNC Chairman Michael Steele is also in hot water this week, with fellow Republicans calling for his resignation after Steele's suggestion that the conflict in Afghanistan is, "a war of Obama's choosing."

But for some really far out remarks, we have to look to the Republican party's newest candidates for election. Kentucky Senate candidate Rand Paul expressed regret after appearing on the Rachel Maddow Show and stating that he doesn't support some aspects of the Civil Rights Act. Does he regret his remarks? No, of course not. He only regrets appearing on the show. Nevada's Sharron Angle is running against Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. Like Rand Paul, candidate Angle has recently felt the need to duck reporters due to some controversial statements. Among these are Angle's beliefs that social security should be "transitioned out," America should bring back prohibition of alcohol, that if Americans don't like what Congress is doing, they might consider, "Second Amendment remedies," and that if a woman should become pregnant as a result of rape she should not have access to abortion services, because her pregnancy is part of "God's Plan."

For the high-information voter, there are also the Republican state Party platforms, which include many planks that, while they may endear some of the GOP faithful, are wildly out of touch with the general public. Consider the platforms of the Republican parties of Montana and Texas, both of which include the charming goal of reestablishing archaic sodomy laws long since struck down by the Supreme Court, with the object of again making homosexuality a criminal offense.

And for one last dose of, "how Republican leaders can make themselves even more unpopular," we have only to look at the day-to-day actions of its Congressional leaders. Just this past week, GOP Senators filibustered a bill that would give aid to homeless veterans and their children.

Finally, I was intrigued this week by a statement from Senator Bob Bennett of Utah, who was denied renomination by the Republican party this year:

"As I look out at the political landscape now, I find plenty of slogans on the Republican side, but not very many ideas," Bennett told The Ripon Society. "Indeed, if you raise specific ideas and solutions, as I’ve tried to do on health care with [Oregon Democratic Sen.] Ron Wyden, you are attacked with the same vigor as we’ve seen in American politics all the way back to slavery and polygamy; you are attacked as being a wimp, insufficiently pure, and unreliable."

I'm sorry Bob, but I have to disagree somewhat. The quotes I've reviewed in this post show that today's Republican leaders have lots of ideas. All terrible ones.

I've got your deficit reduction right here

2010-06-19T21:00:00.000-07:00

The Senate this week defeated a package of domestic aid programs for fears that it would further increase the federal deficit.

As the Washington Post reported, "Even the state aid that Obama last week called critical to preventing the layoffs of hundreds of thousands of teachers and other government workers is foundering. After days of talks, frustrated Democratic leaders in the Senate failed again Thursday to muster the 60 votes needed to approve the cash and left town for the weekend with no clear path forward."

"Fiscal stimulus "is not a particularly effective strategy. So let's just stop," said Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a former CBO director who advised Republican Sen. John McCain presidential campaign."

Yes, and I suppose prosperity is just around corner, provided that we let the free market work its magic? Republicans are apparently channeling Herbert Hoover, whose belief that we should just let the Depression run its course caused GDP to fall nearly 30% in the three years following the stock market crash. President Roosevelt by contrast did not see the federal deficit as a reason to curtail demand-side economic stimulus. As a result, by late in FDR's first term GDP was back to pre-Depression levels.

Actually, Democratic Barney Frank of Massachusetts is leading the charge on some serious deficit reduction, and I hope he succeeds.

First, some context. The following is not a typo:
US Defense spending 2001: $366 billion
US Defense spending 2011: $929 billion

Yes, among the many ways in which 9-11 was a godsend to conservatives is the fact that we have nearly tripled defense spending in a decade. Here's another interesting statistic: We spend almost as much on defense as the rest of the world combined. The panel commissioned by Congressman Frank is recommending nearly $1 trillion in cuts to the Pentagon’s budget during the next 10 years, principally by reducing the nation's nuclear arsenal and our overseas presence while eliminating unneeded weapons programs.

The Frank panel including some Republicans, so its recommendations might have some hope of getting past the Republican policy of "stop all Democratic proposals by any means necessary." Let's hope so.

Do Republicans lie? Well, no more than journalists

2010-06-07T14:15:00.000-07:00

"Americans wanted jobs, but instead Washington passed a "stimulus" that has failed to keep unemployment below 8 percent as promised." These are the words of a Republican California congressman as trumpeted by a recent article on cnn.com. For more than a year I've heard this same claim, not just from conservative sources but also from some that are allegedly unbiased. But as Mark Twain said, "It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so."

America's employment stats are compiled by the Bureau of Census for the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and a chart of unemployment is available here. Here are the unemployment numbers for the time frame I'll be discussing in this post:
11/08: 6.5%
12/08: 7.1%
01/09: 8.5%
02/09: 8.9%
...
01/10: 10.6%
...
04/10: 9.5%

Now here's a little history on President Obama's 2009 stimulus package, otherwise known as the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. When Republicans refer to the President's "promise" that the stimulus would keep unemployment at a certain level, they are (to quote Politifact):

"referring to a Jan. 9, 2009, report called "The Job Impact of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan" from Christina Romer, chairwoman of the president's Council of Economic Advisers, and Jared Bernstein, the vice president's top economic adviser.

Their report projected that the stimulus plan proposed by Obama would create between three and four million jobs by the end of 2010. The report also includes a graphic predicting unemployment rates with and without the stimulus. Without the stimulus (the baseline), unemployment was projected to hit about 8.5 percent in 2009 and then continue rising to a peak of about 9 percent in 2010. With the stimulus, they predicted the unemployment rate would peak at just under 8 percent in 2009."

So let's presume that when the report was published, the authors had up-to-the-minute statistics. That means that they would have been working with the December 2008 unemployment rate of 7.1%. The report the Obama team wrote suggested that with the stimulus plan, unemployment would rise about one percent more before economic recovery would begin to bring it down again. This prediction was essentially accurate, since unemployment peaked in early 2010 at a rate about one percent higher than where it stood when the stimulus bill was signed into law in late February 2009.

There's a lot to criticize about the stimulus bill. But the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office and many economists have gone on record stating that the bill has in fact reduced unemployment. And the Obama administration's record on job creation and stimulating economic recovery is inarguable. When Obama took office, the country was losing nearly one million jobs per month. Growth in GDP for the last full quarter that Bush was in office was a staggering minus 5.4%. Today, the country is creating jobs and growth in GDP for the most recent quarter was a robust 3.2%.

These encouraging numbers have not stopped Republicans from lying about the stimulus bill and what the Obama team claimed it would do. Republican Congressman Eric Cantor: "We were promised, the president said we would keep unemployment under 8.5 percent." Republican Congressman Mike Pence: "The so-called stimulus bill that has taken us from 7.5 percent employment [sic] to nearly 10 percent unemployment nationwide."

Ok, I expect Republican Congressmen to lie. But unfortunately, some mainstream media sources are playing the same tune. According to a 2009 LA Times article, the stimulus bill could be said to be missing its employment targets, because Obama's advisors had claimed "that with the stimulus spending, the U.S. unemployment rate this year would not exceed 8%. It now stands at 9.4%." The same goes for Time magazine, which published this ridiculously misleading article entitled, Obama's Stimulus Plan, Failing by Its Own Measure. Once again, it's the same patently false claim: that Obama's advisors "predicted that the passage of a large economic-aid package would boost the economy and keep the unemployment rate below 8%. It hasn't quite worked out that way. Last month, the jobless rate in the U.S. hit 9.5%"

The Obama administration needs to combat these lies; not with words but with action. The nation is long overdue for a serious jobs bill: one that will use federal dollars to hire the unemployed to rebuild the country's infrastructure. The Works Progress Administration, for example, puts millions to work in the late 1930's. If we can afford to spend half a billion dollars every day in Iraq, we can afford to rebuild America's highways, railroads, bridges, parks and schools.

May 18, Before and After

2010-05-19T21:00:00.000-07:00

Several states held their primaries last night, and Pennsylvania held a special election in the 12th Congressional district to replace Congressman John Murtha, who passed away in February. The 12th has an interesting distinction: of the 435 congressional districts, it's the only one that John Kerry won in 2004, but John McCain won in 2008. Most pundits suggested that the race was a toss up, and a bellwether for the mood of the electorate as well. The results: Democrat Mark Critz defeated Republican Tim Burns by a stunning 53% to 45%.

Here's what respected political analyst Charlie Cook said a few weeks ago, before the PA-12 election:
"I've spent the last couple of days talking to some of the brightest Democrats in the party that are not in the White House. And it's very hard to come up with a scenario where Democrats don't lose the House. It's very hard. Are the seats there right this second? No. But we're on a trajectory on the House turning over...."

And here's what the LA Times, and Charlie Cook, had to say after Critz's victory:
"Republicans should have won the race hands-down. Obama lost the district in 2008 and his popularity has plummeted since; Burns admitted he hadn't even prepared a concession speech. Instead, the defeat extended the GOP's losing streak in special House contests to four this election cycle and 11 going back to 2008 — making it that much more difficult to capture the 40 seats the party needs to win the House.

"This should not have been rocket science," said nonpartisan election handicapper Charles Cook. "How can you win 40 if you can't even focus on one and get it done?"

It was a big night for progressives. In the Democratic primary in Kentucky, Jack Conway defeated Dan Mongiardo, in Pennsylvania Joe Sestak defeated Arlen Specter and in Arkansas Bill Halter forced Blanche Lincoln into a runoff. In each case, it was a victory for the more progressive (and arguably more electable) candidate.

There's been a lot of talk this year about the enthusiasm gap between Republicans and Democrats, and the suggestion that it might lead to big GOP gains in November because conservatives are more fired up to go to the polls. If that gap exists, it sure wasn't on display last night. In conservative Kentucky, 513,000 voted in the Democratic Senate primary versus only 348,000 in the equally heated Republican race.

The LA Times article cited above summarizes the situation neatly:
"For months, the GOP has been buoyed by the notion that 2010 will be a big year, delivering control of the House and perhaps even the Senate in November. But Tuesday's election results — arguably the best campaign day for Democrats since President Obama's victory in 2008 — suggest the climb back to a majority may be steeper than Republicans thought."

I'm Ok, You're Inferior II: More on the Movement Against Marriage Equality

2010-05-15T18:00:00.000-07:00

In my last post, I wrote about how the movement to keep same sex marriage illegal is motivated primarily by bigotry. Today I'd like to go over three other things that inspire the National Organization for Marriage and some other prejudiced people to do what they do.

Goal No. 1: Subvert the democratic process
The campaigns led by NOM and others to keep marriage equality from becoming legal have been successful in many parts of the country. Thirty states have passed constitutional amendments prohibiting same-sex marriage. But at the same time that the anti-same sex marriage movement has been winning many battles, they've been losing the larger war.

In the past fifteen years, support for marriage equality has increased in all 50 states. In many states, support has increased dramatically in just the past few years. Furthermore, a majority of people under 30 support marriage equality, while support among senior citizens is only around 25%. America is moving irrevocably towards majority support of marriage equality. NOM claims that, "We need a marriage amendment to settle the gay marriage issue once and for all, so we don’t have it in our face every day for the next ten years." But it doesn't take a genius to figure out what their real agenda is: to build legal barriers against marriage equality as quickly as possible before they are overwhelmed in the court of public opinion.

Goal No. 2: Make a lot of money
Supporters and foes of marriage equality spent about $40 million each in the 2008 battle in California to enact Proposition 8, which overturned same sex marriage. That money goes somewhere. Some of it goes to people like pastor Gary Randall, who fights against marriage equality in my home state of Washington. Randall operates an organization called Faith and Freedom which raises money to fight against domestic partnership laws and marriage equality in Washington. He pays himself over $1,000 per week for a few hours work on behalf of the organization. But when pressed in a 2009 newspaper interview to explain why same sex domestic partnerships are harmful, he was unable to give anything like a straight answer. (I suppose some of fundraisers who support marriage equality are also only in it for the money. That's life.)

Goal No. 3: Maintain sexism and white supremacy
One of the National Organization for Marriage's project is called the Ruth Institute. The Ruth Institute's object is to promote ideas such as, "Marriage as the proper context for sex and childrearing." The project wants families to have more children. But as the author of the dailykos.com article I cited in my last post points out, "if you thought that the Ruth Institute would be content to let women have children on their own time--say, using techniques like fertility treatments or artificial insemination--you're wrong. Two of the top featured articles at the Ruth Institute's website...openly decry these practices. The only way women ought to have children, if you ask the Ruth Institute, is if a man is present to control the situation."

So NOM is sexist. But it's also white supremacist? Yes. One of the Ruth Project's goals is: "Maintain at least a replacement-level birth rate, so that the devastation of a European-style "demographic winter" is avoided." The demographic winter is an idea that's been kicking around the conservative world a while now. It suggests that the world will face problems in the next century because of falling birthrates. Consider the Demographic Winter project from the conservative Heartland Institute. It mixes some truth with some other easily disproven claims to make it appear that the world's population with shrink dramatically in the next century. For example, the project claims that, "The average birth rate for the European Union is 1.5, well below replacement (2.1)." This is true. However, they also claim that, "If current trends continue, by 2050, the world will hold 248 million fewer children under 5 than it does today." This claim is utter nonsense. Current demographic trends indicate that in the next century, the world's population will rise from the current 6.7 billion to 10 billion.

But take another look at Demographic Winter's bullet points. Almost all of them talk about low birth rates in Europe and the industrialized world. Only passing mention is given to the developing world, with mention of low birth rates in Egypt and the Philippines. This or course ignores the big picture: Africa's population will nearly triple in the next century, while Asia's will nearly double.

So it's not declining birth rates they're worried about. It's declining birth rates within the white, Christian part of the world. It's the same idea I wrote about last year, as expressed by Fox News' John Gibson, "Gibson urges viewers to have more children. By growing the native population, he claims, we can reduce pressure to allow more immigrants into the county. We wouldn't want to become like Europe where, "they are inviting in more and more immigrants every year to take care of things and those immigrants are having way more babies than the native population, hence Eurabia." What does Gibson mean by "Eurabia?" He clarifies this in the second clip, "I'd rather live with the Christians here than live ... under Sharia law in Europe."

This is exactly the same thing many foes of marriage equality worry about. It's also part of the conservative racism that created Arizona's new anti-immigrant law. American conservatives fear the demographic changes coming to this country, and they're not shy about it. As far as they're concerned, anyone who's not a straight, white Christian raising lots of straight, white Christian children is not welcome in their America.

I'm not bigoted, I just believe you're inferior

2010-05-09T23:00:00.000-07:00

Meet the National Organization for Marriage. Its goal is keeping same-sex marriage from becoming legal, and it's incredibly effective. As Dante Atkins of dailykos.com noted this week, "NOM, with the aid of substantial funding from Mormon and Catholic churches and organizations, was the organization primarily responsible for passing Proposition 8 in California and approving Question 1 in Maine, both of which eliminated the legal right for same-sex couples to marry in their respective states."

Since I support same-sex marriage, I'm naturally curious as to what those who are against it are saying, and whether they are making a rational argument supported by facts.

In 2009, I wrote about Dr. James Dobson's Eleven Arguments Against Gay Marriage. I found Dobson's conclusions to be prejudicial, nonsensical and supported by so-called "evidence" that could not be defended upon inquiry.

NOM's approach to the subject is more dispassionate. Unlike Dobson, they aren't beginning their argument with the idea that homosexuality is condemned by God and therefore anything that gay Americans do to increase their civil rights constitutes the advancement of an immoral agenda.

So how does NOM attack same-sex marriage, given that they aren't using morality as an angle? First, they use a lot of "weasel words:" ambiguous claims that create an impression that something specific and meaningful has been said. This begins with the very first sentence of NOM's Marriage Talking Points: "Strong majorities of Americans oppose gay marriage." When I first read that, I thought, "how odd they would lead off with such a demonstrably false claim." A recent Washington Post - ABC News poll found that 47% of Americans support legalizing same-sex marriage, while 50% are opposed. So those that are opposed to same-sex marriage don't constitute a majority, much less a strong majority. Ah ha, but read the sentence again. It doesn't say, "A strong majority of Americans," it says, "Strong majorities of Americans." Ok, well I guess it's true that strong majorities of say, rural Alabamans are opposed to same-sex marriage, and Alabamans are Americans (though grudgingly so), so, technically, the statement is true, although misleading.

Second, NOM's arguments are based on a lot of specious reasoning. NOM talking points include questions such as "What's the harm from same-sex marriage?" and "Are you saying gays cannot be good parents?" It gives the answers to these questions as, "Two men might each be a good father, but neither can be a mom. The ideal for children is the love of their own mom and dad. No same-sex couple can provide that.” and, "Do you really believe people like me who believe mothers and fathers both matter to kids are like bigots and racists?"

I find both of these "answers" fascinating. NOM acknowledges that gay men might be good parents, but not ideal parents. Apparently in this case, the "good" is such an enemy of the "ideal" that the "good" must be outlawed! Additionally, NOM's arguments are based on certain presumptions. Certain demonstrably false presumptions.

Number one: "Marriage is about bringing two sexes together, so that children get the love of their own mom and a dad." From a legal standpoint, this isn't what marriage is about at all. But of course, NOM makes a point of reminding it's followers that supporters of same-sex marriage, "seek to change the subject to just about anything: discrimination, benefits...Don't get sidetracked." Indeed, don't get sidetracked, you just might derail your own paper-thin argument.

Number two: “High rates of divorce are one more reason we should be strengthening marriage, not conducting radical social experiments on it.” Surprise! Massachusetts, the state in which same-sex marriage has been legal the longest, has the lowest divorce rate in the country. States with populations hostile to same-sex marriage have some of the highest divorce rates.

Number three: "Gays and Lesbians have a right to live as they choose, they don’t have the right to redefine marriage for all of us." First of all, the vast majority of those who support marriage equality are heterosexual. Second, allowing more Americans to wed the partner of their choice isn't "redefining" marriage any more than American citizenship was "redefined" when it was extended to Native Americans in 1924.

Number four: That NOM's stance against same-sex marriage cannot reasonably be construed as bigotry. NOM suggests that its supporters answer the question "Are you a bigot?" with another question, "Do you really believe people like me who believe mothers and fathers both matter to kids are like bigots and racists?" Now we return to the weasel word argument. If I accuse someone of bigotry because they believe that same-sex couples cannot possibly be as good at parenting as opposite-sex couples, then I'm attacking people, "who believe mothers and fathers both matter to kids."

I'm particularly fascinated by this part of the argument because it raises the question: What is bigotry?

Bigotry can be defined as irrational suspicion or hatred of a particular group, race, or religion or as the state of mind a narrow-minded person who is intolerant of beliefs other than his or her own.

Is NOM's stance against same-sex marriage irrational? Well, NOM repeatedly refers to the belief that only opposite-sex partners can be ideal parents. NOM loves to talk about what its supporters "believe" and what it "common sense." But at no point does NOM offer any facts or statistics to support its arguments that same-sex parenting is by definition inferior. It's like believing in ghosts. A person can believe ghosts exist. They can argue that it's "common sense." But without any spectral evidence, that person is by definition irrational. Is NOM's stance intolerant of other beliefs? I'd say its demands for a Constitutional Amendment to ban marriage equality for all time answer that question. NOM claims to be all about democracy, but it refuses to allow for the possibility that a majority might support same-sex marriage and want to change the law.

Sorry guys, you are bigoted. And in the long run, ignorance and intolerance will always lose. I've got some more to say on where the Prejudice Movement in America is going, but I'll save it for next time.

Working hard on May Day: 100 Senate race forecasts

2010-05-01T15:30:00.000-07:00

Happy May Day! May Day is the international celebration of the social and economic achievements of the labor movement.

I'm celebrating because for the first time, I have a forecast for the next election for all 100 United States Senate seats.

2010 races click here.
2012 races click here.

2014 races click here.

I hope you have as much fun reading them as I did writing them. Thanks! Joe

Predictions: Senate Races 2014

2010-05-01T15:00:00.000-07:00

Most recent update: 11/12/11:WV

(5/1/10) For the next four and a half years, I'll be writing about the 2014 Senate races. I'll be reporting good news for Democrats wherever I can find it. Unfortunately, by election day '14 it's likely I'll be predicting that the blue team is going to lose some seats, and lose control of the Senate as well. (Of course they might lose control of the Senate before 2014, but that's another story.)

Consider what the Democratic Senate caucus is up against in 2014:
* Of the 33 seats up for election, it is likely that 19 will be Democratic and only 14 Republican.
* The Democrats have 5 Senators who will be between the ages of 73 and 90 and another (Tim Johnson of South Dakota) who faces serious health concerns. If any of these six retire, Republicans will have a good shot at winning the open seat. (The Republicans running for reelection are no spring chickens themselves. Eight of them will be age 69 or older.)
* There's a good chance that Democrats won't be able to pick up a single Republican seat. 13 of the 14 Republicans up for reelection are in red states, and Susan Collins from Maine isn't really vulnerable.
* The party out of power tends to do well in mid-term elections, particularly in years when the President is in his sixth year in office.

If you'd like to read what I wrote about this same class of Senators the last time they were up for reelection in 2008, click here.

Races are categorized as either likely or unlikely to be competitive. This post will be updated continuously through election day.

Races likely to be competitive:

Alaska
Rating: Toss up
Democrat: Mark Begich (incumbent)
Republican: ?
Overview: Begich's chances are difficult to gauge. Congressional incumbents seldom lose in Alaska, as the state likes to build clout and seniority in Washington.

Arkansas
Rating: Likely Democratic hold
Democrat: Mark Pryor (incumbent)
Republican: ?
Overview: Pryor will be running for a third term at the age of only 51. Although Arkansas has been moving to the right for years, he is unlikely to face serious opposition.

Colorado
Rating: Leans Democratic hold
Democrat: Mark Udall (incumbent)
Republican: ?
Overview: Colorado is a swing state, but Udall is a very seasoned politician who is unlikely to lose.

Delaware
Rating: Likely Democratic hold
Democrat: Chris Coons (incumbent)
Republican: ?
Overview: (9/26/10) Conventional wisdom suggested that popular Republican Congressman Mike Castle would win this seat in 2010's special election, and that he might then retire in 2014. That was before the loony, loony Tea Party candidate Christine O'Donnell beat Castle for the Republican nomination. Democrats are fortunate that a popular, seasoned public servant like Chris Coons chose to run against the seemingly-unbeatable Castle in 2010. It means that it's likely that in 2014 they'll have an incumbent Senator who will be difficult to defeat for reelection.
(7/6/11) Maybe the Republican party in Delaware will become more competent in the next three years. But I doubt it.

Georgia
Rating: Likely Republican hold
Republican: Saxby Chambliss (incumbent)
Democrat: ?
Overview: Here's what I wrote about Saxby Chambliss in 2008: "Chambliss is the Republican that Democrats love to hate. In 2002, he defeated incumbent Democratic Senator (and triple amputee) Max Cleland after running an ad showing Cleland's picture next to that of Osama bin Laden and questioning Cleland's commitment to American security. Yes, that's right, Chambliss won based on questioning the patriotism of a veteran who lost both legs and an arm in Vietnam. Thanks a lot, Georgia." Chambliss was expected to have an easy time winning a second term in 2008, but was nearly defeated by Jim Martin, long-time member of the Georgia House of Representatives and Vietnam veteran. Unfortunately for Democrats, Chambliss will probably have an easy time winning a third term.

Kentucky
Rating: Likely Republican hold
Republican: Mitch McConnell (incumbent)
Democrat: ?
Overview: In 2008 McConnell was nearly beaten by third-tier candidate Democrat Bruce Lunsford. If the blue team had nominated a stronger candidate, they would have won. Too bad. In 2014 McConnell will probably have an easy time of it, assuming a sixth term is what he wants.

Illinois
Likely Democratic hold
Democrat: Dick Durbin (incumbent)
Republican: ?
Overview: (5/1/10) Illinois Republicans have long fumed that they can't seem to mount a serious challenge to the man that the magazine The National Journal ranked as "the most liberal Senator" a few years ago. America would be a better place if we had more leaders like Dick Durbin.
(7/6/11) Durbin has recently signaled a willingness to consider social security cuts as part of budget deal. I'm not sure what to think about what Durbin is doing, but the phrase "political suicide" comes to mind. Hopefully he'll come to his senses.

Louisiana
Rating: Toss up
Democrat: Mary Landrieu (incumbent)
Republican: ?
Overview: Democratic fortunes in Louisiana have been on the wane for years. Landrieu is in for a tough fight.

Minnesota
Rating: Leans Democratic hold
Democrat: Al Franken (incumbent)
Republican: ?
Overview: Franken is guaranteed to get a serious challenge, but strong approval ratings and stellar fundraising abilities make him a good bet for reelection.

Montana
Rating: Likely Democratic hold
Democrat: Max Baucus (incumbent)
Republican: ?
Overview: (5/1/10) Baucus is a safe bet, but health concerns make him a possible retirement candidate. If he calls it quits, this seat will likely go Republican.
(7/6/11) A six-term incumbent Senator usually wins a seventh term pretty easily. But combine Baucus' weak approval ratings with a red-state in a Republican year, and anything's possible.

New Jersey
Rating: Toss Up
Democrat: Frank Lautenberg (incumbent)
Republican: ?
Overview: Lautenberg will be 90 and is highly likely to retire. This race is a pure toss up.

North Carolina
Rating: Toss Up
Democrat: Kay Hagan (incumbent)
Republican: ?
Overview: North Carolina is the state that likes to replace rather than reelect its Senators. Hagan will need to get most of the breaks to win a second term.

West Virginia
Montana
Rating: Likely Democratic hold
Democrat: Jay Rockerfeller (incumbent)
Republican: ?
Overview: (5/1/10) Yet another race where the Democrats are safe if their incumbent runs for another term, and in big trouble if he doesn’t.
(11/12/11) Rockefeller still has a net positive approval rating, and the Republican party has managed to defeat only 3 Democratic incumbent Senators in the last 4 elections. Still, if President Obama is reelected, then no Democratic incumbent is going to be safe in those parts of the country where he is deeply unpopular.

Races unlikely to become competitive:

Alabama: Republican Jeff Sessions incumbent. Sessions is unbeatable.

Idaho: Republican Jim Risch incumbent. Also unbeatable.

Kansas: Republican Pat Roberts incumbent. Might possibly retire, but it doesn't matter. Democrats haven't elected a Senator in Kansas since 1932, and lately the Democratic Party of Kansas seems to have fallen into a black hole.

Maine: Republican Susan Collins incumbent. Democrats thought Collins was vulnerable in 2008. They thought wrong.

Massachusetts: Democrat John Kerry incumbent. Kerry has survived being thrice wounded in Vietnam, losing his first race for Congress and losing an election to America's worst President. I think he'll come through this reelection battle without any more scars.

Michigan: Democrat Carl Levin incumbent. Levin is safe, but if he chooses not to run for a seventh term, this race will be a tossup. Michigan is trending red.

Mississippi: Republican Thad Cochran incumbent. Cochran might retire, but there are simply not enough Democrats in Mississippi to win this race.

Nebraska: Republican Mike Johanns incumbent. Will Johanns win? Um, yeah, do Nebraskans grow corn?

New Hampshire: Democrat Jeanne Shaheen incumbent. Popular former Governor Shaheen is in no danger.

New Mexico: Democrat Tom Udall incumbent. Udall has avoided any controversies that would tend to bring his approval ratings down, and the Republican bench in New Mexico is so thin you practically can’t see it.

Oklahoma: Republican James Inhofe incumbent. Inhofe will be 79 years old. Can't we please, please be spared another six years of the man who calls climate change the, "greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people"?

Oregon: Democrat Jeff Merkley incumbent. Merkley is likely to get a serious challenger, but the Oregon GOP has proven totally inept for the last decade.

Rhode Island: Democrat Jack Reed incumbent. Blue-state Rhode Island is, if possible, becoming even more blue. Reed is one of the most popular, if least talked about, members of the Senate.

South Carolina: Republican Lindsey Graham incumbent. Any chance we can get South Carolina to secede again?

South Dakota: Democrat Tim Johnson incumbent. Johnson is the ultimate survivor. In 2002, he won a second term in the Senate in what was a terrible year for Democratic incumbents. In 2008, he battled back from catastrophic illness to win yet again in red state South Dakota. He is a good bet to win another term in 2014, but if he calls it quits, this seat is likely to go Republican.

Tennessee: Republican Lamar Alexander incumbent. To me, Alexander is defined by the infomercials from his 2000 Presidential bid. In these transparently phony "town halls" Alexander would rave about how we needed to take power away from Congress and give more authority to the President. And who would make a great President? Lamar! Tennessee Republicans frighten me.

Texas: Republican John Cornyn incumbent. Texas is slowly moving from red-state to purple-state, but Cornyn has nothing to worry about. As Republican Senators go, his crazy-quotient is fairly low.

Virginia: Democrat Mark Warner incumbent. Warner’s popularity makes him a good bet for a second term.

Wyoming: Republican Mike Enzi incumbent. Not just the last Senate race alphabetically, but also the least interesting!

I'm not going to pay more than six sheep for this operation

2010-04-21T21:40:00.000-07:00

Fourth in a series of articles on the impact of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010.

Meet Sue Lowden. You may not be familiar with Sue, but she's on her way to becoming one of America's most talked-about politicians. Sue is the likely Republican nominee to take on Democratic Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, who happens to be Senate Majority Leader. You wouldn't think that Nevadans would want to give up the clout of having a power broker like Reid represent them, but apparently they do. If current polls are to be believed, Sue Lowden is leading Mr. Reid by 10 points or more.

Sue Lowden is one of many Republican candidates trying to gin up support this year by attacking the health care bill. Congressman Roy Blunt for example, who will be the Republican nominee for the open Senate seat in Missouri this year, has suggested that it's wrong to guarantee access to health insurance to people with pre-existing conditions, because some adults, "have done nothing to take care of themselves."

Mr. Blunt's comments on health care are however not half as obnoxious as Sue Lowden's. Earlier this month, Lowden said,

"I think that bartering is really good. Those doctors who you pay cash, you can barter, and that would get prices down in a hurry. And I would say go out, go ahead out and pay cash for whatever your medical needs are, and go ahead and barter with your doctor."

Initially, the media's reaction to Lowden's comments was to assume that she had used the word "barter" when she meant to use "haggle" or "negotiate." Indeed, her campaign office seemed to confirm this, saying in response to an inquiry regarding Lowden's comments that, "Usually, doctors will offer a lower payment in an agreement with patients because it saves them the hassle of dealing with insurance companies and government-administered health care." Ok, sure, that's sort of reasonable I guess. Doctors have been charging patients on a sliding-scale for centuries.

So a few days ago, I joked about Lowden's apparent blunder, writing, "Thanks, Sue. The next time I go for a check up, I'll try to pay with a chicken."

Ah ha, but it turns out that even Lowden's office had wrongly assumed that she had misspoken. In point of fact, she did literally mean that you should barter with your doctor for services! On April 19, she said,

"I’m telling you that this works. You know, before we all started having health care, in the olden days our grandparents, they would bring a chicken to the doctor, they would say I’ll paint your house. I mean, that’s the old days of what people would do to get health care with your doctors. Doctors are very sympathetic people. I’m not backing down from that system."

(Boy, I was really ahead of the curve with that chicken comment.)

Lowden clearly thinks she's on to something here. Just today, she went so far as to attack her opponent Harry Reid today for not being on board with her brilliant livestock-for-medicine program, saying, "instead of producing a health care solution Americans support, Harry Reid spends his time focusing on attacking ...Sue Lowden."

Personally, I think there's a reason why Republicans are having such a hard time articulating complaints about the health care bill. And it's not because the health care bill is so wonderful that it's beyond criticism. It's because the bill is structured around requiring everyone to buy insurance from the private sector, without any public option to compete with private sector insurance, and without requiring private insurers to reform their abusive pricing practices. This should sound familiar to Republicans, because it's exactly what they themselves proposed for years.

Health care, politics, and the Democrats who keep their promises

2010-04-10T19:45:00.000-07:00

Third in a series of articles on the impact of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010.

I've written about what the health care bill will do for people. Everyone will be able to buy insurance, even those with pre-existing medical problems. Those who can't afford it will get a subsidy. American taxpayers are winners too; they'll no longer be paying out of pocket for the uninsured and indigent to use public hospital emergency rooms for all their health services. Healthy people are also more productive and pay more taxes.

Now I get to talk about the political winners and losers. Hooray! Ok. I declare the biggest loser, by a country mile, to be Fred Barnes of the right-wing rag the Weekly Standard. Just sixty-two days before the health care bill was signed into law, Fred wrote,

"The health care bill, ObamaCare, is dead with not the slightest prospect of resurrection."
-and-
"Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell is the new king of Capitol Hill."

I further declare the aforementioned Mr. McConnell to be the second biggest loser. In the days before Congress passed the final bill, McConnell was very vocal about his belief that Democrats would deeply damage their chances in this fall's election if they did not abandon health care reform. According to McConnell, "Just looking at the politics of it there’s nothing but pain here for the next four years. Why in the world would they conclude that would be popular?"

Jonathan Chait of the New Republic wrote what I thought was a very good commentary on McConnell,

"Imagine McConnell is correct: Republicans will gain a massive advantage if Democrats pass health care reform. Why would McConnell signal this now, before Democrats have passed it, while they still have time to heed his warning and save themselves? Since we can assume that McConnell badly wants to become Senate Majority Leader, it seems awfully inconsistent with his self-interest for him to hand out such valuable strategic advice to the opposing party. Am I cynical for suspecting that maybe McConnell is not offering this advice to Democrats in good faith?"

Ah, but was McConnell right? How happy, or angry are the voters as a result of health care reform finally becoming law? Well, it kind of depends on how you look at it. One day after passing the bill, it looked like Democrats were doing pretty well for themselves. Glynnis MacNicol of mediaite.com noted,

"initial polls are showing that health care approval ratings have gone up (also President Obama's). A USA Today/Gallup Poll finds that “49%-40% of those surveyed say it was ‘a good thing’ rather than a bad one that Congress passed the bill.” This is in contrast to last week when there was “a plurality against it.”"

Current polls actually show that more Americans are still against the bill than are for it. While this is not good news, it also seems that Republicans are not getting a lot of traction in calling for the actual repeal of the bill. Republican Congressman Mark Kirk, who is running in a tight race for Barack Obama's old Senate seat in Illinois, initially promised to lead the charge to repeal health care reform. When that promise didn't test very well with Illinois voters however, he immediately announced that repeal is "impossible." Other Republicans, like Iowa's Chuck Grassley, have been bragging about their role in shaping the bill and talking about their favorite provisions in the legislation. This is odd, since every single Republican in Congress, Grassley included, fought tooth and nail to make sure the bill would never see the light of day.

But these things aren't what concern me the most in terms of the bill and its political fallout. What's most important is this: Democrats in Congress needed to finish health care reform in order to re-motivate their own base and get Democratic voters fired up to go to the polls this November.

Returning to the same article I linked above, I happen to agree with Jonathan Chait who believes, "that the Democrats have already suffered most or all of the damage they're going to suffer from trying to pass health care reform, and that failure will cause even sympathetic voters to conclude that Democrats don't deserve to keep their majority. Passing the bill might staunch the depression of the Democratic base and allow for a different narrative."

As I've noted before, polls from late 2009 showed that Democrats might be headed for a disaster in the 2010 mid-terms due to the enthusiasm gap. According to a 11/30/09 poll, 81% of Republicans said they definitely or probably would vote in 2010, while only 56% of Democrats did. So, did passing health care reform do anything to close this gap? It seems that for the most part, the answer is yes. The same poll taken again after the health care bill was passed showed the "intensity gap" described above shrinking from a staggering 25 points to a manageable 7.

So, does this mean that Democrats are out of woods, and can expect that the 2010 election will result in only mild losses for them in Congress? Well, no. The chances of a Republican wave this fall are actually still pretty high. This Gallup poll, which measure voter intensity in a slightly different way than the Research 2000 poll I linked above, still shows Republicans as far more motivated than Democrats.

The recent polls of hot 2010 races have also been a mixed bag. On the one hand, I've seen very encouraging polls that suggest that Democrats might hold onto the Governor's office and pickup the open Senate seat in Ohio, and even win the Governor's office in red-state Georgia. On the other hand, I've seen discouraging news from polls of the key races in Illinois and Pennsylvania.

In conclusion, while Democrats may not have staved off disaster in the coming election, I'm sure that the health care reform bill is more helpful than hurtful for them in 2010. By passing President Obama's signature legislative initiative and breaking through the Republican policy of total government gridlock, congressional Democrats have made good on the promise that got them elected. That promise, of course, was that unlike Republicans, Democrats can govern competently.

Conservatives pal around with terrorists: other conservatives

2010-04-04T23:09:00.000-07:00

Second in a series of articles on the impact of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010.

The Republican party taught me something during the 2008 Presidential campaign. The worst thing a person can do, so I learned, is to have any contact whatsoever with another person who participated in violent acts of civil disobedience.

In October of 2008, Republican Vice Presidential nominee Sarah Palin told a gathering of campaign donors that, "Our opponent ... is someone who sees America, it seems, as being so imperfect, imperfect enough, that he's palling around with terrorists who would target their own country."

Palin was of course referring to Barack Obama's association with University Of Chicago professor Bill Ayers. Obama and Ayers served on the board of a Chicago charitable organization, and apparently are friendly enough that Obama once held a fundraiser at Ayers' home.

Ayers is a former member of the radical group the Weather Underground and in the late 1960s and early 70s participated in numerous acts of violence meant to protest the Vietnam War. For the past four decades, Ayers has dedicated himself to public service, and in 1997 was named Chicago's Citizen of the Year. He has expressed remorse for his violent acts. Barack Obama for his part has condemned the acts of the Weather Underground.

Ah, but that was 2008. Condemn someone for associating with another person who engaged in civil disobedience? Not any more. Now it's 2010, and, thanks to the health care reform bill, conservatives have fallen in love with breaking the law as a form of political protest.

Within hours of the House of Representatives passing the bill, the violence began. From the Washington Post:

"In the days that followed, glass doors and windows were shattered local Democratic Party offices and the district offices of House Democrats from Arizona to Kansas to New York. At least 10 Democratic lawmakers reported death threats, incidents of harassment or vandalism at their offices over the past week, and the FBI and Capitol Police are offering lawmakers increased protection."

Among the many alarming acts of violence committed by angry conservatives were repeated attacks on the headquarters of the Democratic party of Alaska, and the sabotaging of the gas line of the home of the brother of a Virginia Democratic congressman. Why the home of the congressman's brother? The address of the home had been published on the web site of a Tea Party group who had mistaken the residence for the home of the Congressman himself.

At least some of the violence appears to have been inspired by Mike Vanderboegh, a 57-year-old former militiaman from Alabama, who urged people who opposed the health care bill to throw bricks through the windows of Democratic offices nationwide.Vanderboegh opposes President Obama because he believes the President has "collectivism" tendencies. His condemnations of the government are rank with irony of course: Vanderboegh lives on government disability checks.

But it would be unfair to condemn conservatives at large for the acts of a few bad apples. Any large group of people is bound to include some individuals who are not playing with a full deck. It would however be fair for me to condemn Republican leaders who have made it clear that they actually do condone breaking the law when it involves civil disobedience in response to the health care bill.

From the Hill: "Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas), the ranking Republican on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which has partial jurisdiction over healthcare, told Fox Business Network that Americans would refuse to comply with mandates to buy insurance.

"You're probably going to see a quite a bit of civil disobedience," Barton said. "Not in a violent sense, but all these people are supposed to mandatorily sign up, they're just not going to do it. They're going to say make me pay the penalty but I'm not going to do it."

Barton doesn't seem to be calling directly for people to break the law, but he certainly doesn't seem to be condemning it either. Another Republican however has not minced words in calling for American to violate the law to show their disdain for health care reform.

According to the Arkansas News, Republican Congressional candidate Gunner DeLay, a former prosecuting attorney "said in a news release that he supports efforts to oppose the health care overhaul and that “as 3rd District congressman, I would be committed to supporting this movement, including any acts of civil disobedience that may be necessary to affect change.” Kudos to the News for capping the article with this observation from an Arkansas Democratic party official, "It certainly seems a little ridiculous for a former prosecutor to be encouraging folks to break the law,” he said."

Finally, I realize that Republican leaders are talking about civil disobedience not in terms of breaking windows but only in terms of violating the health reform law itself. But consider what this means: they're suggesting that their constituents will deliberately go without health insurance as a form of political protest.

Hmm, well, people without health insurance don't live as long as people who do. I might point out to Republicans that their actions might be construed as an embodiment of the concept of "survival of the fittest." But since they don't believe in Darwin, it would just confuse them.

Health care reform, part I: We won! We won! Hey, did we win?

2010-03-27T17:15:00.000-07:00

I went looking for an article to use as my link for “President Obama signed health care reform into law this week,” and I came up with this one from ABC News. I think the article is pretty typical of the way in which the mainstream media has treated the whole process. In what is a fairly long piece, there are only five sentences about what the health care reform act actually does. The rest of the article is politics, politics, politics. Sure, it's fine to write about the legislative process and to make guesses about who the winners and losers are among the politicians. I write about that stuff too.

But if you're going make the story 90% or more about style and only 10% about substance, it's no wonder that many Americans are afraid of health care reform. No one will tell them what health care reform actually does! Is it any wonder that Republicans have had such an easy time convincing their flock that the new law includes “death panels?” In what politifact.com called “The Lie of the Year,” Sarah Palin suggested in August 2009 that health care reform would mean that Americans, “will have to stand in front of Obama's ‘death panel' so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their ‘level of productivity in society,' whether they are worthy of health care.” Sounds outrageous? Guess what? A lot of people bought the “death panels” story hook, line and sinker.

So before I go any further, before I talk about how health care reform will affect the next election, which Congressman will get a brick thrown through his window, or anything else, here are the most important things the new law does:

Between 2010 and 2013:
* Insurance companies barred from dropping people from coverage when they get sick. Lifetime coverage limits eliminated and annual limits restricted.
* Young adults able to stay on their parents' health plans until age 26.
* Uninsured adults with pre-existing conditions will be able to obtain health coverage through a new program that will expire once new insurance exchanges begin operating in 2014.
* Medicare drug beneficiaries who fall into the "doughnut hole" coverage gap will get a $250 rebate. The bill eventually closes that gap which currently begins after $2,700 is spent on drugs. Coverage starts again after $6,154 is spent.
* A tax credit becomes available for some small businesses to help provide coverage for workers.
* The Medicare payroll tax is raised to 2.35% from 1.45% for individuals earning more than $200,000 and married couples with incomes over $250,000. The tax is imposed on some investment income for that income group.
* There will be a bunch of improvements to the way in which Medicare operates. You can read about them here.

In 2014:
*All insurers are fully prohibited from discriminating against or charging higher rates for any individuals based on pre-existing medical conditions.
*All insurers are fully prohibited from establishing annual spending caps.
*Expand Medicaid eligibility; individuals with income up to 133% of the poverty line qualify for coverage.
* Offer tax credits to small businesses who have fewer than 25 employees and provide health care benefits for them.
* Impose a $2000 per employee tax penalty on employers with over 50 employees who do not offer health insurance to their full-time workers.
* Impose an annual $695 fine on individuals who do not obtain health insurance; exemptions to fine in cases of financial hardship or religious beliefs.
* Employed individuals who pay more than 9.5% of their income on health insurance premiums will be permitted to purchase insurance policies from a state-controlled health insurance option.
* Establish health insurance exchanges, and subsidization of insurance premiums for individuals with income up to 400% of the poverty line, as well as single adults.

So, did we win? Did we actually get good health care reform? I honestly feel that we did. The big disappointment of course is that we didn't get the biggest, simplest and best reform of them all: a public option to buy insurance from a government source rather than a private sector source.

Insurance from public sources isn't just cheaper. Forcing private insurers to compete would put pressure on them to reform without the need for Congress to sweat over creating thousands of pages of regulations.

About one out of six adult Americans are without health insurance. The new law will make insurance nearly universal. Yes we can!

Rally time!

2010-02-21T22:00:00.000-08:00

As far as Republicans are concerned, it's already over: the GOP will gain control of both Houses of Congress in 2010. Certainly, current polls do show that the House is in play, and that the Senate could be if everything continues to break the GOP's way.

In a stunning development, Congressional Democrats seem to have stumbled on a possible solution to their problem: actually keeping some of their campaign promises!

We may yet see a jobs bill in 2010. Huge strides in the war in Afghanistan show progress towards the exit strategy Democrats have been demanding. (For a short list of Democratic campaign promises that will probably never be kept, see this Think Progress post.) But here's the big news: health care reform, with the public option, is back.

Democrats will attempt to pass an updated version of the health care reform bill in the Senate through the process known as reconciliation, in which a contentious budget bill can be passed with only 51 votes and not be subject to possible filibuster by the minority party. Republicans are feigning shock that Democrats would resort to using the reconciliation process to bypass the GOP's filibuster-everything policy, but of course when they themselves had a small majority in the Senate, the Republican caucus used reconciliation to pass major legislation all the time. For example, they used it to pass Bush's tax cuts for the rich in 2001 and 2003, the result of which is a loss of $2.3 trillion in revenue in the first decade following their passage.

The importance of putting the public option back on the table cannot be overstated. A 2009 poll showed public support for health care reform with a public option at 77%, while a recent poll showed only 44% support for the current, public-option-free version of health care reform that was on the verge of passage before Senator Scott Brown's election in Massachusetts took away Democrats' filibuster-proof supermajority in the Senate.

If Democrats can take advantage of this last, best chance to pass health care reform, I firmly believe it will be a real shot in the arm for them come this fall's elections. At the same time, it will be a stunner for conservatives who thought that they had already buried health care reform for yet another generation. As Jonathan Chait of The New Republic notes:

"You can imagine how this feels to conservatives. They've already run off the field, sprayed themselves with champagne and taunted the losing team's fans. And now the other team is saying the game is still on and they have a good chance to win. There may be nothing wrong at all with the process, but it's certainly going to feel like some kind of crime to the right-wing. The Democrats may not win, but I'm pretty sure they're going to try. The conservative freakout is going to be something to behold."

This week, the White House will publish its final vision for health care refom. On Thursday, Obama will invite congressional leaders from both parties to Blair House for a half-day meeting. There, he will describe and advocate for his proposal, then offer Republicans to do the same. And that meeting may well be what decides what happens. Let's go!

Congess doesn't deliver; Democrats walk away

2010-02-14T19:30:00.000-08:00

The Republican base is energized. They've successfully convinced themselves that the country is governed by a President born in either Kenya or Indonesia, despite irrefutable evidence to the contrary. They're also sure he's a socialist, even though advocates of single-payer health care are the only group who was never allowed a seat at the health care debate. And they're convinced that he's responsible for the budget deficit, even though the last fiscal year of the Bush presidency ended just four months ago.

But it takes more than that for the Republicans to win a Senate seat in Massachusetts. After all, it's usually the case that the party out of power does well in off-year and mid-term elections. More is needed for the kind of really big sweep that the Republicans may get this year. Specifically, what is required is a serious loss of confidence by the Democratic base in the President and Congress.

James Hohmann of Politico.com has a pretty good summary of why Democratic voters are deeply disappointed in the current Congress, and thus may stay home in the fall's election. Labor unions are a pillar of Democratic support, providing not just votes and campaign dollars but also a lot of the party's most hard-working activists and organizers. Yet despite helping to elect a Democratic President and large Democratic majorities in Congress, labor has failed to see any of its major legislative goals become law. Hohmann writes that,

"The Senate’s failure to confirm labor lawyer Craig Becker to the National Labor Relations Board was just the latest blow, but the frustrations have been building for months.

"Here's labor getting thrown under the bus again," said John Gage, the national president of the American Federation of Government Employees, which represents 600,000 workers. "It's really frustrating for labor, and a lot of union people are thinking: We put out big time in money and volunteers and support. And it seems like the little things that could have been aren't being done."

The 52-33 vote on Becker — who needed 60 to be confirmed — really set labor unions on edge, but the list of setbacks is growing."

Hohmann also notes that:

"The so-called “card check” bill that would make it easier to unionize employees has gone nowhere. A pro-union Transportation Security Administration nominee quit before he even got a confirmation vote. And even though unions got a sweetheart deal to keep their health plans tax-free under the Senate health care bill, that bill has collapsed, leaving unions exposed again.

"On health care, unions found themselves in a defensive posture. They worked in early January to carve out an exception from an excise tax on so-called Cadillac insurance policies, only to see the package fall apart, with recriminations about just the kind of back-room deal making they had engaged in.Obama said he would push for greater unionization at the Transportation Security Administration, but it hasn't happened."

Labor isn't the only Democratic constituency to be tremendously disappointed in the current Administration. Environmentalists are fuming that the Senate has abandoned plans to pass legislation to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. And it seems that virtually all Democrats and Independents who supported Obama's election are angry with him for his refusal to fight for the public option on health care reform.

Did Democrats ask for too much? After all, when Obama and other Democrats standing for election in 2008 were drawing up their agenda three or more years ago, they weren't aware that by 2009 that the country would be facing its greatest economic crisis since the 1930s. The economy, at least, has been a success story. When Obama took office, the economy was shrinking at a staggering minus 5.4% annualized growth in GDP, with the banking and domestic automotive industries both on the verge of collapse. One year later, the economy is growing at the brisk 5.7% annualized growth in GDP. On other fronts, the Administration has put in effective plans to wind down the wars in both Iraq and Afghanistan, and it has restored America's tarnished image abroad. And oh yeah, we stopped endorsing torture.

Rather than judging whether the Democratic base has become too cynical too fast, I want to conclude with a different thought. That is, if Democrats do give in to apathy this year because they haven't gotten what they want out of Obama and Congress, they will have done so a lot more quickly than Republican do when they control Washington and it happens that their base doesn't get what it wants.

Thomas Frank commented brilliantly on this phenomenon in 2004 in his classic What's the Matter with Kansas?. Frank observed that at election time conservatives always seem to back their leaders with the same fervency, despite the fact that,

"Their grandstanding leaders never deliver, their fury mounts and mounts, and nevertheless they turn out every two years to return their right-wing heroes to office for a second, a third, and twentieth try. The trick never ages; the illusion never wears off. Vote to stop abortion; receive a rollback in capital gains taxes. Vote to make our country strong again; receive deindustrialization. Vote to screw those politically correct college professors, receive electricity deregulation. Vote to get government off our backs; receive conglomeration and monopoly everywhere from media to meatpacking. Vote to stand tall against terrorists; receive Social Security privatization. Vote to strike a blow against elitism; receive a social order in which wealth is more concentrated than ever before in our lifetimes, in which workers have been stripped of power and CEO’s are rewarded in manner beyond imagining."

In conclusion, my hope is that we can somehow turn out the Democratic base in this fall's election despite our many disappointments. Because if we didn't learn this lesson from the Administration of George W. Bush, we never will: There is absolutely nothing worse than letting the Republicans run this country.

Your Republican party, ladies and gentlemen

2010-02-05T19:30:00.000-08:00

I keep telling myself that the Democratic party's fortunes are going to stop deteriorating sometime before the November elections. Maybe this new insanity from Senate Republicans who are now holding up 70-plus Obama nominations so that they can get their pork-barrel earmarks will sour the public on them a bit.

In the meantime, Chris Bowers of openleft.com has made a prediction that I've been dreading: the GOP will capture the net 40 seats they need to take over the US House. Charlie Cook is only slightly less sanguine about Republican chances in the House, currently predicting a gain of 25 to 35 seats.

So if we're going to hand the country back to the Republicans, why not take a good look at who they are?

A new poll of more than 2000 Republicans tell us... wow, I'm not sure what to say. Why don't I let the poll speak for itself?

Should Barack Obama be impeached, or not? Yes 39 No 32 Not Sure 29
Do you think Barack Obama is a socialist? Yes 63 No 21 Not Sure 16
Do you believe Barack Obama was born in the United States, or not? Yes 42 No 36 Not Sure 22
Do you believe Barack Obama wants the terrorists to win? Yes 24 No 43 Not Sure 33
Do you believe ACORN stole the 2008 election? Yes 21 No 24 Not Sure 55
Do you believe Sarah Palin is more qualified to be President than Barack Obama? Yes 53 No 14 Not Sure 33
Do you believe Barack Obama is a racist who hates White people? Yes 31 No 36 Not Sure 33
Do you believe your state should secede from the United States? Yes 23 No 58 Not Sure 19
Should Congress make it easier for workers to form and join labor unions? Yes 7 No 68 Not Sure 25
Would you favor or oppose giving illegal immigrants now living in the United States the right to live here legally if they pay a fine and learn English? Favor 26 Oppose 59 Not Sure 15
Do you support the death penalty? Yes 91 No 4 Not Sure 5
Should openly gay men and women be allowed to serve in the military? Yes 26 No 55 Not Sure 19
Should same sex couples be allowed to marry? Yes 7 No 77 Not Sure 16
Should gay couples receive any state or federal benefits?Yes 11 No 68 Not Sure 21
Should openly gay men and women be allowed to teach in public schools?Yes 8 No 73 Not Sure 19
Should sex education be taught in the public schools? Yes 42 No 51 Not Sure 7
Should public school students be taught that the book of Genesis in the Bible explains how God created the world? Yes 77 No 15 Not Sure 8
Are marriages equal partnerships, or are men the leaders of their households? Men 13 Equal 76 Not Sure 11
Should women work outside the home? Yes 86 No 4 Not Sure 10
Should contraceptive use be outlawed? Yes 31 No 56 Not Sure 13
Do you believe the birth control pill is abortion? Yes 34 No 48 Not Sure 18
Do you consider abortion to be murder? Yes 76 No 8 Not Sure 16
Do you believe that the only way for an individual to go to heaven is though Jesus Christ, or can one make it to heaven through another faith? Christ 67 Other 15 Not Sure 18

Whew, that was exhausting! Ok, I do actually have a couple of observations about these numbers. First, Nate Silver, one of the best polling data gurus in the business, points that these the views of Republicans on these questions show, "essentially no difference based on age, gender, race, or geography -- once we've established that you're a Republican, these differences seem to be rendered moot. Take, for instance, the statement that "Barack Obama is a socialist", which 63 percent of Republicans agreed with in the poll. How do the responses to this question break down by demographics? Well, they don't -- the percentage is just about the same for all groups."

Second, not too many conservative have commented on the poll, but Bill O'Reilly pretty much went nuts over it, saying, "The survey says 39 percent of self-identified Republicans believe President Obama should be impeached. Sixty-three percent believe he is a socialist. Only 42 percent of GOPers think the president was actually born in the United States. And 31 percent believe he hates white people." Bill's conclusion? "The poll is a fraud."

The thing is, O'Reilly failed to provide or even suggest a reason why the poll is "a fraud." Does he actually think that Republicans don't believe that Obama is a racist and a socialist who was not born in the US? If that's the case, O'Reilly must not be watching his network, because the people on FOX news say that stuff all the time.

Democrats, lower your expectations. No, lower than that.

2010-01-24T14:45:00.000-08:00

Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right, here I am, stuck in the middle with you. - Stealers Wheel

The Republicans grabbed Ted Kennedy's Senate seat in Massachusetts last week. Three reasons why it happened:
1. The Democratic candidate, Attorney General Martha Coakley, couldn't be bothered to campaign. Following her December 8, 2009 primary victory, she went on vacation. By the time it became clear she was in trouble (say, a week and a half before the election), it was almost too late.
2. In those last two weeks before the vote, Coakley campaigned like someone who had bet money on her opponent. Asked a simple question about health care and rules protecting freedom of conscience for Catholic health care workers who do not want to take part in abortions or in dispensing post-coital contraceptives, Coakley said they, "probably shouldn’t work in the emergency room." Thanks a lot, Martha. Half of Massachusetts is Catholic. When it was suggested to her that her campaign was too passive, and that she might spend more time meeting voters, she openly mocked the idea: "standing outside Fenway Park? In the cold? Shaking hands?" Speaking of Fenway Park, Coakley also committed what may be the ultimate crime in Boston: apparently not knowing anything about the Red Sox.
3. Scott Brown's win was due in some part to what the Washington Post called, "Voter discontent with the direction of the government, economy and the health care."

Voter discontent. Let's explore that idea a little further.

Andrew Sullivan of The Atlantic had some very negative things to say about the political scene on the eve of the Republican victory in Massachusetts.

"Democrats can stop hoping at this point...(The Republicans) crafted a strategy of total oppositionism to anything Obama proposed a year ago. Remember they gave him zero votes on even the stimulus in his first weeks. They saw health insurance reform as Obama's Waterloo, and, thanks in part to the dithering Democrats, they beat him on that hill. They have successfully channeled all the rage at the massive debt and recession the president inherited on Obama after just one year. If they can do that already, against the massive evidence against them, they have the power to wield populism to destroy any attempt by government to address any actual problems."

"Ditto any attempt to grapple with climate change. In fact, any legislative moves with this Democratic party and this Republican party are close to hopeless. The Democrats are a clapped out, gut-free lobbyist machine. The Republicans are insane. The system is therefore paralyzed beyond repair."

Hey, wow...are things really as hopeless as that? Well, let's head over the fivethirtyeight.com, where the brilliant Nate Silver will give us the low down.

Nate suggests that the Massachusetts race is indicative of the fact that, "Clearly the national environment has gotten worse for the Democrats since Barack Obama's inauguration one year ago," and "perhaps it is somewhat more bad than we had previously realized."

Great, anything else? Well, Nate's analysis also suggests that the Democrats will lose at least another five Senate seats this November.

Finally, Nate offers a post entitled, Will the Base Abandon Hope? that reads a lot like the Andrew Sullivan article discussed above. Nate summarizes the year since Obama's inaguration:

"Barack Obama gets elected, whose very trademark is Hope, and whose very election signifies progress. He promises a lot of things, and you look over the political horizon and see large Democratic majorities in both chambers of Congress, a logjam of popular, progressive initiatives, and a neutered and discredited opposition party."
-then-
"Over the summer, the unemployment rate continues to go up, and the President's approval rating continues to go down... But the Democrats bounce back as resolved as ever to pass a health care bill, and the President makes a strong speech."
-next-
"After the New Year, there are a few more signs of trouble. A bunch of Democrats retire. Polls -- not just Rasmussen -- show Obama's approval below 50 percent. Then one shows that things are closer than expected in Massachusetts, where they're having an election to replace Ted Kennedy. A Republican can't possibly win the Kennedy seat, can he? Yes. He. Can."

Wow, that hurts. Hey, Paul Krugman, Nobel Prize winning economist and author of The Conscience of a Liberal, how do you feel about the situation?

"I have to say, I’m pretty close to giving up on Mr. Obama, who seems determined to confirm every doubt I and others ever had about whether he was ready to fight for what his supporters believed in."

Good grief, is there any hope at all? Back to Nate Silver for a minute:

"Now, look, political cycles are moving faster and faster, and the probability of a turnaround in the momentum back toward the Democrats, even in the near term, is probably greater than generally acknowledged -- even if we can neither identify nor predict the precise mechanism by which this occurs. But I worry that the upside is limited if the base is burned out -- at best toward a Clintonian second term (treading water, competent) and not Reaganesque one (realigning). And these things tend to have a self-fulfilling quality to them -- if the base doesn't believe that you can actually push the country in their direction, they become less likely to donate to you, work for you, and vote for you, and that in turn makes such successes harder to achieve. I don't know if the Democrats have any good moves right now, but watching the base give up hope isn't one of them."

So to summarize, the political pendulum is swinging to the right, but maybe we can hope that it swings back to the left sooner rather than later? Ah, the audacity of hope. The country, and the Democratic Party, are in trouble.

Blue state to go Brown, give Joe the blues

2010-01-18T17:00:00.000-08:00

"Let us not be downhearted. One total catastrophe like this is just the beginning." - Monty Python's Life of Brian

I've correctly predicted the outcome of the last 68 US Senate races. I've got to be wrong some time. Please, oh please let it be now.

Prediction: Scott Brown (R) to defeat Martha Coakley (D) in tomorrow's Massachusetts Senate race.

All the big prognosticators have called it. Rothenberg, Charlie Cook, Intrade and Nate Silver all say Brown will carry the day.

Could the stakes be any higher? No, they couldn't. If Brown wins, the Democratic Senate caucus loses their filibuster-beating 60th seat. The final vote on the Health Care Reform bill will be severely jeopardized. President Obama put his reputation on the line by campaigning for Coakley, so did a lot of other big name Democrats. A Brown victory will frighten a lot of Democratic incumbents up for reelection this November, possibly spurring a bunch of retirements. And of course the unkindest cut of all: a Republican capturing Ted Kennedy's Senate seat.

I'm already outlining some "why Coakley lost" bullet points. There's a chance of course (say, 1-in-4) that I'll get to write a "how Coakley proved everybody wrong" post. I think her strongest hope is the fact that in close elections, Democrats tend to outperform their polling numbers by a couple of points in blue states, and Republicans do the same in red states. So take Nate Silver's prediction of a two-point Brown victory, give Coakley an extra two points, and there you go.

Election night update:

Ghost of John F. Kennedy: "Ted, I thought you quit drinking."
Ghost of Ted Kennedy: "I did, Jack, I did. But tonight I need one."

Bring back the real filibuster

2010-01-09T15:45:00.000-08:00

Barack Obama made health care reform a cornerstone of his campaign for President. A key part of the Obama plan was the creation of a health insurance exchange in which Americans could choose between private plans and a government operated, not-for-profit public plan. Three out of four Americans supported the public option while health care reform was under debate this past summer, and it was included in the bill passed by the House. But with all the support it had, the public option could not get through the Senate. An historic chance has been lost.

The public option died because its supporters were not able to overcome a threatened Republican filibuster. The Senate rules permit one or more senators to speak for as long as they wish and on any topic they choose, unless 3/5ths of the Senate (60 out of 100 Senators) brings debate to a close by invoking cloture.

The Democrats have 60 Senators in their caucus, but unfortunately can't count on keeping them all in line. The Republicans, aka the Party of No, have made it a policy to use every means available stop all important legislation from being passed, and to hold up the confirmation of President Obama's nominees for ridiculous reasons. If fact, they have made the once rare filibuster into standard operating procedure, invoking it more than 100 times per year since becoming the minority in 2007. That number is double the filibuster rate of the early 2000's. (In the 1970s, the filibuster was used about 20 times per year, in the 1950s once per year, and in the 19th century twice per decade).

So how did the GOP manage to make 60 the new 50? It's because the Democratic leadership has allowed the threat of a filibuster to substitute for the filibuster itself, stunting debate before it even begins. Majority leader Harry Reid has not been requiring the Republicans to actually hold the floor and continue to speak once they have declared their intent to filibuster. The grand political theater in which a single senator would speak for hours to hold up the passage of a bill is long gone.

Aaron Zelinsky of the Yale Law Journal did a great job of summarizing the situation this week. Commenting on recent suggestions that majority leader Harry Reid should use "the nuclear option" of getting rid of the filibuster altogether, Zelinsky suggested a different course: "What we have today is a cheap and easy filibuster-lite; Senator Reid should reestablish the real thing."

"Traditionally, senators had to physically speak on the Senate floor to sustain a filibuster. Filibusters were costly and dramatic. They truly tied up the Senate and the individuals undertaking them. Members of both parties had to be present during a traditional filibuster, the majority for quorum calls, the minority to sustain the ongoing discussion. "(The modern filibuster) requires no real action or sacrifice by senators. In recent times, Senators merely notify the Majority Leader of an intent to filibuster, and the Majority Leader delays further action unless he has sixty votes." "Senate filibusters used to require large amounts of time, energy, and dedication. Now they are the legislative equivalent of a Wal-Mart product, available at everyday low prices. The result has, unsurprisingly, been the universality of the modern filibuster, which requires no real commitment but the lifting of a senator's finger."

Zelinsky notes that bringing back the real filibuster would not only help break gridlock on important legislation, it would also force both parties to take the President's nominations for important appointments more seriously:
"Moreover, a return to the classic filibuster would force Senate Democrats to fight for the President's nominations. Right now, filibusters happen in the darkness. The public does not know how many filibusters are occurring. Nominations languish on the back burner indefinitely. However, if the Republicans were required to actually filibuster on the floor of the Senate, Democrats would be forced to mobilize in response and to defend these nominations openly."

Other types of filibuster reform are also under consideration. Senator Tom Harkin's plan would reduce the amount of votes needed to break a filibuster the longer it goes on. Senators would need 60 votes to break the first vote but then the amount of votes needed would drop to 57, then 54 votes and finally 51 votes.

I don't know for sure what approach to reforming the filibuster is best, but I do know that Democrats had better think of something, or risk seeing the federal government go into long-term gridlock. Today, they are occasionally able to get the 60 votes they need to end debate, but that's not going to continue for very long. It is highly likely that the Democrats are going to see a net loss of Senate seats in each of the next three elections. I'm already forecasting a net loss for 2010. In 2012, Democrats will have 24 seats up for reelection, while Republicans will have only 9. And 2014 looks absolutely disastrous.

I heard it said recently that Democrats govern like they're out of power even when they're in power, and Republicans act like they're in power even when they're deep in the minority. Senator Harry Reid, I'm looking at you.

2010 US House Predictions

2010-01-03T14:00:00.000-08:00

Current US House, 111th Congress:
256 D, 179 R

Prediction: US House, 112th Congress:

221 D, 214 R

10/30/10: Click here for final predictions

This post will be updated continuously through election day 2010.

10/13/10: Am I the last guy who thinks the Democrats can hold the House? Nope! I've got the head of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Um, hooray, I guess...

9/11/10: Currently, 3 out of 5 top prognosticators are forecasting that the GOP will take the House in 2010:
Nate Silver: GOP to net 46 seats -- Hew House 225 R, 210 D.
Cook Political Report: GOP to net 40 seats -- Hew House 219 R, 216 D.
Rothenberg: GOP to net 37 to 42 seats -- Hew House 219 D, 216 R to 221 R, 211 D.
Larry Sabato: GOP to net 47 seats -- Hew House 226 R, 209 D.
Election Projection: GOP to net 38 seats -- Hew House 218 D, 217 R.

I'm going to go a little more optimistic for the blue team: Republicans to gain 35 seats. Here's my reasoning.
1. Looking at the polls on a race-by-race basis gives a slightly brighter picture for the Democrats. For example: Nate Silver says there's a 74% chance that Democrat Bobby Bright will lose in AL-2. But a recent poll gave Bright a 9-point lead versus his Republican opponent. Ditto MS-1, NY-24, NC-8, and SD-AL, where again Nate gives Republicans challgengers a 50% or better chance of winning, but the polls tell a different story.
2. Ok, I'm a cheerleader for the Democrats, and I'm not going to give up until it looks completely hopeless. Admittedly, Nate Silver is just about never wrong (though in 2008, he predicted Indiana for John McCain, while I called it for Obama. HA!).

8/20/10: "It's the economy stupid." The generic ballot is looking pretty grim for Democrats. While America's combat mission in Iraq has ended, and the gulf oil spill has practically been forgotten by most of the country, the weak economy is leading the news cycle.

The likelihood that Democrats will lose a bunch of House seats in increasing. But I'm not as pessimistic as many. Here's why. The generic ballot shows Republicans with the advantage only in the south, where they already hold the lion's share of the seats. From msnbc: "But could those GOP electoral gains come from just one part of the country? The poll contains this interesting finding: The GOP has a HUGE generic-ballot edge in the South (52%-31%), but it doesn’t lead anywhere else. In the Northeast, Dems have a 55%-30% edge; in the Midwest, they lead 49%-38%; and in the West, it’s 44%-43%."

7/4/10: Happy Independence Day! Swing State Project has a post that gives us some food for thought. Among the Democratic incumbents, it rates 29 seats as Likely Dem, 34 as Lean Dem and 18 as Tossup. The tossups are: FL-08 (Grayson), OH-15 (Kilroy), NH-01 (Shea-Porter), PA-11 (Kanjorski) NV-03 (Titus), OH-01 (Driehaus), CO-04 (Markey), FL-24 (Kosmas), NY-23 (Owens), NY-24 (Arcuri), VA-05 (Perriello), NM-02 (Teague), IN-09 (Hill), VA-02 (Nye), MD-01 (Kratovil), MS-01 (Childers), AL-02 (Bright), ID-01 (Minnick).

Some thoughts: The list doesn't include ratings on the 17 Democratic seats that are open due to retirements. Some of those are tossups or even "lean Republican." Suppose we concede five of the open seats, half of the tossup incumbent Dem seats, and nine of the Lean Dem and Likely Dem seats while subtracting the three seats that Democrats are very likely to pickup this year. That still only gets us halfway to a GOP takeover of the House.

6/17/10: A mixed bag of news. On the one hand, the generic ballot doesn't look to bad, with a new AP poll showing Democrats with a 7-point edge. On the other hand, Nate Silver (who is right about pretty much everything all the time) this week said, "the over/under on the number of net Democratic losses is about 40 seats (i.e. they have about even odds of losing the House), with a 90 percent confidence interval of about +/- 20 seats." Ouch.

5/23/10: The GOP has picked up HI-01, but their 8-pt. loss in PA-12 doesn't bode well for Newt Gingrich's prediction that Republicans will pick up, "somewhere between 40 and 65 or 70 seats." (Incidentally, the fact that a slimeball like Gingrich would be back in the spotlight says a lot about the leadership vacuum on the Republican side). Republican Mark Souder (IN-03), yet another holier-than-thou hypocrite, has retired but his seat is safe. Democrat David Obey (WI-07) has retired, but it's a seat Obama carried by 14 points.

4/25/10: I'm guessing we'll probably lose MI-01, where conservative Democrat Bart Stupak is retiring. Michigan is trending red. We're also fairing poorly in New Hampshire, where we could lose both seats.

3/21/10: I'm removing AL-02 from my list of Republican takeovers. There's no indication that Bobby Bright is going to lose his reelection bid, despite the fact that McCain carried his district by 26 points in 2008. Bright must be some kind of magician. Also removing PA from my list of states to net one for the Democrats.

I realize that many pundits are predicting that the GOP will pick up more like 40 seats than the 5 I'm currently predicting. Here's the funny thing though. Those same pundits aren't saying where, exactly, these Republican victories are going to materialize. I actually feel like I'm being pretty generous in predicting that the GOP will pick off the Democratic incumbents in ID-01, MD-01, and either IN-08 or IN-09. Currently, there's no indication that those races are any worse than toss ups for the blue team. As we get closer to election day, I suppose we'll start seeing more polls showing specific Democrats in trouble. But again, I refuse to announce that the blue team is going to get creamed until I see the race-by-race poll numbers to demonstrate it.

1/3/10:
If there's one thing upon which everyone can agree, it's that the Democratic Party will lose seats in the House in the 2010 elections. Let's start by considering the advantages that the Republican party has going into November.
* Here's the big one: current polls demonstrate that conservatives are far more energized than progressives regarding the coming election.
* There are a limited number of vulnerable Republican seats just because the party has fallen so far, it doesn't have much more to lose. They've lost a whopping 55 seats since 2006.
* While the economy is growing again, unemployment is likely to remain high through 2010.
* Historically, the party that holds the White House loses seats in mid-term elections.

While the Democrats will be playing defense, they will also have some advantages:
* Democrats still have a small lead in the generic ballot, and their congressional leaders are more popular than the GOP's.
* While the percentage of Americans identifying themselves as Democrats has held steady or risen slightly over the past several years, the percentage identifying themselves as Republicans has plummeted, from 30% in 2004 to only 23% today.
* As I've noted in recent posts, the GOP is engaged in a "purity war" between its tea-party conservatives and more moderate elements. This "circular firing squad" wastes resources they could be using to attack Democrats.
* Speaking of resources, the Republican party is not currently raising the kind of money it needs to wage war on a large number of Democratic incumbents.

To summarize, the Democratic Party would like to keep its losses small enough to continue to be able to push through legislation in the House next year, then regain momentum heading in 2012. They also have high hopes of gaining some advantage in the 2011 decennial reapportionment of Congressional seats. Democrats currently hold much stronger representation in some states in which Republicans controlled redistricting in 2001. In that year, states such as Florida, Pennsylvania and Texas re-drew their congressional maps so as to eliminate as many Democrats as possible.

The tea party revolution: principle and purity

2009-12-12T17:30:00.000-08:00

I'll be the first to admit it: if the Democratic Party doesn't get our act together, we're going to get killed in the 2010 elections. The Republicans have jumped ahead in Gallup's generic Congressional ballot. President Obama's approval rating has been on a long, slow slide since peaking this past spring. Senate Democrats' attempts to pass a health care bill are looking increasingly farcical.

On the positive side, the fractiousness of the right in this country seems to be increasing even as their electoral prospects appear to be improving. It's beginning to remind me a bit of what's happened to the political left in Canada.

Canada is a very liberal country. There have been four national parliamentary elections in Canada since 2000, and in each one the candidates on the left have received nearly two-thirds of the vote. So how did Stephen Harper's Conservative Party "win" the last two elections? It's because the Conservatives are the only right-wing party in Canada, while the vote on the left if split between no fewer than four major parties: the Liberals, the New Democrats, Bloc Quebec and the Green Party. If progressives ever want to govern in Canada again, one might think it wise for them to unite under one banner (or at least cut it down to two or three banners).

The United States is never going to develop into a multi-party system. And yet I see some hope that squabbling on the right may keep conservatives from achieving the kind of unity they need to get back into power. A new three-way ballot offered by the Rasmussen poll showed the generic Democratic candidate garnering 36% of the vote, compared to 23% for a "Tea Party" conservative candidate and only 18% for a Republican.

This poll mirrors the recent congressional race in New York's 23rd district, in which Democrat Bill Owens won a surprise victory because conservative support was split between the Republican nominee and the Conservative Party nominee. New York has a unique system in which third parties are allowed to cross-nominate the candidates of the major parties, so for the most part the race in the 23rd can be seen as a fluke that won't be repeated in a lot of other places.

The Washington Post this week provided a good summary of the mixed feelings that the Republican world has regarding the Tea Party conservative activist movement: "Publicly, Republican National Committee Chairman Michael S. Steele and other GOP leaders praise the tea party movement as a crucial component of the party's base that will help Republicans make substantial gains in 2010. But the push from the right has also worsened infighting over the GOP's course."

Even if the GOP doesn't have to worry about the tea part activists backing third party candidates, it's clear that the movement is still going to cause the Republican establishment all kinds of headaches. In Florida, the National Republican Senate Committee has backed popular, moderate Governor Charlie Crist for next year's open-seat Senate race. Unfortunately for them, party activists are backing very conservative state representative Mark Rubio for the nomination. At a minimum, this will mean an expensive and divisive primary battle for the nomination that the party would prefer to avoid. At a maximum, Rubio will actually get the nomination and prove unpalatable to Florida voters in the general election and hand the seat to the Democratic nominee. The same thing is happening in Kentucky, where the establishment Republican candidate for Senate Trey Grayon is being challenged for the nomination by the libertarian Dr. Paul Rand. A recent poll shows Rand with a small lead to get the nomination. While Grayson would probably be favored to win in the general election over the Democratic nominee, Rand would not.

The Republican base is clearly moving to the right. Hopefully this movement will alienate more voters than it attracts, because right now Democratic prospects for 2010 election are not very bright.

This candidate certified 80% pure

2009-11-30T22:00:00.000-08:00

This is a post about a novel idea that the Republican party has thought up to boost their fortunes. Before I discuss it, I'd like to quick review the biggest challenges the two parties face going into the next election.

The first problem for Democrats is the current anti-incumbent mood of the public. People aren't happy about the state of the economy, and they're bound to take it out on current office-holders if things don't improve. That means trouble for the party in power. The second problem is apathy among Democrats. Democratic voters mostly stayed home in the 2009 election; in 2008 they represented 39% of the electorate, but only 33% of the electorate in this November's races. Furthermore there's indication that Democrats may stay home again in 2010.

The biggest problem the Republican Party has (now that people are starting to forget the scorched-earth policies of George W. Bush) is that not many Americans want to be card-carrying members. While nearly 30% of voters called themselves Republicans at the time of the 2008 elections, only 22.7% do so now. The party hasn't seen numbers this poor since its post-Watergate nadir in the 1970s. Other difficulties for the GOP include problems raising cash, the fact that it is increasingly identified as a regional party of the American south, and the fact that its leadership is increasingly made up of its nuttiest and least-informed members (Sarah Palin is clearly the party's most popular spokesperson).

So putting aside the Democrats problems for another day, here's what the GOP has come up with to get their party moving again: a "purity" test for candidates. I'll let the New York Times fill you in: "Republican leaders are circulating a resolution listing 10 positions Republican candidates should support to demonstrate that they “espouse conservative principles and public policies” that are in opposition to “Obama’s socialist agenda.” According to the resolution, any Republican candidate who broke with the party on three or more of these issues– in votes cast, public statements made or answering a questionnaire – would be penalized by being denied party funds or the party endorsement."

For the record, the resolution would force Republicans to toe the line on at least 8 of these 10 issues:
(1) Smaller government, smaller national debt, lower deficits and lower taxes by opposing bills like Obama's "stimulus" bill
(2) Market-based health care reform and oppose Obama-style government run healthcare;
(3) Market-based energy reforms by opposing cap and trade legislation;
(4) Workers' right to secret ballot by opposing card check
(5) Legal immigration and assimilation into American society by opposing amnesty for illegal immigrants;
(6) Victory in Iraq and Afghanistan by supporting military-recommended troop surges;
(7) Containment of Iran and North Korea, particularly effective action to eliminate their nuclear weapons threat
(8) Retention of the Defense of Marriage Act;
(9) Protecting the lives of vulnerable persons by opposing health care rationing and denial of health care and government funding of abortion; and
(10) The right to keep and bear arms by opposing government restrictions on gun ownership

Also from the Times,"the chief sponsor of the proposal, James Bopp Jr., defended the use of a 10-point list on key positions like fiscal conservatism, gun rights and abortion. He found it predictable that Democrats would be critical, saying they “relish criticizing the Republican Party for not being true to our conservative principles, which was unfortunately true with regard to support for spending, deficits and bailouts during the Bush administration, which I publicly criticized at the time. They will attack any effort to reassure voters that we are serious about restoring our conservative bona fides.”

I actually find it refreshing to hear a Republican admit that while the party talks a good game on keeping spending under control, the reality has been very different. So to pass a resolution saying in essence, "if you say one thing and do another, you'll be called to account for it," I think that's just fine.

The thing is, this proposal isn't meant to threaten politicians who don't keep their promises, it's a strong-arm tactic that attempts to force all of the party's candidates to hold identical viewpoints on the issues. I fail to understand how this actually helps Republicans to build their party and regain the majority in Congress.

Contrast the Republican strategy with the Democratic game plan. The Democratic Party supports liberal candidates everywhere it's possible to elect a liberal, and more conservative candidates in conservative districts. I support the Democratic strategy for a couple of reasons. First of all, it works. We have a large majority in Congress, and one reason for that is that we've managed to elect a Democrat in a lot of conservative districts. Some people believe these "blue dog" conservative Democrats are more trouble than their worth, but I don't. Although some of the blue dogs have made themselves pretty annoying, a Democrat who votes with us 60% of the time and who helps us raise money and build our party is preferable to a Republican who never votes with us. The second reason why I don't favor forcing Democrats to adhere to a narrow range of opinion on the issues is that is makes us the "big tent" party. We welcome people with different points of view.

The GOP purity test is nothing new of course, Republican Senator Jim DeMint offered essentially the same idea earlier this year when he said that he "would rather have 30 Republicans in the Senate who really believe in principles of limited government, free markets, free people, than to have 60 that don’t have a set of beliefs." And I still like what conservative columnist Peggy Noonan had to say about DeMint's remarks, "Good luck stopping an agenda you call socialist with 30 hardy votes. "Shrink to win": I've never heard of that as a political slogan."

So, is the GOP leadership so deluded that it really thinks that the purity test will help them? Honestly I don't think they believe that this sort of thing will help them build their party. Rather, I think James Bopp Jr. and his friends believe that the purity test resolution will help them build their own power within the party. The Republican leadership has noticed that the party has lost most of its moderate voices, which means that what remains of the base has become far more conservative. By throwing some red meat to the grassroots, Mr. Bopp is assuring his own prosperity, whether his organization prospers or not.

Iowa: corn, beans and incumbents who always win

2009-11-10T18:00:00.000-08:00

Lately I've been thinking of my youth growing up in Iowa. And not just because I'm reminded as we begin the holiday season that the state Song of Iowa is sung to the tune of O Tannenbaum.

A pair of Iowa politicians that no one's heard from in a while have returned, like a couple of ghosts of Christmases past who won't leave us alone. Four-time Iowa Governor Republican Terry Brandstad has returned to run against incumbent Democratic Governor Chet Culver. I ventured over to wikipedia to remind myself what Governor Brandstad's accomplishments were in his sixteen years in office. Branstad's page lists exactly ONE mighty achievement for the good Governor: linking Iowa's school district's in a broadband network.

Well, since no one seems to remember much of anything Branstad did in his most-of-two-decades in office, I'll have to rely on my own memory. The Branstad I recall was mostly interested in raising revenue on the back of Iowa's poor and middle classes. When he took office in 1983, Iowa's sales tax was three percent. Within a few years, where I lived in Story County it was six percent. And as far as the good "conservative" Governor was concerned, too much was never enough when it came to raising the gas tax, creating state lotteries, and legalizing gambling. And almost everyone seems to have forgotten the incident in which Branstad's son killed two people while driving drunk but was only convicted of a misdemeanor.

I had a suspicion that when Branstad and today's Republican Party got their first chance to meet each other that they would find out that they don't have much in common.The new "conservatives" are nothing like the moderate, frequently sensible Reagan coalition Branstad remembers from his first successful race for Governor in 1982. And the young Republican activists who drive the party and who have no idea who Branstad is are going to find out what Iowans knew in the 80's but chose to ignore: Terry Branstad is a very dim bulb.

Sure enough, when the GOP faithful and Branstad finally got together last week, it was not exactly a love-in. Attendees at the event described Branstad as "arrogant" and "no threat to the liberal status quo." (I think "no threat to the liberal status quo" means "not conservative enough.") Branstad's remarks at the event included defending himself on approving the first state lottery bill by saying that it was a response to his getting booed at football games. He also seemed to insult blind people. Branstad's second meeting with Iowa Republicans a few days later didn't go much better, with the Des Moines Register describing the audience as having, "no sense of excitement for the candidate."

So who's our other specter from Iowa's political past? It's Terry Brandstad's first opponent for Governor, attorney Roxanne Conlin, running against crusty old Chuck Grassley in next year's Senate race. I can give you a lot of reasons why Conlin isn't going to beat Grassley. Here's one big one: it is to Iowa's lasting shame that it has never elected a woman to Congress. Here's another reason: Conlin has served as the president of the Association of Trial Lawyers of America. Yeah, that'll be real popular.

There is one upside to nominating the head of the trial lawyers. Conlin will be able to raise an incredible amount of money and drive Grassley nuts with negative ads. The old man has recently shown that he's incredibly thin-skinned when it comes to criticism.

Iowa loves its incumbent politicians, and is likely to reelect them no matter which way the wind is blowing in 2010. That will give Senator Grassley another six years of the guaranteed government health insurance that he's already enjoyed for over fifty years but doesn't believe should be available to you in any form.

Expect the inquisition!

2009-11-08T15:30:00.000-08:00

Anyone reading this article is probably familiar with Monty Python's Spanish Inquisition sketch. In this sketch, an ordinary scene is interrupted by the arrival of Michael Palin, playing a Catholic Cardinal, who proceeds to tie an old woman to a chair and inform her, "you are accused of heresy on three counts -- heresy by thought, heresy by word, heresy by deed, and heresy by action -- *four* counts."

Something very like this happened this fall in the special election for New York's 23rd congressional district. The Republican nominee, Dede Scozzafava, was an experienced legislator who had no trouble winning the endorsement of Republican luminaries such as Newt Gingrich. But a funny thing happened on the way to the forum: GOP activists decided that Scozzafava just wasn't conservative enough. "Tea-bagging" conservatives abandoned Scozzafava and began supporting third-party candidate and right-wing ideologue Doug Hoffman, eventually forcing Scozzafava to drop out of the race. Result: Democrat Bill Owens carried the day, winning in a district parts of which had not voted Democratic since before the Civil War.

Earlier this year, I wrote about the Republican "small tent" strategy, espoused by GOP Senator Jim DeMint, who feels that he, "would rather have 30 Republicans in the Senate who really believe in principles of limited government, free markets, free people, than to have 60 that don’t have a set of beliefs." Interestingly, the Hoffman debacle in New York doesn't seem to have phased DeMint one bit. DeMint criticized National Republican Senate Committee John Cornyn's efforts to find moderate candidates who can appeal to a broad spectrum of the public this week saying, "He’s trying to find candidates who can win. I’m trying to find people who can help me change the Senate...To think we can grow the party by picking people who are more liberal and don’t share our core values doesn’t make any sense."

I'm unclear how as to how DeMint thinks he can grow his party with the strategy "pass our litmus test on every issue or be kicked out of the Party." Well, Kentuckian Henry Clay used to say, "I'd rather be right than President." Clearly, DeMint would rather be right than have a majority in Congress.

I stress this point because the DeMint strategy is such a sharp contrast with how the Democratic Party functions. Democrats are only too glad to support conservative "Blue Dog" candidates in conservative areas that are unlikely to elect very progressive candidates. For example, here's the Act Blue web page to raise money for the Senate campaign of Charlie Melancon of Louisiana, a candidate who agrees with progressive Democrats on precious few issues.

Electing the Blue Dogs has its pros and cons. Pro: it allows Democrats to hold large majorities in Congress and to pass important legislation. Case in point: last night's landmark passage of the Health Care Reform bill in the House by a narrow 220-215 vote. Con: it also allows conservative Democrats to throw their weight around and insert the odious Stupak Amendment that takes away women's reproductive rights into the Health Care bill.

The benefits of having the majority and being able to pass the laws we need are worth having a few conservatives in the Party. And there's another advantage as well. There's always going to be debate on Capitol Hill. I'd rather have the debate on legislation be between liberal and moderate Democrats than between liberal Democrats and conservative Republicans. Until the GOP comes up with some real answers to American problems, they deserve to be marginalized.

Conservatives and missle defense: too much is never enough

2009-11-01T19:00:00.000-08:00

Conservatives are not happy with President Obama's decision to re-focus our missile defense program in Europe. I've been meaning for some time to write on the subject of missile defense, though I'm hardly an expert on anti-ballistic defense technology. I do however know something about American history, so I'll frame today's post around a timeline.

1969: The US and the USSR begin the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks.

1972: President Nixon and General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev sign what would become known as the ABM Treaty: an agreement to limit strategic offensive weapons and strategic defensive systems. (Good job, President Nixon. Wow, it's amazing how bad your Republican successors look compared to you sometimes).

1983-1993: The United States operates the Strategic Defense Initiative or "Star Wars" program. Total cost: over $30 billion. Number of space-based weapons launched: zero. Hm.

2001: President Bush withdraws from the ABM Treaty. The new arms race is on!

2007: President Bush announces that the US will build a ABM system in Poland and the Czech Republic to defend Europe and the United States from long-range missiles launched from Iran. A few problems with this plan: Iran does not have, not is it near to obtaining, long-range missile capability. Both Czechs and Poles oppose the plan. The treaty withdrawal brings post-Cold War relations between Russia and the United States to an all-time low.

2009: President Obama scraps the Bush plan from 2007. The US will now focus its European missile defense plan on defending against Iran's short-to-medium range missiles.

Europe is thrilled by the decision! Why? Here's a summary from Robert Marquand of the Christian Science Monitor: "European officials were skeptical of the missile shield for several reasons: They argued it was technically dubious, did not protect Europe but was mainly planned to stop ICBMs launched against America, that its costs were high, that it was imposed on Europe without proper consultation, and that it gave Moscow an issue to (fairly or unfairly) gripe over."

Relations with our Russian allies improve! President Dmitry Medvedev announces that Russia will not follow through with its threat to deploy missiles and bombers near Poland in the event the antimissile system was installed.

Iran (the alleged threat upon which this whole defense program is based) is furious! Ayatollah Ali Khamenei states that Obama's policy is, "something that is in the doctrine of anti-Iranianism."

So good job, President Obama. Our allies are happy, and our enemies taken aback. We've avoided a new arms race between the superpowers, and we're saving money. That's what we want, right? Well not if you're the conservative Heritage Foundation.

Yeah, yeah, I know. If Obama drinks a Budweiser, conservatives will furiously announce that he should be drinking Coors.

But come on, conservative think-tank guy Baker Spring, is this really the best you can do? Spring: "the U.S. will have no long-range, intercontinental, defense capabilities until 2020. If projections that Iran will produce a long-range missile by 2015 are correct, 2020 is too late."

So what the United States needs to do is to develop an expensive defensive capability to guard against attack from a country that has never in its history started a war, so that we'll be protected from an offensive capability that country doesn't actually have and only theoretically might be able to develop? I disagree.

Spring: "In defense policy, safety, not savings, should be policymakers' ultimate goal... Many painful lessons throughout history have shown that national security should not be shortchanged."

Really, Mr. Spring? Is the United States, the country that spends almost as much as the rest of the world combined on defense, "short-changing" national security? I think not.

Spring: "this shift will weaken America's missile defense capability against real and emerging threats, harm U.S. allies, and embolden its enemies."

Again, our allies approve of what President Obama is doing. They never supported the Bush policy. Do you, Mr. Spring, really know better than them? And again, the Obama policy shifts our defense from a phantom threat to protecting against an offensive capability Iran actually has.

One more thing. I love the bit about how Obama might be "emboldening our enemies." Excuse me, but after President Bush let insurgents bleed us white in Iraq and Afghanistan for most of a decade, is there any way that our enemies could possibly be more emboldened?

Idiot Wind II: The Future Belongs to the Curious

2009-09-29T21:30:00.000-07:00

When we last left our long-suffering friend Winston Smith, the protagonist of George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, he was wandering the streets of America looking for a citizen prepared to offer an opinion on the question, "What is the sum of two plus two?" The first man Winston met was was incurious on the subject, and suggested that it was impossible to know the sum of 2 + 2, as reliable sources on the subject are likely unavailable.

And so Winston met a second man:
Winston: Excuse me sir, do you have an opinion on the sum of two and two?
Man: Oh yes! I'm very interested in mathematics. As a matter of fact, a friend just sent me an email on the subject of two plus two, and I forwarded it to all my friends.
Winston: That is gratifying. What did the email say?
Man: It said that two plus two equals nine.
Winston: I see. Sir, did it occur to you to check if two plus two actually equals nine before you sent this email out to all your friends?
Man: Sorry, I don't understand your question.

Poor Winston, he just met a conservative American who receives and sends a lot of viral emails.

The viral email is the 21st century equivalent of the old chain letter. It's a message that quickly propagates from person to person in a word-of-mouth manner. Let me tell you about my recent experience with viral email.

My friend Janet recently asked me what I thought about a chain email that she had received from another friend. The email was a strident attack piece on Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi. It said, among other things:

Madam speaker Nancy Pelosi wants to put a Windfall Tax on all stock market profits (including Retirement fund, 401K and Mutual Funds! Alas, it is true - all to help the 12 Million Illegal Immigrants and other unemployed Minorities!

As soon as I read the email, I thought, "Something tells me that this is a totally false accusation that right-wingers have been emailing each other for years without spending any thought as to whether it's actually true." Sure enough, it took me about 3 seconds to debunk this one. All I had to do was type "Nancy Pelosi windfall tax" into google and it took me to a complete history of these totally false claims and the equally false chain emails they have spawned. This garbage has been floating around cyberspace for years, but no matter how many times it's debunked, the people who keep sending it to each other just don't care.

I'm fascinated by the idea of people who are interested enough in politics to talk about what's going on in Washington, but who are so completely intellectually incurious (not to mention gullible) that they won't spend a few minutes looking up the facts before they send an email to their all their friends containing a bunch of stuff that is easily demonstrated to be untrue.

Obama's birth certificate has been a common theme in recent viral emails circulated by conservatives. No rational person could examine the evidence and reach a conclusion other than that the President was born in Hawai'i. Of course if you refuse to examine the evidence and, at the same time, choose to believe whatever you hear through the grapevine, then of course you might wind up sharing the opinion of the majority of Republicans, who either believe that President Obama is not a citizen, or are "not sure."

And so Winston continued down the street, and he met a third man.

Winston: Sir, have you opinion on the subject of two plus two?
Man: I'm quite passionate on the subject. Two plus two equals six and one-half. So my faith teaches me.
Winston: Sir, may I ask if you've considered taking two things, pairing them with two other things, and then counting to see how many things you have all together?
Man: Empiricism is irrelevant. Examining the natural world for the answers to life's questions is a fool's errand. Two plus two equals six and one-half. It is written.

According to a 2008 Gallup poll, 50% of Americans believe that man evolved from a lower order of species, while 44% believe that man appeared on Earth in his current form within the last few thousand years. And it is undoubtedly the case that virtually all of those 150 million or so Americans who believe that all those fossils are some kind of elaborate hoax do so because that's what they're taught to believe by America's evangelical Christian churches.

I've heard it said the surest sign that a civilization is in decline is that it becomes more superstitious rather than less superstitious. I don't know if America has become more superstitious in recent years, but it certainly gave that appearance when it elected George W. Bush and a lot of other politicians just like him. One thing I do know is that this particular kind of superstition leads, once again, to a lack of intellectual curiosity.

Consider the case of Kitzmiller vs. Dover Area School District in 2005. This case was the first direct challenge brought in federal court against a public school district with the object of requiring the presentation of "intelligent design" as an alternative to evolution. Fortunately for America's public school students, Judge John Jones ruled against the conservative school board's attempt to introduce "intelligent design" into the curriculum, writing in his decision, "The overwhelming evidence at trial established that ID is a religious view, a mere re-labeling of creationism, and not a scientific theory."

The Judge's decision was a scathing rebuke of the school board, who were attempting to force Dover's science instructors to read a certain statement to students. The statement read in part, "Because Darwin's Theory is a theory, it is still being tested as new evidence is discovered. The Theory is not a fact. Gaps in the Theory exist for which there is no evidence. A theory is defined as a well-tested explanation that unifies a broad range of observations."

Was the school board aware that the defining characteristic of a scientific theory is that it makes falsifiable or testable predictions, something which the Theory of Evolution does, but "intelligent design" does not? Probably they were not aware, I should think. My point here is that is seems clear that the school board actually had no idea what the definition of a scientific theory is, nor did they care to learn. They also didn't care, by the way, that they were sticking the taxpayers of Dover, PA with a bill for the millions of dollars in legal fees that it cost to stage the whole embarrassing affair.

Winston saw one more man on the street. "I'll give this one last try," he thought.

Winston: "Sir, have you anything to say on the subject of two plus two?"
Man: I'm aware that the issue has been under study for a long time. It's fascinating stuff.
Winston: Indeed. Have you personally formed an opinion on the issue?
Man: No, but I assure you, I'm very interested in the debate over this controversy.

Winston, alas, has just had the misfortune of interviewing a lobbyist for a tobacco company. It was the tobacco industry who created the template for turning widespread consensus on any given subject into a never-ending "controversy." In the early 1950's the American public began to learn that smoking carries the risk of cancer. The industry response was to set up a meeting of tobacco executives. As described by Allan Brandt in The Cigarette Century, the goal of this group was,

"to produce and sustain scientific skepticism and controversy in order to disrupt the emerging consensus on the harms of cigarette smoking. This strategy required intrusions into scientific process and procedure... The industry worked to assure that vigorous debate would be prominently trumpeted on the public media. So long as there appeared to be doubt, so long as the industry could assert "not proven," smokers would have a rationale to continue, and new smokers would have a rationale to begin."

This same strategy is still with us today on many different fronts. It's the means by which Republicans deny that global warming is a serious, man-made problem. It's the means by which they pay lip service to calls to halt pollution, without actually doing anything to stop polluters. As described in the excellent book The Republican War on Science by Chris Mooney, the GOP started using this strategy all the time after they got control of Congress in 1995. It's easy. Just invite some scientists to testify before Congress on the dangers caused by certain forms of pollutions. Next, hear testimony from pseudo-scientist-quacks who are actually paid representatives of the polluters, and who will say the exact opposite of what the legitimate scientists just said. Then throw up your hands and say, "Well, we certainly can't regulate when there's no scientific consensus on the problem."

And so Winston Smith came to see me after he interviewed these men on the street, who would not or could not say what 2 + 2 equals. I wanted to cheer him up, so I gave him a ticket to Bill Maher's show on HBO.

And here's what Bill said in his monologue on August 7:

"Sarah Palin says she would never apologize for America. Even though a Gallup poll says 18% of Americans think the sun revolves around the earth. No, they're not stupid. They're interplanetary mavericks. A third of Republicans believe Obama is not a citizen, and a third of Democrats believe that George Bush had prior knowledge of the 9/11 attacks, which is an absurd sentence because it contains the words "Bush" and "knowledge."

"And if you want to call me an elitist for this, I say thank you. Yes, I want decisions made by an elite group of people who know what they're talking about. That means Obama budget director Peter Orszag, not Sarah Palin."

Winston and I capped off the day by watching President Obama's address on health care and the need for a public option on insurance. "Ah," Winston said, "There's a man who sounds like he knows that two plus two equals four."

Good night, and good luck.

Idiot Wind, Part I: Winston Smith Meets the Man on the Street

2009-09-27T22:45:00.000-07:00

"Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows."

So wrote Winston Smith in his diary in George Orwell's classic novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. The character of Winston Smith lived in a totalitarian state that not only told him that 2+2 =5, it brainwashed him until he himself believed it. If Winston were magically transported to 21st century America, he would undoubtedly be relieved to find that our government would allow him to believe that 2+2 equals whatever he thinks it equals.

But beyond that, I think that Winston would quickly become very disillusioned. Why? Because Winston assumed that granted freedom of inquiry, people would actually be inclined to ask, "What does 2 + 2 equal?" And, being inclined to ask that question, that they would further believe that it's actually possible to determine an answer based on reliable media sources, the opinion of experts and/or empirical evidence.

Suppose Winston met four people on an American street, and to each one he asked, "Does 2 + 2 equal 4?" I think the first man might answer, "Who knows? There are no trustworthy sources on the issue."

I've been reading a newly published book from journalist Charles B. Pierce entitled, Idiot America: How Stupidity Became a Virtue in the Land of the Free. Pierce has looked at recent events in America, such as the Terri Schiavo debacle, the opening of the Creationist Museum in Kentucky, and most of the work of the George W. Bush administration, and determined that that in the U.S., "fact" is merely what enough people believe, and "truth" lies only in how fervently they believe it. According to Pierce,

"The rise of Idiot America, though, is essentially a war on expertise. It's not so much antimodernism or the distrust of the intellectual elites...although both of these things are part of it. The rise of idiot America reflects -for profit, mainly, but also, more cynically, for political advantage and in the pursuit of power- the breakdown of the consensus that the pursuit of knowledge is a good. It also represents the ascendancy of the notion that the people we should trust the least are the people who know best what they're talking about. In the new media age, everybody is a historian, or a scientist, or a preacher, or a sage. And if everyone is an expert, then nobody is, and the worst thing you can be in a society where everybody is an expert is, well, an actual expert.

This is how idiot America engages itself. It decides, en masse, with a million keystrokes and clicks of the remote control, that because there are two sides to every question, they both must be right, or at least not wrong. And the words of an obscure biologist carry no more weight on the subject of biology than do the thunderations of some turkeyneck preacher out of the Church of Christ's Own Parking Structure in DeLand, Florida. Less weight, in fact, because our scientist is an "expert" and, therefore, an "elitist."

I thought the phenomenon that Pierce is talking about was neatly demonstrated this week in the Time Magazine cover article on Glenn Beck, a man who is himself a fountain of anti-intellectualism, and who leads an army of like-(empty)minded persons.

Regarding the September 12th rally that Beck organized on the mall in Washington D.C., Time says, "If you get your information from liberal sources, the crowd numbered about 70,000, many of them greedy racists. If you get your information from conservative sources, the crowd was hundreds of thousands strong, perhaps as many as a million, and the tenor was peaceful and patriotic. Either way, you may not be inclined to believe what we say about numbers, according to a recent poll that found record-low levels of public trust of the mainstream media."

The author of this article could, of course, have added the following: "The ACTUAL number of attendees at the rally, according to the estimate of the DC police department, was 60,000 to 75,000." But that, of course, would constitute real journalism on the part of Time Magazine, as well as acknowledgement that it is literally possible to determine how many people attended the rally.

It's not that Time is being lazy. It doesn't take a lot of effort to do what I did and look on abcnews.com or politifact.com to get the DC police estimate. Time Magazine has always been a fundamentally conservative publication, and it surely recognizes that people who are picking up their Glenn Beck issue are conservative as well, not to mention willfully ignorant. So why should they not shrug their shoulders and say, "Yeah, sure, there's no way to know how many were there. Could have been a million."

In the second part of Idiot Wind, I'll be discussing the three other Americans Winston Smith meets in his man-on-the-street interviews on the subject of the sum of two and two. Things are going to get worse for Winston before they get better.

Chuck Grassley: 50 years of nothing, now evil as Hell

2009-08-30T23:15:00.000-07:00

Charles Grassley has been a fixture in Iowa politics for over 50 years. First elected to the Iowa House in 1958, he later became a congressman and was elected to the Senate in 1980. Growing up in Iowa, he never bothered me much. He was too moderate and bland to trouble about.

He's always been conservative, but on the other hand, he's refused to associate with the tax-slashing libertarians of his party. He even used to appear in pro-labor union tv commercials. But I guess the biggest reason why it was hard to get upset about Grassley was that he never used to actually do anything. For example, in 1992, Grassley's Democratic opponent Jean LLoyd-Jones pointed out at a political rally I attended that during his first 12 years in the Senate, Grassley never proposed a single piece of legislation. Poor Jean, she only garnered 27% of the vote against Grassley even though Clinton beat Bush by a comfortable margin in Iowa that year. Well, Iowa has never elected a woman to Congress and maybe it never will.

But now it's 2009, and the old friendly and nonthreatening Grassley is gone. Meet the new Grassley: vicious, dishonest and totally uncaring about the health care crisis in America.

Let's review Senator Grassley's contributions to the health-care compromise that he has supposedly been working on in the Senate for the last four weeks. As of early August, the Senate Finance Committee was the only one of the five committees of jurisdiction to have not completed its work on health care legislation. Committee Chairman Max Baucus of Montana then announced that a "Gang of Six" Democrats and Republicans would draft a compromise proposal, and that the proposal could be expected to be dramatically different from President Obama's proposal. The Baucus plan would instead drop employer mandates and replace public option insurance with health care co-ops. In reality, the health care co-op idea is unworkable, but let's put that aside for the time being and get back to the Grassley record.

The first sign that something was very wrong came when Grassley appeared to get on board with the "deathers," people who falsely believe that that end-of-life counseling provisions in the House health care bill amount to government sponsored euthanasia. In response to a question about the provision, Grassley said people were right to fear that the government would "pull the plug on grandma." More recently, he's reversed course, admitting that there are no "death panels" in the bill. And who does he blame for his own dishonest and alarming statements? Why, left-wingers of course. Grassley recently told MSNBC that death panel talk is, "nothing more than a distortion coming from far-left with bringing up these end-of-life concerns."

So, now that the Gang of Six has had a month to talk, have they come up with the compromise they promised? Hardly. Grassley nows says that the soaring federal budget deficit "puts a stake in the heart" of the health care reform package. According to Grassley, major concessions will now have to be made for him to support any bill. And even if he gets everything he wants, he still won't vote for the bill unless a majority of the Republican caucus agrees to vote for it.

Grassley and fellow Gang of Six member Mike Enzi of Wyoming have used the pretense of negotiating a compromise to pursue the goal of stopping health care reform by any means necessary. Here, finally, we see something like honesty from these two.

Senator Grassley: "If I had not been at the table, there would have been a bill through the committee the week of June 22, and it would have been through the Senate by now because there’s sixty Democrats."

Senator Enzi: "If I hadn’t been involved in this process as long as I have and to the depth as I have, you would already have national health care."

Finally, I'd like to point out that that Grassley's recent observations on health care problems in America have, well, let's say they've left something to be desired. He recently suggested, that those who want quality health care should do what he did, "go work for the Federal government." He's also ardently against public option because it will effectively work the same as Medicare, which "hasn't been a good experiment" in "government price setting." In reality recent studies indicate that Medicare actually works better than private insurance, giving enrollees, "greater access to care, fewer problems with medical bills, and greater satisfaction with their health plans and the quality of care they receive."

Senator Grassley, I used to think you were a pretty decent guy. I kind of suspected that you were going off the deep end when you belittled the health care crisis in America by suggesting that the government is not capable of running a cafeteria: "Us Senators have to think in terms of a government run insurance plan. We just had to turn the Senate dining room over to a private enterprise because it was losing so much money when the Senate was running it. So you got to be careful about government run programs." For the record, I used to eat in that cafeteria when I was an intern for Senator Tom Harkin. The reason why it loses money is because it charges far below costs so that Senators and their staffs can eat cheap. Now, like blogger Iowavoter from bleedingheartland.com, I'm afraid Senator Grassley that you have lost your mind. Please consider retirement. Thank you.

Obama's birth, and the dumbest conspiracy theory on Earth

2009-08-02T01:00:00.000-07:00

Have a look a President Obama's birth certificate. It's been verified by Hawai'i's Registar of Vital Statistics and by the state's Health Director as well. Need more evidence? Both Honolulu newspapers published Obama's birth announcement in 1961. A family friend of the Obamas who was living in Hawai'i in 1961 recently talked about her memories of Barack Obama's birth.

Unfortunately, some irrational people are still not convinced. Alan Keyes and Pat Boone for example. Or Congressman Roy Blunt. Or the majority of Republicans.

What?!

That's right, according to a dailykos.com poll, 28% of Republicans do not believe that Obama was not born in the United States, and another 30% are "not sure."

Am I surprised? No, I guess not. After all, these are the same people who've rejected the conclusive empirical evidence that the earth is billions of years old, and that mammals evolved from more primitive species. Heck, the same dailykos poll that asked about the birth certificate also found that only 24% of Republicans believe that America and Africa were once part of the same continent.

The relationship between the Republican leadership and the "birthers" is a complicated and stormy one. Congressman Mike Castle, one of the nicest people in the Republican Party, was trying to have a friendly talk with some senior citizens recently when he was interrupted by a birther who went a tirade in which she screamed at him for several minutes while waving her own birth certificate. But what's a sane Republican to do? After all, as the polls demonstrate, these people are not a minority fringe, they're the majority of the Republican faithful.

Furthermore, as much as the Republican leadership might claim that they'd like to put the issue to rest, in principle they like what the birthers are doing. As Ofari Hutchinson of huffingtonpost.com recently noted,

"Republicans have a nice little con game going with the birthers. Here's GOP Chairman Michael Steele speaking recently. "The birthers are an unnecessary distraction." Steele blasted the birthers for giving the Democrats a brush to paint the GOP as a bunch of conspiracy driven wackos. Steele admonished the birthers to get over it and hit Obama hard on health care, the economy, the deficit; in other words to pound him on the issues that count. The problem with this is that it took Steele months to finally purse his lips to gingerly rap the birthers, and even then he delivered his criticism in a statement.

In fact, the last thing that Steele and other GOP top cats want is for them to go away. The more the media slams them, the more Democrats lampoon them, and the more respected GOP luminaries denounce them, this serves only to stir more internet chatter and right wing talk show gab that Obama may not be a true blue American."

One last observation. Republican Congressman Eric Cantor has come up with some great spin on the development of the birther movement. According to Cantor, it's a vast left-wing conspiracy! I kid you not. His office has released a statement saying that Cantor, "finds it ironic that those most eager to talk about the President’s citizenship are in fact some of his biggest cheerleaders–whether it’s Chris Matthews or others on MSNBC, the Huffington Post, or camera toting liberal bloggers chasing people through the streets of Washington."

Of course if that's what Congressman Cantor believes, then he and I actually have something in common: we both believe that the majority of Republican voters can be easily duped by a lot of nonsense.

Update 08/05/09:

US News and World Report has jumped on the "it's a left-wing media conspiracy" bandwagon.

"(S)ome conservatives argue that the media's interest in the "Birther" movement is biased and partisan, an effort to paint Republicans as nutty."

No additional effort is needed to paint Republicans as nutty, they're already doing a fine job of that all by themselves.

The door opens for the GOP; they slam it shut

2009-07-11T20:30:00.000-07:00

Republican Congressman Mark Kirk is a winner. Since the year 2000, the voters of Illinois' 10th Congressional District have been sending him to Washington DC despite the fact that the 10th is moderately Democratic. Representing some of the wealthiest suburbs north of Chicago, it voted for Gore over Bush 51-47 in 2000, for Kerry over Bush 52-47 in 2004 and for Obama over McCain by a staggering 61-38 in 2008.

The Illinois Republican Party has fallen on hard times. When I moved to Chicago in 1995, the GOP controlled the Governor's and Attorney General's offices as well as both houses of the state legislature and a majority of Illinois' Congressional seats. Today, that's all gone. But Mark Kirk has survived.

Next year, there will be an open seat race for the Senate seat held until this year by Barack Obama. This contest should represent a golden opportunity for the GOP to stage a comeback in the Land of Lincoln. Illinois Democrats have been rocked this year by the impeachment of Governor Rod Blagojevich. Attorney General Lisa Madigan, Illinois' most popular elected official, has announced that she will run for a third term rather than enter the Senate or Gubernatorial contests. Finally, continued weakness in the economy has caused the Obama Administration's popularity to sag a bit in the rust belt.

So the Republican Party should have been jumping for joy this past Wednesday when Mark Kirk signaled to National Republican Senatorial Committee Chairman John Cornyn that he would run for Senator. Unfortunately for Kirk, his meeting with his party's top muckety-mucks didn't go too well. In fact, he was forced to immediately turn around and announce that he wouldn't run for Senate after all.

Why? According to the Washington Post, "Kirk's decision...followed a meeting of the Illinois Republican congressional delegation on Thursday in which his colleagues refused to back Kirk in a primary against Illinois Republican Party Chairman Andy McKenna due, in large part, to his vote in favor of President Barack Obama's climate change bill."

In other words, given the opportunity to run a candidate who is popular, successful and a titan of fundraising, Republican overlords have decided that they'd rather back a candidate who is a total unknown and who has no experience in running for office, but who is ideologically pure enough to suit them.

You can read a couple of good commentaries on this story here and here. American statesman Henry Clay used to say, "I'd rather be right than President." His spirit lives on in today's Republican Party.

Update 7/25/09: McKenna has stepped aside, so Kirk is back in the race. Kirk has quite a mountain to climb. He has to convince GOP big-wigs to get over their reluctance to back him. He has to convince rural down-state Republicans that he's not a Republican-in-name-only from Chicago. And he has to win in a blue state against a Democrat who has already won statewide election and who undoubtedly will receive support from President Obama. I wish Kirk no luck.

A perfect 68

2009-07-07T14:12:00.000-07:00

Fourth (and last) in a series of reflections on the 2008 election

Al Franken was sworn in today as Minnesota's junior Senator. Finally, the book is closed on the 2008 election.

There's a lot of reasons why I'm happy about this. I've been a Franken fan for a long time. I'm also glad that we've finally beaten Norm Coleman, who was elected only because of the death of Paul Wellstone, the greatest progressive of his era.

But let me jump back to election night '08 for a minute. At close to four in the morning, I was watching the late returns from Minnesota. When the last votes from Duluth finally came in, it looked like Coleman had won by a few votes. I was stunned, because Franken had been leading all night. I was further stunned because it looked like the Repbulican incumbent Senators in Alaska and Oregon had won reelection, despite widespread predictions that they would lose.

Sure, I didn't have a lot to complain about. Obama had won big. Governor Christine Gregoire had defeated challenger Dino Rossi. (The Seattle Post-Intelligencier had all but declared Gregoire doomed the day before. Of course it turned out that it was the P-I itself that was doomed, but that's another story).

Late returns counted after election night would eventually give victory to the Democratic challengers in Alaska and Oregon and to Al Franken as well after a long recount process.

This means that in the last two elections I have correctly predicted the outcomes of all 68 Senate elections. People ask me, "Joe, how do you do it?" Actually, no one's ever asked me that, but if they did, here's what I'd say:

These days, there are so many polls and so much analysis you can read online that it's fairly easily to predict the outcome of most races. On top of that, I look at which party has momentum. Most of the very close races break the same way in any given election. Lastly, I look for small things that tell me how a campaign is going.

For example, I knew that respected incumbent Republican Elizabeth Dole was going to lose her Senate reelection race to second-tier challenger Democrat Kay Hagan after I read this. If you want to win a close race, you need college-age people who will work 80-plus hours a week. Apparently the Dole campaign was run principally by old folks that she and Bob Dole had known for decades.

Similarly, I'm not yet ready to predict that Louisiana Democratic Congressman Charlie Melancon (Me-LAW-saw) will defeat incumbent Republican Senator David Vitter next year, but I am intrigued by this article. It suggests that in any close congressional race in Louisiana, if one candidate is Cajun and the other is not, the Cajun will win.

In conclusion, we now have 60 Democrats in the Senate, but we haven't really won anything unless our ballot box victories translate into the legislative victories we want. Let's start with public option.

America's other health care crisis: Senate Democrats have no backbone

2009-06-22T00:01:00.000-07:00

Our Democratic President wants universal health care insurance for Americans. The American people are expressing clear support for this goal. Democrats in the Senate support health care reform, but they aren't on board with the President's plan. However, they haven't agreed on an alternative plan of their own either; instead they're squabbling over a number of different proposals. Republicans of course are against health care reform. They don't believe America is in a health care crisis. Republicans in Congress are gearing up to oppose any Democratic plan that comes to the floor of the Senate. Of course if the Democrats remain so disorganized that they can't actually bring any of their plans to a vote, the Republicans don't have to do anything.

The eight sentences above explain why the Clinton health care proposal of 1994 failed. Unfortunately, these same eight sentences also describe the current state of President Obama's health care proposal.

"Health care is a right." That was the clear message of the Obama campaign in 2008.

Before we go any further, let's review some facts:

America spends two to three times as much as other leading industrialized nations on health care costs per capita. Despite this, nearly one in five Americans under the age of 65 are without health insurance. We have an infant mortality rate that is higher than Cuba or Slovenia and about twice as high as Japan. The main reason why we spend so much and get so little? It's the fact that 31% of health care costs in this country are not for health care, but instead for administrative overhead costs incurred as a result of our perpetual war between providers of health care and the private insurers that they are trying to get to pay for that care.

To my mind, these facts point to a health care crisis in this country that calls for sweeping reform. Of course the Republican Party didn't agree that reform was needed when the Clinton administration proposed it in 1994, and they don't agree today. But I digress. For once, I'm not writing to beat up on the GOP, I'm writing to beat up on certain Democrats.

Before I talk about the Democratic Senators who are foot-dragging on the President's plan, let's review what the plan is. Obama has proposed a National Health Insurance Exchange that would include both private insurance plans and a Medicare-like government run option. Coverage would be guaranteed regardless of health status, and premiums would not vary based on health status either. For the record, this is a great plan and I support it.

Here's a great summary about how the plan works from Jacob Hacker of the The New Republic: "If you don’t have coverage from your employer, you can choose from a menu of health insurance products that includes not just a range of private health plans but also a public insurance plan provided on the same terms nationwide.

The argument for this new public plan is that it would have lower administrative costs; greater leverage to hold down prices; and the transparency, broad patient data, and incentives for long-term investment in health to improve the quality and efficiency of care. Along with new regulations, it would also be the primary check on a private insurance industry that has, for too long, neglected both quality and efficiency, focusing its creative energies instead on new ways to shift costs onto and screen out the sick."

Allowing everyone to buy into a public insurance program if they so choose is known as public option. And how do Americans feel about public option? Overwhelmingly, they support it. So you would think that Congress would be ready to get behind the President's plan. Democrats in the House have done just that, drafting a bill includes a robust public plan that would operate nationally and compete with private insurers.

Meanwhile in the Senate, spineless Democrats are calling public option dead on arrival. Kent Conrad, for example, is proposing a plan that would allow consumers, states, and anybody else so inclined to create cooperatives that would purchase health care for their members. Why does his plan not include public option? Because, according to Conrad, public option doesn't have the votes, with all Senate Republicans and at least three Democrats opposed to it.

Senator Max Baucus, Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee and a Democratic moderate, has also stated his support for killing public option. Just today, Senator Feinstein of California, who is hardly a conservative, downplayed the possibility of the Obama plan becoming law because she doesn't know that the President, "has the votes right now."

So nearly half the Senate, including some Democrats are totally opposed to public option, even thought it enjoys the support of the President and the public? How can this be? Well, for an explanation, let's return to the Jacob Hacker article I cited earlier:

"The idea of public plan choice was part of all the leading Democratic candidates’ health plans, Senator Max Baucus’ November 2008 White Paper, and the vision of reform articulated earlier this year by key congressional Democrats. All with little attention outside health policy circles--until conservatives, health insurers, and some provider groups decided the public plan was public enemy number one. And so, the misinformation campaign began: A public plan available alongside private plans only for Americans without workplace insurance was suddenly described as a "government takeover” of medicine, the "road to rationing," and (that old standby) "socialized medicine." Republicans drew their lines in the sand, and Democrats started their favorite parlor game: compromising among themselves even before the real debate begins."

The spinelessness that Conrad, Baucus, Feinstein and others are showing on this issue is unbelievable. Apparently, they not prepared to even try to rally support for Obama's plan.

So, are we getting the Conrad co-op plan, that some are now claiming is the only compromise bill with any chance of passage? Actually, there's no reason to think that we will in fact get the Conrad plan, since there's no indication that it enjoys broad support in the Senate. Meanwhile, there are other plans in the Senate. A lot of other plans. Senator Kennedy has proposed a plan that requires private insurers to insure everyone, but his plan like Conrad's does not provide a public option. Senator Rockefeller has proposed a plan that, to its credit, does include public insurance.

So 2009 is shaping up to be exactly like 1994, when Democrats couldn't agree on a health care compromise and eventually gave up completely. Apparently, Senate Democrats may once again be too incompetent and spineless to bring any bill at all to a final vote. No wonder Republicans don't seem worried about opposing health care reform. Why should they be afraid to oppose what the public wants and needs if they never have to cast a vote?

Somebody shut these guys up! Wait... don't bother.

2009-06-02T22:45:00.000-07:00

There's a couple of old statesmen you may have seen in the news lately. They've been dominating the political tv talk shows. One of them has been roundly criticized by Congressional Republicans, who basically told him shut up and go away. The other recently made remarks that National Republican Senate Committee Chairman referred to as, "terrible ."

So who are these guys that are getting so much condemnation from Republicans? A couple of chatterbox Democrats? Nope. They're Dick Cheney and Newt Gingrich, two specters who seem determined to haunt the GOP forever.

You remember Newt, right? He used to be Speaker of the U.S. House. He forced the government to shut down in 1995 because he didn't like the seat that President Clinton gave him on Air Force One. In 1997, he was cited for ethics violations and in 1998 he pushed the impeachment of President Clinton over an affair in the White House while he himself was having an affair. After the 1998 elections, when his fellow Republicans decided that they didn't like him anymore and forced him to resign, he said, "I'm willing to lead but I'm not willing to preside over people who are cannibals."

And you remember Dick, I'm sure. He's the former Vice President who insisted that the 9/11 highjackers were connected with Saddam Hussein as part of his pretext for going to war with Iraq, but who now admits that he never saw any intelligence connecting Hussein and the highjackers. He also continues to claim that Saddam Hussein was actively working with al qaeda. This of course was proven false years ago. Cheney also says that detainees interrogated at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp revealed that Iraq had trained al qaeda operatives in chemical and biological warfare. Guess what? This is also untrue. Yes, Cheney is very big on interrogation of prisoners. He's also recently claimed that CIA documents prove that torture has yielded valuable intelligence information. More guess what? This claim is also untrue. Finally, to bring this paragraph full circle, I'd like to mention one more thing about the former VP that's kept him in the news. It's been revealed that during the run up to the war in Iraq, he ordered the torture of a former intelligence official for Saddam Hussein, who was "suspected to have knowledge of a Saddam-al Qaeda connection." The object of torturing this person was, of course, to try to gin up ties between Iraq and al qaeda as a pretext for the war. And of course Cheney ordered the torture even though the Bush administration has already been informed that torture often yields false confessions.

And look! Dick and Newt are now a dynamic duo: it's the Torture Works Tour!

For all practical purposes Dick Cheney and Newt Gingrich (along with a certain obese junkie radio host who shall remain nameless) are the leaders and spokesmen of today's Republican Party. Neither one holds any official position either in public office or within the Party. Cheney's approval rating stood at 15% this time last year, while Gingrich's was at 25% while he was Speaker of the House over a decade ago.

So why doesn't the GOP get serious about making Dick and Newt go away? Perhaps it's because the official Republican leadership may actually be less popular, as hard as that is to believe. House Minority Leader John Boehner currently registers a 15% approval rating, just ahead of the Republican Congressional caucus as a whole, coming in at 12%.

Did I mention that President Obama's current approval rating is 67%? Hey, Dick and Newt, please, just keeping right on talking.