More Free Advice for the Democrats

Mitt Romney's refusal to disclose his tax returns has gotten some media attention lately, but I don't see that this attack has successfully migrated out of the pundit zone and into the heads of most average American voters.  I think a lot of this has to do with the way Obama and the Dems have pushed the story so far:  "Every other presidential candidate in the modern age has released more than two years of tax returns," and "If there's nothing to hide than there's nothing to fear," and etc.


So far, Romney and his surrogates have responded to the demand for the release of additional tax returns by simply lying about precedent.  For example, Romney claims that John Kerry only made two years of tax returns public before he ran for president, a claim that John McCain repeated a few months ago on Face the Nation.  In fact, by the time he ran for president John Kerry had actually released about 20 years worth of tax returns -- not the two that Romney and McCain claim.

The fact that McCain has been shilling for Romney is telling.  After all, 4 years ago when Romney was angling to be McCain's running mate Romney made 23 years worth of his tax returns available to John McCain as part of his vetting process -- a vetting process that Romney failed to pass.  Indeed, John McCain ultimately decided that Sister Sarah Palin would be a better running mate than Mitt Romney.

If you look at it that way, the way to get some traction for this story is simple:  make it a conspiracy.

Romney: The Worst of Both Worlds for the GOP

I came across two interesting posts this morning that got me thinking some more about the Republican nomination contest.

The first is Steve Benen’s summation of Mitt Romney’s most recent political woes:

Think about where Mitt Romney stood a week ago. He’d won the nominating contests in Iowa and New Hampshire; his national lead was large and getting larger; and he enjoyed double-digit leads over his squabbling competitors in the South Carolina primary.

And then think about where Romney stands this morning. It turns out he lost Iowa to a candidate he outspent 7 to 1; his national lead has, according to Gallup, “collapsed” over the course of the last several days; he struggled through two widely-panned debate performances; and polls suggest he’s likely to lose the South Carolina primary.

It’s likely, in about 12 hours, the only contest Romney will have won will be in the state he lives in for much of the year.

Benen goes on to point out that far and away Romney’s biggest political liability is that voters just don’t like him – the more people see of him, the less likely they are to want to vote for him.

This ties in very well with Steve M.’s comment “A Blind Romney Finds a Nut,” in which he argues that Romney’s apparent refusal to participate in Monday’s GOP debate in Tampa may be the best way to quash Newt Gingrich’s surging momentum.  Newt doesn’t have the money to fund an ad campaign that can keep up with Romney’s in Florida, but Newt does very well in debate formats and has successfully leveraged those performances to keep his candidacy viable. 

Steve M. goes on to speculate that – as the “establishment Republican candidate” – Romney may well benefit by the GOP establishment deciding to simply cancel any further debates, thereby depriving Gingrich of the oxygen he needs to continue his assault on Romney.  I would suggest that such a move might also benefit Romney directly by keeping him from further alienating primary voters with his very personality.

Assuming both Steves’ observations are more or less on point, my question is:  what does the Republican Party hope to gain by engineering the nomination of the guy that the rabid Republican base simply cannot stand?

After all, Romney’s big selling point – the reason he was supposed to be the inevitable Republican nominee – has always been his supposed “electability.”  Bachmann, Cain, Santorum, Gingrich . . . each was considered too extreme a candidate to do well in the general election.  So while the GOP base switched from one candidate to the other searching for the anti-Romney, a candidate about whom they could be excited, the GOP political apparatus quietly lined up behind Mitt.  The thinking seems to have been that nobody in the Republican Party liked Romney, but in the general election they would all hold their noses and grudgingly vote for him and that he might in fact be able to beat Barack Obama in November.

But while Romney may not be too blatantly “extreme,” it sure is beginning to look like he is too patently unlikeable to actually win.  When it comes to Romney, even the slightest degree of familiarity is sufficient to breed truckloads of contempt.

But if Romney is just as unelectable as the other candidates (albeit for a slightly different reason), then I just don’t see what the downside is for the Republicans if they ran Gingrich or Santorum instead.  They’d lose – sure – but at least they’d be running a candidate that actual Republican voters could be enthusiastic about.  Instead, what they are likely to end up doing is running a candidate that actual Republican voters simply cannot stand and then lose the contest anyway – the worst of both worlds for the GOP.

Unfortunately, it may very well be a lousy outcome for the rest of us as well.

As others have pointed out before me, losing with Romney will only exacerbate the current craziness of the GOP.  If they run Mitt Romney and he loses to Barack Obama – the man whom most Republican know-nothings have convinced themselves is the most reviled president in modern history – it will only be further confirmation that they lost by being too moderate.

They will – just as they did after the 2006 and 2008 elections – double-down on the Crazy.  If you thought the American political landscape has been a bit nutty since the Tea Partiers got started, just wait until you see what it’s going to be like after the unlikable “moderate” Mitt Romney dashes all those Teabaggers’ dreams.

The Crazification Factor will go all the way up to Eleven.  

Republicans Playing Calvinball

One of the maddening things about being a rational person following today's politics is that sane people just aren't prepared to grapple 24/7 with the weird Calvinball that the modern-day GOP plays.

Just yesterday I suggested that the Democrats could make hay at Romney's expense by hammering him about his refusal to produce his tax records. However, I also suggested that Obama should not personally be the one calling for their production because he shouldn't open himself up to the possibility of getting pwned if Romney suddenly decided to release the records, the way that Donald Trump got pwned when Obama released his long-form birth certificate right before the Washington Correspondents' Dinner.

And today I see that Craig Romney is suggesting that his dad will release his tax records when Obama releases his birth certificate. Huh? Haven't we already covered this?

Apparently not. Apparently for the Crazies now running the GOP asylum the very Structure of the Universe means that it is impossible for Obama ever to have released his birth certificate, even though he now has done so on multiple occassions (including his very public humiliation of Donald Trump with it at that Correspondents' Dinner).

This is what I mean by Calvinball. Today's Republicans really will tell you that the sky is green if they think saying so will get them an extra political point. They really will change the rules two seconds after telling you what the rules are, if they think they can get away with it.

Making Hay at Plutocrat Romney's Expense

A good deal already has been written about Mitt Romney’s categorical refusal to release his tax statements.  The conventional wisdom is that Romney’s refusal arises out of his desire to avoid telling the American public that he makes millions every year – in part because he still collects a paycheck from Bain Capital, a company he left 12 years ago – but thanks to the “carried interest” loophole and the capital gains tax rate, he pays a lower federal income tax than do most working and middle class Americans.

If Romney does indeed turn out to be the Republican nominee, it’ll be interesting to see how much hay the Democrats can make of this.  I would hope that at a time more and more Americans are becoming concerned with the inherent unfairness of our economic system, the answer to that would be “a lot of hay.”  Personally, I think the Democrats should run political ad after political ad after political ad calling on Romney to do what every other presidential candidate has always done, each ad strongly suggesting that Romney doesn’t want to admit that – as a member of the 1% -- he is trying to hide from the American public just how skewed in his favor our current system is.

Of course, Obama himself shouldn’t run these ads.  The last thing Obama needs is to have Romney finally produce his tax returns and have them show something other than that Romney is taking advantage of a tax break.  It’d be like what Obama did to Donald Trump with his long-form birth certificate, except in reverse.

No, the ads should be run either by the Democratic Party or – even better – by an anonymous Super PAC.  So long as Obama himself cannot be tied to the charges, then it won’t make any difference whether the charges can be disproved.  And politically speaking, the damage would already have been done.  Accuse Romney over and over again of being a plutocrat who wants to enshrine the plutocracy, and low-information voters will come to internalize that message.  If it goes on long enough then no amount of information afterward will actually be able to correct that impression.

Clarification:  I don’t think that what I am suggesting here amounts to the same kind of outright falsehoods in which the Romney campaign itself already is engaged.  I certainly would not suggest that Obama lower himself to Romney’s own stygian depths in order to win an election.

And I do think there is a vast difference between asserting something that you believe to be true and that almost certainly is true (even if you don’t have absolutely conclusive evidence to back up that assertion), and flat-out making statement after statement that you know to be false – which is what Romney is doing.  

Radical Republicans Update

UPDATED BELOW:

Just before the Christmas weekend I threw up a post decrying our political press’s unwillingness to acknowledge that the Crazy Wing of the Republican Party still is committed to destroying the great political and economic consensus under which both parties operated from the end of WWII until about the age of Reagan – the consensus that allowed us to build an affluent middle class society in the first place.  This wing traces its lineage directly back to the John Birch Society and the Barry Goldwater campaign of 1964.

So I was extremely gratified to read E.J. Dionne’s column raising the same essential point:  “For the first time since Barry Goldwater made the effort in 1964, the Republican Party is taking a run at overturning the consensus that has governed U.S. political life since the Progressive era.”  Dionne argues that the Republican presidential candidates’ uniform embrace of the view that government is an oppressive force, with no legitimate role to play in Americans’ lives, makes them the truly radical candidates and Barack Obama the real “conservative” in 2012 in the truest sense of that word.

While it’s heartening to see someone with a national platform trying to draw attention to a situation that should be self-evident, it also must be pointed out that “Conservativism” – as that word has come to be used in modern American politics – always have been deeply radicalized.  Indeed, this is one of the themes underlying Corey Robin’s recent book The Reactionary Mind:  Conservatism from Edmund Burke to Sarah Palin, in which Robin argues: 

Far from being “traditionalists,” or advocates for continuity and only small, incremental changes to existing social structures, Conservatives are – in fact – fairly radical thinkers who can define themselves only in relation to some past or imminent attempt (real or imagined) by others to wrest power, wealth or privilege away from them. . . .

[snip]

Thus, Robin argues, Conservatism – properly understood – is never about maintaining things the way they now are; it is always about reintroducing the “proper” balance to society, which previously had been upset by some illegitimate reformation.

This is why I find the rise of the radical right within the Republican Party so potentially terrifying.  These people aren’t concerned with “preserving” American society but about fundamentally re-writing the way the federal government’s role in that society.  Specifically, they want to eliminate the government’s ability to rein in abuse by rich and powerful private actors, and they want to eliminate even the minimal safety net the government provides for the least fortunate among us. 

These aren’t small goals, and I truly believe that the people voting for this agenda don’t fully realize what it is they are empowering:  a dystopia in which anyone already rich and powerful can essentially do whatever they please, and everybody else will just have to get use to being abused.

UPDATE:  Turns out the Frank Rich is also thinking along these lines, as he explains in his latest article in NY Magazine, "The Molotov Party."

Bachmann: Perfect for Low-Information Voters

Under President Obama's watch, we've seen some fairly radical changes in the Middle East just this year alone. When the Egyptian people rose up against Hosni Mubarak - Egypt's human-rights abusing dictator and, until recently, our man in Egypt - and demanded a more democratic government, Obama refused to support our erstwhile ally, things ran their course, and now the Egyptian people have Mubarak in the dock and are trying to figure their own way forward. No American troops present at all, no loss of American lives, and a step toward greater democratic freedoms in a major, important country in the Middle East has been achieved. Good.

When the Libyan people rose up against Qaddafi earlier this year, Obama did put U.S. military power behind a series of air strikes to prevent Qaddafi from essentially slaughtering his own citizens, but even then that power was led and controlled by NATO. Once more, no American toops present, no loss of American lives, and now the Libyan people have driven Qaddafi from power. Once more, a step toward greater democratic freedom in an important country in the Middle East (well, not geographically, but culturally) has been achieved. Good.

In the midst of the Syrian uprising against its government, President Obama has - so far, at least - refused to get the U.S. involved. Just as with Egypt, Libya and Tunisia, this is a matter for the Syrian people to work through themselves; America should not be in the business of installing governments we like over people who aren't, y'know, us.

And speaking of Tunisia, once again we see a people taking steps on their own to achieve greater democratic freedom, once again pushing out an aging despot, and once again doing so without the U.S. throwing its military might around to decide events for them. Good, right?

One thing you can say about the Arab Spring: regardless of how it ultimately turns out (and history teaches that any sudden change in government can be a tricky thing to negotiate), events this summer have reflected the will of the people involved and not been the forced result of U.S. intervention. Yay!

2012: Who the Hell Are We?

Via John Aravosis over at Americablog I found this press pool report from Sunday:

At his first fundraiser in San Jose, President Obama took aim at Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry, without naming the Texas governor by name, and was critical of the recent GOP debates.  He said the 2012 election will be “a contest of values.”

“Some of you here may be folks who actually used to be Republicans but are puzzled by what’s happened to that party . . . .  I mean, has anybody been watching the debates lately?  You’ve got a governor whose state is on fire denying climate change,” he said to applause.  “It’s true.  You’ve got audiences cheering at the prospect of somebody dying because they don’t have health care and booing a service member in Iraq because they’re gay.

“That not reflective of who we are,” Mr. Obama said.  “This is a choice about the fundamental direction of our country.  2008 was an important [elec]tion.  2012 is a more important election.”

Yes, please . . . more of this.

Low Capital Gains Tax Rates Hurt The Economy

UPDATED BELOW

So the big news over the weekend was the leaking of President Obama’s proposed “Buffett Rule.”  Details are sketchy at this point, but he seems to be proposing that anyone with an annual income of $1 million or more face a minimum income tax rate at least comparable to that paid by middle-class Americans.  The name is derived from a NYT op-ed that gazillionaire investor Warren Buffett recently authored in which he decried the fact that – because investment income is subject to only the 15% capital gains tax rate – he and his fellow “mega-rich friends,” who derive most of their income from investments, often pay a lower tax rate than does his cleaning lady.  

Well, hell – it’s about damned time someone suggested this, and not only because it is obscene that hedge fund managers like John Paulson (who would be in jail on fraud charges if he worked in any field other than the American financial industry) can make more than a thousand million ($1B) dollars a year and pay a lower tax rate than a firefighter or a school teacher.  But also because taxing investment income at a lower rate than earned income hurts the economy by sucking money out of economically productive enterprises.  

And we really shouldn’t be doing that.

Pres. Obama: Being a Grown-Up is Not Enough

We’ve all seen them, been annoyed by them.  Those revolting children in the store or restaurant or anywhere you happen to be, throwing a temper tantrum and screaming at the top of their lungs because they want something and they can’t have it.  But as much as we’ve loathed those children in the darkest places of our hearts, we’re all of us essentially kind people and few of us have ever wished ill on the children themselves.  I mean . . . they’re children for God’s sake.  They don’t really know what they’re doing because they’ve obviously never been taught how to behave properly.

No, in those circumstances I think most of us save our private ill-wishing for the parents of the brat causing such a ruckus, who are demonstrably incapable of controlling their little Hellspawn and who are almost certainly responsible for the kid’s willingness to behave so atrociously in the first place.

President Obama might want to consider this as he continues his quest to be seen as “the only grown-up in the room.”  ‘Cause it seems to be backfiring on him.

The Sociopathy of Banksters and Slaveowners

About six years ago Digby penned a piece entitled The Resentment Tribe. She was following up on a prior post in which she had asked the question: "Why are [Conservatives] so angry?" Digby proposed that what we see from the increasingly batty right-wing is something we have seen demonstrated throughout our history -- namely, a worldview that not only cannot brook dissent, but that so resents any expression of disagreement by others that it demands their complete and utter extirpation. Digby argued that this worldview "ha[d] its genesis in the original sin of slavery and . . . . the best way to understand this is to go right to the heart of the beast and quote . . . Abraham Lincoln at the Cooper Union in New York in 1860."

In that speech, Lincoln spoke to "the Southern people's" threat to break up the union unless their legal right to practice slavery was "at once admitted to as a conclusive and final rule of political action[.]" (emphasis added). Pointing out that the South's right to own slaves already had been legally adjudicated in its favor by the Supreme Court, Lincoln demanded:

[W]hat will satisfy them? Simply this: We must not only let them alone, but we must, somehow, convince them that we do let them alone. This, we know by experience, is no easy task. We have been trying to convince them from the very beginning of our organization, but with no success. In all our platforms and speeches we have constantly protested our purpose to let them alone; but this has had no tendency to convince them. Alike unavailing to convince them, is the fact that they have never detected a man of us in any attempt to disturb them.

These natural, and apparently adequate means all failing, what will convince them? This, and this only: cease to call slavery wrong, and join them in calling it right. And this must be done thoroughly -- done in acts as well as in words. Silence will not be tolerated -- we must pledge ourselves avowedly with them. Senator Douglas' new sedition law must be enacted and enforced, suppressing all declarations that slavery is wrong, whether made in politics, in presses, in pulpits, or in private. We must arrest and return their fugitive slaves with greedy pleasure. We must pull down our Free State constitutions. The whole atmosphere must be disinfected from all taint of opposition to slavery, before they will cease to believe that all their troubles proceed from us. (emphasis added).

In short, it was insufficient that the Southern States be left alone to continue the barbaric institution of slavery; what they demanded from their neighbors to the North was not mere tolerance of this institution, but active approval. Because they were unable to convince their Free State cousins that they should be lauded for buying, selling, and mercilessly exploiting other human beings for personal profit, they felt they had no choice but to go to war.

That excerpt from Lincoln's speech has stayed with me ever since I read it for the first time over at Digby's. I think of it every time I'm confronted by people with whom I disagree and who seem to take it as a personal insult that I might disagree with them. And I think about it when I see political actors -- like the banksters on Wall Street -- who would seem to have more than even the most self-regarding, greedy bastard imaginable might ever want, but who also seem to be perpetually whining that people aren't being nice enough to them.

The Excruciating Choice: To Hope for a Romney or a Perry Nomination?

Over at No More Mister Nice Blog, Steve M. asks Is Beltway Denial of GOP Insanity the Reason Romney Won't Fight Back? Essentially, Steve points out that a large portion of the media Village can't bring itself to admit that the modern GOP has basically gone insane because it hurts them too much to acknowledge this. (For my money, this is because they're afraid that recognizing the modern GOP's insanity would sound too "partisan" and thus would damage their self-identification as "politically savvy -- yet at the same time politically innocent -- insiders"). He suggests that Mitt Romney actually believes the Villagers when they assert that large swathes of the GOP still consist of reasonable, moderate voters and that those voters are sufficient to prevent Rick Perry from stealing what Romney thinks is his nomination.

Like Steve, I don't believe that -- I think the nomination is going to be decided by the increasingly unhinged teabaggers and their supporters, who are after all the most active and strident group within today's GOP. And so I think Steve is onto something when he suggests that "denial of the GOP's psychopathy harms the one not-quite-crazy Republican still standing in the race." Truthfully, though, I'm not quite sure how I feel about that.

On the one hand, and for strictly short-term political reasons, I think I'd be delighted to see Perry get the nomination over Romney. Were Romney to get the nod, it would only provide further cover for the Villagers to continue denying that the modern Republican Party has gone off the rails. Moreover, I think Romney would have a real chance at winning the general election given how terrible the economy is likely to remain. And that, of course, would be pretty much all that is needed to complete the corporatization of America.

I also believe quite the opposite about Perry. Personality-wise, Perry is pretty much as extreme as they come these days: an unapologetic Bible thumper whose only clearly articulated plan for dealing with the problems that beset our country and his own State of Texas is to pray for Jesus to make it all better, an adolescent who brags about how he named his custom-made boots "Liberty" and "Freedom" and that he carries a laser-sighted pistol with him when he goes jogging, and a snarkish bully captured on video after announcing his presidential bid telling a journalist to "give [Romney] my love" and blowing a kiss toward the camera.

This type of blowhard might play well in Texas and amongst the GOP faithful in general, but they tend to turn off everybody else. Bush may have been just as psychopathic, but at least he had the political acumen to run for president claiming to be "a compassionate conservative." Perry, on the other, seems to revel in hippie-punching and pissing off as many non-(GOP)believers as possible. Which is at once why he is now the Republican front-runner, and why I also think that he would lose the general election to Obama. It is also why a Perry nomination would help to "immanentize the eschaton" of getting the pundits and the bipartisan fetishists (and I'm looking at you, Mr. President) to acknowledge how far off the rails the GOP has driven itself.

On the other hand . . . hoping for a Perry nomination just seems wrong. I tend to think that nobody should be actively hoping that a callous, hot-headed know-nothing might snag the presidential nomination of one of our country's only two national parties. And, hey, I have to acknowledge that I could also just be wrong about Perry's chances of winning the general election. Romney would knowingly and greedily complete the corporatization of America, but Perry would do the same out of simple thick-headedness and a Texas understanding that this is how "bidness" gets done. But Perry would also further institutionalize the worst Christianist, xenophobic and anti-science impulses our nation has to offer. Which would be even worse.

So when it comes to hoping for a particular GOP candidate, that's the choice presented. Gamble I'm right about my assessment of Perry's chances in the general election and root for him to win the Republican nomination, or hedge my position and root for Romney and then hope that Obama beats him in the general election but console myself that - even if Obama loses - at least Rick Perry isn't squatting in the Oval Office.

It's a tough call, and looking over the Republican field all I can say is Thank God (and my state's election laws) that as a registered Democrat there is no possibility that I will be forced to actually vote on this.

Obama Doesn't Understand that He Doesn't Get to Set the Agenda

If a tree falls in the Beltway and nobody reports on it, does it make a sound?

Last Wednesday Austan Goolsbee – soon to be the ex-Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors to President Obama – appeared on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.  Goolsbee is about to head back to a teaching gig at the University of Chicago and Stewart spent a lot of time pointing out how “giddy” Goolsbee appeared to be now that he was getting out of Washington.  Goolsbee didn’t make much of an attempt to refute Stewart’s assessment.

During the interview Stewart asked Goolsbee to explain to him why Obama had seemingly acquiesced to using the debt ceiling discussions as an excuse to suddenly start talking about getting the deficit under control.  After all, Stewart pointed out, we had been told by the Obama White House that the stimulus had been what was needed and that it had worked.  Why then would Obama now, in essence, decide to do the opposite and focus entirely on cutting the deficit and government spending?

Goolsbee’s response was interesting.  Substantively, he punted and never really did answer Stewart’s question.  Instead he simply reasserted that an economic stimulus had been required back in early 2009 and then claimed as well that “dealing with the long-term deficit” is also something that has to be addressed.  He did not explain why it had to be addressed now, when one would think that greater and further stimulus efforts are really what is needed.  But the most interesting rationale Goolsbee provided was the following:  now that the deficit had been dealt with (kind of) by the Deficit Reduction Two-Step Shuffle, the President and the government could “pivot back” and start addressing the nation’s economic woes again.

Really?

Obviously, I don’t know Goolsbee and I am glad he is happy to be making his way back to academia, but if the man has spent the past two and a half years in the bowels of Washington and still thinks that now the government can pivot back to focusing on substantive economic issues the man is . . . well, he seems a little thick to tell you the truth.

Were this a fiction then I suppose it could be considered kind of naively charming to think of the President and his economic advisors imagining that they still have the power to set the nation’s agenda:  ‘Look!  they’re still innocents,’ we could all admiringly cry, happy that their basic humanity hadn’t been subsumed in cynicism.  But in the event this sort of naiveté is just chilling.  If the President thought he was cutting a deal by acquiescing to Republican demands in exchange for the power to frame the argument going into the 2012 election then, once again, he has traded the nation’s birthright for a mess of pottage.

This is Getting Really Crazy

First, the House Republicans insisted on voting on their insane "Cut, Cap and Balance" plan for cutting the deficit, despite the fact they knew it was DOA in the Senate. But they went through this little vanity act anyway, wasting time, and then -- as was expected -- the Senate killed the beast last Friday by voting to table it.

Then John Boehner and Harry Reid announced they were working on their own, competing deficit reduction bills. Reid's bill gives the Republicans everything they've asked for: $2.7 trillion in spending cuts over the next 10 years, with absolutely no revenue increases. However, Reid's plan (i) cuts costs by closing out the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, and (ii) does not cut Medicare or Social Security spending. Since the GOP doesn't believe a spending cut is really a spending cut unless it hurts old, poor or sick people, the Republicans already have announced their opposition to Reid's plan.

And then there is John Boehner's "two-step proposal," which is supposed raise the debt ceiling by $1.2 trillion (which will carry us through about 6 months) and slash entitlement spending for the old, poor and sick people the GOP considers such lazy parasites. Afterward, Boehner anticipates we go through this entire hostage-taking exercise again six months from now by having another round of debt-limit wrangling while the Republicans look for more safety net programs they can slash.

But Obama has announced an intention to veto Boehner's plan if it gets to him, which it won't because Reid has announced it won't pass the Senate, which is moot because Republican leaders themselves acknowledge that Boehner doesn't have enough votes to get his bill past the House either.

In light of all this, Reid indicated earlier today that he was going to wait to watch Boehner's proposal get shot down in the House before presenting his own bill in the Senate. I suppose the thinking was that - by then - we'd be so close to the Aug. 2nd drop-dead date that Reid's plan would be the only way to avoid defaulting on our debt, and that enough sane Republicans could be found in the House to get his plan passed and onto President Obama's desk before Defaultageddon.

But then the Congressional Budget Office announced that Boehner's plan doesn't actually save very much money. So then Boehner said that he is re-writing his proposal (and scrambling to try to get some more support from his own party) and is delaying a vote on his plan until Thursday. Oh, yeah . . . and get this: Boehner also has scheduled another vote on Thursday to have a balanced budget amendment added to the Constition. That's right. Apparently, for the GOP, 5 days before the United States defaults on its debt obligations is the perfect time to have a vote about amending the frigging Constitution.

There is no word yet if Harry Reid still intends to wait for Boehner's bill to be shot down before bringing his own proposal before the Senate, but it seems clear that while the House Republicans are dicking around with balanced budget amendments and bills that can't even get past the chamber that they themselves control time is getting very, very short.

Here's a proposal: Why doesn't Congress just raise the debt ceiling, without worrying right now about slashing the deficit, exactly the way it has 89 times before? Seriously, this wholly manufactured "debt ceiling crisis" could be resolved in 30 seconds with a coupla voice votes, and then Congress could go back to arguing about the deficit -- without the Sword of Damocles hanging over its head -- while it tried to work out the 2012 budget.

Simple, no?

The Story of Who We Are

Via Steve Benen over at Political Animal I see that the White House has been circulating a video of President Obama speaking with some college students in Massachusetts. In trying to explain the nature of politics to them, Obama said the following:

[O]ne of the challenges of this generation is, I think, to understand that the nature of our democracy and the nature of our politics is to marry principle to a political process. That means you don't get 100% of what you want. You don't get it if you are the majority; you don't get it if you are in the minority. And you can be an honorable [person] in politics understanding that you are not going to get 100% of what you want.

One of the reasons I like this statement is because it implicitly clarifies the respective, and different, roles that are supposed to be played by politicians and advocates. The mere fact that you can never get 100% of what you want doesn't mean that you stop advocating for it. It just means that you have to recognize that -- in any particular political battle -- you won't realize it.

And that is fine. It is the job of the politician to compromise with the other side and obtain for you the most he can get that you want, whilst giving up the least that you are willing to sacrifice. But it is the job of us, the advocates, to continue to press for our desires and try and re-work our society to make it better fit the image we have of what it should be.

Above all, it is our job to try and remember that what we call "the political process" is precisely that: a process. It is always ongoing, it is always changing, it is always evolving. It never, ever stops.

Arguing with each other over societal policies and prescriptions is nothing less than the never-ending story we tell each other about who and what we are as a people. And if you want your narrative to carry the day, you can't stop talking.

Maybe We Should Try and Get Obama's Back

I’ve been playing around over at The Great Orange Satan the past few days, cross-posting some things and leaving comments here and there on others’ diaries.  I enjoy being part of the politically aware, on-line Leftist community not least for the opportunity it gives me to share a back and forth with others who care enough to spend their time paying attention to news and thinking about what is going on in the world.

One of the things that always strikes me is how diverse are the people on the Left side of the political spectrum . . . at least compared to those on the Right.  There is a reason that for 30+ years – year in, year out - the political pundits have been able to pull out that tired trope:  “Democrats in Disarray.”  It is because the Democratic party always is.

Where the Conservative/Republican party has no difficulty circling wagons and attacking everyone who is The Other, the Liberal/Democratic party doesn’t really see it that way.  As inclined toward inclusion as we are, we naturally take in everybody willing to fight the good fight.  Unfortunately, after doing so, we tend to argue with each other about who is really a “Good Liberal” -- as if there is some “elect of the elect” toward which we should aspire.

Broadly, this breaks down into two groups:  the ideologically liberal pure, and the pragmatists.  The ideologically liberal pure constantly sneer at the pragmatists for being “sell-outs,” and the pragmatists always sneer at the ideologically liberal pure for being “electoral losers.”  Every once in an election year the two factions join together (more or less) to try and defeat the Evil Conservative Republicans, but even when they succeed they almost always forget their common foe immediately thereafter and turn upon and start savaging each other.

Personally, I find it quite frustrating.

Which is one of the reasons I am very happy to have Barack Obama as my president, right now.  Everyone says that the Presidency ages you, but rarely have we seen it age someone this quickly.  Still, he isn’t giving it up.  He is still fighting to try and do something to get the country moving again.

I am not sure I could do that.  I have my problems with the way Obama has used his presidency; I, personally, would have taken a much more liberal and partisan approach to the job.  Unlike Obama, I would not have made a fetish of “bipartisanship,” and I certainly would not sacrifice effective economic policy on its altar.

But right now Obama is still trying to get a deal done to keep the country from going into the economic crapper and he is facing an unhinged opposition party, and he is at the same time contending with a “liberal base” that at least 5 times out of 10 considers him a “sell-out.”  As tough as his job is, it’s gotta be even worse knowing that a sizeable chunk of the people who voted for you no longer have your back.

Just last night I came across this sentiment from James Kunstler: 

If I were Barack Obama, I'd think twice about presiding over this irresolvable muddle of engineered swindles, sinking prospects, booby-trapped budgets, and played-out lies for another term. Let Hillary step in and try to keep this leaky Flying Dutchman out of the drink.  

When I read that I suddenly imagined how alluring the idea of simply quitting must sometimes seem to Barack Obama.  Obama was sworn in to preside over cleaning up maybe the worst mess ever left behind for a new president.  And for the entirety of his term, he has been forced to deal with the most recalcitrant, reactionary opposition party any president has ever seen; a party determined to let the country go down in flames before it will grant him even the slightest degree of cooperation.  Moreover, Obama has had to deal with not only the opposition, but with those of us on the Left so busy trying to “out-Left” each other that we publish headlines that ask whether Obama is:  “The Worst President Ever.”

* * *

Now, if Obama were a Conservative I’m sure he wouldn’t be running for re-election; it’d be so much easier to just retire and cash in.  Isn’t that what Conservatives do?  Sarah Palin cared so little about the job she had been handed – Governor of Alaska – that once she hit the national stage she up and quit that job, trading it in to be a B-list celebrity on a basic cable channel hawking her own books.

Obama could easily quit and coast on his laurels.  Not only is he a President, he is the First Black President and for that alone he has secured his place in the history books.

But, from all that we see now, Obama isn’t about to do that.  Obama is still trying to cut a deal and do what he thinks is the right thing for the country – as much as I and others might disagree with him on the details – and he is still the only thing standing between us and the utter corporatization that will occur should the Republicans take complete control in 2012.

* * *

Hey . . . I don’t know where I fall on the “liberal spectrum,” whether I should be viewed as a True Believer or a Pragmatic Sellout.  I believe in my goals, and I also believe that sometimes you have to give ground to get ground.  Sometimes you cede territory to gain a strategic advantage.  And I recognize that when someone else is calling the shots it is difficult to know whether that guy is doing something smart, or doing something feckless.

But what I do know is that Kunstler was right:  it would be amazingly easy for Obama to just walk away from the problems he’s inherited, and if he did so his historical legacy would remain intact.  I think the man deserves just a little bit of appreciation for hanging in there and fighting the fight, and not giving up and rolling over even when it seems he has so little support from so many of us.

Eric Cantor: My Negotiating Guru

House Leader Eric Cantor has an, ah, unique negotiating style. Apparently, during a meeting with President Obama on Tuesday, Cantor suggested that there was nothing stopping everyone involved in the debt limit negotiations from reaching a deal immediately. Cantor pointed out that the GOP had asked for entitlement cuts and that the White House had agreed to some entitlement cuts in exchange for additional increases in revenue. The only sticking point was that the GOP didn't want to give Obama any increases in revenue. Nevertheless:

"We both agree on doing something that is good for the country, which is dealing with entitlements," Cantor said, "Why don't we just do that? Why do we have to sit here and say we still got to raise taxes when we don't agree on that? We both agree on entitlements, and, in fact, we would both agree on what the president's prescription for entitlement reform is."

That's brilliant! I can't wait to pull that the next time I get a new car: "Look, we both agree that you want me to have this car, and that I want me to have this car. Why do we have to sit here and say we still got to agree that I need to pay you money for it? Why don't we just go with what we both agree on: I get the car. We can do this deal right now."

I'm sure that'll go over about as well as did this silliness with the President.

One More Thought re: Debt Limit Negotiations

Over at Balloon Juice TimF has a post up about the debt limit negotiations and he raises an interesting point:

It looks like [the GOP] has arrived at a truly existential moment -- it has to decide who is in charge, and halfway measures won't do. Does the party serve wealthy people, who mostly want low taxes and stability, or does it serve tea party anarchists? The issue here is quite similar to the GOP dilemma on immigration in that the party utterly depends on two factions whose demands are not just misaligned but diametrically opposed. The Chamber of Commerce not only wants but in fact depends on undocumented immigrants for more jobs than most people realize, while redneck racists will do almost anything to clean the brown people out of their towns and states.

[snip]

As recently as the mid-Bush administration Republican initiatives still served the CoC at least as much as they catered to racist Bubbas. Can you imagine that now? Of course you can't. Leading edge GOP policies like Arizona's SB1070 and the Georgia law that left their unpicked fruit harvest to rot make it look an awful lot like angry, stupid Bubbas have a solid grip on the steering wheel.

Boehner and his business lobby could still rally and put armageddon back in snooze mode for a few more months. If they do it would count as one hell of an upset against a raging 'roided-up faction that has won every intra-party battle so far.

I wonder if the debt ceiling impasse might not lead the financial Powers That Be to start backing Obama and the Dems again. Despite all of the Wall Street whining about Obama once referring to them as "Fat Cats" the banksters have done very, very well under Obama's watch. The markets are up and bankster compensation is through the roof. Sure Obama and the Dems want to raise their taxes, but at least the Democratic party is still capable of acting rationally to prevent a complete financial meltdown. If the Republicans have been as thoroughly captured by their insane Teabagging base as it now appears, then the Republicans pose a much more fundamental threat to business-as-usual in this country than do the Dems -- and therefore a much more fundamental threat to the CoC and the Wall Street banksters.

Gaming Out the Debt Limit Negotiations

(Because Estabon Ferlingetti VI demanded it)

For a lot of different reasons, it is obviously insane that the House GOP has resorted to extortion by threatening to block an increase in the nation’s debt limit unless its demands for spending cuts are met.  Every person who actually understands the situation agrees that the economic consequences would be disastrous should America end up defaulting on its public debts.  Toby Ziegler explains:

This is why even John Boehner and Mitch McConnell have acknowledged that the nation’s debt limit must be raised before the August 2^nd drop-dead date.  “Must” – not “should.” Toby Ziegler's assessment of what will occur should the United States default of its debt obligations may have been dramatic, but it wasn't far off the mark. <:p>

Obama Might Not Know What a "Sista Souljah Moment" Is

For those too young to remember, Bill Clinton created the eponymous "Sista Souljah moment" when he criticized the rapper and political activist in June 1992 for some intemperate comments she had made about race relations in the U.S. (Those comments were made in the context of the 1992 Los Angeles riots, which in turn were sparked when four white police officers -- who had been captured on videotape administering a savage beating to African-American Rodney King -- were acquitted of wrongdoing.)

Clinton's criticism of Sista Souljah, previously seen as a fellow traveler of the perceived-to-be (but not really) liberal Bill Clinton, earned him some backlash from Jesse Jackson and other black Democratic activists but it solidified his position among more moderate, white Democrats and helped make him more palatable to independents and Republicans. After Clinton won the 1992 election with a plurality, political pundits and observers came to think of his "Sista Souljah moment" as a very canny piece of electioneering. Ever since, having a "Sista Souljah moment" has become almost a rite of passage for high-profile Democratic politicians.

I'm wondering, now, if this is what President Obama thinks he is doing by putting potential Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid cuts on the table in these debt ceiling negotiations. Maybe he thinks that by "standing up to the liberals" in his party -- you know, the people who still believe The New Deal is a good deal -- he will gain some mainstream credibility going into 2012.

I certainly hope not. The thing about Clinton's Sista Souljah moment is that when he did it -- and this is important -- Clinton wasn't doing anything substantive. Criticizing a hip-hop DJ for a few fiery sentences is not the same thing as cutting benefits for seniors and the poor. It was a piece of political theater meant to ally concerns by the more racially apprehensive members of society -- it cost Clinton nothing.

But cutting entitlements is going to cost Obama plenty. If you thought Democrats didn't show up to vote in 2010, see how many show up to vote after Obama and the Congressional Dems eviscerate the programs liberal voters care most about. I really hope Obama truly is as smart as his backers claim and that this is just more 11th-Dimensional chess and a feint and a ploy and that he is not serious. Because God help him -- God help us all -- if he is.

The Goofiest Thing

(This is going to sound like fiction.  It is completely true.

Even the names haven’t been changed.)

So, last Sunday evening I was driving home.  I had both bulldogs – Homer and Napoleon – in the car with me and was looking forward to a quiet night.  But it was only about 9:30 on a Sunday . . .  a time to read and reflect and maybe pass a glass with some friends (or, at least, acquaintances) before the work-a-day world of Monday morning presented itself.  So instead of going immediately home, I stopped off at Paddy’s Pub for a quick pint.

Paddy’s is a neighborhood bar, and sits pretty much just across the street from my place anyway.  Until recently (the Tourist Season) it is usually a quiet place to have a drink, the clientele and bartenders are amiably low-key, and they have WiFi.  I show up about once a week or so and I have gotten to know the staff and some of the people who actually are Norm Peterson. 

I didn’t even drop the dogs off at my place before heading in, that’s how little time I was going to spend there.