Month: November 2007

Don’t Call Colin

by digby

No, No, No. This is a horrible idea. I assume that Clinton thinks this would signal a return to “The Powell Doctrine” but even if it’s decided that’s a good idea, Powell himself should never be allowed anywhere near government again.

Despite his long career, Colin Powell’s most world famous, resonant moment was this:

Clinton may think it’s a neat idea to send a few Republicans around the world as envoys to show that America has a bipartisan foreign policy again, but she’s going to have to look to people who have been out of government for a couple of decades if she expects them to actually have a credibility in the rest of the world.

Colin Powell sold his reputation and his soul when he helped the Bush administration sell a war he knew was bullshit. It’s worse, in some ways, than what Bush did. At least Bush actually thought it was a good idea.

And anyway, there is no margin in rehabilitating members of the Bush administration. She will get no thanks for it and she knows it. Colin Powell was instrumental in destroying Bill Clinton’s first term for gawd’s sake:

As President Bush gave way to President Clinton, the general’s protests grew more vocal. First, in October 1992, Powell went public with his opposition to using force in Bosnia, penning an unprecedented New York Times op-ed justifying his stance. Powell cleared the article with the Bush team, but coming at the height of a presidential election in which candidate Clinton was calling for forceful action to halt Milosevic, the intent was clear-all the more so when Powell reiterated his objections in a Foreign Affairs article published as Clinton prepared for his inauguration. “Whether the issue was military service for homosexuals, post-Soviet budget levels, or military action in ex-Yugoslavia,” recounts Edward Luttwak, “Powell overruled the newly inaugurated Clinton with contemptuous ease.” In at least one instance-the 1993 dust-up over gays in the military-Powell skirted the edge of insubordination. Exploiting Clinton’s weakness vis-à-vis the armed forces, Powell went public with his opposition to the plan to integrate homosexuals into the military, letting it be known that he might resign over the issue and humiliating Clinton into negotiating with-and all but surrendering to-his own military chiefs.

The funny thing is that that article is about how Powell acted as a free agent under both Bush I and Clinton (especially Clinton) when he was in uniform, and it was warning that he’d freelance even more as a civilian in the BushII administration. If only. After he became Secretary of State, he turned into a good little soldier who never said a word in public about what went on in the Junior administration until just last summer, when Bush’s approval ratings had been safely in the 30’s for a year.

No member of the Bush administration should ever be set out to represent this country abroad again. And aside from Bush, Rumsfeld and Cheney, I can’t think of anyone less credible than Colin Powell.

.

Today’s Tweety Moment

by digby

Matthews: Let’s go back to women with needs. Women with needs are Hillary’s great strength. Women who don’t have a college degree, women who don’t have a lot of things going for them. May not have a husband, may have kids, have all kinds of needs with day care, education, minimum wage. Will Oprah help with them to move to Barack Obama?

Julie Mason Houston Chronicle: Well, they’re looking more for issues than they are for a celebrity endorsement. I don’t think it’s a celebrity endorsement from Oprah or from Bill Clinton, not that he’s a celebrity, but you know what I’m saying. I don’t think they move votes. I think they bring attention, I think they bring TV cameras, but those particular women are more concerned with health care and other issues than they are with what Oprah says …

Matthews : (angry, nasty) OK let’s get straight. Don’t ever say Bill Clinton doesn’t bring votes. If it weren’t for Bill there wouldn’t be a Hill. The idea that he doesn’t give her star quality is INSANE

Julie Mason: (startled) I’m not saying he …

Matthews: He IS her star quality.

Julie Mason: I’m not saying, he doesn’t bring votes but if you were undecided…

Matthews:(abrupt) Ok. … Thank you Matt.

Julie Mason:… I don’t think Hillary..er Bill Clinton …

Matthews: I know I caught you off guard there.

Julie mason: …would bring you in.

Matthews: I was too tough on you there, but I know I’m right. Anyway, Matt … just like Hillary I know I’m going to win.

The entire panel laughed nervously and that was it. Julie Mason should refuse to appear on his show again, but I doubt she will, unfortunately.

It’s reminiscent of the submissiveness training Matthews gave to Norah O’Donnell back when she used to say things Tweety didn’t like. It works.

Oh, and it’s quite clear that Matthews thinks these so-called women with needs who “don’t have a lot going for them” are a bunch of morons who probably shouldn’t be voting. His voice drips with derision whenever he describes them, which he does often, and in great detail. “Women with Needs” doesn’t have quite the same ring as “Welfare Queens” but it does the trick.

.

Hide The Bunnies

by digby

Radar Online interviewed former Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee

Do you know any of the presidential candidates?
I don’t know them that well—I know “how do you do.” I know Romney—”how do you do.” I know Hillary. What do you think of Hillary?
Well, I’m not as against her as some other people under my roof. Sally [Quinn, his wife]—I find the women are really very, very strongly against her. What’s that about?
I don’t know…

Please:

Sally Quinn: In terms of entertaining being partisan, it started with Clinton. The people who were seen as “hostesses” were people who had money or were raising money.… When the stuff about Clinton and women started appearing, in the second term, things shut down. Everybody wanted to go hide in a cave. For people willing to defend him, it became intolerable for them to go out.

In 2000, after being elected to the Senate, Hillary Clinton bought a fashionable house near the British and Italian Embassies. Before her run for the presidency, she added on to the house in order to have more space for entertaining.

Since Hillary has been here in the Senate for the last eight years, I think I’ve seen her twice. Otherwise, she is at fund-raisers. She entertains constantly, but it is all political. It is people who work for her or raise money for her.

Sally doesn’t like being ignored.

When people ask me why I think the DC Establishment is like a Village, I send them this link. I didn’t come up with it. Sally Quinn did:

In Washington, That Letdown Feeling
By Sally Quinn
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, November 2, 1998; Page E01

“This beautiful capital,” President Clinton said in his first inaugural address, “is often a place of intrigue and calculation. Powerful people maneuver for position and worry endlessly about who is in and who is out, who is up and who is down, forgetting those people whose toil and sweat sends us here and pays our way.” With that, the new president sent a clear challenge to an already suspicious Washington Establishment.

And now, five years later, here was Clinton’s trusted adviser Rahm Emanuel, finishing up a speech at a fund-raiser to fight spina bifida before a gathering that could only be described as Establishment Washington.

“There are a lot of people in America who look at what we do here in Washington with nothing but cynicism,” said Emanuel. “Heck, there are a lot of people in Washington who look at us with nothing but cynicism.” But, he went on, “there are good people here. Decent people on both sides of the political aisle and on both sides of the reporter’s notebook.”

Emanuel, unlike the president, had become part of the Washington Establishment. “This is one of those extraordinary moments,” he said at the fund-raiser, “when we come together as a community here in Washington — setting aside personal, political and professional differences.”

Actually, it wasn’t extraordinary. When Establishment Washingtonians of all persuasions gather to support their own, they are not unlike any other small community in the country.

[…]

But this particular community happens to be in the nation’s capital. And the people in it are the so-called Beltway Insiders — the high-level members of Congress, policymakers, lawyers, military brass, diplomats and journalists who have a proprietary interest in Washington and identify with it.

They call the capital city their “town.”

And their town has been turned upside down

Like many a political observer, until I read this, I thought of DC as being more like a European Court filled with jesters and courtiers and grey eminences advising in the shadows. But Versailles could never be this hypocritically provincial — and proud of it. DC is America, through and through — America, ca. 1690. The Reverend Broder sentences the heretics to the stake while Sally Goodwyfe runs around screaming “burn them, burn them!”

It’s always the dramatists who get this stuff right. Arthur Miller called it years ago.

Update: H/T to Jonathan at A Tiny Revolution who has more from the interview, here.

Did I confuse Bradlee with Jason Robards? He sure sounds like a jackass these days.

.
.

You And What Army?

by digby

Huckleberry Graham and Saxby Chambliss give fair warning that their surging surge will be respected — or else:

Two Republican senators said Monday that unless Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki makes more political progress by January, the U.S. should consider pulling political or financial support for his government.

The stern warnings, coming from Sens. Lindsey Graham and Saxby Chambliss, are an indication that while GOP patience on the war has greatly increased this fall because of security gains made by the military, it isn’t bottomless.

“I do expect them to deliver,” Graham, R-S.C., said in a phone interview upon returning from a Thanksgiving trip to Iraq. “What would happen for me if there’s no progress on reconciliation after the first of the year, I would be looking at ways to invest our money into groups that can deliver.”

Chambliss, R-Ga., who traveled with Graham as part of a larger congressional delegation, said lawmakers might even call for al-Maliki’s ouster if Baghdad didn’t reach agreement on at least some of the major issues seen as key to tamping down sectarian violence.

“If we don’t see positive results by the end of the year I think you’ll probably see a strong message coming out of Congress calling for a change in administration,” he said in a conference call with reporters.

Right. More “regime change.” If I were an Iraqi, I think I’d be asking, no begging the Americans to stop changing our regimes for us. It’s really not working out.

Graham and Chambliss said the recent military gains are remarkable, but they agree with Democrats that the political progress has been disappointing. Graham, an early ally of Bush’s troop buildup, said he would lose confidence in al-Maliki’s government if it could not pass by January a law that would ease curbs on former Baathists from holding government jobs.

This is interesting because McCain was with them and he’s doing an end zone dance saying that all the naysayers were wrong and he’s a big hero because the surge is supposedly working.

That’s one of the cleverest warmonger arguments around. When someone argues that there is no military solution to a problem, the right wing liars insist that means they are saying the military will be defeated. McCain and his fellows said the same thing before the Iraq war — when we all argued that it wouldn’t make us safer, that it would increase terrorist recruiting, that occupying the country would be dangerous and long term they spun that to mean we thought the military couldn’t topple Saddam’s regime, which we never doubted for a moment. We just didn’t think toppling Saddam’s regime was a good idea, not that the military couldn’t do it. When they drooled all over Bush’s victory lap on the carrier it was with a strong dollop of “I told you so” as if those who were against the war had ever doubted that the US Army could defeat Saddam’s, which was absurd.

I was talking with a friend yesterday about the fact that conveniently for the Republicans, Iraq is liding off the agenda now that the surge is being touted as a huge success and he noted that we can probably expect to see it slide further as news netwroks decide the war is over and show less and less news. As Eric Boehlert shows in his column to day, it’s already happening:

What’s obvious is that it’s becoming increasingly difficult to find news about the war on television. If the U.S. military action inside Afghanistan is often referred to as “The Forgotten War,” due to the lack of media attention it receives, what has Iraq become — “The Forgotten War II”? And perhaps nowhere is that amnesia stronger than at ABC’s Nightline. The virtual news boycott from Iraq that Nightline has implemented since July went far beyond what any other major American broadcast has done. Again, Nightline aired more than 230 news reports between July 18 and November 22, and not one was about the events on the ground in Iraq. Nightline has not even bothered to cover the ongoing Blackwater USA scandal, involving private American contractors accused of opening fire on unarmed Iraqi civilians on September 16 at a crowded Baghdad intersection, killing 17. The mass shootings are now being investigated stateside by a federal grand jury. Yet, in the 10 weeks since the story first made headlines, there has not been one word about Blackwater USA mentioned on Nightline. Not one.

This is another way the Village picks your president for you. It’s not enough that they cover the primaries like a Junior High Wrestling match and Mean Girls slumber party, or even that they cover the general election horse race based upon who stuffs them with the most expensive food on the campaign press plane. They also decide which issues are important — and that means that the issues they want to talk about — or which certain savvy political operators who are adept at pushing the kewl kidz buttons want to cover.

Iraq is obviously boring them silly now that it’s no longer a great and glorious story of dirty hippies vanquished by the conservative he-men (which is the real subtext of the war in the chattering classes.) So it’s being taken off the schedule.

Meanwhile, Huckleberry shakes his tail feathers at the Iraqi government and Condi stages a pageant called “Annapolis” because she wanted her own “Dayton” or “Camp David” in her bio, even if it is seven years and a miserable failure of a war too late. She should have arranged for some people dressed as hippies to protest it and maybe the press would be interested.

.

Time After Time

by digby

The blogosphere is steaming over Joe Klein’s infamous error-filled column this week about the pending FISA legislation. Jane Hamsher took it to Klein’s editor at TIME magazine this morning, who said there were no errors and hung up on her.

I am not an insider so I’m unfamiliar with most of the editorial staffs of the Village rags, but I have followed political coverage very closely for the past 25 years or so and when I looked at the editor’s bio, I was struck by something. See if you see it too:

Before assuming her current title in January 2002, Painton had been an assistant managing editor. She was responsible for TIME’s political reporting as the magazine’s Nation Editor for six years, in which she helped guide readers through the the re-election of Bill Clinton in 1996, the rise and fall of Newt Gingrich, the campaign of 2000 and its vote-counting battle that led to George W. Bush’s assumption of the presidency in December of 2000. She and her team produced that year’s “Person of the Year” cover on George W. Bush. In 1998, she oversaw the magazine’s coverage of the Kenneth Starr investigation and President’s Clinton’s impeachment trial and edited TIME’s “Men of the Year” cover story on Kenneth Starr and Bill Clinton.

In 1996 and 1997, she oversaw TIME’s investigation of the campaign finance scandals, which won a prestigious Goldsmith Investigative Journalism Prize.

During that period I didn’t have access to all the great sources for political news I have today, so TIME and Newsweek, along with the TV gasbags and the NY Times were the main sources of Village CW during the Clinton years for those of us who lived outside the beltway.

I don’t know how many of you remember TIME‘s coverage, but suffice to say that it was about the same as what you got from the Washington Post and the NY Times, which is to say it was a non-stop sophomoric, error-ridden, tabloid spectacle.

Here’s just a sample of political covers from the magazine in 1997 and 1998:

Let’s just say these were as positive as it got in the Village Enquirer during that era. And the errors contained therein would fill the Grand Canyon.

It occurs to me that while we all mistrust the Broders and the Cohens, we may actually come to see them as paragons of journalistic ethics compared to those who came up during the 90’s and the Bush years. Look at how many of them climbed the media ladder.

Update: Susie from Philly writes in with this via Gawker:

Date: Oct 16, 2007 3:25 PM Subject: To: Redacted To: TIME Staff From: Rick Stengel

After twenty magnificent years at TIME, Priscilla Painton has decided
to leave us before the end of the year. Priscilla recently came to me
and said she wanted to figure out “Act Two” of her career, and try
something new and completely different.

Before I say how much we will miss her, let me talk a little about her
“Act One.” Priscilla has two qualities that are unmatched: her
unrelenting passion for our mission as journalists and the
intellectual rigor with which she approaches everything that we do.
When I worked with her in Nation, there was no one who could inspire
you so much to go out and find a great story–and no one who would
bounce it back so quickly when it didn’t meet her standards. She cares
deeply about every aspect of the stories that we do–from the reporting
to the headline to the picture captions. There’s no way to quantify
how much her passion and her standards have contributed to the
unmatched quality of TIME over the last two decades, except to say
that we wouldn’t be who we are without Priscilla Painton. It will be
hard to match those qualities in the years to come, but her legacy is
that she’s taught us all how to do so.

We will have a terrific celebration before she goes, and I promise,
the champagne will be good, and it will be French.

R.S.

Voila.

Update II: The daily Howler captured a revealing moment back in 2005, when Painton appeared on O’Reilly to talk about TIME‘s “Most Influential” list:

O’REILLY (4/11/05): All right–Ann Coulter. Wow! Ann Coulter?

PAINTON: Ann Coulter is big.

O’REILLY: Yes–

PAINTON: She had a huge best-seller, as you know, this year. Everywhere she goes, she attracts throngs of people.

O’REILLY: But doesn’t she just speak to the choir, almost like [Jon] Stewart?

PAINTON: Well, yes, she does. But that doesn’t mean that that isn’t influential. I mean, in the sense that when there’s a big debate, usually it’s her funny, amusing, outrageous quips that people walk around–

O’REILLY: Do you think people, Americans, listen to Ann Coulter? Do you think she has influence in public opinion?

PAINTON: I think so. I think the way she sort of summarizes issues and twists them with humor has a big impact. But I also think people read her books.

O’REILLY: Well, obviously. She’s another best-selling author.

Keeping Them Viable

by digby

Far be it for me to be suspicious of the Kewl Kidz of Village High, but I have noticed an odd phenomenon in the past week or so that makes me wonder if those clever kids aren’t doing a little GOP prep work for the general election.

Isn’t it a little bit weird that we are suddenly seeing a bunch of articles about the liberal records of Republican candidates in the mainstream press? I realize that they are running in conservative primaries and these articles may be planted by rivals, but if I were a GOP pooh bah I might think it was important not to let stories of GOP candidates’ bloodthirstiness and fundamentalism get too embedded in the public consciousness. After all, the money people have already decided that they need a “different kind of Republican” who can win over some moderates this time out. We wouldn’t be seeing Blue State Mitt and Big City Rudy (with Compassionate Conservative Huck on the rise) if they didn’t know that this is one election where running as a conservative in the general is likely to be the kiss of death.

Hence, we see David Brooks trying to convince the readers of the NY Times that Rudy really loves immigrants. We see the Prince of Darkness telling everyone who will listen that Huckabee is far too liberal. And we had that bizarre “realignment” talk from William Kristol a couple of weeks ago where he was pushing for the nominee to bring Lieberman on the ticket.

The surrogates are all doing their jobs to preserve the GOP candidates’ viability after they get the rabid neanderthals in line with appeals to the right of Atilla the Hun. But I don’t know if they can maintain all this winking and nodding all the way to next November. It’s going to get a little bit confusing after a while trying to tell “Red State Rudy” from “Blue State Rudy” and all that dogwhistling going in both directions is liable to make everybody howl.

.

Misdirection

by digby

I’ve been observing discussions here and elsewhere about the immigration debate with increasing anxiety that the Republicans are going to get away with yet another misdirection perfectly designed to derail progressive hopes and dreams by stroking America’s lizard brain. The election feels eerily reminiscent of 1992, when so-called reasonable centrists stoked the crazy man Ross Perot’s campaign by backing his obsessive concern for “the deficit” which was nothing more than a weird abstraction into which misinformed discontented voters could pour their economic fears. The political result was that even though a Democrat won, instead of using the tax windfall from the tech boom to finance new initiatives for the public, the best he could do was hang on to the surplus for as long as possible and then watch as the Republicans passed it out to their rich friends like it was Christmas morning the minute they stole the election. Suckered, suckered, suckered.

This time, of course, the stupid irrelevant issue they are forcing into the ether is illegal immigration. And, like “the deficit” it is virtually designed to twist the Democratic candidates into pretzels as they help the Republicans once again misdirect the public to blame something other than the corrupt plutocrats who just pillaged the treasury for their woes.

Illegal immigration has long been a political football in America and this time is no exception. There have been bracero guest worker programs and repatriation programs from the beginning of the last century. During the 1950’s, Eisenhower had tens of thousands of Latinos deported under Operation Wetback more than a few of them citizens. (Read that link if you want to see just how similar the arguments then were to today’s.) Migration across the border has been present since before there was a border and it’s a “problem” that always exists and nobody cares about until they suddenly … do.

The thing progressives need to keep in mind is that only thing truly different in this latest “crisis” is the growing number of Latino citizens who are getting agitated by the predictably ugly tone of it and are starting to politically organize. That really is new and the ramifications of it are huge and important for both political parties. It is true that the voter registration drive after the massive rallies was disappointing. But those rallies are a sign of something very, very different in this age-old debate and the Republicans know it. That’s why Rove tried so hard to get comprehensive immigration reform knowing very well that he had a short window to take credit among Latinos. They couldn’t get it done, not because of the decent people we all know who are suddenly concerned about illegal immigration, but because of a very distinct cohort of the far right who even the old hardline racists are smart enough to know are on the wrong side of history on this one:

Comments by Republican senators on Thursday suggested that they were feeling the heat from conservative critics of the bill, who object to provisions offering legal status. The Republican whip, Trent Lott of Mississippi, who supports the bill, said: “Talk radio is running America. We have to deal with that problem.”

They gave their monster a megaphone and now they can’t shut them up. (“As ye sow” and all that drivel.)

The issue tends to get ginned up whenever the plutocrats need to misdirect the people from their corruption and malfeasance, so I would be very suspicious of their “support” for CIR in this environment. There is every reason to believe that they will get behind any punitive border enforcement atrocity with everything they have (if they aren’t behind it already.) As much as the Wall Street Journal likes to tout open borders, their real mission at the moment is keeping the people from demanding regulations and laws that will contain their massive greed and reduce income inequality. If it means shutting the border for a little while to keep the rubes from blaming the real culprits, that’s a small price to pay.

But like it or not, the way they do this (over and over again) is by playing to certain xenophobic and racist impulses that are always present among some Americans (or which can be drawn out in others who might not think they have such impulses, but, in fact, do.) It’s one thing to say that we shouldn’t go around willy nilly calling people racists, but it’s quite another to actually believe that racism and xenophobia are not in play in a major way.

We political junkies talk a lot about “intensity” when trying to figure out what issues people vote on and which issues to emphasize in an election. It takes very little scratching beneath the surface of this argument to come up with usual “they live like pigs,” “they’re diseased” and worse among those who say this is the most important issue facing the nation.

But that’s not the whole story either. On their side the intensity is with racists and xenophobes who are pushing their ideas into the mainstream with fervor and focus. On our side the intensity is in all those Latino citizens and legal residents who are living with the same loathing and suspicion as their family members and acquaintances who once were or currently are “illegal” and that’s what our side should be concerned about. Discounting all of those who we would love to see brought into the system, if even those Latinos who are currently registered fail to vote, we will lose Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, Colorado and Florida in the next election again when they should be blue all the way. (Check out the current state of the Democratic party in Louisiana now that it’s been cleared of African American voters to see how this works.)

The Latino community — the fastest growing voting bloc in America — is rightfully very concerned by these condemnations of “illegals” as being diseased, dirty and criminal, since those who say such things don’t bother to make certain important distinctions.

Back at the Help Save Manassas booth, volunteers wearing T-shirts emblazoned with “What part of illegal don’t you understand?” displayed photographs of garbage-strewn houses and yards. One showed a tent next to an overturned wading pool propped up by a stick—overflow, Letiecq claimed, from a house full of illegals. An elderly woman in a Democratic Party T-shirt confronted a stocky ex-Marine named Steve, asking, “How do you know that the people living in these houses are illegal? Poor people would live like that, too.”

“Ma’am, they’re illegal. They are,” Steve said. “You’re in denial.”

People like that have made sure that the Republicans have lost the Latino vote for the foreseeable future. They are making the best of it by falling back on their tried and true methods of vote suppression. The question for progressives is why Democratic leaders would help them do it by having Heath Shuller and half the caucus co-sponsor a punitive enforcement only bill that is a taxpayer boondoggle and a mandate to harrass the Latino community. It simultaneously legitimizes the extremist right wing (who love the bill, by the way) while telling Latino citizens that the Democratic party would rather appease racists like Tom Tancredo than stand up for them and insist on comprehensive immigration reform — which they support in large numbers.

Of course not everyone who is concerned about illegal immigration are racists. But it is clear that the ones who claim “illegals” are dirty, diseased and depraved to make their argument are. I don’t think the vast majority of Americans are comfortable with that kind of talk and if it’s exposed, they might just wise up and realize they are being played — and not want to be associated with such people. And it certainly would reassure our Latino brothers and sisters that the Democratic party is not a party that welcomes people who believe such things.

.

Best Wishes

by digby

I just heard that Robert Frank, economist and great friend of Hullabaloo, had a heart attack recently. Apparently, he’s doing very well, back at home etc., so that’s good news.

If you would care to make him happy in his recuperation (good for healing), I would urge you to consider buying one of his books, particularly “The Economic Naturalist: In Search of Explanations for Everyday Enigmas” a fun little book that answers many questions about how and why people make the decisions they do. It’s a great way for those of us who are not economists to think about economics in our everyday lives.

Frank appeared on the FDL Book Salon a few months back and we had a very lively discussion of his book Falling Behind: How Rising Inequality Harms the Middle Class — a book for our times if there ever was one.

Get well soon!

.

Deep Thoughts

by digby

A couple of months ago I published a memo about the upcoming elections from a friend of mine who is a very sharp, well informed observer and participant in the political scene. I call him Deep Insight.

He’s updated his analysis of the presidential election and I thought you might find it interesting:

On some days, it appears George Bush could care less if he drives the GOP over the cliff in 2008. His pursuit of rightwing foreign and domestic policy continues unabated. Iraq will remain a mess for years and millions have already fled the country. Our wonderful ally, the President of Pakistan, declares martial rule while we funnel billions in cash to his military cronies. Meanwhile, the Taliban now controls parts of Northwest Pakistan. Bush’s decision to veto the Children’s health proposal cements a nice brand image for his party as reckless and incompetent on foreign policy and heartless on healthcare for kids.

The GOP remains confident, however, on its messaging ability and willingness of the mainstream media to carry its talking points. Just tune in and watch pundits Tim Russert and Chris Matthews, who began their careers as Democratic aides on the Hill, carry on a dialogue that Social Security is a “Ponzi scheme.” Their former employers, Daniel Moynihan and Tip O’Neill, roll over in their graves. This type of elite pundit narrative is repeated daily on television, radio and op-ed pages. The next media magic trick will be to make George Bush, as Digby notes, “disappear.” It worked for Karl Rove and Alberto Gonzales who have made Nixon’s henchmen Haldeman and Mitchell look like amateurs. Rather than Rove being investigated by the mainstream media, he now has a column in Newsweek. The Democratic nominee will not only have to defeat the GOP nominee, but also the elite media narrative.

The Republicans in Congress, however, have reason to be worried. They face the inevitable retirements after losing majority status. The number in the House is 15 and still rising. The Democrats should retain both open seats (Maine, Colorado) where the incumbents are seeking Senate seats. If handled properly, the vote against the Children’s health bill could resonate against GOP incumbents. Democrats have to be concerned, however, about the overall approval rating of Congress. Anti-Washington sentiment in the country is still growing. In the Senate, the Democrats are posed for a 2seat pick up. This margin will grow with the right breaks and enough grassroots activism. In the House, the Democrats are now ahead by 17 points in their most contested seats. As a bonus, the party is ahead by 6 points in the Republican held marginal seats. Right now, it looks like a pick up of at least high single digit House seats for the Democrats.

Congressional Democrats, however, sometimes act as if it is still 2002 when they were still in the minority. The big bad Republicans will distract the country and beat them into submission. Bush has a 25% approval rating. There is absolutely no political price in opposing the initiatives of the GOP. On national security issues, the Democrats need to take the “kick me” sign off their backs. Bush has weakened our national security with this reckless war in Iraq. Bombing Iran will only add to the terrorist threat. This has to be clearly stated.

Extremists, who have little interest in responsible governance or the common good run the modern Republican Party. They obstruct any positive legislative effort, force the Democrats to compromise, and then abandon the compromise. The Democrats need to tout accomplishments and fault the GOP for its obstructionism. Instead, the Democrats are losing the communications skirmishes to the rightwing noise machine including wasting time on such things as responding to the censure of MoveOn for an ill-advised ad and telling Congressman Pete Stark to apologize for calling the President names. If Bush continues to veto popular bills to benefit the common good, the Democrats can draw sharp contrasts with the right wing. This will only enhance 2008 opportunities.

The Republican K Street Project is in tatters as access donors in the business community pony up to the Democrats. Before Democrats get too cozy with the priorities of business, they should note the public is not enthralled with the current state of the economy. Whether the economy falls into recession, or merely slow growth, many Americans are really hurting. People are working longer hours to run in place. 1.7 million Americans face home foreclosure next year. As Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz noted recently, “Herbert Hoover has been regarded as the “worst President” when it comes to the economy, but Bush’s legacy is more insidious and likely to be longer lasting.” Congressman Rangel has started a discussion of why hedge fund managers and private equity bigwigs pay a lower marginal tax rate than the janitors in their building. Bush will veto any tax increase anyway, but a political airing will be useful.

The Republicans hope to use this economic discontent to fan resentment against immigrants. The Democratic leadership is divided, but being less crazy than the Republicans is not a policy. The public knows illegal immigration is a serious issue and is concerned about it. When the Wall Street Journal waxes poetic about open borders, it is clear business wants downward pressure on wage. Americans favored a comprehensive solution to this issue but a vocal movement derailed it. Lou Dobbs pretends to represent the mainstream view on immigration, and now toys with a Presidential run to pump up his ratings.

Before a single vote is cast, the pundit class has awarded the Democratic nomination to Hillary Clinton. The Republicans are already running against her, and McCain has an attack ad up of dancing hippies at Woodstock (one more time let’s go back to 1969). Certainly, she is in a commanding position with plenty of money and universal name identification. She remains the favorite, and the press has even decided it is time to harass her.

Democratic primary voters do, however, have a way of upsetting apple carts or Ed Muskie would have been the 1972 nominee and in 1976 Jimmy Carter would have remained a polling asterisk. Walter Mondale had all he could handle with Gary Hart’s 1984 challenge. Unpredictability is the rule not the exception in the Democratic primaries. Early polling is just early polling. Howard Dean had a 23-point lead in New Hampshire at this juncture in 2004. Polling is particularly shaky in Iowa where no one can predict turnout and the 15% threshold rule applies.

Still, Obama and Edwards have to shake up the race. Obama has consciously scaled back his “audacity of hope” campaign for a more restrained approach. He needs a movement of individuals who vote, not a traditional campaign. He needs a win in Iowa or a close second. Edwards has placed his political fate on Iowa and if either he or Obama wins, it will give the victor substantial momentum heading in to the rush of primaries. The margin between first and third in Iowa is likely to be small.

Chris Dodd stood up to the White House on the FISA legislation. He definitely needs to win New Hampshire as does Senator Biden or their campaigns will end with applause in the Senate. Bill Richardson’s last stand is Nevada.

In early fundraising, the Democratic field continues to swamp the Republican one. This is also true, not surprisingly, for the Senate and House Committees, but the RNC continues to out fundraise the DNC. If the Democratic nominee is settled in February, the DNC has to step up fundraising. This pre-Labor Day period will be critical for the party to spend on behalf of the nominee.

An independent NGO communication effort must also utilize this time period. Only innovative and cost-effective communication strategies should be considered. With TIVO, satellite TV and itchy finger remotes, typical political advertising on broadcast TV is of declining utility. The GOP and rightwing will be very active during this time. Their 527 “Freedom Watch” is already in full swing on Iraq and Iran.

The Republican field continues to distinguish itself by pandering to its base. Evolution is a myth, not established science. The war is going great; global warming is not a threat. Taxes have to be cut on the wealthy, etc. Rudy still leads in national polls but as he receives more scrutiny, the numbers trend downward. He employed and defended Bernie Kerick his indicted mobbed connected ex-police commissioner. Now there is a lawsuit from Kerick’s ex-mistress alleging her former employer, News Corp, tried to suborn perjury from her to help Rudy. Expect banner coverage from FOX News and the Wall Street Journal. An ex-priest accused of pedophilia is also on his payroll. The social conservatives have upped their threat to run a third party candidate if he is the nominee, but this may be a ruse as the religious right leadership is fractured. The berserk businessman/evangelist Pat Robertson, who said we deserved 9/11, recently endorsed Rudy. The Republicans like aggressive candidates and nobody is going to out aggressive Rudy. Should he become the nominee, the Democrats do need to worry because of his “strong leader” image.

Fred Thompson, the conservative “great white hope,” seems to be fading. Mitt Romney keeps dipping into his own pocket and upping his right wing rhetoric. He still leads in New Hampshire and if unprincipled ambition is the threshold, Mitt is the clear winner. John McCain is staging a mini comeback but still has little money and the enmity of the right wing. Senator Brownback’s endorsement of him is interesting, if it is not just Senatorial courtesy. Mike Huckabee looks like he will inherit a good proportion of the social conservative vote, particularly if Thompson flops. Huckabee is moving up in national polls, and is tied with Romney in Iowa. He will hurt Romney badly if he wins there. Ron Paul is running 4th in New Hampshire but raised an astonishing $4 million on the Internet on Guy Fawkes Day.

So far, the GOP race has been the gift that keeps on giving to the Democrats. But George Bush must be made into the GOP nominees’ political brother. 2008 will be a “change the course” election and the electorate is clearly not thrilled with Washington DC priorities or institutional arrangements. So, the Democrats need to ride this tide both on the Presidential and Congressional levels.

I can’t tell you how important I think that last is. Here’s David Brooks:

DAVID BROOKS: … this campaign will not be about George Bush.

MARK SHIELDS: It won’t be about George Bush, if Republicans have their way. I mean, the past eight years, are you better off than you were eight years ago?

George Bush should be tied so tightly around the Republican candidates’ necks they can hardly breathe. Every quote of support, every vote, every word of worship should be thrown in their faces and there is a ton of it. He is the most unpopular president, for the longest sustained time, of any president in history. He is the modern Herbert Hoover, a man whose name should become an epithet.

And it isn’t just the presidential campaigns. The congress, obviously, is missing its moment to solidify this president and the drones who enthusiastically supported every single thing he did for six long years as losers in the eyes of the public. I know that liberals don’t like to be nasty to anyone but each other, but this is just crazy. As Deep Insight says:

Congressional Democrats, however, sometimes act as if it is still 2002 when they were still in the minority. The big bad Republicans will distract the country and beat them into submission. Bush has a 25% approval rating. There is absolutely no political price in opposing the initiatives of the GOP. On national security issues, the Democrats need to take the “kick me” sign off their backs. Bush has weakened our national security with this reckless war in Iraq. Bombing Iran will only add to the terrorist threat. This has to be clearly stated.

This is not brain surgery and it isn’t ideological. This is purely tactical. If the Democrats are seen to be unwilling to take on the party and ardent supporters of the most unpopular president in history then their entire case for leadership falls completely flat. Of course, they have to run against Bush. The Republicans are Bush.

Update: Responding to the now infamous, misinformed Joe Klein column this week, saying for the umpteenth time that Democrats must go along with Republican crackpot legislation or risk being seen as wimps, Athanae at First Draft gives one of the best explanations I’ve seen for why people don’t care to vote for people who think capitulation is a good way to show toughness:

[Voters] don’t like voting for people who make them embarrassed. You all know what an embarrassment squick is, right? It’s why I can’t watch Ricky Gervais’s original version of The Office, or Charlie Kauffman movies, or Jerry Seinfeld, or those silly home video shows of kids falling off bikes or doughy guys getting hit in the balls. I don’t … it’s just … ugh. It’s the feeling you get when watching uncomfortable people being stupid, and sticky, and … it’s like this in politics, every day, with Klein and his ilk. They are advising a course of action that sets off everybody’s embarrassment squick, and nobody’s gonna vote for the guy who you watch and it’s like your baseball team’s getting whomped. You’re up in the stands, having your tenth beer in an hour, pulling your hat down over your face and hoping nobody is looking at you. Or your team. You don’t even want to be there because the yuck might rub off on you.

Is that dumb and irrational? Sure. We’re talking about perception and strategy here, so it’s dumb and irrational. But Democrats won in 2006 by acting like they didn’t give a fuck what Republicans thought, they were gonna fix the mess we’re in, and everybody was happy, and they felt like winners, and people like winning because the parties are better, and so on and so on. I don’t know what it will take for them to act like that again. A veto-proof majority? A Democratic president? Both? The sudden and unexplained silence of every pundit everywhere? A memory transfusion? I really don’t know what it’s going to take but I can tell you for damn sure going back to the glory days of 2002 is not the answer here.

I suspect that if they would just refuse to allow the Republicans to set the agenda for the upcoming election as they are currently doing, they would be halfway there. I don’t know if anyone’s noticed, but nobody’s talking about Iraq now that the administration has managed to move the goalposts so far that victory is defined as fewer killings than six months ago. Huzzah! We won! Now we can talk about the Mexicans and the tax and spend liberals!

It’s embarrassing alright.

.

Wingnut Week-end

by digby

Reader David writes in with a very good question.

What in the world is up with C-SPAN over this holiday? Here is the list of authors featured on BookTV:

Jeff Gannon, Bjorn Lomborg, and of course, John Lott, toss in a little Victor Davis Hanson

In fact, look at the whole schedule,and it’s shockingly full of wingnuts

I suppose it’s a testament to how hard up the right wing is these days that it has Jeff Gannon and John Lott out there shilling for it, but still. A long holiday week-end and this is the best C-Span can do?

.