Month: November 2007

“It’s A Great Lie”

by digby

So Juan Williams and Sean Hannity are very upset that Markos Moulitsas is going to be writing a column for Newsweek because he is such a hater, not to mention unqualified for this important journalistic post:

Appearing on Hannity and Colmes, he said:

“The fact is that (Moulitsas is) not a journalist in terms of someone who knows how to do reporting, someone who reflects balance in what he portrays. To the contrary, he engages in the kind of hyperbole and extreme statements that are represented by that crass and I think offensive statement that he made about those dead people. But you know what? I think that’s just what’s going on in journalism. I think that there’s more and more opinion, less and less people who know how to do the job. All you gotta do is shout, say something on the blog that offends and attacks the other side and suddenly you have the credentials and you’re said to be a journalist. I think it’s a great lie.”

Right.

Hannity attended St. Pius X Preparatory Seminary in Uniondale in Long Island, graduating in 1980 with a high school diploma… He dropped out of New York University because of financial issues, and decided to pursue a radio career.Hannity hosted his first talk radio show in 1989 at the volunteer college station at UC Santa Barbara, KCSB-FM, while working as a general contractor The show aired for 40 hours of air time and, according to Hannity, he was terrible.Hannity’s weekly show was cancelled after less than a year when KCSB management charged him with “discriminating against gays and lesbians” after two shows featuring the book The AIDS Coverup: The Real and Alarming Facts about AIDS by Gene Antonio. The station reversed its decision to dismiss Hannity due in part to a campaign conducted by the Santa Barbara Chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union. Hannity decided against returning to KCSB.

After leaving KCSB, Hannity placed an ad in radio publications presenting himself as “the most talked about college radio host in America,” and WVNN in Athens, Alabama (part of the Huntsville market) hired him to be the afternoon talk show host. From Huntsville, he moved to WGST in Atlanta in 1992, filling the slot vacated by Neal Boortz, who had moved to competing station WSB. In September 1996, Fox News founder Roger Ailes hired the then relatively unknown Hannity to co-host the television program Hannity & Colmes with Alan Colmes.

Wrong:

Moulitsas was born in Chicago, Illinois to a Salvadoran mother and Greek father, and grew up in El Salvador. (Following the Spanish language custom for surnames, his last name is “Moulitsas”, not “Zúniga” – See Spanish naming customs.) His family moved back to the United States in 1980 due to the Salvadoran civil war. He served in the U.S. Army from 1989 through 1992; while stationed in Germany, and after missing deployment to the Gulf War “by a hair”, he changed his political affiliation from Republican to Democratic. He has described the military as “perhaps the ideal society – we worked hard but the Army took care of us in return.”

After leaving the army, he attended Northern Illinois University and wrote for (and eventually managed) the Northern Star college newspaper. Moulitsas earned two bachelor degrees at Northern Illinois University (1992-1996), where he majored in Philosophy, Journalism, and Political Science. He earned a J.D. at Boston University School of Law (1996-1999).

Moulitsas founded Daily Kos in May 2002, and the site quickly rose to prominence. In its first year, Daily Kos received over one million unique visitors.

I think both Hannity and Kos, practice perfectly legitimate forms of opinion journalism in the modern media landscape (even if Hannity is a complete moron.) But it’s undeniable that Kos is obviously the more well rounded person and has the academic credentials that Hannity certainly didn’t have before he was hired at Fox News and given his own show.

Juan “the journalist” is very confused about who he is, which is natural when you sell your soul to the devil. He has his undies in a twist because as a so-called legitimate journalist he feels that an upstart like Kos shouldn’t be allowed to get a coveted perch in a major news magazine. But he whores himself out to Republican pimp Roger Ailes and appears frequently with a fair and balanced fellow who says things like this:

“You’re entitled to your opinion. I frankly don’t really care what you have to say. It has very little impact on my life.”

Poor Juan. He thinks we blogofascists are ruining everything but he is so personally compromised that he can’t see that it was all ruined a long, long time ago.

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Power Sharing

by digby

Broder:

No one who has read or studied the large literature of memoirs and biographies of the Clintons and their circle can doubt the intimacy and the mutual dependence of their political and personal partnership.

No one can reasonably expect that partnership to end should Hillary Clinton be elected president. But the country must decide whether it is comfortable with such a sharing of the power and authority of the highest office in the land.

Now call me crazy, but wasn’t there just recently a president who shared the power and authority of the highest office in the land? Give me a minute, I’m sure it will come to me …

I wrote the other day that the Village was disappearing Bush and were portraying the Clinton candidacy as a direct succession. Never have we seen it more starkly than this. The most powerful Vice President in history,a man who chose himself for the office, who has operated a presidency within a presidency, who even submitted the novel defense that his office wasn’t part of the executive branch (with the attendant implication that he didn’t answer to the president), who came into office with express purpose of enshrining the “unitary executive”, and who insisted that all decisions be routed to him before they went to the president — that guy, David Broder hasn’t had a problem with.

Bill Clinton coming in a trashing the place with his presence? Houston, we have a problem.

From the PBS Frontline documentary on Dick Cheney:

Yeah, we know from several participants that there was a meeting in the Old Executive Office Building on Martin Luther King Day weekend of 2002. Now, remember, this is just four months after the attacks on New York and Washington. And we still have things going on in Afghanistan, the war is not over there. There’s still a lot to be done, and there is a meeting, at which only one or two people attend from each agency.

It appears that it was chaired by Wayne Downing, who had been Deputy National Security Adviser for Counterterrorism; he had taken over from Dick Clarke. And it appears as well that the briefing papers had been produced by the Office of the Vice President, and this is a fairly strange thing to some of those who were there. One of them, who was a very senior official, said to me, “It really was not clear at this period who was in charge of the U.S. Government,” which is a very striking thing. …

I think it really meant that no one knew whether the national security adviser was playing her traditional role as the coordinator of all the different agencies involved in the national security process, or whether the vice president’s office had slipped into that role. Remember, there were a lot of questions about who was going to be chairing the meetings, if the vice president was going to be regularly attending principals committee meetings? And there were a lot of uncertainties as to who was really running the show.

Cheney has built up an enormous staff, much larger than any previous vice president. And he clearly has the president’s ear on foreign policy issues, at a minimum in a way that no other vice president has ever had. And so, the papers at this meeting are circulated. … They discussed just what would need to be done to go to war in, essentially, four months’ time. And obviously, in meeting like this, you don’t come to conclusions, you throw out all the problems that need to be assessed.

Well, at some point after this, [National Security Adviser] Condi Rice, who apparently didn’t know about this meeting, got wind of it. And she insisted that all the papers be destroyed, and that there would be no further meetings along these lines.

What was her reaction to not being invited to the hearing, or the meeting?

According to those who were involved, she was aghast. She was furious. And frankly, for a national security adviser not to be invited to a meeting on whether the United States was going to go to war, and what it would take to do [so], is mind-boggling.

What does it tell you, or what did it tell your source?

Well, those people who were involved in this, and many others who didn’t know about this meeting, but when told about it, said, “Yes, that’s just further evidence of the extent to which a government within a government was driving foreign policy.” That the traditional statutory process of a National Security Council that brings together the secretaries of state and defense, and all the other agencies sitting around deliberating, that that was no longer where the action was. That the meetings were happening, but they weren’t necessarily the meetings that mattered. …

Does anyone think Bill Clinton is likely to behave this way? Does anyone think Hillary Clinton needs him to act this way or would stand for it?

But we’ve had the entire Village propping up Junior for years, knowing full well that Dick Cheney was actually the president, operating in the dark, leading this country down the path to perdition, and they were just fine with it. After all, Dick is one of them.

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Moving The Ball

by digby

The media have been talking up Tom Tancredo’s new ad, asking whether it crosses the line. It is a doozy:

There are consequences to open borders beyond the 20 million aliens who have come to take our jobs. Islamic terrorists now freely roam U.S. soil, Jihadists who froth with hate here to do as they have in London, Spain, Russia. The price we pay for spineless politicians who refuse to defend our borders against those who come to kill.

It is such an extreme ad that you wouldn’t think anyone who wanted to make a serious case would create such a thing. But then, making a serious case is not Tancredo’s goal at all:

Rep. Tom Tancredo has announced that he will not seek a sixth term in Congress in 2008 but will continue his long-shot campaign for the Republican presidential nomination. His reelection to another term in Congress would have been a slam dunk, whereas he freely admits that he has virtually no chance to actually win his party’s nomination for president.

What’s going on?

The pundits and political analysts who believe Tancredo blundered in choosing an impossible goal — the presidential campaign — while forsaking a slam-dunk reelection to Congress need to follow Ayn Rand’s admonition: “examine your premises.”

Tancredo’s campaigns have never been about winning or holding onto office. Tancredo’s political life is all about “moving the ball forward,” the ball in this instance being the protection of national sovereignty and the struggle to resist and ultimately defeat radical Islamic terrorism. He believes he can do that best by leaving Congress for a larger stage.

From the beginning his presidential campaign has been about influencing the 2008 Republican nominating process and the party platform on immigration control. He knew he did not have a serious shot at winning the party’s nomination, but he could steer the party away from the Bush administration’s disastrous flirtation with amnesty. He has already achieved that goal within the Republican party and even Nancy Pelosi now runs from the amnesty lobby.

[…]

The most savvy voices in the Democratic Party are telling the Latino activist groups to “cool it” until 2009, fearing a voter backlash in 2008 if Democrats are perceived as weak on this issue.

Yes indeed. In fact, the allegedly “savviest” Democrats in the party aren’t just saying “cool it.” This is what they are saying:

A recent memo by one senior Democratic pollster, Stanley Greenberg, warned that voter discontent over immigration is salient among many potential Democratic voters — specifically among less educated voters, African Americans, and blacks and whites in rural areas who view illegal immigration as an economic issue.

[…]

Greenberg’s advice echoed arguments offered last year in a strategy memo from a moderate Democratic group, Third Way. It advised the party’s candidates to be tough and fair — but to avoid sounding overly sympathetic to illegal immigrants at the expense of average voters who believe they are paying for benefits and bearing other burdens of a broken system.

“Compassion and justice for illegal immigrants ends when taxpayer interests begin,” the group said.

This savvy advice to the savvy Democrats has led them to jettison any further attempt to get a comprehensive immigration bill and instead rush to introduce an entirely punitive “enforcement” boondoggle called the SAVE Act that throws even more police power at Homeland Security, tons of money at police agencies, both militarizes AND privatizes the border (a neat trick), empowers the IRS to share information with other agencies and creates a new federal database that contains information about every American worker.

It’s filled with all kinds of neat new requirements for all people who work for a living. If you are a person with two jobs, like a lot of people, I’m sure you’ll enjoy this:

Notification of Multiple Uses of Individual Social Security Numbers

Prior to crediting any individual with concurrent earnings from more than one employer, the Commissioner of Social Security shall notify the individual that earnings from two or more employers are being reported under the individual’s social security account number. Such notice shall include, at a minimum, the name and location of each employer and shall direct the individual to contact the Social Security Administration to submit proof that the individual is the person to whom the social security account number was issued and, if applicable, to submit, either in person or via electronic transmission, a pay stub or other documentation showing that such individual is employed by both or all employers reporting earnings to that social security account number.

Sound like fun?

The savvy Dems have decided to do this because they believe that by helping Tom Tancredo “move the ball.” They can “take the issue off the table.” It is the same tried and true Greenberg and Carville tactic that was argued in 2002 when they said to get the Iraq war resolution off the table so the Dems could discuss the issue their focus groups told them people really cared about — prescription drug coverage. This tactic has really been a big success for Democrats: five long years later, we are arguing that we need to get immigration off the table so we can get down to the issue people really care about —Iraq.

This (pdf) is a more aggressive memorandum from Greenberg and Carville describing Democratic focus groups which they say show that rural and high school educated black and white voters now blame immigrants for most of their problems. Carville and Greenberg see this in the same light as the welfare issue in the 1980’s and since Bill Clinton ended “welfare as we know it” they naturally believe that this should be handled exactly the same way in order to prove to the people who matter that the Democratic party isn’t in thrall to Hispanics.

(One of their contentions — that African Americans are very upset about illegal immigration — is seriously undercut by a brand new Pew study.)

There are a couple of other little flies in Greenberg and Carville’s ointment, however, they fail to explain. First of all, there’s this morning after report from the recent off-year election:

The one point on which moderates and conservatives seem to agree is that their party overplayed the illegal immigration issue. “They went for a magic bullet with immigration, and it didn’t work,” says a conservative strategist who doesn’t want his name used because his clients don’t agree that immigration is a losing issue. Prince William County board Chairman Corey Stewart, the strategist says, “won last year as the anti-tax and anti-growth candidate, and he ended up in the same place this year. He pushed hard on immigration, but it didn’t move his numbers” in his reelection victory Tuesday.

Why, if both the savvy Democrats and the Republicans all agree that this is a major issue, did it have these results?

And how are they planning to deal with this?

I have never seen an issue where the short-term interests of Republican presidential candidates in the primaries were more starkly at odds with the long-term interests of the party itself. At least five swing states that Bush carried in 2004 are rich in Hispanic voters — Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, Colorado and Florida. Bush won Nevada by just over 20,000 votes. A substantial shift of Hispanic voters toward the Democrats in these states could make the national political map unwinnable for Republicans.

Obviously,in light of that, there’s no rational explanation as to why the Democrats keep pimping this issue. But I think I know why the Republicans are. Check out the prominent “You Can’t Make This Up” button on the RNC web site:

Below are some of the most recently published articles pertaining to vote fraud around the country. Find your state to read about the problems in your area, or scroll down to browse the recent news nationwide. If you have a news item related to voting irregularities in your state, e-mail it here.

Before the last election I (prematurely) opined about this serendipitous convergence of issues:

If we allow the Republicans to define this next election, it will be about immigration and voter fraud.

After the blowback from the base around comprehensive immigration reform (and the loss of any hope of splitting the powerful growing Latino voting bloc) they are going back to the tried and true. Vote suppression and bogus accusation of voter fraud. They’ve been doing it for years and now that they’ve had access to the DOJ and trained a whole new generation of Monica Goodlings, I have no doubt they’ve devised some great new techniques. One excellent approach is to have a whole slew of police wearing a dozen different uniforms harassing the Latino community. Why, the SAVE Act even includes a government sponsored media campaign to tell everyone in the Latino communities all about the harsh new penalties they face.

So why in the world do Democrats believe that they’ll benefit from a new enforcement only bill so harsh that it even calls for legal family members who help an undocumented worker to get a year in jail for doing it? This isn’t like welfare reform at all. There’s no “taking it off the table.” This is an issue that hits directly at the largest and fastest growing new voting bloc in America.

The report documents how Hispanics have gone from a group trending Republican to a group overwhelmingly Democratic; one whose percentage of the American electorate has increased by 33 percent in the last 4 years; and one poised, because of the structure of the Electoral College, to determine who the next President will be in 2008.

And studies show that when you enact punitive enforcement-only measures designed to intimidate and marginalize undocumented workers, you also intimidate and marginalize legal Latino immigrants and citizens:(pdf)

The study that follows is a heavily carted recitation of recent Latino voting patterns, with the most objective analysis I can muster in an environment fraught with variables. But I will state my subjective conclusion here: Immigration policies that induce mass fear among illegal residents will induce mass anger among the legal residents who share their heritage…Ties of family, culture, and a shared media will communicate the fears of the group directly threatened – the illegals — to other Latinos who are not. The profiling inevitable with the enforcement of previously flouted immigration laws will intensify the attendant emotions. To the authorities, every Latino becomes a potential criminal. To Latinos, every interaction with the authorities becomes, or symbolizes, an existential threat.

Telling these people to suck it up, as Carville and Greenberg, in their ever more desperate quest to recover the aging “Reagan Democrat” are doing by urging Democrats to pass legislation virtually designed to suppress their vote, is nothing short of political malpractice. It is the equivalent of the Republicans telling the Christian right to stay the hell out of politics back in the 1980’s.

Big new voting blocs don’t come along every day.

Far be it for the Democratic Congress to look beyond Stan Greenberg’s suspect focus groups of the moment and insist on passing comprehensive immigration reform, which is supported by Latinos and virtually everyone else. Instead they tell Democrats to pass harsh, enforcement only legislation that will only help Republicans. If they gave more than five minutes attention to trying to figure out ways to gain new voters, like unmarried women and Latinos, instead of fighting the Republicans over every cranky white guy who left the party in 1980 and never looked back, they could actually “move the ball” down the field in their direction for a change.

Far be it for the Democratic Congress to try to build a real majority for the long term so that there is a chance of enacting a real progressive agenda. Can’t have that. Plutocrats don’t want that, which is why every single time a populist wave threatens, somebody starts waving a shiny nativist distraction in people’s faces.

Tom Tancredo’s going home, by the way. Quitting electoral politics.

”I feel my job, my task, has been completed.”

He moved the ball down the field and scored. Now he’s going to get a nice wingnut welfare sincure.

Update: Here’s a very moving letter to Rahm Emmanuel from one conservative supporter of the SAVE bill:

Congressman,

Your colleague Heath Shuler is about to present the SAVE Act on the floor of the House within a week. This bill creates a system in which every employer can identify the status of everyone of their employees,. I think we finally have some sensible legislation with a lot of potential to do some real good in ridding this country of the Cancer of illegal immigration. More than once I believe your party has played politics with this issue rather than looking to make good policy. A couple weeks ago your Senate colleagues voted against making cities like ours, sanctuary cities, illegal. All but one Democrat voting against this bill. That is frankly reprehensible.

I don’t know if the Democratic leadership is pandering to the Hispanics, trying to create a new base of current illegals, or simply bowing down to your puppetmaster, George Soros. Either way, your party has shown that it is more interested in compassion for law breakers than it is for the rule of law. I hope that will change with this bill.

This guy’s definitely going to vote for the Democrats if they pass this bill, right?

Blue America and the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rightshave some questions for Rahm Emmanuel too.

Update II: Ian Welsh had an interesting post the other day about the plutocrat angle that is very illuminating.

Update III: In response to those who accuse me of being a shill for whomever they oppose, I hereby acknowledge that Barack Obama stated that he continues to support giving drivers licenses to undocumented workers even as Elliot Spitzer has changed his mind and Hillary Clinton agreed. (I hadn’t heard. Sorry.) Good for him. That’s a bold step in this environment. It would be great if all the candidates would came out against the cruel and punitive SAVE act, which presents a far worse problem for Latinos and Democrats than this symbolic driver’s license issue. (Hint: illegal immigrants don’t purposefully interact with the government, whether it’s to get welfare benefits, medicaid or drivers licenses. They’re not stupid, they’re just poor.)

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Tweety All Aflutter

by digby

Wow. Of all days to miss Hardball, it sounds like I missed a spectacular one. I received a whole bunch of emails from various readers. (I’ve set the 1am broadcast to record so I’ll catch it in the morning.)

Meanwhile, check out this post by D-Day. I’ve noticed Matthews’ recent spitting and screaming emotionally about driver’s licenses, so I guess he’s decided to give Dobbs a serious run for his money. But you really have to love this:

And then he just scratched his head and couldn’t figure out what this whole Judith Regan thing is all about and why it has anything to do with Rudy Giuliani. He just can’t figure it out and it’s all so complicated and what is Judith Regan really saying (um, it’s all in the lawsuit, bud) and this is “a media echo chamber” and clearly there’s no impropriety here and maybe Rupert Murdoch should “write a big check” to Regan to straighten all this out.

Here you have a juicy scandal involving possible collusion between a presidential candidate and a rival network, and old Chris just can’t wrap his mind around it. He even suggests that maybe Murdoch should pay Regan off to make it go away. Neither professional rivalry or direct competition (certainly not journalistic integrity) can override Chris Matthews’ loyalty to the Village. (Of course it’s entirely possible that GE/NBC has a similar arrangement with the Giuliani campaign, judging by the coverage.)

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Freedom and Consent

by digby

From Dorothy in the comments to a previous post:

I have noticed that “right wingers” have a lot of problems with the idea of consent: they can’t tell the difference between Abu Graib and a “fraternity hazing” or bondage-play, between consensual sex and rape, between “torture techniques used on trainees” and “torture techniques used on prisoners”.

Does anyone know what their problem is? Has there been any research that sheds light on why they can’t wrap their brains around the idea that someone who agrees to have an appendectomy isn’t signing on to be disembowled by the next psychopath that comes along?

It’s an interesting question and there have been some studies done on the different ways the minds of lefties and righties work. I’ve written a lot about consent in the context of forced pregnancy and many other subjects and it’s obvious that the authoritarian right simply does not respect the concept.

They talk a lot about “choice” in the marketplace and how it’s the ultimate expression of personal freedom to choose your own retirement plan or whatever. But the idea of “consent”, which you would assume is the other side of that coin, is very confused in the right wing mind. It’s where the absolutist rubber meets the nuanced road and I expect the logic is just too difficult.

In the abortion debate, the only people who are (sometimes) considered worthy are those who didn’t consent to sex and are therefore, “innocent.” This also means that if a womans consent to sex she is automatically consenting to pregnancy (and admitting to being a whore who deserves to become a parent against her will.) Yet the anti-choice crowd simultaneously believes that a woman who chooses an abortion has not really given her “consent” because she doesn’t really know what she’s doing and can’t be held liable for that decision.

This last was made most obvious recently in the 2003 “partial birth” abortion bill which contained this provision:

(c)(1) The father, if married to the mother at the time she receives a partial-birth abortion procedure, and if the mother has not attained the age of 18 years at the time of the abortion, the maternal grandparents of the fetus, may in a civil action obtain appropriate relief, unless the pregnancy resulted from the plaintiff’s criminal conduct or the plaintiff consented to the abortion.

The husband or the parents could sue a doctor who performs an abortion. But the woman, who had very obviously given her consent, is completely missing from the equation.

The Deputy Director of Intelligence said the other day that if you gave any information to a web-site, you’ve consented to giving up your privacy to the government. GOP hacks are saying that if a soldier consents to be tortured as part of his training it means that it can’t possibly be considered torture in any other situation. They write out the “consent” part of the “advise and consent” clause and pretend that the Senate is only allowed to blather ineffectually for a little while before installing any crank the president puts up for his cabinet or a lifetime appointment to the courts or. (They will, of course, rediscover it when the Democrats are in power.)

It goes on and on, with the right picking and choosing when consent picking when consent means something and when it doesn’t, always subject to their arbitrary designation. Yet the idea of “consent” is one of the bedrock foundations of democracy — the consent of the governed. It’s also a social and cultural concept that underlies the idea of (adult) personal autonomy and agency. You know, freedom, which in the cramped and self-centered right wing view is defined as your inviolate freedom to use guns, discriminate, pollute, and exploit. Any other kind of freedom, not so much.

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For The Record

by digby

I wrote a post the other day discussing Tim Russert’s question at the last debate, calling out Clinton for Bill allegedly refusing to release documents from the National Archives. Bill Clinton later explained how the claim was off base and called it “breathtakingly misleading.” NBC was very arrogant, standing by Russert, and the MSNBC crew, especially Matthews, has been whining for over a week about how ridiculous it is to be critical of the Village high priest and his dim acolyte, Brian Williams’, conduct in that debate. (Apparently, it was also very important to get to the bottom of Dennis Kucinich’s position on UFOs.) [Update: Here’s Matthews on the archives story]

Turns out Russert — shocking, I know — was wrong, after all.

Here’s FactCheck.org:

Correction, Nov. 8: In our original version of this story, we found Clinton’s response regarding the Archives to be “doubly misleading.” We have since concluded that we were wrong, and have rewritten the section as you see it above.

Two days after this article was first posted, Bruce Lindsey, who is Bill Clinton’s designated representative for dealing with the National Archives, issued a statement that said, in part, “Contrary to recent reports, Bill Clinton has not asked that records related to communications with Senator Clinton be withheld.” It also said that “Currently, none of the FOIA requests [the Archives] has processed and provided for my review involve Senator Clinton. On the same day, the former president responded to a reporter’s question about the issue. Hillary Clinton “was incidental to the letter, it was done five years ago, it was a letter to speed up presidential releases, not to slow them down,” Bill Clinton said at a stop in Redmond, WA.

These statements prompted us to dive back into Bill Clinton’s 2002 letter to the Archives and similar letters from his two immediate predecessors, and to talk to some more experts in this small crevice of the law. We realized that the area of confusion for us – and perhaps for other journalists – was the wording of this sentence: “[I]nformation should generally be considered for withholding only if it contains…..” The section goes on to list eight categories, one of which involves his communications with his wife as well as with his family and his wife’s.

We originally read the sentence as putting a lock on the documents. That isn’t the case, as we note in our revised section in the body of the article above. The bottleneck is at the lightly staffed Archives. It of course remains possible that Bill Clinton could yet block the release of any or all communications between himself and the First Lady, but that hasn’t happened yet. It remains to be seen whether any of this material will surface before the election.

But Russert was wrong, and so were we. Bill Clinton, in Redmond, called Russert’s question “breathtakingly misleading,” and we now agree. Russert did not respond to requests for comment.

Why not?

In any case, one of the points I made in my earlier post was that no other presidential candidates who were running as successors to a former president (as all Vice Presidents are) or worked in the White House or had a close relationship with a former president were asked to release their personal correspondence or records during the election. Not Bush Jr, Gore, Poppy, Mondale or any of those who came before.

And this question was especially rich considering that in 2001 Junior had issued an executive order pretty much sealing all presidential records unless a researcher or historian could show a “need” for the documents and the president in question felt like releasing it — an executive order that was deemed unlawful, by the way as an “impermissible exercise of the executive power” nearly a month before Russert asked his question.

I realize that just because Bush does it, it doesn’t make it right for others, and if Clinton had done something similar it would have been equally wrong. But Russert has never, to my knowledge, been remotely interested in this topic when it concerned the royal blue blooded Bush Dynasty. Indeed, he and the rest of the Village behaved as if they’d witnessed a rightful Restoration when Bush seized office. (Ex-Republican Kevin Phillips even wrote a book about it called American Dynasty : Aristocracy, Fortune, and the Politics of Deceit in the House of Bush — not that anyone in the media gave a damn.)

Russert needs to issue a correction and an apology. It wasn’t the only reason Clinton faltered in that debate to be sure — her evasive answer on the driver’s licenses was more damaging. But this misleading question of Russert’s is a good example of these smug journalists behavior toward all Democratic front runners and eventual nominees. This innuendo, likely fed to them by GOP oppo researchers, gets out into the ether and becomes part of the CW even though it is later proved untrue.

This is not about Hillary. All you have to do is read The Daily Howler’s archives to see that the press ran the same game on Gore, to an almost comic degree, and we all watched them help the Republicans turn John Kerry into a “phony soldier.” They’ll do it to Obama, to Edwards or any of the rest — they’ve already laid the groundwork on all of them. This is nothing personal. The Clinton Rules apply to any Democrat. It’s just the way the Village does business.

BTW: If you want to see the definition of chutzpah check this out:

Grover Norquist, one of America’s most influential Republican activists, aims to turn the question of dynasty into a campaign issue.

“It will be ridiculous to have Mr President and Madam President in the White House,” he said. “We’re the United States of America. How can we say to President Mubarak [of Egypt], ‘You can’t hand off the presidency to your son, it’s got to be your wife’ or, ‘Hey Syria and North Korea, you’ve got to knock this stuff off and be like us’.”

Norquist has commissioned lawyers to draw up a constitutional amendment that would ban family members from succeeding one another to elected and appointed office. If passed, it would not apply to the Clintons as a Bush was elected in between them. But Norquist believes that it will alert voters to the perils of dynasty. “Americans don’t like to go back,” he said.

Here’s a nice chart about the Bush dynasty from uggabugga:

Now that’s a Dynasty. Since the Bush’s have worn themselves out for three straight generations plundering the treasury for themselves and their aristocratic brethren, it’s time to outlaw dynasties lest the riff-raff gets the idea that just anyone can have one.

Update: A reader emailed this. You can’t help but be suspicious about where Russert got that misleading question.

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WTF?

by digby

NARAL has endorsed Al Wynn, one of the worst Bush Dogs in the congress, a total corporate sell-out to the highest bidder, in a primary in which we have a true blue female pro-choice candidate who would go to the mat for reproductive freedom and every other progressive cause. If they couldn’t support the real progressive, why in the hell didn’t they just lay out?

Jane at FDL:

I find this inexplicable and inexcusable. Is there any reason for NARAL to jump into a race to the detriment of a total pro-choice woman? What Nancy Keenan has done to women and to choice in this country is a horror show.

Yet another thing that has to be cleaned up — the foolish, moribund, liberal interest groups of the Village that refuse to enter the 21st century. It’s exhausting.

Tone

by digby

I was over at FDL and a commenter linked to this interesting DKos diary by Barack Obama from 2005 called Tone, Truth and the Democratic Party.

I read with interest your recent discussion regarding my comments on the floor during the debate on John Roberts’ nomination. I don’t get a chance to follow blog traffic as regularly as I would like, and rarely get the time to participate in the discussions. I thought this might be a good opportunity to offer some thoughts about not only judicial confirmations, but how to bring about meaningful change in this country.

Maybe some of you believe I could have made my general point more artfully, but it’s precisely because many of these groups are friends and supporters that I felt it necessary to speak my mind.

There is one way, over the long haul, to guarantee the appointment of judges that are sensitive to issues of social justice, and that is to win the right to appoint them by recapturing the presidency and the Senate. And I don’t believe we get there by vilifying good allies, with a lifetime record of battling for progressive causes, over one vote or position. I am convinced that, our mutual frustrations and strongly-held beliefs notwithstanding, the strategy driving much of Democratic advocacy, and the tone of much of our rhetoric, is an impediment to creating a workable progressive majority in this country.

According to the storyline that drives many advocacy groups and Democratic activists – a storyline often reflected in comments on this blog – we are up against a sharply partisan, radically conservative, take-no-prisoners Republican party. They have beaten us twice by energizing their base with red meat rhetoric and single-minded devotion and discipline to their agenda. In order to beat them, it is necessary for Democrats to get some backbone, give as good as they get, brook no compromise, drive out Democrats who are interested in “appeasing” the right wing, and enforce a more clearly progressive agenda. The country, finally knowing what we stand for and seeing a sharp contrast, will rally to our side and thereby usher in a new progressive era.

I think this perspective misreads the American people. From traveling throughout Illinois and more recently around the country, I can tell you that Americans are suspicious of labels and suspicious of jargon. They don’t think George Bush is mean-spirited or prejudiced, but have become aware that his administration is irresponsible and often incompetent. They don’t think that corporations are inherently evil (a lot of them work in corporations), but they recognize that big business, unchecked, can fix the game to the detriment of working people and small entrepreneurs. They don’t think America is an imperialist brute, but are angry that the case to invade Iraq was exaggerated, are worried that we have unnecessarily alienated existing and potential allies around the world, and are ashamed by events like those at Abu Ghraib which violate our ideals as a country.

It’s this non-ideological lens through which much of the country viewed Judge Roberts’ confirmation hearings. A majority of folks, including a number of Democrats and Independents, don’t think that John Roberts is an ideologue bent on overturning every vestige of civil rights and civil liberties protections in our possession. Instead, they have good reason to believe he is a conservative judge who is (like it or not) within the mainstream of American jurisprudence, a judge appointed by a conservative president who could have done much worse (and probably, I fear, may do worse with the next nominee). While they hope Roberts doesn’t swing the court too sharply to the right, a majority of Americans think that the President should probably get the benefit of the doubt on a clearly qualified nominee.

A plausible argument can be made that too much is at stake here and now, in terms of privacy issues, civil rights, and civil liberties, to give John Roberts the benefit of the doubt. That certainly was the operating assumption of the advocacy groups involved in the nomination battle.

I shared enough of these concerns that I voted against Roberts on the floor this morning. But short of mounting an all-out filibuster — a quixotic fight I would not have supported; a fight I believe Democrats would have lost both in the Senate and in the court of public opinion; a fight that would have been difficult for Democratic senators defending seats in states like North Dakota and Nebraska that are essential for Democrats to hold if we hope to recapture the majority; and a fight that would have effectively signaled an unwillingness on the part of Democrats to confirm any Bush nominee, an unwillingness which I believe would have set a dangerous precedent for future administrations — blocking Roberts was not a realistic option.

In such circumstances, attacks on Pat Leahy, Russ Feingold and the other Democrats who, after careful consideration, voted for Roberts make no sense. Russ Feingold, the only Democrat to vote not only against war in Iraq but also against the Patriot Act, doesn’t become complicit in the erosion of civil liberties simply because he chooses to abide by a deeply held and legitimate view that a President, having won a popular election, is entitled to some benefit of the doubt when it comes to judicial appointments. Like it or not, that view has pretty strong support in the Constitution’s design.

The same principle holds with respect to issues other than judicial nominations. My colleague from Illinois, Dick Durbin, spoke out forcefully – and voted against – the Iraqi invasion. He isn’t somehow transformed into a “war supporter” – as I’ve heard some anti-war activists suggest – just because he hasn’t called for an immediate withdrawal of American troops. He may be simply trying to figure out, as I am, how to ensure that U.S. troop withdrawals occur in such a way that we avoid all-out Iraqi civil war, chaos in the Middle East, and much more costly and deadly interventions down the road. A pro-choice Democrat doesn’t become anti-choice because he or she isn’t absolutely convinced that a twelve-year-old girl should be able to get an operation without a parent being notified. A pro-civil rights Democrat doesn’t become complicit in an anti-civil rights agenda because he or she questions the efficacy of certain affirmative action programs. And a pro-union Democrat doesn’t become anti-union if he or she makes a determination that on balance, CAFTA will help American workers more than it will harm them.

Or to make the point differently: How can we ask Republican senators to resist pressure from their right wing and vote against flawed appointees like John Bolton, if we engage in similar rhetoric against Democrats who dissent from our own party line? How can we expect Republican moderates who are concerned about the nation’s fiscal meltdown to ignore Grover Norquist’s threats if we make similar threats to those who buck our party orthodoxy?

I am not drawing a facile equivalence here between progressive advocacy groups and right-wing advocacy groups. The consequences of their ideas are vastly different. Fighting on behalf of the poor and the vulnerable is not the same as fighting for homophobia and Halliburton. But to the degree that we brook no dissent within the Democratic Party, and demand fealty to the one, “true” progressive vision for the country, we risk the very thoughtfulness and openness to new ideas that are required to move this country forward. When we lash out at those who share our fundamental values because they have not met the criteria of every single item on our progressive “checklist,” then we are essentially preventing them from thinking in new ways about problems. We are tying them up in a straightjacket and forcing them into a conversation only with the converted.

Beyond that, by applying such tests, we are hamstringing our ability to build a majority. We won’t be able to transform the country with such a polarized electorate. Because the truth of the matter is this: Most of the issues this country faces are hard. They require tough choices, and they require sacrifice. The Bush Administration and the Republican Congress may have made the problems worse, but they won’t go away after President Bush is gone. Unless we are open to new ideas, and not just new packaging, we won’t change enough hearts and minds to initiate a serious energy or fiscal policy that calls for serious sacrifice. We won’t have the popular support to craft a foreign policy that meets the challenges of globalization or terrorism while avoiding isolationism and protecting civil liberties. We certainly won’t have a mandate to overhaul a health care policy that overcomes all the entrenched interests that are the legacy of a jerry-rigged health care system. And we won’t have the broad political support, or the effective strategies, required to lift large numbers of our fellow citizens out of numbing poverty.

The bottom line is that our job is harder than the conservatives’ job. After all, it’s easy to articulate a belligerent foreign policy based solely on unilateral military action, a policy that sounds tough and acts dumb; it’s harder to craft a foreign policy that’s tough and smart. It’s easy to dismantle government safety nets; it’s harder to transform those safety nets so that they work for people and can be paid for. It’s easy to embrace a theological absolutism; it’s harder to find the right balance between the legitimate role of faith in our lives and the demands of our civic religion. But that’s our job. And I firmly believe that whenever we exaggerate or demonize, or oversimplify or overstate our case, we lose. Whenever we dumb down the political debate, we lose. A polarized electorate that is turned off of politics, and easily dismisses both parties because of the nasty, dishonest tone of the debate, works perfectly well for those who seek to chip away at the very idea of government because, in the end, a cynical electorate is a selfish electorate.

Let me be clear: I am not arguing that the Democrats should trim their sails and be more “centrist.” In fact, I think the whole “centrist” versus “liberal” labels that continue to characterize the debate within the Democratic Party misses the mark. Too often, the “centrist” label seems to mean compromise for compromise sake, whereas on issues like health care, energy, education and tackling poverty, I don’t think Democrats have been bold enough. But I do think that being bold involves more than just putting more money into existing programs and will instead require us to admit that some existing programs and policies don’t work very well. And further, it will require us to innovate and experiment with whatever ideas hold promise (including market- or faith-based ideas that originate from Republicans).

Our goal should be to stick to our guns on those core values that make this country great, show a spirit of flexibility and sustained attention that can achieve those goals, and try to create the sort of serious, adult, consensus around our problems that can admit Democrats, Republicans and Independents of good will. This is more than just a matter of “framing,” although clarity of language, thought, and heart are required. It’s a matter of actually having faith in the American people’s ability to hear a real and authentic debate about the issues that matter.

Finally, I am not arguing that we “unilaterally disarm” in the face of Republican attacks, or bite our tongue when this Administration screws up. Whenever they are wrong, inept, or dishonest, we should say so clearly and repeatedly; and whenever they gear up their attack machine, we should respond quickly and forcefully. I am suggesting that the tone we take matters, and that truth, as best we know it, be the hallmark of our response.

My dear friend Paul Simon used to consistently win the votes of much more conservative voters in Southern Illinois because he had mastered the art of “disagreeing without being disagreeable,” and they trusted him to tell the truth. Similarly, one of Paul Wellstone’s greatest strengths was his ability to deliver a scathing rebuke of the Republicans without ever losing his sense of humor and affability. In fact, I would argue that the most powerful voices of change in the country, from Lincoln to King, have been those who can speak with the utmost conviction about the great issues of the day without ever belittling those who opposed them, and without denying the limits of their own perspectives.

In that spirit, let me end by saying I don’t pretend to have all the answers to the challenges we face, and I look forward to periodic conversations with all of you in the months and years to come. I trust that you will continue to let me and other Democrats know when you believe we are screwing up. And I, in turn, will always try and show you the respect and candor one owes his friends and allies.

What do you think?

Update: From No More Mr Nice Blog, Here’s Joe Biden, who apparently doesn’t like liberals much at all:

Sen. Joe Biden said in an interview at the New Hampshire Union Leader this afternoon that too many Democrats, including the frontrunners for the presidential nomination, do not have faith in the American people.

“We’ve got to trust the American people more,” Biden said.

“I think they’ve really lost faith in the American people in terms of leveling with them,” he said of his leading rivals.

When he asks groups of Democrats if they think the American people are stupid because they elected George W. Bush twice, most respond that, yes, they do, he said. He said he thinks that attitude is a real problem for the Democrats, who fail to understand how smart and pragmatic the American people really are.

Biden was generally critical of the far left wing of his party and of the strategies the frontrunners are using to win the nomination.

Asked if he thinks, as he suggested recently in another interview, that the other candidates tend to think the American people are stupid or easily fooled, he said, “Well, I do.”

“It’s not even so much they don’t trust, which is a piece of it,” he said. It’s that they think that “the way to win is the Bill Clinton triangulation and the Karl Rove angering.”

“It’s the thesis that you go to your base because people don’t vote. Well, why don’t they vote?” he asked. He said he thinks people don’t vote because they’re tired of the way politicians treat them.

He said Democrats would do better if they stopped dividing the electorate by playing to their base and instead brought people together. He criticized the left wing of his party for demonizing the rich and Republicans.

“Rich folks are as patriotic as poor folks, but we don’t talk that way,” he said.

Wow.

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The Definition of Delusion

William Kristol on making Lieberman the Republican vice presidential nominee:

It’s true, given the behavior of the congressional Democrats, the GOP nominee might well win with a more conventional running mate. But why settle for a victory if you can have a realignment?

Right. Joe Lieberman will finally bring about that realignment the Republicans have been anxiously awaiting for the last four decades. They don’t even know that it already came and went. The problem was that nobody much cared for the results.

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Having Your Cake

by digby

…and eating it, while talking out of both sides of your mouth.

I would look for this to be the new paradigm for dealing with independent expenditure groups on the Republican side: decry the ads but claim you can’t do anything about them because of the campaign finance laws. They did it clumsily in 2004 with the swift boaters, but they tend to learn from their mistakes.

In this case McCain is saying that he is against them because he’s a believer in the campaign finance laws he helped write. And he’s getting lots of praise for it from the gullible press who say he’s a straight shooting son-of-gun who might be hurting his (low on cash) campaign by disavowing these hagiographic ads — which the independent expenditure group (headed by his former staffer) are defiantly vowing to keep on the air. How convenient.

There are going to be a lot of these ads on both sides this time. It’s a natural outgrowth of the campaign finance laws. But, unlike this one, which apparently shows McCain as some sort of super-hero there are going to be a lot of wild cards that will potentially shape the race in ways the campaigns don’t expect and can’t adequately prepare for. (I would expect the Republicans to do a lot of this sort of thing, however — they tend to get away with obvious lies, obfuscations and distortions that others can’t. We’ll call it the “cake” tactic.)

With the blogs and YouTube and now this new world of big money independent ads, campaigns are much less controllable than they once were, even with the Village elders controlling the news narratives. They are going to have to be nimble and flexible to roll with these random factors. (A good quality for a leader in tough times as well.) It will be very interesting to see who among the candidates handles these outside factors well.

*I can say that the one politician I’ve ever observed who had those qualities in spades was Bill Clinton. Hillary, on the other hand, seems to be much more methodical and orderly in her approach. Those might be good qualities for day to day governance — there’s an awful mess to clean up and it’s going to take disciplined prioritizing. But campaigning and fighting the political game against the Republicans effectively is a whole other kettle of fish, requiring good reflexes and dexterity. Bill Clinton was energized by all that change and stress. It remains to be seen if Hillary Clinton is.

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