Month: May 2008

A Conundrum

by digby

I’m curious as to what you might think about this:

While much of the Congressional political focus has been on the declining fortunes and numbers of House Republicans, House Democrats have their own problem – they are winning too many elections.

By prevailing in conservative locales where they ordinarily would not have a chance, Democrats are widening the ideological divide in their own ranks and complicating their ability to find internal consensus.

This will be an interesting challenge. In the blogosphere we’ve been in the business of trying to elect more and better Democrats, by which we mean progressive. This raises the question: is more, without the better, a good idea?

The article asserts that the Democrats need to win much more in order to have a real working majority and there may be a chance this year to do it. But it still presents an interesting conundrum. What if you end up with a bigger majority of people with (D) after their names, but most of the new ones are conservative? It’s not an unexpected outcome in a country that has, until recently, been very evenly divided.

The Republicans kept their “moderates” on a very short chain and consciously governed with as few cross over votes as possible in order to keep the other side frustrated and the caucus “pure.” They got things done for a while, and protected their president with the loyalty of feral pit bulls, but ended up destroying themselves.

On the other hand, if the Democratic “moderates,” the Blue Dogs, become the deciding factor in legislation, the change we will see will be incremental at best. Having the majority means that the most heinous right wing legislation never sees the light of day, so that’s worth it, no matter what. But it’s going to be very difficult to enact sweeping changes in policy unless these new Representatives are running explicitly on that agenda. Otherwise, they may very well vote with the Republicans, even if their president can raise lots of money for them. Money can’t guarantee that Democrats in conservative districts can win.

I’m a big believer in padding the progressive caucus, so a new group of conservative Democrats seems like a mixed bag to me(although it’s great to see Republicans reeling.) But it’s happening and it is something for which we should prepare ourselves.

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This Is My Favorite Week Ever

by dday

In the comments of the last post, Jemand von Niemand ran through some of the week’s highlights.

On May 15th, the Senate cast a near-unanimous vote to reverse the Federal Communication Commission’s December 2007 decision to let media companies own both a major TV or radio station and a major daily newspaper in the same city. (freepress.net)

On May 16th… Bush used a private visit to King Abdullah’s ranch here Friday to make a second attempt to persuade the Saudi government to increase oil production and was rebuffed yet again. (NYT)

The California Supreme Court struck down the state’s ban on same-sex marriage on May 15th … invalidat[ing] virtually any law that discriminates on the basis of sexual orientation. (LA Times)

On May 14th, about 100 House Republicans refused to vote for more war funding, voting ‘present’… Democrats were able to increase their ‘no’ vote number on funding from 141 to 149; the bill failed…

Finally the GI bill passed with overwhelming margin of 256 votes in the House, including 32 Republicans… This might actually be the most remarkable piece of the votes today; conservative Democrats agreeing to raise taxes on the wealthy to pay for educational benefits for veterans. (Matt Stoller)

On May 16th, Hans von Spakovsky, a former Justice Department official who never had Democratic support to win confirmation, withdrew his nomination on Friday. Bush “reluctantly accepted” von Spakovsky’s request, the White House said. (sfgate.com)

Hell of a week, huh, Bootsie? And there are thirty more to come.

Not even a mention of Travis Childers’ win in a Mississippi House seat that has caused Republicans to despair of a landslide loss in the fall.

Representative Tom Davis, Republican of Virginia and former leader of his party’s Congressional campaign committee, issued a dire warning that the Republican Party had been severely damaged, in no small part because of its identification with President Bush. Mr. Davis said that, unless Republican candidates changed course, they could lose 20 seats in the House and 6 in the Senate.

“They are canaries in the coal mine, warning of far greater losses in the fall, if steps are not taken to remedy the current climate,” Mr. Davis said in a memorandum. “The political atmosphere facing House Republicans this November is the worst since Watergate and is far more toxic than it was in 2006.”

And let me give you another one to add to the list. Remember that Missouri voter ID scheme that Digby wrote about earlier in the week? Turns out the State Senate refused to consider it.

In a victory for all voters, Missouri lawmakers ended this year’s legislative session without a final vote on legislation that could have prevented up to 240,000 Missourians from voting. The proposed change would have altered Missouri’s constitution, allowing for strict citizenship and government-issued photo ID requirements that would make Missouri one of the toughest states in the country for eligible, law-abiding citizens to register to vote or cast a ballot.

“I am relieved that I will be able to vote this fall,” said Lillie Lewis, a St. Louis city resident, “I’ve been voting in every election since I can remember, but if I needed my birth certificate, that would be the end of that. I hope this is the last we hear of this nonsense.” Lillie Lewis was born in Mississippi, but the state sent her a letter stating they have no record of her birth.

Birdell Owen, a Missouri resident who was displaced by hurricane Katrina, also voiced her relief. “I should be able to participate in my democracy,” she said, “even if Louisiana can’t get me a copy of my birth certificate. I’m glad Missouri politicians had the sense to protect my right to vote.”

Oh, and Series of Tubes Ted Stevens might lose his Senate seat after 50-odd years.

We’re seeing an entire political party’s collapse happen before our eyes, and in many of these cases a strong citizen-led movement, aided by leadership in the political sphere, has been decisive. There are two things at work here. One, you have a conservative movement that has been horrible for the country and created all these terrible policies which have made us less safe, less economically secure, and weakened in the eyes of the world. And you have a vibrant progressive movement that has been able to broadcast these failures widely. Consider what we’ve learned in the last month or so:

• The Defense Department embedded “military analysts” as propaganda engines inside US media with the full knowledge of the White House, mainlining the Pentagon message directly to the public with the imprimatur of independent media voices.

• The politicized show trials scheduled to crop up at Guantanamo during the fall election have been delayed because of the amount of perversions of justice employed by interrogators. The top DoD adviser to military commissions has been barred from participating in them because of evidence of bias, and one detainee had his charges dropped because torture was used (authorized by the Secretary of Defense), making the testimony inadmissable. Meanwhile the US is planning a huge new prison in Afghanistan, suggesting that indefinite detentions of masses of prisoners will continue.

• Domestic spying in the United States has spiked at a time when actual terrorism prosecutions have decreased, a massive violation of citizen privacy with no material benefit in stopping crime.

• The US government routinely injects psychotropic drugs into detainees to keep them sedated during deportation flights. , in violation of international human rights standards.

• An official at the VA told his staffers to stop diagnosing returning soldiers with PTSD, in an attempt to lower the costs of permanent disability payments. Many leaders in Washington, including Sen. Obama, are demanding an investigation.

The Republicans are wasting away because of more than just bad branding. It’s because over the last eight years they’ve taken the country we know and done something terrible to it. And despite media blackouts and whitewashes, Americans intuitively know this. The historically high wrong-track numbers have a basis in economic struggles, but I believe just as much in this loss of faith in what we’ve become as a country in the Age of Bush.

It’s going to take years to repair all of this, and the Republicans will be all too happy to sabotage those efforts as the opposition and pin the blame on their opponents. It’s what they do.

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Friday News Dump Alert

by dday

Democrats held the line and Hans von Spakovsky is out as FEC Commissioner.

President Bush’s contentious nominee for the Federal Election Commission has yanked his name from consideration, potentially ending a broader confirmation deadlock in the Senate.

Hans von Spakovsky, a former Justice Department official who never had Democratic support to win confirmation, withdrew his nomination on Friday.

Bush “reluctantly accepted” von Spakovsky’s request, the White House said.

I heard that Bush was giving up on the von Spakovsky nomination in solidarity with the troops.

Get this, Hans sez that the drawn-out nomination process has been terribly hard on his family and he doesn’t have the financial resources to wait around. Well that’s just terrible. Hopefully some think tank like Heritage or AEI in need of a known vote suppressor on staff will pick up the slack for him. Or maybe someone is needed to go around the country and agitate for crap voter ID laws to depress turnout in November. I’m sure he’ll find something.

This is kind of a big deal because it’ll break the deadlock at the FEC and get it to function again in this election year. And with McCain breaking finance laws with each passing day by continuing to spend primary money over the limit without getting out of the public system, the oversight agency ought to be in working order. (I say kind of because the FEC is a rather toothless body)

But really it’s big because of poor George and Hans, getting kicked around again. It feels good to win one every so often.

Just Words

by dday

Hey, before you go off on this, just lighten up, ‘kay? Mike Huckabee was only joking about the assassination of a leading black candidate for President in front of the NRA.

During a speech before the National Rifle Association convention Friday afternoon in Louisville, Kentucky, former Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee — who has endorsed presumptive GOP nominee John McCain — joked that an unexpected offstage noise was Democrat Barack Obama looking to avoid a gunman.

“That was Barack Obama, he just tripped off a chair, he’s getting ready to speak,” said the former Arkansas governor, to audience laughter. “Somebody aimed a gun at him and he dove for the floor.”

Why can’t you libruls take a joke? Sure, the jokes normally take the form of violence against political opponents, but it’s not their fault if you don’t know what FUNNY is!

Yuk it up, you bastards! You know you love it!

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Don’t Know Much About History

by dday

Chris Matthews’ brutal takedown of some robotic wingnut yesterday was notable simply for how easy it was. Apparently asking a conservative to define the words coming out of their mouth is a question on par with the final round of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire.

Of course, what the wingnut is referring to above is the President’s comments yesterday in Israel, trying to stick it to the Democrats by calling them Nazi-appeasers. He used the artful phrase “an American senator declared: ‘Lord, if only I could have talked to Hitler, all of this might have been avoided.’ in discussing the times in 1939, aware but unwilling to admit that he was alluding to Republican isolationist Senator William Borah of Idaho. What he appeared blissfully unaware of was the collaboration of his own grandfather, Prescott Bush, who reaped financial reward for him and his family (including his son Bush 41 and grandson Bush 43) through sitting on boards of companies who did business with the Nazis.

(By the way, this is the biggest gift George Bush could have given the Obama campaign, so much so that I almost believe it had to have been staged.)

But less remarked upon was this amazingly ignorant comment by John McCain in an interview with Matt Bai.

as we talked, I tried to draw out of him some template for knowing when military intervention made sense — an answer, essentially, to the question that has plagued policy makers confronting international crises for the last 20 years. McCain has said that the invasion of Iraq was justified, even absent the weapons of mass destruction he believed were there, because of Hussein’s affront to basic human values. Why then, I asked McCain, shouldn’t we go into Zimbabwe, where, according to that morning’s paper, allies of the despotic president, Robert Mugabe, were rounding up his political opponents and preparing to subvert the results of the country’s recent national election? How about sending soldiers into Myanmar, formerly Burma, where Aung San Suu Kyi remained under house arrest by a military junta?

“I think in the case of Zimbabwe, it’s because of our history in Africa,” McCain said thoughtfully. “Not so much the United States but the Europeans, the colonialist history in Africa. The government of South Africa has obviously not been effective, to say the least, in trying to affect the situation in Zimbabwe, and one reason is that they don’t want to be tarred with the brush of modern colonialism. So that’s a problem I think we will continue to have on the continent of Africa. If you send in Western military forces, then you risk the backlash from the people, from the legacy that was left in Africa because of the era of colonialism.”

Of course, there is no history of colonialism in the Middle East. Except for Algeria. And Jordan. And Iran. And Saudi Arabia. And Yemen. And Bahrain. And Oman. And Qatar. And The United Arab Emirates. And Iraq, whose borders were almost randomly drawn on a British map, which has led us to the instability we see today.

(McCain, by the way, was for talking to Hamas before he was against it, another example of torching the past.)

The worst thing the conservative movement has foisted on the country is a collapse of historical memory. Our civic education here is not so robust, and our civic knowledge of history is worse. This has given wide latitude for conservatives to create their own reality, and jabber away with “facts” that consist of shibboleths and catch phrases, which by now have been ripped of all meaning outside the Manichean “good” and “bad.” That’s what we saw with that shameful appearance on Hardball. That’s what we saw by the President yesterday. That’s what we saw from McCain in that interview. And that, sadly, is a part of America. The Poor Man says it best:

It’s all like this. Everything is just like this. Some blank young person who has memorized a 5″x7″ index card of focus group-approved phrases, yelling, yelling, yelling over everyone. And you can say what you want, and be as right as you want, but he’s going to keep yelling, and yelling, and yelling until you get sick of it, and at the end of the day everybody knows that Barack Obama goes to secret Muslim church. Everything is like this. An election won’t fix it. This rules the world.

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Winning By Losing

by digby

Last night I had the great pleasure of hearing Rick Perlstein read from Nixonland here in LA. There were many interesting questions and among them, naturally, were some about the current election. One, during the book signing phase, was “do you think the Democrats can possibly win?” which Perlstein deflected to me, explaining that I’ve been writing for the past year that it’s in the bag, “tell him in 25 words or less, why you think the Democrats can’t lose…” Since I go into brain freeze at times like that, I think I muttered something about seismic forces and tsumanis, so I’m sure the poor fellow thought I was confused and thinking about the natural disasters in Asia.

Upon reflection, I think the short answer is this: Because the Republicans want to lose.

It’s not that I believe the winds of change aren’t at our back. They are. And it’s not because I don’t think that the modern conservative movement is tired and played out. I do. There is a shift happening toward the liberal side of the spectrum which started with the Nader campaign, grew with the Dean campaign and has reached critical mass with the Obama campaign. The broad middle is disgusted by what Bush has wrought (he was never that popular to begin with, you’ll recall, and only became so after a terrorist attack.) They too are listening to the Democrats for the first time inmany years. There is fundamental discontent with GOP governance and the people are highly unlikely to reward them for it.

But just as important, I think the conservatives have always taken the long view of politics and they understand the value of a tactical retreat. The Bush years have weakened them considerably and they are going to take some time to count their ill gotten gains, rest up and reengage. The Republicans are all about ressentiment. They understand the value of being out of power and know how to advance their agenda from that perspective. I wrote this a while back:

The truth is that they know the Republicans are very, very likely going to lose the presidency anyway. And they are fine with it. It brings them together. Here’s old hand Richard Viguerie making his pitch for GOP to lose in 2006:

[Sometimes] a loss for the Republican Party is a gain for conservatives. Often, a little taste of liberal Democrats in power is enough to remind the voters what they don’t like about liberal Democrats and to focus the minds of Republicans on the principles that really matter. That’s why the conservative movement has grown fastest during those periods when things seemed darkest, such as during the Carter administration and the first two years of the Clinton White House.

Conservatives are, by nature, insurgents, and it’s hard to maintain an insurgency when your friends, or people you thought were your friends, are in power.

They use their time out of power to grow their movement and one of the main ways they do this is by obstructing anything positive the Democrats want to do. They are organized around the principle of being insurgents — outsiders — victims. It is not in their interest to cooperate with Democrats.

When they have damaged their reputations as badly as they have under Bush, they recognize the value of allowing the chickens to come home to roost on the Democrats’ heads and obstructing any efforts they might have to advance their own agenda.

So, I think they want to lose. That doesn’t mean they won’t do everything in their power to damage Obama and deny him a mandate. They want the Democrats to win and then fail. The first is fairly easy — the second, not so much. If President Obama is wily and tough he can outmaneuver and outsmart them. The presidency has a lot of power and with a majority can do some amazing things. But the Republicans’ sole energies will be put to making it impossible for them. They love to play defense and are good at it. As Viguerie says above — it’s their very identity.

I think the Democrats are destined to win this election for many reasons. And I believe they have a chance to set in motion a new progressive era. But I also think the Republicans are happy to let them win this one, will regroup and try to obstruct them with everything they have to tee up 2012. Then they will bring in The Man Called Petraeus to save us all.

If the Dems govern well, they won’t be able to pull it off.

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Requests And Complaints

by digby

A reader sent this to me. I thought you might find it useful:

This website helps Americans get copies of complaints filed with the Federal
Communications Commission about television programs:

http://www.TVshowComplaints.org

This website helps Americans get copies of their FBI File:

http://www.GetMyFBIfile.com

This website helps Americans get copies of their GRANDFATHER’s FBI file, or
the FBI File of any dead person:

http://www.GetGrandpasFBIfile.com

This website contains a large amount of hard-to-find government information
posted online:

http://www.GovernmentAttic.org

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Not Our Problem

by digby

I hate to interrupt the ongoing flag pin and orange juice obsessions, but this seems like a big deal to me:

Troops dug burial pits in this quake-shattered town and black smoke poured from crematorium chimneys elsewhere in central China as priorities began shifting Thursday from the hunt for survivors to dealing with the dead. Officials said the final toll could more than double to 50,000.

As the massive military-led recovery operation inched farther into regions cut off by Monday’s quake, the government sought to enlist the public’s help with an appeal for everything from hammers to cranes and, in a turnabout, began accepting foreign aid missions, the first from regional rival Japan.

This isn’t good either:

The United Nations said on Wednesday up to 2.5 million people might have been affected by the Myanmar cyclone and proposed a high-level donors conference as the Myanmar junta again limited foreign aid.

The European Union’s top aid official said the military government’s restrictions on foreign aid workers and equipment were increasing the risk of starvation and disease.

U.N. humanitarian affairs chief John Holmes told reporters between 1.6 and 2.5 million people were “severely affected” by Cyclone Nargis and urgently needed aid, up from a previous estimate of at least 1.5 million.

Thai Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej met Myanmar Prime Minister Thein Sein in Yangon and urged him to ease visa rules for relief workers. He said he was told Myanmar could “tackle the problem by themselves.”

Myanmar state television raised its official toll to 38,491 dead, 1,403 injured and 27,838 missing.

The International Federation of the Red Cross estimated on the basis of reports from 22 organizations working in Myanmar that between 68,833 and 127,990 people had died.

In a rational world the news media would be obsessing on these stories night and day. It’s human tragedy on an epic scale. Instead, well … you know.

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Unitary Flyboy

by digby

So McCain declares Mission Accomplished in Iraq — in 2013. Yea. War is over. Someday. Maybe.

Even more good news. McCain also says he’s going to be different than Bush and be more transparent and seek congressional approval. According to his faithful hound, Huckleberry Graham, he doesn’t believe in the Unitary Executive theory:

“I think Sen. McCain would be an aggressive advocate of executive power, but not to the extent that this administration has framed it,” said Graham.

Boy, that’s a relief, huh? Well, there is a tiny little wrinkle though. He does believe that the President has nearly unlimited power as Commander in Chief. Which is what the unitary executive “powers” allegedly derive from:

“The Congress can declare war, but it cannot dictate to the president how to wage war,” McCain said when Democrat Robert C. Byrd of West Virginia tried to restrict the resolution to authorize military strikes only if there was a clear threat of attack from Saddam Hussein.

So, don’t count on McSame being substantially different from his predecessor. If he feels the need to torture, spy on Americans or invade countries at will, he believes he has the constitutional right to do it. It seems he’s only promising not be as arrogant and in your face about it. So that’s good.

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Basic Civil Right

by digby

It’s a proud day to be a Californian:

California’s Supreme Court today struck down the state’s statutory ban on same-sex marriage, finding the state’s constitution “properly must be interpreted to guarantee this basic civil right to all Californians, whether gay or heterosexual, and to same-sex couples as well as to opposite-sex couples.”

In a 4-3 ruling, the majority – with a 121-page opinion authored by Chief Justice Ronald George, joined by associate justices Joyce Kennard, Kathryn Werdegar and Carlos Moreno – found the fact that California law assigns a different name for the official family relationship of same-sex couples compared with the name for the official family relationship of opposite-sex couples “raises constitutional concerns not only under the state constitutional right to marry, but also under the state constitutional equal protection clause.”

But that, unfortunately, isn’t the end of the story. Kevin Drum explains:

… the initiative to strike down their ruling has already gathered over a million signatures and is just waiting for verification from the Secretary of State before it goes on the November ballot. It’s 14 words long, identical to the wording of Prop 22 back in 2000: “Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California.” This time, however, it’s a constitutional initiative, not a statutory initiative, so if it passes it will be immune to court challenges. Prop 22 passed overwhelmingly with 63% of the vote. Has 13% of the state decided to relax since then and allow gay couples to live in peace? We’re about to find out.

This is one state where the huge youth turnout could really make a tangible difference in real people’s lives immediately. If they come out in the numbers we expect in November, I believe we will defeat this on the ballot, no matter how many reactionary wingnuts get excited about it.

It’s fitting that in an election year where we are dealing head on with all these issues of race and sex that we’re going to have a showdown on gay marriage in the most populous state in the union. The chances have never been greater to defeat the forces of bigotry and discrimination. It’s a risk, but there will probably never be a better time to take it. Bring it on.

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