Month: February 2010

Reconciliation Twist

by digby

Ben Dimiero at Media Matters has helpfully assembled all the instances of shrieking Republican hypocrisy on the issue of “reconciliation” and the “nuclear option.” Twisting Democrats into pretzels trying to explain why GOP nonsensical gibberish doesn’t make sense is exactly the kind of politics at which they excel.

I heard a few Dems on TV sounding like they were reciting mathematical formulas when they should have been repeating “up or down vote” and “the country wants this congress to get things done.” They don’t seem to get that the difficult thing for people to understand is the crazy filibuster and arcane terms like “cloture”, not the 51 vote majority requirement. That’s standard 8th grade civics.

They should just say that they will pass the bill with a majority and leave it at that. Nobody gives a damn about “reconciliation” except political junkies and Chris Matthews, who doesn’t know what he’s talking about either. Let the Republicans howl about it all they want — they look like losers who are whining about majority rule. Fine. That’s something people can understand. They are losers who are whining about majority rule.

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Village Buzz

by digby

Oh my. Somebody finally noticed that the Queen bee was using the pages of the Washington Post to wash out her dirty family linen.

A newsroom source at the Washington Post has just confirmed that the very survival of Sally Quinn’s dreadful column, “The Party,” has been the topic of several high-level discussions at the paper this week. The talks follow a column penned by Quinn last Friday, in which she laid out all the reasons for a wedding-scheduling snafu in her family. The column was a response to some negative stories written about how the date of the wedding of Quinn’s son, Bradlee Quinn Quinn Bradlee, coincided with that of Quinn’s husband’s granddaughter. A decision on the fate of the column has reportedly escalated all the way to Executive Editor Marcus Brauchli.

It wasn’t any more embarrassing than the rest of her noxious, insider drivel, but it was somewhat peculiar in that she assumed that her little family drama was actually worthy of discussion in a major newspaper. (She should have put up a Facebook page like all the bigshot presidential aspirants do.)

The question is, will anyone at the paper have the nerve to finally put this All The Camelot’s Men hanger-on out to pasture?

Update: Speaking of Facebook, there are already those out there trying to save Quinn’s job, although not for reasons of which she would approve …

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Skin

by digby

There seems to be some puzzlement as to why liberals are skittish about the deficit commission. There’s actually a very, very good reason for that and it goes back to the very beginning of the administration, before the deficit fetishists had even had the chance to work the country into a state of frothing hysteria:

I asked the president-elect, “At the end of the day, are you really talking about over the course of your campaign some kind of grand bargain? That you have tax reform, healthcare reform, entitlement reform including Social Security and Medicare, where everybody in the country is going to have to sacrifice something, accept change for the greater good?”

“Yes,” Obama said.

“And when will that get done?” I asked.

“Well, right now, I’m focused on a pretty heavy lift, which is making sure we get that reinvestment and recovery package in place. But what you described is exactly what we’re going to have to do. What we have to do is to take a look at our structural deficit, how are we paying for government? What are we getting for it? And how do we make the system more efficient?”

“And eventually sacrifice from everyone?” I asked.

“Everybody’s going to have give. Everybody’s going to have to have some skin the game,” Obama said.

The problem, of course, is that the best case has millionaires “sacrificing” being able to buy a bigger airplane while the average retiree has to sacrifice eating protein. This “game” we’ve all got our skin in has some much more serious consequences for some of us than others: since certain of the wealthy players just crashed the financial system a whole lot of soon-to-be seniors lost their nest eggs in both the real estate and stock markets (and are being priced out of the health care market just when they need the coverage the most.) If there’s a worse time to require these particular people to sacrifice more I don’t know what it is.

It’s also true that often the people for whom “sacrifice” is nothing more than a minor inconvenience are prone to lecture those for whom is is quite painful. It’s irritating.

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Friendly Reminder

by digby

The Virtual March is happening today. If you haven’t done it, go here to see how to participate. It’s the only way that ordinary people are going to be part of this health care summit tomorrow.

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Spoiled Children

by digby

I have no idea if this is the correct interpretation of the numbers, but if it is, it’s clear that most of the American people understand that Republicans are behaving like spoiled two year old terrors having a tantrum but they think the best thing to do is for the Democrats to give in to their demands because they are the grown-ups and it’s up to them to keep the peace. It says a lot about the national character:

Even though more people think Republicans are not doing enough to reach bipartisan consensus, 54 percent believe the Democratic party should take the first step toward developing bipartisan solutions to the country’s problems, the survey says. Forty-two percent say the GOP should take that first step.

Just over half of those questioned say the Democrats should give up more ground to achieve bipartisanship, while 43 percent want to see the GOP make more compromises.

“Americans feel the ball is in the Democrats’ court,” Holland added. “They may not be held responsible for the problem, but since they are in charge of the government, Americans appear to think they are responsible for the solution.”

No word on whether or not enabling monsters normally results in good governance but common sense argues against it.

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The Producers

by digby

… and I only wish I were talking about Mel Brooks’ (original) cinematic masterpiece.

FYI:

Calls to rally the virtuous “producing classes” against evil “parasites” at both the top and bottom of society is a tendency called producerism. It is a conspiracist narrative used by repressive right wing populism. Today we see examples of it in some sectors of the Christian Right, in the Patriot movements and armed militias, and in the Far right. (see chart of US right). Producerism is involved in the relationship between Buchanan, Fulani, Perot, and the Reform Party.

Producerism begins in the US with the Jacksonians, who wove together intra-elite factionalism and lower-class Whites’ double-edged resentments. Producerism became a staple of repressive populist ideology. Producerism sought to rally the middle strata together with certain sections of the elite. Specifically, it championed the so-called producing classes (including White farmers, laborers, artisans, slaveowning planters, and “productive” capitalists) against “unproductive” bankers, speculators, and monopolists above—and people of color below. After the Jacksonian era, producerism was a central tenet of the anti-Chinese crusade in the late nineteenth century. In the 1920s industrial philosophy of Henry Ford, and Father Coughlin’s fascist doctrine in the 1930s, producerism fused with antisemitic attacks against “parasitic” Jews.

Perhaps this explains it best:

(click on image)

Why do I bring this up? Well:

Today The Hill is reporting that Repbulican Senators are using immigration wedge politics to try to poke holes in the new jobs legislation moving forward in Congress:

The GOP expressed worries that the $15 billion jobs package crafted by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), does not go far enough to ensure that businesses don’t use new-jobs tax credits in the bill to write off jobs given to illegal immigrants.

Sound familiar? It should. Restrictionist members of the GOP have been playing the ‘immigrant’ card on nearly every major piece of legislation that’s come before Congress this session. They started off playing politics with sick kids, but now they are holding jobs for unemployed Americans hostage in order to score cheap political points on the backs of America’s most vulnerable workers and families. A familiar bloc of Republican Senators (PDF) are protesting the Senate jobs bill over supposed fears that the bill’s tax credits for employers would be used to employ unauthorized immigrants. The reality, according to The Hill, is that the very language in this current jobs bill is the same as language first introduced by Republican Senator Orrin Hatch from Utah in tax rebate legislation. In short, it is already against the law to hire unauthorized workers. Reality, however, is rarely the issue with this debate. The thinly-veiled excuse to oppose legislation based on the “illegal immigration” boogeyman is a worn-out strategy used again and again by some GOP lawmakers, who draw on research by extreme groups like the Federation for American Immigration Reform, (FAIR), a recognized hate group, to make their points. These groups have urged their Republican allies to play the “immigrant” card in the stimulus bill, SCHIP, healthcare, the financial crisis, the flu pandemic, and even global warming.

The Real Americans we see at these tea party rallies are often portrayed as slightly misguided common folk who have it right in their gut. And when they rail about bailouts and government it all sounds somewhat rational, at least on the surface. Sure, there are some rather unseemly images among them, particularly those pertaining to the president, but politics ain’t beanbag and demeaning pictures of politicians are as old as the hills, even if these have a peculiarly, shall we say old-fashioned tenor.

But the ACORN set-up was a little preview of what I suspect is coming. And immigration is the issue that’s likely to clear up any confusion about just what kind of “populists” these tea party patriots really are. And it will be yet another headache for the GOP establishment, who know that they need to get somebody other than white, middle aged conservatives to vote for them.

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Sacrifice

by digby

Uhm, I hate to bring this up because nobody wants to hear about it, but this remains a problem:

Rep. Bart Stupak (D-MI) issued a statement today on the White House’s health care reform proposal: I was pleased to see that President Obama’s health care proposal did not include several of the sweetheart deals provided to select states in the Senate bill. Unfortunately, the President’s proposal encompasses the Senate language allowing public funding of abortion. The Senate language is a significant departure from current law and is unacceptable. While the President has laid out a health care proposal that brings us closer to resolving our differences, there is still work to be done before Congress can pass comprehensive health care reform.

Stupak is lying, of course. The egregious Nelson Amendment, like the egregious Stupak amendment changes the current law to the extent that it extends the tentacles of the egregious Hyde Amendment into the private sector. Nelson just does it slightly less egregiously than Stupak.

Nobody knows for sure how many votes he has in his pocket, but with the vote as tight as it is, it’s likely that he has enough. Either everyone is putting their fingers in their ears and singing “lalalalalala” or they are preparing to give Stupak what he wants.

The egregious Nelson amendment isn’t good enough for the forced pregnancy crusaders. They are determined to force women down on their knees and make them give up even more of their ability to exercise their constitutional rights to secure this comprehensive health care reform. That’s going to be the deal.

But, as I have written befor, some permutation of this is always the deal:

Universal health care is something any decent, wealthy society shouldn’t even have to think twice about. It’s a global embarrassment that the United States, the chest thumping superpower, is even having this debate at this late date. It’s equally embarrassing that we have put together a Frankenstein of a system because our democratic government is in league with wealthy interests which are exploiting its people. It’s hard to believe that anyone would call that system liberal, much less socialist, but as you can see every day on Fox news, it’s set off a tantrum among a vocal minority that would hardly be less hysterical if aliens from a foreign planet landed in Washington. (And that hysteria is also a tool of the permanent establishment, funded by big money, and used as a way of keeping the debate focused on the right, even if it’s taking on an absurdist quality.)

Any legislation such as health care reform must therefore be tempered by a liberal sacrifice, something real, a principle that will make them hate themselves and loathe each other for having done it. It cannot be a clean victory, lest they come to believe they can do more. In the end, the “moral” must always be that you cannot go too far left.

The Stupak amendment was designed to do just that, a power move easily predicted by anyone who has watched the way policy victories are managed over the last couple of decades. The one consistent characteristic is that they are never unambiguously positive for the left. The arguments are always self-servingly pragmatic — “blue dogs have to vote their district” — but the real purpose is to drive home the absolute certainty that liberals are never really in charge. That is why there is never any desire among the ruling elite to sell the idea that liberalism itself — its philosophy, its values, its ideology — is something positive with which a majority of people, including Blue Dogs, can identify.

If the public ever came to believe that, who knows what might happen?

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Stop Your Sobbing

by digby

Harry Reid takes the Republicans to school on the Senate history of using reconciliation:

And I’m still waiting for Chris Matthews to apologize to Alan Grayson for this disgraceful interview:

Grayson: Why do you think they can’t use reconciliation?

Matthews: Because you talk to any one of these Senators. Have you talked to any of them lately? And what do you think they’ll tell you?

Grayson: What do you think, I’m their confessor?

Matthews: Have you ever called up a Democratic Senator and said why don’t you do this by reconciliation?

Grayson: What makes you think they’re not going to do it? What do you know that I don’t know?

Matthews: Because they refuse to do it because they cannot get past the filibuster rule. The United States Senate is different from the House.You’re allowed to talk as long as you want in the Senate. Unless you get cloture.

Grayson: Reconciliation is 51 votes not 60 votes.

Matthews: You can’t create a program through reconciliation! Congressman just name me the program that’s ever been created through reconciliation!

Grayson: Tax cuts for the rich!

Matthews: That’s not a program. Under reconciliation you’re allowed to do two things. Change fiscal numbers, raise taxes or cut spending.

Grayson: You’re saying that. You don’t know that. Nobody else thinks that.

Matthews: I just spent three years in the Senate budget committee when I was a kid and you can’t do it. By the way, have you asked any Senator this question? This plan you have?

Grayson: I’m in the other place, I’m in the House.

Matthews: I know, that’s why you’re not in the senate

Grayson: Oh that’s why I’m not in the Senate…

Matthews: This is netroots talk. This is outsider talk and you’re an elected official and you know you can’t do it. You are pandering to the netroots right now. I know what you’re doing.

Grayson: You are wrong. This is something we talk about with our leadership in our caucus meetings every week! …

Matthews: …I know what I’m talking about and you ask anybody in the Senate right now. Go call the Senate legislative counsel’s office and ask him if you can do this. Go ask the parliamentarian is you can do this. You haven’t bothered to do that.

That was only a month ago. Now that it’s clear that the Democrats are going the reconciliation route, Matthews is pretending that he never made an ass of himself for months claiming that reconciliation was some kind of netroots wet dream. He should be called on this.

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Who Needs Enthusiasm Anyway?

by digby

I had been sort of hoping that the Democrats were going to surprise me by recognizing that if they wanted to win this mid-term they would need to wage a battle of the bases and therefore had decided to actually push through a public option. (This was as opposed to putting the public option on the table knowing it would be defeated and haughtily demand again that we praise them for their efforts.)

Unfortunately, it appears that the White House, at least, doesn’t believe they need to motivate their base by passing a good policy it really wants in order to win:

Speaking at the daily briefing, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs was asked again why the administration did not include the government-run insurance option in its final health care proposal in light of the fact that 23 Democratic senators signed a letter calling for its passage.

“We have seen obviously that though there are some that are supportive of this, there isn’t enough political support in a majority to get this through,” Gibbs responded. “The president… took the Senate bill as the base and looks forward to discussing consensus ideas on Thursday.”

So what in the hell are all these Senators doing saying they will vote for a public option? I suppose they know something the president doesn’t know — or that they are trying to pressure the president into doing something he doesn’t want to do. (And, who knows? It might even work.)But judging by their past behavior, I’d have to guess that they are simply hoping to take credit for voting for something popular in their states ;with the full knowledge that it isn’t going to pass, which is deeply cynical — and stupid. You can’t get away with that crap when you have 58 Senators with “D” after their names. In fact, it makes them look even weaker than they already look which is saying something.

Putting a public option through reconciliation would electrify the Democrats in this country. It would revive their hopes for Obama and go a long way toward easing this feeling of hopelessness and despair that anything can get done. The fall election ` But if they believe that the liberal base will enthusiastically turn out no matter how many times they raise their hopes and then disappoint them (particularly if it is cynically designed as a triangulation strategy to make the White House look more “centrist and moderate”) then I guess this makes sense.

It sounds like a Loser Mentality to me, but what do I know?

*The Senate could do it anyway, of course. Obama would have to sign it. But I’m guessing that’s a long shot.

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Independent Wingnuts

by digby

I think it’s pretty clear that the “soccermom-nascardad” of this cycle is the “independent,” the segment of the electorate which the Villagers deem to represent the real American who is, as always, imbued with all the attributes and concerns that are deemed to be important in the current political narrative. This designation rarely has any meaning, but simply serves as a vehicle for the gasbags to pontificate with authority about the this important voting bloc really wants, without having to actually back it up with any real analysis.

Fortunately, the “independent” vote is a real measurable bloc about which a lot of data has been gathered over the years, so this time we have some actual information to rebut their facile bloviations. Ed Kilgore does the honors:

The general consensus is that of the 30% to 40% or so of Americans who call themselves independents, no more than ten percent are independent voters in any meaningful sense of the term. And “pure independents” are also less likely to vote than partisans.

This is important for a whole lot of reasons. For one thing, the idea that “independents” are a third force in politics positioned in some moderate, bipartisan space equidistant from the two parties is entirely wrong. They are not a bloc of voters who think just like David Broder or David Brooks, spending their days pining for deficit reduction and “civility.”

More immediately, the high percentage of Tea Party activists who call themselves “independents” obscures the fact that most of them are in fact highly partisan Republicans who are close ideologically to the right wing of the GOP. Here’s how Blumenthal puts it:

Remember the 52 percent of Tea Party activists who [in a recent CNN poll] initially identify as independent? It turns out that virtually all of them lean Republican. According to CNN, 88 percent of the activists identify or lean Republican, 6 percent identify or lean Democratic and only 5 percent fall into the pure independent category.

Remember that CNN pollster Holland reported that 87 percent of the Tea Party activists would vote Republican if there were no Tea Party-endorsed third-party candidate running? That makes perfect sense for a group that is 88 percent Republican.

Why do functionally partisan, and sometimes quite ideological, people self-identify as independents in such large numbers? Some of it is just fashion: many folk conflate “independence” with “intelligence” or “thoughtfulness.” Some of it reflects short-cuts by pollsters, who often give respondents the impression that voters who have ever split a ticket should call themselves “independents.” In the case of the Tea Party activists, there is undoubtedly some mistrust of the godless moderate “GOP establishment” and its Beltway habits–mistrust that will not, however, keep them from voting uniformly for Republican candidates in any two-party contest, and which in any event may not last long given the rightwards trajectory of the party as a whole.

I would say that in the case of the tea partiers, many of them call themselves independent because they are embarrassed by George W. Bush’s reputation as a failure and want to pretend that they weren’t genuflecting to his picture for the first six years of his presidency.

And this rump Republican Party is happy to run right as quickly as possible. It’s not like anyone’s resisting. The tea partiers will vote for the veriest wingnut available and I doubt the GOP will resist this much, although it should be exciting to watch their primaries as they all race each other over the cliff.

The bigger question is whether or not average voters of every ilk will be paying enough attention to the details to see that voting for the Republicans to protest the lack of progress under Obama will usher in a bunch of radical lunatics.

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