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Month: July 2011

And how did you like the kabuki dance, Mr Lincoln?”

And how did you like the kabuki dance, Mr Lincoln?


by digby

Reading this piece by John Judis about President Obama’s misreading of Lincoln’s “compromises” reminded me of a (far less elegant) post of mine from some years back on the subject of America’s original sin and the two tribes that emerged from it. Judis writes:

THIS IS IMPORTANT because Obama may now be facing his own crisis of the Union. Over the last four decades, the Republican Party has transformed from a loyal opposition into an insurrectionary party that flouts the law when it is in the majority and threatens disorder when it is the minority. It is the party of Watergate and Iran-Contra, but also of the government shutdown in 1995 and the impeachment trial of 1999. If there is an earlier American precedent for today’s Republican Party, it is the antebellum Southern Democrats of John Calhoun who threatened to nullify, or disregard, federal legislation they objected to, and who later led the fight to secede from the union over slavery.

It’s my my ongoing thesis on this blog that we’ve never stopped fighting that war, it just varies in intensity. My old post quoted extensively from a speech by historian Steven Z. Starr, who made it on the centennial anniversary of the civil war:

The second basic issue between the sections lay in the area of politics; necessarily so, for it was in the political arena that the problems between the sections were fought out until the South decided that political solutions, reached by a process of give and take, were no longer adequate to protect its “honor and self-respect.”

Bear in mind that middle and upper class Southerners were politicians by birthright. Active participation in politics was, in the South, a way of life. One would expect, therefore, to find a much greater degree of political skill and acumen there than in the North. What one finds there instead is demagogy, bombast, irresponsibility, incompetence, a childish refusal to come to grips with realities, and a habitual substitution of slogans, symbols and bogeymen for facts. These are strong statements, but hardly strong enough to fit the situation.

The South had an almost unbroken control of the Federal Government from 1789 until secession. The presidents were either Southerners., or Northerners like Pierce and Buchanan, who were mere puppets in the hands of Southern senators and cabinet members. For seventy years, the Supreme Court had a majority of Southern justices. With the aid of its Northern allies and the three-fifths rule, the South controlled one or both houses of Congress. The fifteen Slave States, with a white population of not quite eight million, had 30 senators, 90 representatives, and 120 electoral votes, whereas the State of New York, with a population of four million had two senators, 33 representatives, and 35 electoral votes. Even the election of 1860 left the South in control of both houses of Congress, and until at least 1863, Lincoln and the Republicans would have been powerless to pass legislation hostile to the South, and through its control of the Senate, the South could have blocked the confirmation of every Lincoln appointee whom it considered unfriendly. In spite of this, and notwithstanding Lincoln’s repeated assurances that he would not, directly or indirectly, interfere with slavery where it already existed, the South chose to secede.

Starr goes on to show that this irrational behavior was not due to the south failing to get the the legislation it wanted, because it did. It became an emotional issue in which it was important to “crack the whip over the heads of the northern men” and they began to make enemies of their allies in the territories. As Starr says, “this tale of political ineptitude, the habitual misreading of the minds of opponents, the misjudging of the practical possibilities of a given situation, the purposeless striving for effect, the substitution of arrogance and threats for rational discussion, could be expanded many fold.”

Starr’s view is that the south behaved irrationally prior to the civil war because of it’s defensiveness about its culture of slavery. He grants that there other differences, some exaggerated and some quite real, but notes that most people of both regions were farmers and had more in common than not. The record suggests one very important difference, however, and that was that the south had a much inferior educational system,

…in 1850, 20.3% of white Southerners over the age of twenty were illiterate, as against less than one-half of one percent of New Englanders.

But it is important to point out that lack of educational opportunities was a significant factor in preventing the rise of a class of intelligent, educated farmers and artisans in the South. Only two Southern states, North Carolina and Kentucky, had respectable public school systems before 1860, and this had much to do with the failure of Southern whites to understand that their “peculiar institution” was out of tune with the moral, social, and even economic sentiment of the times, and with their readiness to follow the Pied Pipers who thought that a nation and a state could be founded on the enslavement of four million human beings. These are among the dangers of a closed society and of an iron curtain.

Granting the existence of cultural differences between the North and South, can we assume that they would necessarily lead to a Civil War? Obviously not. Such differences lead to animosity and war only if one side develops a national inferiority complex, begins to blame all its shortcomings on the other side, enforces a rigid conformity on its own people, and tries to make up for its own sins of omission and commission by name-calling, by nursing an exaggerated pride and sensitiveness, and by cultivating a reckless aggressiveness as a substitute for reason.

And this was the refuge of the South. For ten years before secession, Northerners were commonly referred to as “mongrels and hirelings.” The North was described as “a conglomeration of greasy mechanics filthy operatives, small-fisted farmers, and moonstruck theorists … hardly fit for association with a southern gentleman’s body servant.” And, most fatal delusion of all, Southerners began to credit themselves with fighting ability equal to that of nine, five, or more conservatively, three Northerners. Once a nation or a section begins to speak and think in such terms, reason has gone out the window and emotion has taken over. This is precisely what happened in the South, and this is why the Cotton States seceded before Lincoln was even inaugurated and before his administration had committed, or had a chance to commit, any act of aggression against them. Such behavior is fundamentally irrational, and cannot be explained in rational terms.

Interesting, yes?

The civil war, of course, made everything worse. Reconstruction was a nightmare and the north never had even the slightest idea what to do about the race problem once they dealt with the slavery problem. (Indeed, when it comes to racism, the north shared most of the same beliefs. They just didn’t live among many blacks so they didn’t have to deal with those problems until much later.) But, the ignominy of reconstruction gave birth to the Lost Cause mythology and that only reinforced the already outsized sense of wounded pride.

The south today has forty percent that votes with the blue states in national elections. They are white progressive modern people who share the southern cultural identity but have avoided the 200 year old baggage that makes it impossible to identify with people not of their own tribe and african-americans who were excluded except as scapegoats and second class citizens. (I’m sure nonetheless that some of what I’ve written sticks in the craw of many of you and you may feel that old resentment. It appears to me as if this is an ingrained reaction to discussions of this sort. It certainly has been around forever.)

I’m not going to take a stand against “heartland values” or “southern culture” whatever it’s defined as this week. It seems to me that it would be worthless, because this battle is obviously tribal, not specific to any particular issue. Slavery and Jim Crow are long gone. Now it’s religion and gays. The lines are drawn as they’ve always been and there will be no reconciliation through politics. Even a bloody civil war couldn’t do that.

History suggests that the southern culture has always been as defined by it’s resentment toward the rest of the country as much as anything else. The so-called bi-coastal liberal elites certainly don’t think of themselves as having a lot in common with each other, other than being Americans. People from Los Angeles and Vermont call themselves Californians and New Englanders, respectively. I don’t think they believe they share a “culture.” People in Seattle call themselves pacific northwesterners. People in New York call themselves New Yorkers — Chicagoans midwesterners. They identify themselves by their specific region and a broader identity as Americans, not by this alleged Bi-coastal cultural alliance. This notion of two easily identifiable cultures is only held by the people who used to call themselves the confederacy and now call themselves “the heartland.” That alone should be reason to stop and question what is really going on here.

One thing this little historical trip should show everyone is that it is nonsense to think that this cultural resentment and cultural contempt was created by Hollywood movie stars and limosine liberals from New York City. Indeed, this has been a problem since the dawn of the republic. And it isn’t a problem that will be solved by the Red States gaining and maintaining power. They have held power many times throughout our history and they were still filled with resentment toward “the north” (now “the liberal elites.”) And, it won’t be solved by adopting different stances on “moral issues,” or telling the current Democratic southern constituencies to suck it up. Maybe it’s time we looked a little bit deeper and realized that this tribal problem isn’t going to be solved by politics at all.

The “liberal elites” will no doubt be making more compromises in the direction of heartland values for pragmatic reasons. But, judging by history, it won’t change a thing. Neither will Republican political dominance. So, maybe it’s time for the heartland to take a good hard look at itself and ask when they are going to adopt the culture of responsibility they profess with such fervor. It sure looks to me as if they’ve been nursing a case of historical pique for more than 200 years and that resentment no longer has any more meaning than a somewhat self-destructive insistence on maintaining a cultural identity that’s defined by it’s anger toward the rest of the country. They are talking themselves into a theocratic police state in order to “crack the whip over the heads of the northern men” and it’s not likely to work out for them any better this time than it did the first time. The real elites in the church, the government and the corporations will take them down right along with us when that comes to pass.

The parties still represent the two tribes that were created out of slavery and the same dynamic prevails today. During the Bush years we were all fascinated by the comparison between the civil war map and the 2004 election. It still represents the political bases of the two parties pretty well, with the ascension of the Randian kook faction recently coming out of the Upper Midwest. It’s interesting how this tribal identity spread beyond region, however, a subject which is partially covered in fascinating detail in Kevin Philips 2007 book called American Theocracy: The Peril and Politics of Radical Religion, Oil, and Borrowed Money in the 21st Century. he shows how the Southern Baptist convention spread beyond the South to dominate Protestantism in general and it partially explains how this Southern based tribal identity comes to be found in pockets throughout the country. There’s also urban white backlash and the dominance of corporate sponsored media aimed at stoking the resentments that animate this particular American identity. This tribe now calls itself the Tea Party or the Conservative Movement and it dominates the Republican coalition.

If President Obama wants to be the Lincoln of his day he needs to recognize that the same dynamics that drove the Southern coalition to total lunacy in 1860 are driving it there today because as John Judis points out, he’s had it wrong from the beginning:

When Barack Obama announced his presidential candidacy on February 10, 2007, he did it in Springfield, Illinois, in the same place where Abraham Lincoln had made his historic challenge to slavery in June 1858. “A house divided against itself cannot stand,” Lincoln had declared, conveying his conviction that the union could no longer countenance the existence of a slave-owning South.

This speech, Obama said, was the basis of his candidacy: “And that is why, in the shadow of the Old State Capitol, where Lincoln once called on a divided house to stand together, where common hopes and common dreams still live, I stand before you today to announce my candidacy for President of the United States,” Obama said. But Obama had Lincoln’s speech exactly backwards. Lincoln wasn’t calling for a divided house to stay together. He was arguing against compromise with the slave South.

This Resentment Tribe doesn’t do compromise. You have to beat them. But then I suspect that President Obama understands this very well. It’s just that he’s torn between his centrist ideology, which is well served by this chaos (opportunity!) and his need to operate in a partisan system. In the end, he may achieve the other side’s policy goals and be punished politically anyway. It’s not policy or politics that drives these people, it’s tribal resentment. And he will never be one of them.

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Cult of centrism, or right-wing media? by David Atkins

Cult of centrism, or rightwing media?
by David Atkins (“thereisnospoon”)

Digby and I have both been emphasizing Krugman’s point lately about the media’s cult of centrism, the relativistic postmodern approach to truth that sees everything as mere “perspective” rather than factual reality.

But on second thought, that analysis may merit some questioning. Consider the following thought experiment:

Suppose there were a bill coming up to fund, say, money for troop pay. Or the existence of the base in Guantanamo. Or Pentagon black ops budgets for monitoring potential nuclear terrorism threats. Fairly essential things Republicans care about.

Suppose that bill came up fairly regularly and passed completely without incident under GOP and Democratic administrations alike.

Now suppose Democrats controlled just the Senate, but a Republican who won election in a landslide held the White House and the Speaker’s gavel lay in GOP hands as well.

Now suppose Senate Democrats decided that they simply weren’t going to allow the troops to be paid at all unless we returned to Reagan-era 50% marginal tax rates on the wealthy and a 35% capital gains tax rate. Suppose that the Republican President and the Speaker totally capitulated on the essence of these demands (I know, stop laughing for just a moment to read on) but said that they would only accept a 40% marginal rate and 25% capital gains rate. Suppose the Republican President put on the table wholly unrelated closures of other corporate tax loopholes and an end of oil drilling subsidies as a cherry on top in a “Grand Bargain”, but only in exchange for some fairly minor and inconsequential cuts to discretionary spending that most reasonable people on both sides felt to be wasteful.

Now suppose that Senate Democrats rejected that deal, threatening to withhold pay for the troops/Guantanamo/nuclear terrorism funding on general principle, arguing that their not getting the money at all might be a good thing, because starving the beast might force the Republican President to defund the military-industrial complex entirely. Suppose Congress could not come to a deal as the Democratic Senate remained intransigent on this point, and the Senate Majority Leader’s job were under fire as Democrats excoriated him for also daring to allow funding for troop body armor in the bill because after all, what do they need that for? (And yes, stop laughing again at the fact that in the real world, it’s Democrats who work to give the troops body armor and Republicans who vote against it.)

How would the modern media treat that scenario? Would it be a postmodern “both sides do it” mishmash of weary journalistic malaise?

Of course not. Every “liberal” columnist from Joe Klein to Dana Milbank would spend every waking moment tut tutting the crazy, unreasonable Democrats. Regular newspaper articles would breathlessly characterize Democratic actions as hostage-taking, replete with stories about the danger being placed on America and how much regular folks in the heartland hate those awful Democrats. And the howling on the Right? Well, take the regular over-the-top screaming, and amplify the Drudge flashers and Fox News chyrons by tenfold. You would almost almost certainly see physical violence against Democratic legislators.

The point of this exercise, of course, is that we don’t really have a cult of centrism in the media. We just have a right wing media. Period.

Some of it is right wing by choice. The rest of it is scared into the position by pressure from conservative advocacy groups, or fear of losing their jobs. But we should really call it what it is. “Cult of centrism” really doesn’t do justice to what has happened to media in this country.

Even the lunatics aren’t crazy enough for the kooks

Not crazy enough for the kooks

by digby

In case you were worrying overmuch about the Senate kabuki, this should set your mind at ease:

Even Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.), who had promised to use all parliamentary procedures at his disposal to slow approval of any plan with a balanced-budget provision, said Friday that he was still mulling his strategy in coming days.

“I don’t know what I’m going to do,” he said, indicating he would take into account an appeal from McConnell to allow an expedited process, if a compromise were reached. “I’m certainly going to listen — we’re playing up against a pretty important deadline here, and I don’t want to fool with that.”

I wonder if DeMint knows what he’s in for:

Tea Party leaders from the Tea Party Express, Tea Party Nation, Tea Party Founding Fathers, and United West are targeting their hero Rep. Allen West (R-FL) and three other GOP freshman for supposedly trading in their Tea Party principles to support House Speaker John Boehner’s (R-OH) debt ceiling plan. Chaffing under his new title of “Tea Party defector,” West scoffed at his supporters’ derision this morning on the Laura Ingraham Show. “If [Tea Party] folks, one minute they are saying I’m their Tea Party hero and three, four days later I’m their tea party defector, that kind of schizophrenia I’m not going to get involved in,” he said.

Trouble in Tea-a-dise?

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Wingnut Reality: Post-modern epistemological relativism

Post-modern epistemological relativism

by digby

Curious about how your average right wingers are interpreting the debt ceiling crisis? I was, so I perused the comments underneath The Hill’s story about Jon Kyl’s bizarroworld Saturday address to the nation:

Kyl said taxes are the sticking point between the parties.

“The simple fact is, in order to afford the kind of government this president wants, taxes would have to be increased dramatically – and for middle income Americans, not just on the wealthy,” he said.

“President Obama is simply too committed to the European-style of big government that his policies have set in motion.”

When you just lie outright, you can expect that people who are listening will be confused. Here’s a random sample of the comments:

Democrats are raising taxes on the middle class. BIG SURPRISE LMAO!

If you raise taxes at all, you raise taxes on eveyone through consumer prices.

Who cares? Fix the debt problem Senate!
BY TAKEMTOTHEWOODSHED on 07/30/2011 at 07:55

No they just want the economic news hidden from the front page.The recession double dip is here.President Obama and the california delegation of university lounge lizards have destroyed the country in less that 2 years.A feat no one can beat with a stick on the back of the american unemployed. 30million workers are stuck in poverty for many years thanks to california liberals,and harry reid
BY JONNIE on 07/30/2011 at 07:56

I did read at the daily caller that the Reid Bill counts on raising taxes from present day an additional 3.8 Trillion. So if he cut 2.2 trillion wouldn’t that make it 6 trillion going to the deficit? If it is only 2.2 trillion than spending actually jumps 1.6 trillion. Slick…Reid…really slick. Get rid of this horrible bill…this is a disaster.
BY SUZY000 on 07/30/2011 at 08:15

GOP Boehner and McConnell fall for the have to do a deal to be responsible nonsense. They don’t have to do any deal. They have to cut housing, education and welfare to zero. They have to end civil rights regulation that is a source of high tuition increases. They have to end 3rd world immigration that bankrupts government at all levels.
BY OLD ATLANTIC on 07/30/2011 at 08:20

When Pelosi came out with her tax reform that would remove deductions for mortgage interest, and retirement account deductions. She took direct aim at the middle class. Her definition of the “uber” rich is you managed to keep up on your house payments, and still have a job that has a 401k, or you can still invest in a CD or IRA.

We should take a hard look at her tax returns and see what deductions she takes annually. She is in that over 250 thousand range. I would bet she has a list of deductions as long as her arm in fine print.

A fair tax. That way she too could pay taxes on what she spends.

You say a Fair tax would hurt those on Social Security? If Social Security is their only income with no other retirement income, Issue them an exemption card.
BY JB on 07/30/2011 at 08:25

I’m not even going to count the number of falsehoods and misinformation in those comments. But it should give you a clue as to how impossible it’s going to be to unravel the truth of what’s happened in this debate when the press is simply throwing up its hands for the most part and saying “both sides are equally guilty” and “they’re all just acting like children.”

Granted, these are obviously Republican partisans. But they aren’t the only ones listening to Jon Kyl. Or Limbaugh. Or Fox news. Or CNN for that matter, where they hire miscreants like Erick Erickson and treat their lies with respect.

This is the very essence of our problem. America in the 21st century is a post-modern epistemological relativist state in which the right creates its own alternate reality in real time. And there’s nobody to sort it out because the press gives equal weight to everyone. This is the world that produced Tea Partying congressmen who believe that default on the national debt is a rational policy to shrink government.

Or as Krugman sez:

People know that it happened, because Rush Limbaugh and the Wall Street Journal say so. But that doesn’t make it true.

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How’s That Working Out for You?

How’s That Working Out for You?
by David Atkins (“thereisnospoon”)

Remember this?

First, Plouffe suggested, Obama has an opportunity to improve his standing among independent voters — many of whom deserted the Democrats in the 2010 midterm election — by working with Republicans toward bipartisan deficit-reduction measures.

Second, Obama has managed to move toward the center without losing significant support among core Democratic voters. The president’s job approval rating among Democrats, Plouffe said, is in the 80% to 90% range in many states. (Nationally, it’s about 77%, still respectable.)

In case you missed it, the latest from Pew:

The sizeable lead Barack Obama held over a generic Republican opponent in polls conducted earlier this year has vanished as his support among independent voters has fallen off.Currently, 41% of registered voters say they would like to see Barack Obama reelected, while 40% say they would prefer to see a Republican candidate win in 2012. In May, Obama held an 11-point lead.

This shift is driven by a steep drop-off in support for Obama among independents. The latest national survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, conducted July 20-24 among 1,501 adults and 1,205 registered voters finds that just 31% of independent voters want to see Obama reelected, down from 42% in May and 40% in March. Where Obama held a slim 7-point edge among independent registered voters two months ago, a generic Republican holds an 8-point edge today.

This is consistent with a drop in Obama’s approval among all independents. Currently, a majority (54%) disapprove of Obama’s performance for the first time in his presidency.

But how could this be? After all, the public wants compromise, and the polls show the President is helping convince voters of the need for shared sacrifice and austerity.

It’s hard to understand how this could have happened. It’s almost as if spouting an endless stream of GOP talking points and bending over backward to compromise in the face of a fundamentalist cult in pursuit of a shifting “centrist” voter makes people less likely to vote for Democrats and less receptive to Democratic ideas. Doesn’t make sense to me. Which I guess is good, because it obviously doesn’t make sense to David Plouffe, either, or the White House strategy would be very different. For starters, they probably wouldn’t lose 37,000 twitter followers spamming their core supporters with messages about how important compromise is.

But no worries. I’m sure they’ve got it all under control.

Boehner passes his bill. Now we switch to the second front in the war on sanity.

The second front

by digby

Boehner passed his bill. Barely. And now it goes to the Senate.

Here’s TPM on what awaits:

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) is eyeing two separate avenues to passing such a bill — one that would result in Senate passage of a debt limit bill Monday morning, another that would wrap up the Senate’s work Tuesday, each leaving House Democratic and Republican leaders precious little time to cobble together a coalition to pass it.

Reid has his eyes on several Republicans who might co-operate. The huge question looming over the Capitol at this point is whether Boehner has enough sway with his caucus to put together a substantial number of votes — enough to pass something before the country’s borrowing authority expires late Tuesday evening.

Right. Reid will have to get “several Republicans to co-operate.” And then Boehner is going to have to decide between risking his speakership by essentially having the President and Pelosi pass the final hideous piece of garbage that emerges(with just enough Republicans to get it over the line) or default. I still don’t see how the debt ceiling gets raised by the congress any other way.

What a mess. I think it’s time to start tippling.

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Fingerprints

Fingerprints

by digby

Obviously, I don’t have any more idea of how this is finally going to come down than anyone else has at this point. It’s clear that the GOP is milking this for every last drop and the leadership can’t satisfy its greedy teabaggers with mere assurances that there will be more to come down the road. But one thing is looking more and more to me to be the sad, obvious outcome and it’s something I thought would happen from the beginning: the Democrats are going to pass a terrible, contractionary bill filled with spending cuts that will devastate the economy and affect their own constituents far more than the opposition.

If it’s Reid’s bill, which we’re all supposed to be rooting for at this point, at a minimum it will attach the names of liberal politicians to the aforementioned spending cuts and the Super Congress that will undoubtedly force cuts to all the safety net programs and it will spell the end of any vestige of rational economic thinking on the left as well as the right. That doesn’t seem like a good idea to me.

The answer at this point is to punt on all negotiations and have the president use the 14th Amendment remedy. It would be risky, of course. After all, the market Gods with the apt names of “Standard” and “Poors” (helped by the centrist Dem eunuchs who serve at their pleasure) have joined the Tea Party and decreed there must be horrifying, painful austerity. But all the backroom deals on the table are so bad that it is preferable at this point to take a chance with some bold leadership than go through with any of them.

As I said, I don’t think this will happen. I think Democrats will pass this bill and the Democratic President will sign it. And honestly, I’m not sure there’s a worse outcome.

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“I’m gonna ask you a simple question and I want you to listen to me: who’s the big winner here tonight?”

Winning!

by digby

You’re a big winner. I’m gonna ask you a simple question and I want you to listen to me: who’s the big winner here tonight at the casino? Huh? Mikey, that’s who. Mikey’s the big winner. Mikey wins.

Ezra says that Boehner ending negotiations with the White House on the Grand Bargain helped President Obama dodge a bullet:

Thus far, this debate isn’t helping anybody. Obama’s approval rating hit 40 percent in the most recent Gallup poll — a new low for him. But it’s devastating the GOP. As you can see in the Pew chart to the right, confidence in the Republican leaders has fallen by more than 10 percentage points since February. They’re now well below the Democrats.

That’s good news for House Democrats, in particular. But it’s also evidence that Obama’s strategy of trying to personally manage the negotiations hasn’t improved his numbers. Which is why it’s probably helping him that Boehner decided to move the negotiations over to Congress and assume more of the blame himself.

Apparently studies of these gridlocked budgets in the states show that people tend to blame the legislature more than the executive when the legislative majority is of the opposite party. Or something. Ezra has the data.

The President did everything in his power to own this debacle but I think Boehner saved Obama from himself not so much by taking more of the blame for the breakdown in negotiations but by making it impossible for him to take a Greatest Deal in History Grand Bargain victory lap. Considering what’s probably going to come of all this, the greater distance from the results the better. In their zeal to prevent Obama from being perceived as a winner, they may have saved him from his worst instincts.

And speaking of “winning”, Rush Limbaugh is giving his listeners quite the pep talk today. This is from David Frum:

I listened to about 45 minutes of the first hour of Rush Limbaugh in the car today.

The dominant theme of the hour, repeated over and over: “You” – meaning, Limbaugh listeners – are not “losers.” It’s Obama’s who’s a “loser.”

The word “loser” must have been repeated dozens of times, half as reassurance (that’s what you are not!), half as epithet (that’s what President Obama is!)

The psychological interpretation of what’s going on here is almost too obvious to remark. But what I can’t decide is whether it’s more sinister or more sad.

I’m voting for sinister.

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Mythological job creation

Mythological job creation

by digby

Michael Sherer from Time was on MSNBC a few minutes ago exploding some of the myths about this stupid debt ceiling circus. To the question of “why nobody will compromise”, he explained that there have been plenty of compromises already what with the Republicans giving up their request for liberal concentration camps and Democrats giving up everything they ever stood for (or something like that) and he explained that contrary to economic experts Michelle Bachman and Rick Perry default actually is a big problem.

But this surprised me because I think it may be the first time I’ve seen a mainstream journalist point this out:

Q: Last but not least, “this debate is about getting people back to work”

Sherer: That’s right. Both parties like to talk about jobs and do it all the time because that’s what Americans want to hear.

The problem is that this debate is really not about jobs, especially in the short term. All the plans that have been scored so far are going to reduce GDP, which reduces employment.

There is a long range benefit of solving our fiscal problems. but there’s nothing for the short term. There’s been one plan floated for so0me short term tax stimulus but it=’s not been a priority for either party.

So when you hear both parties talk about jobs, this is just not the vehicle that’s going to help the jobs picture. in fact the instability caused by this debate has almost definitely reduced investment in recent weeks and that’s hurt the jobs picture.

I realize that the president has been more nuanced than the Republicans on the benefits of the massive spending cuts and contractionary nature of this whole debate. He evidently believes that once this is all over and all the cuts have been made that the Republicans will go home and get drunk leave the Democrats alone to start stimulating the economy and creating new more wonderful programs to make up for the destruction of the old ones. But it is still the case that most Americans have come to believe that fixing thew deficit will lead to jobs. (And hey, maybe it will — in 2057)

[T]oday’s Pew poll offers some of the clearest evidence yet that Dems helped Republicans win the argument over the deficit and government spending by acquiescing to the GOP’s austerity/cut-cut-cut frame at the outset:

In terms of the public’s priorities for economic policy, more Americans (52%) say they would place a higher priority on reducing the budget deficit rather than on spending to help the economy recover. In February, opinion was more closely divided (49% reduce deficit vs. 46% spend to help the economy recover).

While there are wide ideological and partisan gaps on this issue, independents view deficit reduction as the higher priority. More than half of independents (54%) say this should be a higher priority for the federal government, compared with 39% who prioritize spending to help the economy recover.

This comes after yesterday’s Bloomberg poll found that the public broadly agrees with key GOP arguments: That deficit reduction is necessary to spur “economic confidence” (the “confidence fairy” argument) and that government regulation and taxes create “uncertainty” that harms job creation.

The key in today’s Pew poll, though, is that there’s been clear movement in the direction of prioritizing the deficit over spending to create jobs. The public was roughly divided on this question in February (49-46), but now the public prioritizes deficit reduction by 10 points (52-42).

If people trusted the Democrats to put job creation above everything else, they’ve been well schooled to believe that cutting spending is the way to get there.

Still, it’s good to see someone in the press put that out there. It might have been helpful if they did it before both parties decided to take a swan dive over the deficit cliff, but I suppose it’s better than nothing.

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