Foreclosure Primer: Chris Hayes takes us to school
by digby
I love the fact that Chris Hayes is allowed to have a free wheeling show on week-end mornings. But this sort of analysis really needs to have a wider audience:
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
That is one of the best, most easily understood explanations of the foreclosure crisis I’ve seen. It needs to be seen.
Oh, and this too:
Kicking the girls
by digby
Celinda Lake is one of the Democratic Party’s most prominent pollsters. She is obviously very well informed about the political implications of most policy decisions and I’ve never found her to be ideological in her assessments. Here’s what she said about the administration’s Plan B decision, via dday:
Democratic pollster Celinda Lake said she could “not even remotely” understand the political calculus of the decision, saying it “alienates the base, causes conflict with women in the base, [is] bad for key groups of women like younger women and unmarried women, and doesn’t win the swing independent women.”
If Democrats cared as much about getting young women to the polls as they care about getting ideologically incoherent swing voters, they’d win in a walk. They are progressive and they are hostile to the GOP agenda on nearly every level. They have been the most loyal Democratic voters but they are demoralized and need to be reassured that the Democrats give a damn about them. The Plan B decision says the opposite.
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The myth of the “independent” voter, and the cynical stupidity of the Third Way
by David Atkins
The Third Way has a new report out with some bad news for Democrats. It would appear that a large number of Democrats in swing states have chosen to re-register as independents. To be fair, a significant number of Republicans are also doing so, but in far fewer numbers than are Democrats. Of course, the Third Way in typical mewling form attributes the registration decline to disgust with hyper-partisanship and “polarization.” From the report:
Democrats’ path to victory just got harder. Fed up with the traditional two-party system and overwhelming polarization, voters are increasingly abandoning the parties. Since 2008, in all eight battleground states for which voter registration information is available, Democratic registration has declined relative to both Republicans and Independents. In 7 of those 8 states, Independents’ share of the electorate has increased relative to both Democrats and Republicans. The number of Independents registered to vote in those states increased by 254,310, as Democratic registration fell by 825,708 and Republican registrations dropped 378,835. In 2012, Independents are likely to turn out in their largest numbers in 35 years, and President Obama will need those Independent votes even more than he did in 2008, if he hopes to be re-elected.
To be sure, these numbers should be cause for alarm among Democrats. But not for the reasons Third Way proclaims. The sleight of hand Third Way is perpetrating here is the assumption that Democrats (and Republicans as well) are re-registering as Independents because they feel their party is too ideologically extreme.
Yet nowhere in the report is that assertion ever actually proven. Like so much else in the Village bubble, it is simply assumed, a fallacy used to cow elected progressives into submission when a dispassionate study of the facts would suggest precisely the opposite. Alan Abramovitz had a seminal article about this in 2009:
At first glance, the evidence from the 2008 NES appears to show that independents make up the largest segment of the American electorate. About 40 percent of the respondents identified themselves as independents, which was considerably more than the 34 percent who identified with the Democratic Party or the 26 percent who identified with the Republican Party. However, when these independent identifiers were asked a follow-up question, nearly three-fourths of them indicated that they usually felt closer to one of the two major parties. Only 11 percent of the respondents were “pure independents” with no party preference. And because these pure independents turned out at a much lower rate than either regular or independent partisans, that number shrank down to 7 percent among those who actually voted.
Not only did the large majority of independent identifiers readily acknowledge having a party preference, but the evidence displayed in Table 2 from the 2008 NES shows that independent partisans behaved almost identically to regular partisans when it came to choosing candidates for President, House of Representatives, and Senate: independent Democrats voted overwhelmingly for Democratic candidates and independent Republicans voted overwhelmingly for Republican candidates…
On social issues, independent Democrats were sometimes even more liberal than regular Democrat. For example, 59 percent of independent Democrats supported same-sex marriage compared with 48 percent of regular Democrats, and 63 percent of independent Democrats took the most pro-choice position on the issue of abortion compared with 53 percent of regular Democrats.
Partisanship continues to exert a powerful influence on public opinion in the post-election period. A CNN poll in late April found that 90 percent of independent Democrats and 92 percent of regular Democrats approved of President Obama’s performance while 71 percent of independent Republicans and 70 percent of regular Republicans disapproved.
The large majority of independent identifiers lean toward one of the two major parties and these independent partisans are virtually indistinguishable from regular partisans in political outlook or behavior. It therefore makes no sense to view independents as a homogenous bloc of floating voters. Independents are sharply divided along party lines just like the rest of the American electorate.
It’s also worth pointing out that the oft-quoted idea that independents “abandoned Democrats” in the 2010 election cycle is predicated on a fallacy of voter switching, rather than weak voter turnout.
In 2008, Obama won independents by 8%. And yes, “independents” as a bloc voted overwhelmingly Republican in 2010. But of the independents who voted in 2010, 51% of them had voted for McCain, while only 42% of them had voted for Obama. In other words, it wasn’t so much that Obama independents switched to vote conservative (though a few clearly did.) It was, rather, that many of the independents who had voted for Obama in 2008 simply stayed home in 2010. Independents didn’t “switch.” Rather, a more conservative breed of independent showed up at the polls in 2010.
And it’s a very fair bet that a large percentage–perhaps even a majority–of the independents who stayed home did so because they felt the President had not been progressive enough. Greg Sargent explains:
As the intraparty Dem war over the meaning of the midterms continues, centrist Democrats have been making the case that the big swing of independents for Republicans proves Dems need to move to the middle to recapture this key demographic.
Now a leading liberal group is set to push back on that argument with a counter-intuitive case of its own: Independents are not a monolith, and what really happened is that indys who backed Obama in 2008 stayed home, because they were unsatisfied with Obama’s half-baked reform agenda, while McCain-supporting indys turned out in big numbers.
The group is set to release new polling from the respected Dem firm Public Policy Polling that is meant to buttress this case. The Progressive Change Campaign Committee commissioned the poll and sent some results my way.
The key finding: PPP asked independents who did vote in 2010 who they had supported in 2008. The results: Fifty one percent of independents who voted this time supported McCain last time, versus only 42 percent who backed Obama last time. In 2008, Obama won indies by eight percent.
That means the complexion of indies who turned out this time is far different from last time around, argues Adam Green of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee. His case: Dem-leaning indys stayed home this time while GOP-leaning ones came out — proof, he insists, that the Dems’ primary problem is they failed to inspire indys who are inclined to support them.
“The dumbest thing Democrats could do right now is listen to those like Third Way who urge Democrats to repeat their mistake by caving to Republicans and corporations instead of fighting boldly for popular progressive reforms and reminding Americans why they were inspired in 2008,” Green says.
Adam Green is right.
Democrats are shedding registered voters, to be sure. But as anyone actually doing voter registration knows, that has more to do with the progressive base giving up on a Party that has demonstrably shifted too far to the right, than with a delusional handful of Fox News Democrats who think that President Obama is some sort of socialist partisan.
The Third way crew are suspect in their motives, wrong on the facts and dead wrong on their political instincts. They make grandiose assumptions about political narratives that they’re either too politically tone-deaf to understand, or too cynical to acknowledge understanding. The only people more stupid and/or cynical than the Third Way, are the people who listen to them.
If the Third Way gets its way (more than they already are, that is), Democrats will lose even more voters. Here’s hoping no one important is foolish enough to give them any credibility.
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Amend it, don’t end it
by digby
Assuming that we don’t continue to stick our fingers in our ears and sing lalalala while the planet gets so hot in the next decade that we are living in a Mad Max style dystopia, this could be the most important long term initiative the left takes up:
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) decided to take the next step toward realizing this goal by introducing a constitutional amendment to the U.S. Senate that would overturn the ruling which classified multi-national corporations as people and therefore entitled to the same rights as living, breathing, human individuals.
The Saving American Democracy Amendment states:
Corporations are not persons with constitutional rights equal to real people.
Corporations are subject to regulation by the people.
Corporations may not make campaign contributions.
Congress and states have the power to regulate campaign finances.“There comes a time when an issue is so important that the only way to address it is by a constitutional amendment,” Sanders said. He had previously described the Citizen United ruling as “basically insane. Nobody that I know thinks that Exxon Mobil is a person,” Sanders said in November.
Sanders is accompanied in his endeavor to restore fiscal sanity to the political system by Rep. Ted Deutch (D-FL), who has introduced a companion measure in the U.S. House.
Sens. Tom Udall (D-NM) and Michael Bennet of (D-CO) have also introduced a similar constitutional amendment that would essentially defeat Citizens United by granting Congress and the states the authority to regulate the campaign finance system. Udall and Bennet hope that by emphasizing states’ rights, they’ll gain the support of a few Republicans.
Here’s a place to start. Hopefully a full fledged campaign will develop.
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Making the moral case
by digby
It was a different politics and a different time, but this ad couldn’t be more different than the way Democrats talk to the people today:
This is how it goes today:
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Goldilocks is pregnant
by digby
“Is it a small bone thrown to our side? Sure. But it’s political posturing in an election year,” said Jeff Field, the Catholic League’s director of communications.
The Catholic League, a lay organization that’s opposed to abortion, actually agrees with a leading pro-choice group that the decision is politically motivated.
“It really harkens back to the days I thought we were done with when politics trumps science,” said Andrea Miller, president of NARAL Pro-Choice New York..
“There’s no indication that she’s changing her stripes at all,” said Field.
NARAL wants a reversal. The Catholic League wants the pill banned completely.
So this decision must be juuuust right.
I don’t have much to add to what I wrote earlier on this. I consider the decision to be cruel. Many, many teenagers are going to needlessly become pregnant and either have abortions or children before they should because of this.
Teenagers have always had sex and they always will. The only question for any government is whether or not to stand in the way of scientific advances that will prevent unplanned pregnancies. This government has chosen to do just that by proclaiming, in the most Orwellian fashion, that “common sense” should trump scientific evidence.
There’s a reason why no administration has never overturned an FDA ruling. (Even Republicans were afraid to evoke a “common sense says the science is wrong” exception, although I doubt they will be after this …) It pretty much pushes the door wide open for the government to overturn any scientific finding that doesn’t comport with their political needs. I think we can see the dark implications of that, can’t we?
And as you can see by that story above, everyone agrees that this is a political calculation. Sadly, it’s one with real life implications for actual human beings. The status quo is that a lot of young teenagers face unwanted pregnancies. They always have. And that will continue despite the fact that there is a safe alternative for many of them that doesn’t require that they go through hoops that make it nearly impossible to use. (Time is of the essence with this one.)More children of children, more abortions, more heartache for young women who have done nothing more than what young people have always done. It didn’t have to happen.
Update: Oh, and the pro-choice Democratic women who are saying that they’re keeping their powder dry for the “bigger fight” are fooling themselves. The opponents of women’s freedom will not stop until they get everything they want. They know that every little victory like this is another advance in their long term agenda. There will always be another fight. If the pro-choice officials keep retreating they will wake up one morning and find that there’s nothing left to fight for.
Update: Apropos of nothing:
Discussing controversial classroom subjects such as evolution and global warming, Santorum said he has suggested that “science should get out of politics” and he is opposed to teaching that provides a “politically correct perspective.”
Update II: And this too:
The Union of Concerned Scientists published a statement yesterday on their website decrying the HHS decision—and Obama’s support of it—as an attack not only on reproductive rights but also on sound science.
The UCS points out that this is the first time an HHS secretary has overruled the FDA on a drug approval. But as Erin Matson, action vice president of the National Organization of Women, noted on Twitter, the administration rarely disagrees with the FDA—drugs or no drugs. She tweeted: “Perhaps the last time the FDA was overruled: A cranberry recall in 1959. Now Obama admin after emergency contraception in 2011. OUTRAGE.”
As such, yesterday’s decision sets an ugly precedent for scientific assessment of drug safety. “The agency needs to be able to do its job without fearing that the integrity of its work will be compromised,” says Francesca Grifo, director of the UCS’s Scientific Integrity Program.
The UCS also points out that this decision flies in the face of Obama’s commitment to scientific integrity in government. A few months after his 2009 inauguration, the president called for the Office of Science and Technology Policy to craft better protections for scientific research in government. “Political officials should not suppress or alter scientific or technological findings and conclusions,” the memo says.
Well, unless “common sense” says otherwise, of course.
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Who could have known?
by digby
It is extremely bad taste to quote yourself, I know, but somebody must have linked to this post because it’s come up in my referrer logs so I went back and looked at it thought it was interesting.
Make It So
by digby
Eugene Robinson goes out among the natives and brings back some important data:
“In Washington, it is conventionally wise to think of government gridlock as basically a good thing, even something that most Americans approve of. To have a president from one party and a Congress controlled — or at least reined in — by the other, we tell ourselves, prevents too-abrupt shifts in policy. Gridlock is supposed to force bipartisan consensus, which is held as a kind of Holy Grail, the only way to tackle the nation’s biggest problems.
But tell that to Iowans — or residents of most states, for that matter — who either don’t have health insurance or can’t get insurance companies to pay their medical bills. Tell it to Arizonans who have pressed their state government to implement its own immigration policy — shouldering what is clearly a federal responsibility — because Washington can’t get its act together. Tell it to military families, some in favor of the war in Iraq and some against, whose lives have been turned upside down by extended deployments with no end in sight.
There aren’t many people in Washington (the state of mind) who spend sleepless nights worrying about sons, daughters or other loved ones serving in Iraq. Even though there are suburbs within 20 miles of the Capitol where illegal immigration is a passionate, hot-button issue, most in Washington think of the problem in academic terms. And just about everyone in state-of-mind Washington has top-notch health insurance; members of Congress enjoy a comprehensive plan that one might be tempted to call “socialized medicine,” since a large portion of the costs are borne by taxpayers.
We in Washington are increasingly isolated from the people in whose interest we claim to labor. The economic gap between us and most of the country is widening to a chasm. In most American cities, a $600,000 house in a leafy neighborhood would be considered an extravagance reserved for the wealthy. Here, we’d call it a bargain.
The word “change” had great resonance in the Iowa campaign. In part, the yearning for change arose because George W. Bush has led the nation down so many dead-end paths. But from the conversations I had with Iowans, it seemed clear to me that change is also shorthand for the disconnect between the Washington state of mind and the widespread expectation, hardly unreasonable, that this city ought to actually get something done every once in a while.
Whether it gets done after a bare-knuckle brawl or a chorus of “Kumbaya” really doesn’t matter.”
That’s exactly right, I think. The story isn’t that people want peace at all costs. They want results.
Here’s Candy Crowley from a couple of days ago in Iowa:
“BLITZER: What do you think, Candy? Do you think Michael Bloomberg is really serious about doing this?
Steve Forbes — you heard him in that piece. He says he has no doubt that Michael Bloomberg — when the dust settles from the caucuses and the primaries — will throw his hat into the ring as a third party, Independent candidate.
CANDY CROWLEY, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, Steve Forbes may talk to Michael Bloomberg a good deal more than I do. It’s hard to see where his niche is. I know that everyone says that everybody wants a more bipartisan spirit in Washington. But I’ll tell you what, if you get out here with these Republicans and, in fact, the Independents and the Democrats, what they’re looking for, in fact, is their ideas to be pushed forward.
You know, the first thing that comes out of their mouth is not I really wish everybody would get along. It’s I want this war stopped, I want the economy to be better, we need better jobs. So I’m just not sure what kind of constituency is out there”
When people say they want change it’s not because they are tired of “partisan bickering” (which basically consists of derisive Republican laughter.) They’re sick of a government that does exactly the opposite of what they want it to do. And they aren’t picky about how it gets done. If it can be done with gentle persuasion, that’s great. But if it takes a fight, they’re all right with that too.
This is the central difference between the beltway CW as expressed by the Bloomer party and the village gasbags. The elders believe that nothing can get done without “moving to the middle” which currently means, even in the best interpretation, somewhere between the center right and the far right. And even that is incredibly optimistic. The truth is that Republicans out of power believe in total obstruction. They are perfectly happy to block all progressive legislation because they know they will suffer no consequences for it from the mild mannered Democrats and the bipartisan zombies…
I’ve seen nothing in recent years that leads me to believe it’s gotten any less daunting. If anything, the Republicans’ time in the majority made them more adept at both constitutional destruction and parliamentary obstruction. (For sheer audacity, check out this from Kagro X, keeping in mind that this gambit was first used by Reagan and failed. It’s not going to fail this time. They learn…)
The LieberBloomer party insists that the only way to get anything done is to reach across the aisle. Back in the day, when the two parties were regionally and ideologically diverse, (and the conservative movement wasn’t completely insane) that was certainly true. But it hasn’t been that way for a long time now. The new political terrain is to either rule like Republicans, which requires a servile press and mountains of money to spin your undemocratic, plutocratic, imperialism as “boldness”, “strength” and “resolve” (which will never be said of Democrats) or you get a specific, detailed mandate from the people and then gather enough legitimate democratic power to enact it.
I get a lot of people saying I’m fighting old wars. And that may be true. I would love nothing more than to see the conservative, martial, exclusionary, robber baron faction in American politics (which is now the Republican party) tamed. But they have always been around in one incarnation or another and with the post civil war realignment finally completed, it seems unlikely to me that they will be even more open to compromise than they used to be. The country is back to its original equilibrium — which was always politically at odds.
That’s America. We’ve been fighting from the beginning. The good news is that the progressives may be coming back into dominance, which means it’s possible for Democrats to actually enact progressive legislation rather than simply stop the bleeding — if they’re willing to take the heat. I think the American people will be with them if the politicians listen to what it is they really want, lay out a program to make it so and then pass their agenda even as the villagers shriek and howl about “partisanship.”
Or, on the other hand, the Democrats could follow David Broder’s advice and get punk’d. Again.
The Pwn Broker
by digby
People always talk about brokered conventions and it’s almost always nothing more than pundit masturbation. But this year could be different because of several different factors — the Republicans hate all their candidates, the rules have changed, and this:
In a far cry from his ragtag 2008 effort, Ron Paul is looking beyond the traditional early state contests and gearing up for a long primary slog that lasts at least through Super Tuesday.
It’s a strategy that could make Paul a player at the Republican convention in Tampa, Fla.
The Texas congressman’s long-haul approach is designed to take advantage of new GOP proportional allocation rules that enable candidates to amass delegates without finishing in first place, and to leverage the unique attributes of his campaign — an intensely loyal following and a steady flow of money that will likely enable him to continue for as long as he chooses.
Paul has already put teams in place in 12 caucus states through March 6, when about a dozen Republican primaries and caucuses will take place. On Wednesday, the campaign announced five office openings: Colorado, Maine, Minnesota, North Dakota and Washington.
None of it means Paul is dismissive of the early states.
Rather, he’s assembled an infrastructure aimed at giving him staying power and a voice at the national convention — a strategic approach that few other candidates besides Mitt Romney are pursuing at the moment.
Paul’s people are actually working that system in ways that nobody else is. And this is a crazy year. It could actually result in a weird convention and a party in total disarray.
This would be a good thing. The GOP has gone completely nuts and until they are repudiated they are going to keep pulling the country in the direction of lunacy. The Democrats are little better, but I think we can all agree that it would certainly be easier if one of the parties wasn’t batshit insane.
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Bad guys
by digby
Looking For A Villain? Try Fred Upton (R-MI)
Upton is the chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee and he’s the power behind HR 3035, the Mobile Informational Call Act of 2011. Upton has opposed every consumer protection bill that has come along and the collection agencies and other disreputable characters behind this one know Upton is their man. The corporations Upton is working with the push this bill forward include American Bankers Association, ACA International, Air Transport Association, Consumer Bankers Association, Coalition of Higher Education Assistance Organizations, Edison Electric Institute, Education Finance Council, Financial Services Roundtable, Housing Policy Council, Mortgage Bankers Association, National Association of College and University Business Officers (NACUBO), National Council of Higher Education Loan Program, Student Loan Servicing Alliance, Student Loan Servicing Alliance Private Loan Committee, The Clearing House, and, of course, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. In case you are intereste din sending Upton a message you don’t approve of this law, you can contribute to the progressive Democrat running against him in his Michigan district, John Waltz. And you can do that right here on the main Blue America page. Waltz vehemently opposes this invasion of privacy.
Don’t even bother to read this absurd Politico piece asserting that the corrupt Upton is some sort of moderate because he’s not “thoroughly investigating” Solyndra.
Solyndra is like chocolate. (They think Whitewater.) They’re saving a piece for later.
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The disappearing middle class
by David Atkins
Pretty soon we’ll have to stop calling it the “middle” class:
The Great Recession and its aftermath have hit California’s middle class so severely that it isn’t even technically in the middle any longer.
In a study released Wednesday, the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California reports that the proportion of households it defines as the middle class — those with annual incomes between $44,000 and $155,000 — has dropped below half, to 49.7 percent.
Households below that level account for 36.6 percent of Californians, and those above account for 13.7 percent.
The percentage of Californians in the middle class is the lowest in at least 30 years, the report says, and has consistently fallen since its peak of 60 percent in 1980.
The report’s definition of the middle class, said co-author Sarah Bohn, is households with incomes between two and seven times the federal poverty guidelines, which are adjusted every year and allow researchers to measure “a consistent level of income over time.”
The decline in the middle class comes as incomes dropped across the board from 2007 to 2010, the report says.
The sharpest income decline — 21 percent — was felt among those at the 10th percentile, while those at the 90th percentile saw their incomes drop by just 5 percent.
As a result, the report says, income inequality in California, which has historically been higher than the rest of the nation, has reached a new high.
The story in California is being repeated across the country. Everyone in America but the top 1% is losing ground. The wealthiest of the rest lose ground more slowly, with the most rapid declines among the poorest Americans.
Sounds like the best answer to this problem is more austerity, safety net slashing and tax cuts for the rich. The Village says so, so it must be true.
Also, check out the comments section to the article to get a sense of the fever swamp of ignorance and right-wing culture war obsession that defines so many voters even in coastal California. For forty percent of the country or so, there is no amount of evidence that will ever convince them that they’re getting screwed by the top 1%. Even when the middle class is basically gone and all that’s left is the very wealthy and the impoverished underclass, these fools will still be blaming taxes, environmental regulations and minorities for everything. And yet, those of us who know better are supposed to feel other than contempt for them.
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