Month: September 2012

The plebes don’t like Richie Rich

by digby

Jamelle Bouie at the Plumline makes an excellent point about the dangers for Romney in his dismissive 47% claim:

Romney’s path to victory depends on an outstanding performance among white voters. Assuming an electorate like 2008’s — 74% white, 26% nonwhite — Romney needs 61% of whites to eke out a victory in the popular vote. As Ron Brownstein points out, this would equal the best performance ever for a Republican challenger among this group of voters. In other words, not an easy mark to hit.

Romney’s best bet for reaching this target has always been working-class whites. Hit hard by the sluggish economy, these voters were the first to leave the Obama coalition — Democrats lost them by 18 points in 2008, and 30 points by 2010. Romney’s goal has always been to consolidate those voters and erode Obama’s already-tenuous support among whites as a whole. Likewise, on the other end of things, the Obama camp has been devoted to making Romney as toxic as possible to working-class whites, and blocking any gains he might make…

But the 47% remarks strike at the heart of Romney’s strategy. The 47% of Americans who don’t pay income tax are those who either don’t make enough money to qualify, or receive tax credits that offset their liability. This group includes students, the elderly, the poor and a large number of working-class families. Yes, some will not see themselves as belonging to the 47%. But when a politician disparages half the country as unwilling to “take responsibility for their lives,” at least some will see these comments as an attack on their livelihoods.

I think that’s right. He had a problem with some of these folks even before this thing happened. This piece from last week spelled it out:

Sheryl Harris, a voluble 52-year-old with a Virginia drawl, voted twice for George W. Bush. Raised Baptist, she is convinced — despite all evidence to the contrary — that President Barack Obama, a practicing Christian, is Muslim.

So in this year’s presidential election, will she support Mitt Romney? Not a chance.
“Romney’s going to help the upper class,” said Harris, who earns $28,000 a year as activities director of a Lynchburg senior center. “He doesn’t know everyday people, except maybe the person who cleans his house.”

She’ll vote for Obama, she said: “At least he wasn’t brought up filthy rich.”
White lower- and middle-income voters such as Harris are wild cards in this vituperative presidential campaign. With only a sliver of the electorate in play nationwide, they could be a deciding factor in two southern swing states, Virginia and North Carolina.

Reuters/Ipsos polling data compiled over the past several months shows that, across the Bible Belt, 38 percent of these voters said they would be less likely to vote for a candidate who is “very wealthy” than one who isn’t. This is well above the 20 percent who said they would be less likely to vote for an African-American.

There was a reason why the Republican Party — always thought of as the party of the plutocrats — learned to nominate everyman types who spoke the rubes’ language and didn’t reek of vast wealth. It’s the reason why George Bush Sr went to Texas and started eating pork rinds and why his silver spoon son wore the Southern identity as a talisman. Their base doesn’t really trust rich yankees who don’t have the common touch. This was something everybody knew at one time and somehow forgot. Just like the rest of the filthy rich have forgotten to play it cool and let the rubes think they have it under control, even to the extent of allowing a little mild regulation and taxation when necessary.

It’s hubris. The conservatives’ fatal flaw.

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Why the Romney revelation will matter

by David Atkins

It’s true that there has been altogether too much schadenfreude over Romney’s video denigrating half of Americans as freeloaders. Pundits across the spectrum have pre-emptively declared the campaign dead, when the evidence shows that “gaffes” tend not to have much impact.

Indeed, this election should be less susceptible to movement based on these sorts of slips and revelations than most, given the very static electorate this cycle. So will it matter? Probably not much for this election. If Romney were going to win the election, he probably would have been able to do so regardless. The video’s existence doubtless makes his road harder, but one or two good debates against the President could theoretically even the score. Is Romney likely to win? I think not. But it’s certainly possible.

But where the controversy matters is in the conversation that the election will take over the next month, and the impact that conversation is likely to have after the election. The “47% vs 53%” meme has been simmering on the right for a long time now (remember this guy?), and simmering just under the insincere media discourse about “entitlements.”

Americans everywhere assume that there are a bunch of other people in the country on the take. And why not? Most Americans are seeing their own standards of living decline even as the country goes further into debt and even basic governance has become impossible. It’s natural for them to assume that someone is on the take. It’s just a question of who. And this, of course, is where the failure of the press comes into play. With people confused and seeking answers, it should be the job of the media to supply accurate information about who is benefiting from the suffering of the middle class. But since the press has failed to do its job, Americans have been left to turn to their instincts about how the world works. Liberals rightly assume–and the facts back us up–that the wealthy and the corporate sector have hoovered up all the losses of the middle class. Conservatives, meanwhile, assume that various “others” are to blame.

Without a direct and honest conversation about who exactly is taking the benefits, this mass confusion will continue to persist, making it easier for the Very Serious People to cut Medicaid and Social Security out of “necessity.”

That’s why images like this will be so valuable:

It could well be that Mitt Romney’s insensitive and erroneous comments will save all of us from the nightmare of Simpson-Bowles by forcing an enlightening conversation into the open prior to November.

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Gangnam Style looks good in uniform

Mainstream Republican discourse

by digby

There’s been a lot of Randian rhetoric being thrown about these last couple of days, what with the GOP standard bearer dismissing half he country as a bunch of freeloaders. But at least we don’t have to deal with crazy religious lunatics in high levels of American politics.

Oh wait:

This separation of church and state, which has been driven by the secularists to remove those people of faith from the public arena, there is nothing farther from the truth.

When you think about our founding fathers, they created this country, our Constitution, the foundation of America upon Judeo-Christian values, biblical values and this narrative that has been going on, particularly since the ’60s, that somehow or another there’s this steel wall, this iron curtain or whatever you want to call it between the church and people of faith and this separation of church and state is just false on its face.

We have a biblical responsibility to be involved in the public arena proclaiming God’s truth. You know, are we going to get up and say ‘you are going to vote for X’? No, but we’re going to talk about Christian values. When you think about the issue of life and protecting life, it’s so important that we as Christians put legislation into place, that we elect women that defend life.

The idea that we should be sent to the sidelines I would suggest to you is very driven by those who are not truthful, Satan runs across the world with his doubt and with his untruths and what have you and one of the untruths out there is driven—is that people of faith should not be involved in the public arena.

You think about what has gone here in the last few days around the world and never has there been a time that I think we need more spiritual courage, that we need more moral fiber if you will.

The American family is under seize, traditional values are somehow exclusionary, a simple prayer in our public schools is the basis for these secular attacks; you think about this spiritual warfare that’s going on and [inaudible] going strong as President Obama and his cronies in Washington continue their efforts to remove any trace of religion from American life.

It falls on us, we truly are Christian warriors, Christian soldiers, and for us as Americans to stand our ground and to firmly send a message to Washington that our nation is about more than just some secular laws. Activist courts, we see them chipping away from our values and remove so much that is very special and unique about the United States.

I don’t want to get too far off course here but when you think about what’s going on in the Middle East and the president stood up in Cairo in 09 and either incredible naïve or very unschooled in the ways of these radical Islamists, and four American lives were lost in Libya.

It is our founding fathers knew and understood the importance of the role of our Creator in public discourse and they didn’t shy away from referencing Him, using the values he brought and the message of his son Jesus Christ to build the system that we as a society have e enjoyed for more than 200 years.

Securing that system, rebuilding our nation is what these 40 Days to Save America is really all about. It’s about saving our nation, it’s about preserving the values that make us special, about rejecting the concept that freedom of religion means freedom from religion, about turning away from this growing tide of secularism and atheism, the way they preach tolerance and diversity while they engage in oppression and bullying tactics.

If you thought that was some fiery conservative preacher, think again. That’s erstwhile presidential candidate and Governor of one of the biggest states in the nation, Rick Perry.

I don’t know about you, but that’s just as frightening as Mitt’s Randroid rage.

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Republicans *work* for their handouts

by digby

Well, at least Mitt has brought out the GOP’s full Randroid extremism now, at least rhetorically:

“There are makers and takers, there are producers and there are parasites,” she said. “Americans can distinguish between those who have produced and paid in through no fault of their own and because of Obama’s horrible policies who cannot get a job or are underemployed. That’s what the campaign is about.”

That’s speaking directly to the “I deserve my benefits but those you-know-whos don’t” crowd. You know, the Republican base. Apparently, the Republicans are going to turn all their throwbacks into John Galt in their own minds. I think it’ll work too.

That’s why they love Mitt:

h/t to Watertiger

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The right problem and the right solution

by digby

A smart writer makes an important argument about Social Security:

For decades, the burden of retirement saving and planning has been shifted onto individuals, having them accumulate money in 401(k) plans and Individual Retirement Accounts (IRAs), instead of the defined benefit programs which were common only a couple decades ago. The results have not been good. People fail to save enough, and one crisis, such as spell of unemployment or bad health, can lead them to empty out their retirement accounts, despite the significant penalties for doing so.
This reality has inspired proposals for new forms of retirement accounts, with various means of funding and varying degrees to which the programs are mandatory, but we’re missing the simple answer.

We already have an excellent, if not especially generous, program in place. Workers contribute during their working lives in exchange for a promised benefit level during their retirement years. This program is called Social Security.

Instead of considering some exciting new program to try to encourage workers into saving more, another Rube Goldberg incentive contraption designed to nudge individual behavior in the right direction, we should increase the level of retirement benefits in the existing Social Security program.

That sounds like blasphemy because we’ve all been fed the myth that Social Security is bankrupt. It is almost universally accepted in policy circles and in the pundit class that strengthening Social Security involves cutting future benefits relative to what current law promises because according to current projections, Social Security only has the ability to pay promised benefits in full until 2033, and then 75% of them thereafter. The basic thinking is that we must promise to cut benefits now so that we won’t necessarily have to cut them 22 years from now. What?

Imagine if that is how we treated defense spending. Since it appears budgets will be tight in the 2030s, best to mothball all those aircraft carriers today. Who would buy that argument?

The reality is that we will make our defense decisions about the 2030s in the 2030s. That’s just how we should treat federally financed retirement programs. We never actually have to cut benefits if we make the policy choice to keep funding them.
Social security is only bankrupt to the extent that our political leaders lose the will to invest in a decent retirement for American workers.

In addition to its own editorials, USA TODAY publishes a variety of opinions from outside writers. On political and policy matters, we publish opinions from across the political spectrum.

Roughly half of our columns come from our Board of Contributors, a group whose interests range from education to religion to sports to the economy. Their charge is to chronicle American culture by telling the stories, large and small, that collectively make us what we are.

We also publish weekly columns by Al Neuharth, USA TODAY’s founder, and DeWayne Wickham, who writes primarily on matters of race but on other subjects as well. That leaves plenty of room for other views from across the nation by well-known and lesser-known names alike.

As the system exists, large numbers of Americans nearing retirement will have little more than fairly meager Social Security benefits (the average benefit for retired workers is currently $1230) to survive on in their old age. We can doom them to a life of insecurity and relative poverty or we can take the obvious step to improve their lives: Increase Social Security benefits.

Seriously, if it weren’t for the radical wingnut faction in this country we’d just do the simple thing and raise the cap and raise social security benefits so they’re adequate for people to live decently in their retirement years. It’s not brain surgery.

Oh, and by the way, the smart writer is a guy named Duncan Black. And he’s scored a weekly column! (They’re taking over I tells yah …)

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This is what a campaign with no answer looks like

by David Atkins

Yeah, right:

A top advisor to Mitt Romney said Tuesday that the controversy over the GOP nominee’s comments about President Obama’s supporters as dependent on government and not paying income taxes would blow over.

“It has to,” said senior advisor Kevin Madden, though he said that whether the dust-up would subside was partly dependent on the media. “I think we’ve put in context the focus of the voters out there. And the voters I think are really focused on the big issues related on the economy and the direction of the country. And if we keep our focus on that, then I think ultimately we’re going to be in a better position to win on election day as a result.”

When a campaign’s only answer is to a horrible controversy is to simply say “it’ll go away. It has to, right?” That’s when you know it’s a bigger problem than they can handle.

The 47% Mitt Romney insulted includes seniors, military personnel, and poor hardworking Americans of every race and creed. Count on the Obama campaign to hammer that fact home as we approach election day, and for every Democratic campaign in the country to force their Republican opponents to stand with Mitt, or against the 47% of America struggling to get by.

It’s not going away.

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QOTD: Rich Lowry

by digby

After saying that Mitt foolishly conflated several different themes with his 47% gaffe, Lowry says:

The overall impression of Romney at this event is of someone who overheard some conservative cocktail chatter and maybe read a conservative blog or two, and is thoughtlessly repeating back what he heard and read.

Well yeah. You’d have to be an idiot to thoughtlessly repeat anything you read or hear from conservatives.

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The American aristocrat’s persecution complex

by digby

“My job is not to worry about those people. I’ll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives.” Mitt Romney

“Let them eat cake” -Marie Antoinette

Based on what Greg Sargent points out in this post, most Americans don’t feel the poor are the problem:

In July, Pew asked Americans what they think about the amount lower income people pay in taxes. Only 20 percent think they pay too little, versus 34 percent who say they pay a fair amount and 37 percent who say they pay too much — a total of 71 percent.

Pew also tells me that only 23 percent of independents, and 18 percent of moderates, say low income people pay too little in taxes, while big majorities of both say they pay a fair amount or too much.

Are these numbers skewed by the large number of respondents who pay low federal income taxes or none at all? Guess what: Only 22 percent of self-described middle class people think lower income folks pay too little, versus 69 percent who say they pay their fair share or too much.

Meanwhile, the reverse is true about rich people. A majority, 58 percent, say the wealthy pay too little in taxes, while only 26 percent say they pay their fair share. Fifty six percent of independents, and 69 percent of moderates, say the rich pay too little.

What about the broader debate over the role of government and the safety net? As Jim Tankersly points out, polling suggests that swing voters actually disagree with the fundamental ideological case underlying Romney’s videotaped remarks.

In that donor meeting, Romney was very loose, very casual and very colloquial. He was among his own. And “his own” believes itself to be the newest oppressed minority in the United States. Here’s David Frum:

The background to so much of the politics of the past four years is the mood of apocalyptic terror that has gripped so much of the American upper class.

Hucksters of all kinds have battened on this terror. They tell them that free enterprise is under attack; that Obama is a socialist, a Marxist, a fascist, an anti-colonialist. Only by donating to my think tank, buying my book, watching my network, going to my movie, can you – can we – stop him before he seizes everything to give to his base of “bums,” as Charles Murray memorably called them.

And what makes it all both so heart-rending and so outrageous is that all this is occurring at a time when economically disadvantaged Americans have never been so demoralized and passive, never exerted less political clout. No Coxey’s army is marching on Washington, no sit-down strikes are paralyzing factories, no squatters are moving onto farmer’s fields. Occupy Wall Street immediately fizzled, there is no protest party of the political left.

The only radical mass movement in this country is the Tea Party, a movement to defend the interests of elderly incumbent beneficiaries of the existing welfare state. Against that movement is a government of liberal technocrats dependent on campaign donations from a different faction of the American super-rich than that which backs Mitt Romney himself.

From the greatest crisis of capitalism since the 1930s, the rights and perquisites of wealth have emerged undiminished – and the central issue in this election is whether those rights and perquisites shall be enhanced still more, or whether they should be allowed to slip back to the level that prevailed during the dot.com boom.

Yet even so, the rich and the old are scared witless! Watch the trailer of Dinesh D’Souza’s new movie to glimpse into their mental universe: chanting swarthy mobs, churches and banks under attack, angry black people grabbing at other people’s houses.

Watch the D’Souza trailer with the sound off for the full effect:

This also ties into Mitt’s throwback comment about how if would be easier for a Mexican to be elected President (instead of a wealthy, white male with a famous political father.) This delusion of being an oppressed class is becoming pathological. When you’ve got people of vast, vast wealth acting as though the poorest and least of society have huge advantages, you know they’ve gone down the rabbit hole and may not be able to find their way back.

This isn’t about Mitt Romney. He just happens to be the perfect symbol of the American aristocrat’s persecution complex.

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At the end of May, progressives and reformers had a big win in Texas to celebrate. Texas? Well… sort of sure. El Paso is its own unique little corner of Texas, closer, some people like to say, to Los Angeles than to Houston. And in a different time zone from the rest of the state. The big victory was undeniable– an entirely grassroots campaign by a reform-Democrat on the El Paso City Council, Beto O’Rourke, that swept away longtime Congressman and Machine Democrat Silvestre Reyes, a cog in the Military Industrial Complex wheel.

When I asked Beto what topic he would most like to discuss at our Blue America chat at Crooks and Liars today (noon, El Paso time, 11am, PT) he didn’t hesitate for a moment, although it’s a topic a lot of Democrats shy away from: immigration. Beto, 39 years old and the father of 3 small children, is a 4th-generation El Pasoan, a graduate of Columbia University who returned to El Paso and started a technology and media company downtown–not to mention the band, Foss with Cedric Bixler-Zavala who went on to play in At the Drive-In and The Mars Volta. Cedric went on to other bands– and Beto went on to City Hall, winning 3 elections as a no-nonsense reformer, where he opposed vigilante Minutemen groups on the border, opposed the wasteful and failed so-called “war on drugs,” and pushed through a forward-looking downtown revitalization plan. He was effective and controversial and his enemies kept trying to recall him… but readers of El Paso’s biggest weekly voted him the city’s Best Elected Official– beating both Mayor John Cook and, ominously, Congressman Silvestre Reyes.

TX-16, Beto’s district, is one of the bluest in Texas. When most of the state was giving McCain a 55-44% landslide over Obama, El Paso voters gave Obama a solid two-thirds victory. Both Gore and Kerry also won in TX-16 while most of the state rallied around its former governor. Beto’s victory in the primary stunned DC insiders. They saw a business-as-usual member of their own corrupt little club fall to a steely-eyed reformer. For Party bosses that’s scarier than the opposite party winning a seat, which probably explains why the DCCC is completely ignoring Beto’s race. That has a lot to do with why Blue America is stepping in with a fill throttle endorsement and why we’re asking you to help us make sure he beats the Republican candidate who hopes to flood the district with corporate money.

Beto’s adamantly pro-Choice, pro-marriage equality, pro-immigrant stands have angered the haters and bigots and they’re determined to defeat him. The DCCC is uninterested in helping. You think they want to hear things like this?

“El Paso and Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua are home to over 2.5 million people from all over the hemisphere, and together we form the largest bi-national community in the world. This is where Latin America and North America meet, where cultures, economies, families and histories come together.

“The numbers alone are staggering: $80 billion in trade and millions of pedestrians and automobiles cross the five international bridges that connect our two countries annually.

“But our imprint on history is incalculable.

“It was in this bi-national community that the Mexican revolution was planned and launched; it’s here that millions of immigrants first experienced this country as they made their way deeper into the United States, making El Paso the Ellis Island for those coming from Latin America; and it’s El Paso’s history of tolerance and progressiveness that has broken so many national barriers when it comes to race and ethnicity (we elected the first Mexican-American mayor of a major city in 1957; we won the NCAA basketball championships in 1966 with the first all-black starting five; and we were the first city in the former Confederacy to desegregate places of public accommodation).

“Our connection to each other and our isolation from the centers of power, in Washington D.C. and Mexico City D.F., have made us stronger, more self reliant, and less influenced by the conventional wisdom from our respective country’s capitals.

“It means that when we look at the issues related to the border– issues like immigration, security, trade or Plan Merida– we understand them better than any community in America, because we live them.

“When D.C. wants to build billion-dollar walls to keep people out, we know it’s money wasted that could be better spent connecting our two countries. When we invest in military helicopters and drug war materiel in Mexico, instead of in schools and social infrastructure, we know that we are condemning our neighbor to more violence and failed policies.

“We see immigration as a huge benefit to this country– one that fuels our economy, enriches our culture and helps positively define who we are, both to this country and to others around the world.

“We know that we’re offered a false choice when asked to decide between security and mobility. We understand that cities like ours, with large immigrant populations, are the safest in the country.

“Whether you look at it through the prism of economics, demographics or culture– we are the future of this country. I look forward to sharing a positive vision of the U.S./Mexico border and helping ensure that the best values of our party and our country are reflected in our national policy.”

Beto is part of the future of the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party, part of the future of a new Texas and part of the future of our dynamic country. Please help him write history in November.