Month: November 2012

Two Americas

by David Atkins

Charles Blow breaks the silence and says what many are thinking but dare not say:

The gap is growing between liberals and conservatives, the rich and the not rich, intergenerational privilege and new-immigrant power, patriarchy and gender equality, the expanders of liberty and the withholders of it. And that gap, which has geographic contours — the densely populated coastal states versus the less densely populated states of the Rocky Mountains, Mississippi Delta and Great Plains — threatens the very concept of a United States and is pushing conservatives, left quaking after this month’s election, to extremes…

As Monica Davey reported in The New York Times on Friday, starting in January, “one party will hold the governor’s office and majorities in both legislative chambers in at least 37 states, the largest number in 60 years and a significant jump from even two years ago.”

As the National Conference of State Legislatures put it, “thanks to an apparent historic victory in Arkansas, Republicans gained control of the old South, turning the once solidly Democratic 11 states of the Confederacy upside down.” Arkansas will be the only one of these states with a Democratic governor.

As Davey’s article pointed out, single-party control raises “the prospect that bold partisan agendas — on both ends of the political spectrum — will flourish over the next couple of years.” But it seems that “both ends of the political spectrum” should not be misconstrued as being equal. Democrats may want to expand personal liberties, but Republicans have spent the last few years working feverishly to restrict them…

We are moving toward two Americas with two contrasting — and increasingly codified — concepts of liberty. Can such a nation long endure?

I don’t know the answer. Obviously, demographics are changing the equation somewhat. But the notion that the Republican Party will moderate itself to win national elections is a pipe dream. Things are going to get much worse on that side of the aisle long before they get better–if they ever do.

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He’s baaaack

by digby

Via C&L:

ORLANDO, Fla. -U.S. Rep.-elect Alan Grayson (D-Fla.) joined a Walmart worker as she walked off her job in St. Cloud as part of a nationwide protest against the country’s largest employer. Grayson joined Walmart associate Lisa Lopez on Thanksgiving night to protest what employees says is the store’s retaliation against workers who speak out for better job conditions. On “Black Friday,” Grayson also joined a walkout at a Walmart in Orlando. Union-backed groups OUR Walmart and Making Change at Wal-Mart, along with watchdog group Corporate Action Network, are calling on the retailer to end what they call retaliation against employees who speak out for better pay, fair schedules and affordable health care.

Disappearing Romney

by digby

If you’re looking for a quick laugh, check out disappearingromney.com, which features a minute by minute account of Mitt Romney sinking across all social media.

That’s a snapshot of the site at 9:30 this morning …

The only person left who likes him is Ann Coulter. (And if you can tell what her point is in this, you’re a better person than I am:)

[T]he idea that Mitt Romney was “a weak, moderate candidate” is preposterous.

As Trotsky said, in moments of crisis, people with no politics tend to develop the worst possible politics.

Even newly elected Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas complained that Romney failed to get across that there are “two viewpoints and directions for the country” and that he erred by trying to “be a nice guy.” As Cruz said, “I’m pretty certain Mitt Romney actually French-kissed Barack Obama” in the third debate — proving once again that comedy is harder than it looks.

The idea that Romney failed to present a clear contrast with Obama or was too “nice” is also nonsense. If Republicans continue to tell themselves comforting myths about our candidate being the problem, they better get used to losing a lot more elections.

The only Republican to defeat a sitting president in the last century was Ronald Reagan in 1980, when he beat Jimmy Carter, the second-worst president in U.S. history (pending the final results of Obama’s second term). Because of that, and also because he is in the top two best American presidents, Reagan’s example is worth studying.

In Reagan’s one debate with Carter in 1980, he presented “two viewpoints and directions for the country” by vowing to save Medicare and not to cut taxes too much. Loud and clear, Reagan said: “My tax cut does not come close to eliminating (Carter’s) $86 billion increase. I’m only reducing the amount of the increase.”

There’s your bold contrasting vision!

Reagan picked a pro-choice, anti-supply side Republican as his running mate. He lavishly praised FDR in his acceptance speech at the national convention, leading The New York Times to title an editorial about him “Franklin Delano Reagan.”

Meanwhile, Romney promised to institute major reforms to Medicare, repeal Obamacare and impose a 20 percent across-the-board tax cut. He said he’d issue a 50-state waiver to Obamacare on his first day in office. (Why he didn’t promise it to all 57 states I’ll never know.) He chose a pro-life, fiscal conservative as his running mate and never praised FDR.

A careful analysis of the Romney plan thus reveals several deviations from the Democrat platform — more stark than those delineated by even Reagan.

Romney was the most libertarian candidate Republicans have run since Calvin Coolidge. And he got more votes from the dwindling white majority than Reagan did.

How many more votes would Romney have gotten by being a rude, condescending jerk? Sure, it worked for Obama, but he was the incumbent.

Some conservatives didn’t trust Romney because, as governor of a state between blue and North Korea, he had instituted a health insurance mandate, one feature of the hated Obamacare.

As governor of a purple state, Reagan had signed the most liberal abortion law in the country and imposed the three largest state tax hikes in the nation’s history. Nevada Sen. Paul Laxalt’s nominating speech hailed Reagan’s governorship of California for producing “a veritable Great Society of aid for schools, minorities and the handicapped,” as the Times put it. Reagan had also been an actual member of the godless, treason party.

This is not to diminish Reagan. It is to say that Romney wasn’t the problem.

To the extent Republicans have a problem with their candidates, it’s not that they’re not conservative enough. Where are today’s Nelson Rockefellers, Arlen Specters or George H.W. Bushes? Happily, they have gone the way of leprosy.

Having vanquished liberal Republicans, the party’s problem now runs more along the lines of moron showoffs, trying to impress tea partiers like Jenny Beth Martin by taking insane positions on rape exceptions for abortion — as 2 million babies are killed every year from pregnancies having nothing to do with rape.

Romney lost because he was running against an incumbent, was beaten up during a long and vicious primary fight, and ran in a year with a very different electorate from 1980. At least one of those won’t be true next time. But we’re not going to win any elections by telling ourselves fairy tales about a candidate who lost because he wasn’t conservative enough, articulate enough or mean enough.

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We don’t really count as “people” to Peggy Noonan

by David Atkins

Peggy Noonan’s now-famous column predicting a Romney win has been widely mocked as the musings of an ignoramus unwilling to admit obvious polling data–the dying gasp of a political crowd that trusts its gut “vibrations” over scientifically available evidence. All that is true.

But there’s also a revolting cynicism at play about what constitutes the “American people” for pundits like Noonan. Consider this passage:

Among the wisest words spoken this cycle were by John Dickerson of CBS News and Slate, who said, in a conversation the night before the last presidential debate, that he thought maybe the American people were quietly cooking something up, something we don’t know about.

I think they are and I think it’s this: a Romney win.

One could interpret this as a belief that Romney’s support was undercounted by the polls. But that doesn’t make much sense: all the enthusiasm and likely turnout models were actually more favorable to Republicans than the eventual result. It’s hard to believe that GOP pundits really thought that the polls were underestimating Romney’s legitimate base support.

And in fact we know that’s not the case. The reason that conservative pundits from Dick Morris to George Will to Peggy Noonan were predicting blowout wins for Romney was that Romney’s own people were expecting that, too. But not because they believed the polls were undercounting Romney support. Instead, Romney’s pollsters believed a Romney blowout would result from base Democrats simply not showing up to vote:

Romney and his campaign had gone into the evening confident they had a good path to victory, for emotional and intellectual reasons. The huge and enthusiastic crowds in swing state after swing state in recent weeks – not only for Romney but also for Paul Ryan – bolstered what they believed intellectually: that Obama would not get the kind of turnout he had in 2008…

They misread turnout. They expected it to be between 2004 and 2008 levels, with a plus-2 or plus-3 Democratic electorate, instead of plus-7 as it was in 2008. Their assumptions were wrong on both sides: The president’s base turned out and Romney’s did not. More African-Americans voted in Ohio, Virginia, North Carolina and Florida than in 2008.

This is actually overstating the case: as the votes continue to be counted, it’s increasingly clear that Romney-Ryan received about the same level of Republican base support as did McCain-Palin. Understand clearly what this means: conservative pundits, doubtless reflecting information gleaned directly from Romney operatives, believed that base Democrats wouldn’t show up to the voting booth, resulting in a lower Democratic turnout than had existed in 2008.

This is what Noonan really meant when she suggested that the “American people were cooking something up.” Not that a silent majority of Americans would surprisingly turn out to vote for Romney, but that all those voters who clearly preferred Democrats would fail to materialize. It’s an assessment based on apathy, division and subtraction rather than addition and inclusion.

Republicans spent four years attempting to delegitimize Obama’s presidency, obstruct at every turn, disempower Democratic and progressive constituencies, and breed cynicism about government among those who had voted for hope and change. They assumed that those voters would be so turned off by the entire political process that they would simply give up and stop participating, allowing Romney to take a majority of the voters who showed up to the polls, even though he didn’t have the support of a majority of the actual people in the nation regardless.

And having done this, Noonan and her ilk would have deigned to claim the mantle of support from an “American people” that had “cooked up” an unexpected result.

Because after all, to the Noonans and George Wills of the world, Democratic constituencies don’t legitimately count as “people.” If we stay home and don’t vote it doesn’t impact the legitimacy of the election, since our voices aren’t really included in the American recipe.

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The president and his sniper rifle

by digby

One of the creepiest video you will see today:

Mark Bowden, who gained access to the president and other top officials in order to write his new book “The Finish: The Killing of Osama bin Laden,” talks to “Viewpoint” host Eliot Spitzer about Obama’s “target killings” program, in which the president regularly decides whether to kill or capture individual terrorist suspects with no judicial review.

“He has in effect a sniper rifle and each day he is given a dossier of an individual who has come into the crosshairs of the CIA or the military, and on a regular basis has to decide whether to pull the trigger,” Bowden says. “It’s very direct, and it’s also, as the president told me, a tool that is very dangerous because it’s relatively easy and there’s so little risk involved in targeting and killing someone anywhere in the world with this technology.”

Dangerous? Really?

Watch the interview and then think about the hundred ways that this is wrong.

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Support the Walmart Walkout

by digby

This video is from one of the Walmart walk-outs in LA today:

George Woodley, a 63-year-old Wal-Mart cashier, was also outside. He is a few years away from retirement, and wants to fight for current and future employees, he said.

“I know times are tough and people need jobs,” Woodley said. “But the question is, what kind of jobs are we getting?”

That’s really the question, isn’t it?

It’s still early here on the West Coast so there still time to help out.

It’s not the economy stupid

by digby

Americans are a very religious people and this day is one of our most precious days of worship: we believe in shopping. The malls are our cathedrals, and the ritual of standing in line to buy garbage we don’t need is our greatest act of devotion. But as you watch the news media try to spin this as a prediction of economic strength, as they do on every “black Friday”, keep this in mind:

[S]ales over Thanksgiving weekend tell us virtually nothing about retail sales for the full holiday season—let alone anything meaningful about the economy as a whole. Paul Dales of Capital Economics analyzed the relationship between retail sales during the week of Thanksgiving against the overall change in retail sales for November through January. As the chart shows, the relationship is a very weak one, with dots all over the grid. But if there is any conclusion to draw at all, the relationship is actually negative! (That’s why the line is sloping downward).

In other words, strong sales results around Black Friday actually predict slightly weaker holiday sales overall. (Shhh. Don’t tell the people who lined up at Target last night that they aren’t actually bellweathers for the U.S. economy).

It is what it is — a pious commitment to our one true God: consumerism, nothing more nothing less.

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Pat Robertson misses God. So do a lot of people.

by David Atkins

Pat Robertson embarrasses himself again:

“You have to practice the presence of God, practice to voice of God, practice hearing from God and then check to see if indeed you are hearing from Him. And so many of us miss God. I’ll tell you, I won’t get into great detail about elections, but I sure did miss it and I thought I had heard from God, I thought I had heard clearly from God. What happened? What intervenes? Why? You ask God, ‘How did I miss it?’ Well, we all do and I’ve had a lot of practice.

There are many people who try to get a sense of the purpose of the universe, ascertain their role in it, and attempt to go with the flow of what that purpose intends. That’s part of living spiritually. Atheists will scoff and say that such things are illusory, and that’s fine. Whether there is a higher power of some kind is ultimately unknowable.

But what is knowable is that every sap and two-bit con artist like Robertson who claims to know the intent of God, who claims to ask specific questions of God and receive specific answers, hasn’t heard anything more than the confirmation of their own biases and prejudices.

If there is a divine presence in this world, it doesn’t communicate with people who slaughter one another over “holy” lands. It doesn’t care who lives on what scrap of desert any more than it cares to put an end to childhood leukemia.

And it sure as hell doesn’t communicate directly to the likes of Pat Robertson, nor has it ever.

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Freedom fried Thanksgiving

by digby

Via a dozen tweets:

One of our most important holidays is Thanksgiving Day, known in France as le Jour de Merci Donnant.

Le Jour de Merci Donnant was first started by a group of Pilgrims (Pèlerins) who fled from l’Angleterre before the McCarran Act to found a colony in the New World (le Nouveau Monde) where they could shoot Indians (les Peaux-Rouges) and eat turkey (dinde) to their heart’s content.

They landed at a place called Plymouth (now a famous voiture Américaine) in a wooden sailing ship called the Mayflower (or Fleur de Mai) in 1620. But while the Pèlerins were killing the dindes, the Peaux-Rouges were killing the Pèlerins, and there were several hard winters ahead for both of them. The only way the Peaux- Rouges helped the Pèlerins was when they taught them to grow corn (maïs).The reason they did this was because they liked corn with their Pèlerins.

In 1623, after another harsh year, the Pèlerins’ crops were so good that they decided to have a celebration and give thanks because more maïs was raised by the Pèlerins than Pèlerins were killed by Peaux-Rouges.

Every year on the Jour de Merci Donnant, parents tell their children an amusing story about the first celebration.

It concerns a brave capitaine named Miles Standish (known in France as Kilomètres Deboutish) and a young, shy lieutenant named Jean Alden. Both of them were in love with a flower of Plymouth called Priscilla Mullens (no translation). The vieux capitaine said to the jeune lieutenant:

“Go to the damsel Priscilla (allez très vite chez Priscilla), the loveliest maiden of Plymouth (la plus jolie demoiselle de Plymouth). Say that a blunt old captain, a man not of words but of action (un vieux Fanfan la Tulipe), offers his hand and his heart, the hand and heart of a soldier. Not in these words, you know, but this, in short, is my meaning.

“I am a maker of war (je suis un fabricant de la guerre) and not a maker of phrases. You, bred as a scholar (vous, qui êtes pain comme un étudiant), can say it in elegant language, such as you read in your books of the pleadings and wooings of lovers, such as you think best adapted to win the heart of the maiden.”

Although Jean was fit to be tied (convenable à être emballé), friendship prevailed over love and he went to his duty. But instead of using elegant language, he blurted out his mission.Priscilla was muted with amazement and sorrow (rendue muette par l’étonnement et la tristesse).

At length she exclaimed, interrupting the ominous silence: “If the great captain of Plymouth is so very eager to wed me, why does he not come himself and take the trouble to woo me?” (Où est-il, le vieux Kilomètres? Pourquoi ne vient-il pas auprès de moi pour tenter sa chance?)

Jean said that Kilomètres Deboutish was very busy and didn’t have time for those things. He staggered on, telling what a wonderful husband Kilomètres would make. Finally Priscilla arched her eyebrows and said in a tremulous voice, “Why don’t you speak for yourself, Jean?” (Chacun à son goût.)

And so, on the fourth Thursday in November, American families sit down at a large table brimming with tasty dishes, and for the only time during the year eat better than the French do.

No one can deny that le Jour de Merci Donnant is a grande fête and no matter how well fed American families are, they never forget to give thanks to Kilomètres Deboutish, who made this great day possible.

Art Buchwald. This column first appeared in the IHT many, many Thanksgivings ago.

We return to our regularly scheduled program tomorrow. Enjoy your food coma.

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Negotiation Kabuki

by digby

Ok, now they’re just getting silly:

The White House and congressional Democrats are balking at the idea, floated by House Speaker John Boehner on Wednesday, that changes to the president’s signature health care law should be on the table during lame-duck talks over taxes and the deficit.

An administration official told The Huffington Post that the president would oppose involving the Affordable Care Act in the negotiations taking place to stave off the so-called “fiscal cliff.” A top Senate Democratic aide called the idea “absolutely” a non-starter.

“And they know that, so its counterproductive to even offer it,” the aide added.

Another Senate Democratic aide did concede that some changes to the Affordable Care Act could be made as part of a grand-bargain deal that would replace the expiring Bush-era tax cuts and the $1 trillion in spending cuts included in the sequester. But those changes would not alter the purpose and reach of the law “in any meaningful way.”

Sometimes negotiation kabuki is believable and sometimes it isn’t. This time it isn’t. Injecting Obamacare into the mix is ridiculous, but it does serve as something that the GOP can “give up” in exchange for something the Democrats can give up. It remains to be seen whether anyone’s really giving up anything.

I’m actually becoming more hopeful. This negotiation has all the hallmarks of other phony negotiations. I would not be surprised to see a six month extension of all the tax cuts with a “firm” trigger to slash spending if they don’t come up with a deal. In other words, an extension of the sequester only on worse terms for the Democrats (just because…)

The great God of the Free market has been quiescent thus far so they probably think they will have some time. And it’s possible the Dems can extract some important stuff in this round, like some reworking of the payroll tax cut and Unemployment Insurance. If they truly wanted to protect SS and Medicare they’d run out this string, but I don’t honestly think they do, so that’s probably all we can hope for for now.

But who knows? And I can’t believe I’m saying this, but Grover Norquist is right: these negotiations should be on C-SPAN.Trying to read tea leaves of negotiations being done behind closed doors by a bunch of politicians who are being button-holed by lobbyists and big donors all day long isn’t what I’d call a democracy. The people just spoke in the Big Poll and nobody seems to give a damn what they said.

Update: Greg Sargent has more …