Dear Barry: Four Words
by tristero
Love,
tristero
"what digby sez..."
Month: October 2013
“There’s a lot we don’t know”
by digby
It’s amusing watching the right wingers get up on their “skewed polls” horses once again to explain why it’s just not possible that the country doesn’t agree with their tactics on this government shut down. (I understand the impulse — it’s the old Pauline Kael trope about not knowing anyone who disagrees with you, right?) But it seems quite clear to anyone without blinders on that the Republicans are taking the bigger hit in public opinion on this. There are very few Ted Cruz fans out there.
On the other hand, I do recall that in the last election, everyone I knew said that we should “trust Nate Silver” and indeed, he turned out to be right. So unless we want to be as unrealistic as Republicans we should probably pay attention to what he’s saying about all this as well — just so we don’t go off half cocked. He points out once again that presidential polling is pretty good and that, for the most part, by the end of the campaign it’s fairly clear who’s going to win. Then he says this:
However, presidential elections are more the exception than the rule. As I discuss in my book, the more common tendency instead is that people (and especially the “experts” who write about the issues for a living) overestimate the degree of predictability in complex systems. There are some other exceptions besides presidential elections — sports, in many respects; and weather prediction, which has become much better in recent years. But for the most part, the experts you see on television are much too sure of themselves.
That’s been my impression of the coverage of the shutdown: The folks you see on TV are much too sure of themselves. They’ve been making too much of thin slices of polling and thinner historical precedents that might not apply this time around.
There’s been plenty of bullshit, in other words. We really don’t know all that much about how the shutdown is going to be resolved, or how the long-term political consequences are going to play out.
He goes on to lay out six reasons why everyone should show a little restraint when predicting the political outcome of all this:
1. The media is probably overstating the magnitude of the shutdown’s political impact.
2. The impact of the 1995-96 shutdowns is overrated in Washington’s mythology.
3. Democrats face extremely unfavorable conditions in trying to regain the House.
4. The polling data on the shutdown is not yet all that useful, and we lack data on most important measures of voter preferences.
5. President Obama’s change in tactics may be less about a change of heart and more about a change in incentives.
Read the post for his reasoning on all this, but in a nutshell he points out that these stories tend to have a shorter shelf life than people realize, that Clinton was always likely to win in 1996 and he had no coattails so his victory was sort of pyrrhic anyway, gerrymandering and polling on this is imprecise and that Obama isn’t facing election so he’s behaving differently.
All of that is thought provoking and worth taking into consideration before we plan our victory party. But this may be the most important insight:
6. The increasing extent of GOP partisanship is without strong recent precedent, and contributes to the systemic uncertainty about political outcomes.
Congress has gone through periods of relatively high partisanship before — for example, at the turn of the 20th century. But the degree of polarization in the Congress is higher than at any point since the Great Depression by a variety of measures, and is possibly at its highest point ever. (Most of the evidence suggests the trend is asymmetric: Republicans in Congress have become much more conservative, while Democrats have become only somewhat more liberal.)
What this means is that, whether they assume the form of statistical models or more anecdotal takes on the evidence, conceptions based on recent history of how the negotiations might play out may not be all that reliable. That there were 17 government shutdowns between 1976 and 1996, for example, none of which persisted for more than three weeks, may not be all that meaningful since none of those came at a time when Congress was nearly as polarized as it is now. Similarly, the fact that an aggregate limit on federal debt has been in place since 1939 [PDF] may not tell us all that much. This is not to imply that the risk of a debt ceiling breach is all that high, especially given the reports of progress in budget talks as of Thursday morning.
But there’s a lot we don’t know.
The joy with which Democrats greet the bad polling numbers for Republicans is understandable. And there could be some very serious fall-out for them a year from now in the mid-terms. These guys are certifiable and one hopes that sanity will reassert itself in American politics sooner rather than later. But if this joy at the short term polling breeds Democratic hubris (as if often does) that always hurts the ball team. As Silver says, “there’s a lot we don’t know …”
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A picture’s worth a thousand words
by digby
As most House Republicans meet in the Capitol, Beck in ad hoc meeting with Lee, Bachmann, Gohmert pic.twitter.com/kf8wbl7W9y
— daveweigel (@daveweigel) October 12, 2013
Remember folks, this was only a couple of years ago:
This guy:
Trading spaces, kabuki style
by digby
This piece in the New York Times reveals nothing new — everything still fluid, who knows what’s really going on. But this struck me as unhelpful:
Democrats, led by Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader, have repeatedly said they will not negotiate over reopening the government or raising the debt ceiling. But privately, a growing number of them said they have come to the realization that to insist on giving nothing to Republicans at all is a bargaining position they may be unable to maintain.
What they give and how a compromise could be structured so it allows the president and Democratic leaders to say credibly that they have not reversed their hard-line position is unclear. White House officials said the president would be willing to sign a short-term increase in the debt ceiling and then negotiate on larger budget issues, but not if the two were explicitly linked.
Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, one of a handful of Republicans who often reaches across the aisle, said Mr. Obama told them he would be willing to “trade” something in exchange for their cooperation.
“He said ‘space for trading,’ ” Ms. Murkowski said. “So apparently we are not talking about negotiation, we’re talking about some trading space.”
It doesn’t matter if the two are “explictly linked.” They’re linked. Unless the president can extract some kind of ironclad agreement to never do this again, which is impossible, the whole thing will end up being a kabuki spectacle that rewards the craziest dancer.
Personally, I don’t see how it could ever have worked — once the dam on the debt ceiling was broken in 2011, I think this was bound to happen. The Republicans will have to lose and lose big, and explicitly because they become so out of the mainstream that even some of their own voters decide they’re too nuts to be elected before this fanatical behavior stops. Until that happens, I think Democrats have to start being a little bit more strategic and wield their power more effectively than they have been. These people are nuts and kabuki dances pretending to “win” when you didn’t actually win isn’t going to cut it.
I have to think, however, that even on a kabuki level, Democrats whispering to reporters that they “recognize” that they’re going to have to compromise after they’ve made such a huge deal out of never giving in probably isn’t the best idea. It’s hard for me to believe that came from the leadership or the White House because it would be completely ridiculous at this point.
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Mass hysteria of the right
by David Atkins
Isn’t it time we started asking if these people might be clinically ill?
A joint coalition of gun lobbyists are declaring Dec. 14, 2013 — the one-year anniversary of the massacre at Sandy Hook School in Newtown, Conn. — “Guns Saves Lives Day.”
The Second Amendment Foundation, the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, and DefendGunRights.com announced yesterday that they will be organizing events in all 50 states on Dec. 14 to counteract the anticipated anti-gun activism on the anniversary of the mass shooting that killed 26 people.
In addition to these organized events, GunsSaveLivesDay.com includes a petition calling for Congress to cease and desist all efforts to disarm Americans, and donation page to “help protect and support gun rights.”
In a press release posted online yesterday, the sponsors said their mission “is to assure them our groups are working day and night to thwart government gun-grabbers at every opportunity. We are going to show America that there is a good side to guns.”
Gun control organization Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America immediately responded to the gun lobby’s plans:
“To hold a gun-glorifying event on Dec. 14, a day when America will remember the slaughter of 26 innocent Americans, including teachers and first-grade students, can be deemed nothing less than abject evil.”
The most charitable explanation I can give for all of this behavior–from these people to Ted Cruz to the rest–is the sense that their world is disappearing. America is no longer as dominant as it once was, men aren’t as dominant as they once were, whites aren’t as dominant as they once were, Christians and believers in general aren’t as dominant as they once were. Sure, the American rich white Christian male still has social hegemony, but these people can feel it slipping away. It scares them half to death, and rage-filled, destructive, wildly inappropriate tantrums are the typical reaction.
On many levels we have moved past politics as usual. This is a collective hysteria among millions of terrified people that will get far worse before it runs its course.
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Moment of zen: aging baby boomer edition
by digby
A half-century after Beatlemania swept Britain, Paul McCartney faced squealing teenage girls once again when he performed on Wednesday afternoon in the Tony Bennett Concert Hall at the Frank Sinatra School of the Arts in Astoria, Queens. They didn’t scream all the way through the songs, as their grandparents might have, but they stayed on their feet — clapping, waving their arms, singing along — through oldies like “Eight Days a Week,” “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da,” “We Can Work It Out” and “Blackbird.”
Before an audience of about 400 students along with guests including Mr. Bennett (the arts school’s founder) and Mr. McCartney’s wife, Nancy Shevell, Mr. McCartney played a handful of songs from “New” along with songs from the Beatles and Wings. He also answered questions from 10 nervous but well-prepared students. The D.J. Jim Kerr was the host. Gauging the generation gap, Mr. McCartney made sure that when he mentioned a fellow student from his high school in Liverpool, England, he identified him as “George Harrison of the Beatles.”
Three songs from “New,” which pairs Mr. McCartney with new producers, vigorously upheld the Beatles spirit. “New” celebrated the hopefulness of new love with ebullient piano chords reminiscent of “Penny Lane.” (Mr. McCartney dedicated it to Ms. Shevell and the anniversary of their Oct. 9 wedding.) The guitar riffs of “Save Us” arrived with an almost punky drive, even as the song headed for a vocal-harmony chorus. And “Everybody Out There” was foot-stomping folk-rock that urged, “Do some good before you say goodbye.” Mr. McCartney was just as exuberant in older songs like “Jet,” “Back in the U.S.S.R.,” “Lady Madonna” and “Band on the Run,” whooping and belting his way up to the high notes.
Speaking to the students, Mr. McCartney noted that they were getting better training than he did when he started writing songs. Their questions were career-oriented. When one student asked how fame had affected his musical evolution, Mr. McCartney replied: “The thing that fame does is it gives you freedom. So you start off doing stuff that you think other people want to hear and you end up thinking, `Well, that’s O.K., but I could give them something they don’t know they want to hear just yet.’ ”
Another asked what his greatest lesson had been. “When we first started out, I was terrified of doing anything wrong onstage,” he said. Eventually he realized that “people don’t mind,” he said. “In fact, people kind of like it. It’s true, you know, if you’re onstage and you make a mistake, people go, ‘Oh, I was at the show where he made the mistake.’ And it doesn’t matter as much as you think it does.”
He said that he felt he had made it the first time he heard “Love Me Do” on the radio while driving from Liverpool to London. “I just wound down all the windows,” he said, gesticulating. “It’s me! This is me!”
And he distilled the simple but demanding formulation behind his Beatles collaborations with John Lennon: “We didn’t want to do the same thing twice.”
Arms were waving and voices were raised for Mr. McCartney’s finale, “Hey Jude.” And for long minutes after Mr. McCartney and his band had left the stage, the students kept singing the “Na na” refrain as if it were a brand-new hit.
The mini-concert and Q & A session will air on CLEAR CHANNEL – Oldies, Classic Rock, Classic Hits, and AC stations MONDAY, OCTOBER 14th at 9p ET/8 p CT/6p PT.
Here’s the Youtube of the new song “Everybody out there” from the surprise concert in Times Square yesterday.
You can listen while you enjoy your Geritol and gin cocktail. I love those things. Gives me pep.
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by digby
I assume Lord Saletan makes a very good living:
Hey, Democrats! Here’s an idea: If you rein in spending and borrowing, you won’t have to win another debt-ceiling increase a year from now.
— Will Saletan (@saletan) October 11, 2013
I. just.can’t.
The United States is up against the debt ceiling right now. If we wanted to avoid more borrowing, we’d have to stop running deficits altogether. Immediately. And that would hurt.
The U.S. federal government currently takes in enough tax revenue to pay for about two-thirds of its spending. So balancing the budget right away would mean cutting spending by 33 percent, hiking taxes by 50 percent, or some combination of the two.
Most economists will tell you this would crush the economy. As Paul Krugman points out, cutting government spending by 33 percent all at once would trigger a recession. Once that happened, deficits would soar higher as tax revenue fell and safety-net programs expanded automatically. So, to stay under the debt ceiling, we’d have to keep cutting.
Once the dust settled, Krugman estimates, eliminating the deficit that much would cause GDP to fall by around 10 percent and trigger a 5 percent rise in unemployment. Maybe more. This is basically what Greece did to deal with its debt crisis. And Greece still hasn’t yet eliminated its deficits, even after years of massive austerity.
Now, obviously you could reduce the deficit more gradually than this — most Democrats and Republicans are in favor of a softer approach here. But as long as the United States keeps running any deficits at all, the federal government will continue to accumulate more debt and will need additional borrowing authority. Even the most ambitious deficit-reduction plans now on the table will still require future debt-ceiling hikes.
On the other hand, there’s also ample evidence that this deficit obsession is pretty much bullshit from start to finish.
But it’s a helluva good way to turn the US into a banana republic for real.
Update: See David’s post below, as well.
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Chris Hayes sees the trees for the forest
by digby
Here’s a nice piece from yesterday’s All In with Chris Hayes that shows Hayes may be the only journalist who gets what’s going on:
Unfortunately, earlier today Jake Tapper asked that same Sherrod Brown if Democrats would agree to “entitlement” cuts:
House Republicans are reportedly trying to start a bigger budget deal that includes cuts to entitlement programs and tax reform, while also removing smaller sequester spending restraints and increasing spending. The latter would please Democrats who want higher spending levels, but would require some hard cuts down the road.
“It’s something we should consider. We should consider everything now,” said Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown, of Ohio.
Here’s some hopeful news, however:
Broad deficit reduction could strain R coalition more than #Obamacare: nearly 4/5 of whites >50 oppose any medicare cuts in new #UTCNJCCPoll
— Ronald Brownstein (@RonBrownstein) October 11, 2013
Maybe the Tea Partiers will save us one more time …
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Reminder: balancing the budget doesn’t help the economy
by David Atkins
As we begin to engage in another round of deficit hysteria, it’s helpful to remember that the notion that balancing the budget will help the economy is possibly the most widespread and most harmful lie in politics at the moment.
It’s not hard to prove, either. No one disputes that a lack of jobs is due to a lack of business investment in creating jobs. The question is why businesses aren’t creating those jobs.
The first and simplest conservative lie is that taxes and regulations are killing investment. Yet we know that effective business taxes are lower now than they were decades ago when many more jobs were being created, and we also know that corporate profits and stock prices are at record highs. That argument is easy to dismiss out of hand as partisan hackery.
The more sophisticated plutocratic lie is that uncertainty about America’s fiscal future is causing a lack of investment. The argument goes that businesses won’t invest in America because it’s not clear that America will be able to pay its bills without hyperfinflation to cover unsustainable debts.
But this is also an easily disproven lie. Let’s ignore for a moment the fact that the deficit is actually shrinking. It turns out that there is a market that directly prices the risk of the United States defaulting on our obligations: the U.S. treasuries market. The signal that global investors are leery of U.S. debt would be rising prices on treasuries, and/or investors fleeing the treasuries market. But the opposite has been happening. Not only are investors not fleeing U.S. treasuries, the market has been so strong that many have speculated there’s a bubble in U.S. treasuries. Only with the Republican-led threat of default has the treasuries market started to destabilize.
It’s important to restate this. There is an easy way to know if lack of confidence in U.S. debt obligations is causing lack of business investment. As long as the U.S. treasuries market is strong, saying that U.S. debt is the problem with business investment is a bald-faced lie. It’s just objectively not true.
It’s theoretically possible for debt to take on problematic levels at some point in the medium to far future. But the easiest and best way to reduce debt is by growing the economy. And if we know that low consumer demand is the reason for weak economic performance, it’s insane to hurt consumer demand now by reducing government spending ni order to “solve” a possible long-term problem later. It makes no sense at all.
Whenever you see someone claiming that “reducing entitlements” now is the key to economic recovery, it’s important to know that that person is either economically ignorant or deliberately conning you. More likely the latter.
They know that income inequality and corporate profits are at all time highs, and that maintaining current Medicare and Social Security obligations 20 years from now will likely mean higher taxes on them in the future. That’s undoubtedly true, and entirely appropriate given rampant inequality. They also know that a much more progressive Millennial generation of voters won’t hesitate to raise those taxes in 20 years.
So these people are lying to you, pretending that cutting “entitlements” will improve the economy today. They know it won’t. They know it will do the opposite.
They’re just lying. And nearly every major reporter in Washington is aiding and abetting that lie.
Don’t tease the panther
by digby
A top adviser to President Barack Obama on Friday said Republicans will have plenty of negotiating leverage to help strike a budget deal even if they take the threat of a government default off the table.
National Economic Council Director Gene Sperling downplayed the idea that Republicans would be “surrendering” if they agree to raise the debt ceiling without receiving any policy concessions from Democrats.
“When you have divided government, it is not correct that one side has to feel that if they were to open the government or take away the threat of default, they somehow lose their leverage,” Sperling said at conference hosted by the the Institute of International Finance, a bank trade group. “In divided government, you by definition have leverage because each side has gains and policy achievements that they cannot achieve without the cooperation of the other side.”
[…]
He reiterated that the president will not negotiate with Republicans under the threat of default but that once this is out of the way, the White House stands ready to negotiate a budget deal — large, small or medium.
Actually this seems wise on some level. Democratic triumphalism is a big danger here. If they are on the verge of ending the crisis (even temporarily), the last they should do is rub the GOP’s nose in it before the deal is done.
On the other hand, Jay Carney put it a little bit differently earlier in a way that doesn’t make much sense to me. He said that they would sign on to a “clean” lift of the debt ceiling and the CR even if it was temporary. But he said they would not agree to do that with any promise to negotiate. But obviously, they will be in exactly the same position 6 weeks from now if they don’t come to some agreement, so any extension is a tacit agreement to negotiate. I get that they believe it’s extremely important not to reward this debt ceiling gambit. But whether they like it or not, any agreements they make with the Republicans will result in Republicans believing they won something by doing it. What am I missing?
The only thing that will stop them from doing this again is for them to lose many seats in the next election. I’m not sure why people are fooling themselves into believing otherwise.
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