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Month: June 2014

Uhm, don’t look now but Iraq seriously seems to be coming apart …

Published by digby on June 12, 2014

Uhm, don’t look now but Iraq seriously seems to be coming apart…

by digby

I officially no longer give a damn about David Brat. I’m sure I will again, but for the moment this seems a little bit more important:

Sunni militants extended their control over parts of northern and western Iraq on Wednesday as Iraqi government forces crumbled in disarray. The militants overran the city of Tikrit, seized facilities in the strategic oil refining town of Baiji, and threatened an important Shiite shrine in Samarra as they moved south toward Baghdad.

The remarkably rapid advance of the Sunni militants, who on Tuesday seized the northern city of Mosul as Iraqi forces fled or surrendered, reflects the spillover of the Sunni insurgency in Syria and the inability of Iraq’s Shiite-led government to pacify the country after American forces departed in 2011 following eight years of war and occupation.

By late Wednesday, witnesses in Samarra, 70 miles north of Baghdad, were reporting that the militants, many of them aligned with the radical Islamic State of Iraq and Syria or ISIS, were on the outskirts of the city. They said the militants demanded that forces loyal to the government leave the city or a sacred Shiite shrine there would be destroyed. Samarra is known for the shrine, the al-Askari Mosque, which was severely damaged in a 2006 bombing during the height of the American-led occupation. That event touched off sectarian mayhem between the country’s Sunni Arab minority and its Shiite majority.

This live-blog of the day’s events will wake you up.

I don’t know what to say. I suppose we all figured this would be the likely end game. Certainly it seemed more likely than the Jeffersonian democracy bilge they tried to sell us on a decade ago. But what in the hell is going to happen now?

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VDare’s dreamboat

Published by digby on June 11, 2014

VDare’s dreamboat

by digby

As we wait for David Brat to “carefully craft his message” it’s fun to see what some of the more fringy members of the right wing fever swamps think of him. The immigrant haters at VDare love him to death:

It’s … the greatest electoral victory to date for the patriotic immigration reform movement.

Having worked in Republican immigration politics for many years, I’ve seen a very sad and familiar pattern in challenges to pro- Amnesty politicians. It goes like this:

1) Establishment candidate supports amnesty

2) Challenger runs anti-amnesty campaign

3) Establishment candidate pretends to oppose amnesty and outspends challenger by many orders of magnitude

4) Establishment candidate fools voters and wins

5) Chattering classes use election as proof that voters support amnesty

6) Establishment candidate goes back to supporting amnesty

The most blatant example: Senator John McCain suddenly championed SB 1070 and ending birthright citizenship for a few months when JD Hayworth challenged him 2010. Then he proceeded to become one the Gang of Eight. But this has happened many times: Jeff Flake in 2012, Lindsay Graham in 2008 (and again today, but we’ll leave that for another time), Chris Cannon in 2004 and 2006.

For a while, it looked like Eric Cantor was on the same path. As I wrote in my previous VDARE.com column, Cantor has been quietly (and sometimes vocally) supporting Amnesty for some time. Yet, faced with Brat’s challenge, Cantor began sending out campaign mailers stating “Conservative Republican Eric Cantor Is Stopping the Obama Reid Plan to Give Illegal Aliens Amnesty.”

Money is what makes this campaign both stunning and such a win for patriotic immigration reform. Cantor raised over five million dollars to David Brat’s $200,000. Brat responded with a populist campaign calling Cantor a tool of the cheap labor and business lobby.

Oh baby. But they’ve loved and lost before so they’re trying no to let themselves go over the moon:

Brat is not the first primary challenger to defeat a pro-amnesty incumbent. Jason Chaffetz defeated Chris Cannon in 2008. Although Cannon was a solid conservative on all issues other than immigration and Chaffetz made opposition to amnesty to main focal point of his campaign, the MSM portrayed the defeat as rooted in general dissatisfaction with Washington.

Chaffetz aided this perception by focusing on how he won by promoting conservative principles generally, rather than immigration after his victory. Now Chaffetz supports Amnesty.

However, I would be shocked if Brat became another Chaffetz. He shows a real passion and understanding of the importance of the issue that goes far beyond the usual clichés of “secure the border” and “stop Amnesty” you hear from your average conservative shyster. And although Brat focused on Amnesty, he has expressed support for ending birthright citizenship, ending chain migration and reducing overall legal immigration levels.

He’s just sooooo dreamy. But you know wingnuts… they get your hopes up and you let down your guard and the next thing you know they’re eating burritos and hanging around with Democrats.

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The lesson Cantor’s loss should teach the left, by @DavidOAtkins

Published by digby on June 11, 2014

The lesson Cantor’s loss should teach the left

by David Atkins

I have a piece up at Salon today about Eric Cantor’s loss, and the cultural difference between the right and the left when it comes to elections. Main point? The left still has a lot to learn from the right.

More than that, however, this historic election should serve as a lesson for the left. It is the clearest demonstration yet of how and why American politics continues to drift inexorably to the right on all but a few social issues. The conservative base pulled off its biggest upset yet against a powerful establishment candidate, but underfunded radicals defeating establishment incumbents is a regular feature of the GOP primary process in a way that has few parallels on the Democratic side. Even in New York where anti-establishment progressives have a strong base in the Working Families Party, there was little appetite for directly challenging centrist Gov. Andrew Cuomo. In fact, the most noteworthy challenge to a Democratic congressional incumbent this year is occurring from the right in CA-17, as business-friendly Ro Khanna challenges longtime progressive Democratic incumbent Mike Honda.

It is not an accident that the Republican Party continues to move rightward even in the face of negative public polling on most issues, even as the Democratic Party seems unable and often unwilling to advance legislation that meets with approval among majorities of the public. It’s not just the corruption of money in politics. It’s the direct result of the difference between voter engagement on each side of the aisle.

Democrats reliably vote in presidential elections, but tend to skip voting in midterms and are practically electoral truants in mid-cycle primaries. Republicans, by contrast, are much more motivated to vote in both midterms and intra-party contests. This is not just a function of economic and lifestyle differences. It is also, crucially, a function of political cultures and instincts.

…

The Tea Party is often viewed as the revival of the John Birch Society, but it is important to note that almost all Tea Party activism occurs directly within the rubric of the GOP. It is at heart an intra-party fight, not an inside-outside battle.

The culture of the left is quite different. Left-leaning voters disaffected with the Democratic Party tend to eschew the organization altogether. The more activist among them usually join issue advocacy organizations that are often directly and intentionally in conflict with the party and competing for the same resources. Even more important are the less activist disaffecteds, who tend to simply disengage from the electoral process in apathy rather than channel their anger into primary contests.

Ask a voter for Ralph Nader in 2000 if they feel any blame for the presidency of George W. Bush, and you’ll typically hear a definitive no. If the Democratic Party wanted their vote, it is said, the party should have taken more progressive stances. The thinking here goes that if voters on the left abandon the party by not voting or by voting for third parties, then the Democratic Party will have to chase them left. Conversely, it is often said, if the Democratic Party gets their vote regardless, why should the party ever listen to them?

But this is backward thinking. The Democratic Party has not in fact chased these voters to the left. Whether it be in 1994, 2000 or 2010, the Democratic Party always responds to significant electoral defeat by moving rightward — even when its defeats can most obviously be attributed to a failure to adequately motivate base progressives. The conservative base has proven, by contrast, that it can force the Republican Party to chase them to the right. And Cantor’s defeat puts an exclamation mark on the fact that when it refuses to do so adequately, the base can embarrass and punish the Republican establishment. While it is true that ousting establishment candidates has sometimes led to defeat in general elections for conservatives (see Christine O’Donnell and Sharron Angle), this has not led to diminished influence for the far right. Within the party, the primary vote is the one that really matters.

Click on over for the whole thing.

I’ve said it loudly and often here before: the way to win is to mobilize and organize not only outside of the Democratic Party, but within it as well. The right has been very successful doing so, and the left should take note.

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Economic anemia

Published by digby on June 11, 2014

Economic anemia

by digby

I’m guessing this isn’t good news:

Everyone had better hope this doesn’t translate into higher unemployment again. From a political perspective this would be the worst possible time for that to happen.

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You Can See Russia From Virginia! by tristero

Published by tristero on June 11, 2014
You Can See Russia From Virginia! 

by tristero

The return of Sarah Palin:

“So should there be a minimum wage in your opinion?” Todd pressed. 

“Um, I don’t have a well-crafted response on that one,” Brat said, haltingly. “All I know is that if you take the long-run graph over 200 years of the wage rate, it cannot differ from your nation’s productivity. Right? So you can’t make up wage rates.” 

Brat found another question, this one about whether the U.S. should arm rebels in Syria, even more troublesome. Instead of answering Todd, he admitted he wasn’t expecting to have to speak to such weighty issues. 

“Hey, Chuck, I thought we were just going to chat today about the celebratory aspects,” Brat responded. “I’d love to go through all of this but my mind is — I love all the policy questions but I just wanted to talk about the victory ahead and I wanted to thank everybody that worked so hard on my campaign. I’m happy to take policy issues at any time, I just wanted to call out a thanks to everybody today.”

Crikey.

Before Cantor there was Hume

Published by digby on June 11, 2014

Before Cantor there was Hume

by digby

Before David Brat’s upset victory last night, there was a sort of precursor in the form of hate talk hero Laura Ingraham destroying elder statesman Brit Hume for having the nerve to defend little immigrant children the day before.  I wrote about it for Salon this morning.

You see Hume thinks that kids who make it across a thousand miles of treacherous terrain to come to a better life might actually have something to offer America. He even thinks these children are human beings. Ingraham was having none of it:

To get a flavor of the reaction to this rare demonstration of decency by a conservative commentator, one need look no further than chief immigrant basher, Laura Ingraham, whose xenophobic callousness toward the plight of the kids who are currently flooding the border from central America is well documented. She claims to love the Hume, but thinks he’s a bit addled for holding those views:

Of course there are wonderful children. I love children. I remember the children in the Iraqi orphanages that I had to leave behind … heart broke for them. But we have something going on here that is profound. In our sovereignty, our rule of law, our financial resources, our military bases.

By the way when he said they are happy to eat whatever they’re giving them the consul of Honduras is saying that the illegal immigrant children are complaining that the burritos and eggs they’re being given in their holding areas are making them sick. So they’re complaining about the food. I’ll bet there are American kids who would like free food before they go to bed at night.

They’re already complaining.

Yo quiero Taco Bell

You read that right. She played the Taco Bell tag line at the end of that rant. Her misanthropic disregard for the welfare of these little kids remains a bizarre counterpoint to the fact that she is the adoptive mother of three foreign born children, one of whom is from Guatemala. If one were a cynic, one might assume that this is a performance. The right wing talk audience is rabidly anti-immigrant, so it’s a good, perhaps necessary, career move. But if it’s a performance, she deserves an Oscar. She sure sounds like she means it.

Ingraham was down in Brat’s district campaigning for him just last week. She said that President Obama should have traded Eric Cantor for Bowe Bergdahl. Because he once had the nerve to say that kids who’ve spent their whole lives in the US (The DREAM kids) might be allowed to become citizens. That’s all it took for him to become her enemy.

Last night on Fox she and Ann Coulter battered old Brit Hume to his face. Here’s how Twitchy gleefully described it:

The American right wing populist strain was perfectly realized in David Brat’s campaign.

Published by digby on June 11, 2014

The American right wing populist strain was perfectly realized in David Brat’s campaign

by digby

It’s interesting that there seems to be emerging a duel interpretation of the reasons for Cantor’s loss.  On the one side, there is the standard  CW that he lost because of his harsh immigration stance, which was blasted out to the true believers through talk radio. And the other is the idea that he lost because he was too close to elites, particularly financial elites.  The fact is that Brat ran on both of those issues simultaneously. They are two sides of the same ideological coin. It’s called right-wing populism.

I wrote about this a decade or so ago when the Democrats kept whining that the guys with confederate flags on their trucks should be voting for them because they need health care too:

To put together this great new populist revival everybody’s talking about, where we get the boys in the pick-up trucks to start voting their “self-interest,” we’re probably going to need to get up a new nativist movement to go along with it. That’s pretty much how populism has always been played in the past, particularly in the south. Certainly, you can rail against the moneyed elites, but there is little evidence that it will work unless you provide somebody on the bottom that the good ole boys can really stomp. As Jack Balkin wrote in this fascinating piece on populism and progressivism:

History teaches us that populism has recurring pathologies; it is especially important to recognize and counteract them. These dangers are particularly obvious to academics and other intellectual elites: They include fascism, nativism, anti-intellectualism, persecution of unpopular minorities, exaltation of the mediocre, and romantic exaggeration of the wisdom and virtue of the masses.



Is it any wonder that the right has been more successful in recently in inflaming the populist impulse in America? They are not squeamish about using just those pathologies — and only those pathologies — to gain populist credibility in spite of a blatant lack of populist policy. 

That is not to say that populism is evil. It is just another political philosophy that has its bad side, as every philosophy does. Balkin describes it in great depth, but here’s a capsulized version:

The dual nature of populism means that political participation is not something to be forced on the citizenry, nor are popular attitudes some sort of impure ore that must be carefully filtered, purified, and managed by a wise and knowing state. From a populist standpoint, such attempts at managerial purification are paternalistic. They typify elite disparagement and disrespect for popular attitudes and popular culture. Government should provide opportunities for popular participation when people seek it, and when they seek it, government should not attempt to divert or debilitate popular will. An energized populace, aroused by injustice and pressing for change, is not something to be feared and constrained; it is the very lifeblood of democracy. Without avenues for popular participation and without means for popular control, governments become the enemy of the people; public and private power become entrenched, self-satisfied, and smug.



Progressivism, or modern liberalism, takes a distinctly different view:

Central to progressivism is a faith that educated and civilized individuals can, through the use of reason, determine what is best for society as a whole. Persuasion, discussion, and rational dialogue can lead individuals of different views to see what is in the public interest. Government and public participation must therefore be structured so as to produce rational deliberation and consensus about important public policy issues. Popular culture and popular will have a role to play in this process, but only after sufficient education and only after their more passionate elements have been diverted and diffused. Popular anger and uneducated public sentiments are more likely to lead to hasty and irrational judgments.

Like populists, progressives believe that governments must be freed of corrupting influences. But these corrupting influences are described quite differently: They include narrowness of vision, ignorance, and parochial self-interest. Government must be freed of corruption so that it can wisely debate what is truly in the public interest. Progressivism is less concerned than populism about centralization and concentration of power. It recognizes that some problems require centralized authority and that some enterprises benefit from economies of scale. Progressivism also has a significantly different attitude towards expertise: Far from being something to be distrusted, it is something to be particularly prized.

What is more difficult for many academics to recognize is that progressivism has its own distinctive dangers and defects. Unfortunately, these tend to be less visible from within a progressivist sensibility. They include elitism, paternalism, authoritarianism, naivete, excessive and misplaced respect for the “best and brightest,” isolation from the concerns of ordinary people, an inflated sense of superiority over ordinary people, disdain for popular values, fear of popular rule, confusion of factual and moral expertise, and meritocratic hubris.



And there you see the basis for right wing populist hatred of liberals. And it’s not altogether untrue, is it? Certainly, those of us who argue from that perspective should be able to recognise and deal with the fact that this is how we are perceived by many people and try to find ways to allay those concerns. The problem is that it’s quite difficult to do. 


Richard Hofstadter famously wrote that both populism and early progressivism were heavily fueled by nativism and there is a lot of merit in what he says. Take, for instance, prohibition (one of William Jennigs Bryant’s Bryan’s major campaign issues.)Most people assume that when it was enacted in 1920, it was the result of do-gooderism, stemming from the tireless work by progressives who saw drink as a scourge for the family, and women in particular. But the truth is that Prohibition was mostly supported by rural southerners and midwesterners who were persuaded that alcohol was the province of immigrants in the big cities who were polluting the culture with their foreign ways. And progressives did nothing to dispell that myth — indeed they perpetuated it. This was an issue, in its day, that was as important as gay marriage is today. The country divided itself into “wets” and “drys” and many a political alliance was made or broken by taking one side of the issue or another. Bryan, the populist Democrat, deftly exploited this issue to gain his rural coalition — and later became the poster boy for creationism, as well. (Not that he wasn’t a true believer, he was; but his views on evolution were influenced by his horror at the eugenics movement. He was a complicated guy.) And prohibition turned out to be one of the most costly and silly diversions in American history.


It is not a surprise that prohibition was finally enacted in 1920, which is also the time that the Ku Klux Klan reasserted itself and became more than just a southern phenomenon. The Klan’s reemergence was the result of the post war clamor against commies and immigrants. The rural areas, feeling beseiged by economic pressure (which manifested themselves much earlier there than the rest of the country)and rapid social change could not blame their own beloved America for its problems so they blamed the usual suspects, including their favorite whipping boy, uppity African Americans. 


They weren’t only nativist, though. In the southwest, and Texas in particular, they were upset by non-Protestant immorality. According to historian Charles C. Alexander: 

“There was also in the Klan a definite strain of moral bigotry. Especially in the Southwest this zeal found expression in direct, often violent, attempts to force conformity. Hence the southwestern Klansman’s conception of reform encompassed efforts to preserve premarital chastity, marital fidelity, and respect for parental authority; to compel obedience to state and national prohibition laws; to fight the postwar crime wave; and to rid state and local governments of dishonest politicians.” Individuals in Texas thus were threatened, beaten, or tarred-and-feathered for practicing the “new morality,” cheating on their spouses, beating their spouses or children, looking at women in a lewd manner, imbibing alcohol, etc.



Yeah, I know. The more things change, yadda, yadda, yadda. The interesting thing about all this is that throughout the 20’s the south was Democratic as it had always been — and populist, as it had long been. But when the Dems nominated Al Smith in 1928, many Democrats deserted the party and voted for Hoover. Why? Because Smith was an urban machine politican, a catholic and anti-prohibition. Texas went for Hoover — he was from rural Iowa, favored prohibition and was a Protestant. Preachers combed the south decrying the catholic nominee — saying the Pope would be running the country. Florida, North Carolina, and Virginia went Republican, too. Now, one can’t deny that the boom of the 20’s was instrumental in Hoover’s victory, but rural America had been undergoing an economic crisis for some time. However, then, like now, rural American populists preferred to blame their problems on racial and ethnic influences than the moneyed elites who actually cause them. It’s a psychological thing, I think. 


(By 1932, of course, all hell had broken loose. Nobody cared anymore about booze or catholics or rich New Yorkers in the White House. They were desperate for somebody to do something. And Roosevelt promised to do something. Extreme crisis has a way of clarifying what’s important.) 


 Bashing immigrants and elites at the same time has a long pedigree and it is the most efficient way to bag some of those pick-up truck guys who are voting against their economic self-interest. There seems to be little evidence that bashing elites alone actually works. And that’s because what you are really doing is playing to their prejudices and validating their tribal instinct that the reason for their economic problems is really the same reason for the cultural problems they already believe they have — Aliens taking over Real America — whether liberals, immigrants, blacks, commies, Wall Street whomever.

That’s not the whole story, of course.  Cantor lost for any number of individual reasons, not the least of which is that he was just plain unlikable — his lugubrious style is truly unpleasant.  But I think it’s probably a good idea for progressives to be very clear-eyed about the “populist” message from this upset. Yes, Brat ran against the moneyed elites. And that’s an encouraging sign for potential reform. But it’s a mistake to discount the other side of that coin: Nativism. Brat’s campaign is the perfect picture of the traditional right wing populist strain in America: you can’t have one without the other.

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Tweet o’ the day: Jim Messina (by @DavidOAtkins)

Published by digby on June 11, 2014

Tweet o’ the day: Jim Messina

by David Atkins

Short term, Cantor’s historic defeat is a huge victory for the far right. Long-term, it is going to do lasting damage as Republicans even considering making an appeal to Hispanic voters will be scared out of their pantaloons for the next decade or longer.

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