Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

Party Orthodoxy

Jeffrey Goldberg writes on the Democratic “toughness” problem in this week’s The New Yorker, mostly by focusing on Joe Biden:

He has come to realize, he said, that many Democrats still haven’t grasped the political importance of September 11th, and again he recalled how he had urged Kerry to keep his campaign message focussed on terrorism. Kerry, Biden said, would tell voters that he would “fight terror as hard as Bush,” but then he would add, “and I’ll help you economically.” “What is Bush saying?” Biden said. “Terror, terror, terror, terror, terror. I would say to John, ‘Let me put it to you this way. The Lord Almighty, or Allah, whoever, if he came to every kitchen table in America and said, “Look, I have a Faustian bargain for you, you choose. I will guarantee to you that I will end all terror threats against the United States within the year, but in return for that there will be no help for education, no help for Social Security, no help for health care.” What do you do?’

“My answer,” Biden said, “is that seventy-five per cent of the American people would buy that bargain.”

Have you ever read anything more stupid than this? Does he really believe that seventy-five percent of the country is so afraid of terrorism that they would make that bargain? Absolute rubbish.

It’s not fear of terrorism, Joe. I’m sure New Yorkers and Washington DC’ers are truly afraid of terrorism for very good reason and THEY DIDN’T VOTE FOR BUSH! If Bush won because of the terrorism issue it was patriotism, not fear, that got him over the line. People responded to his simple Hollywood tough guy image because it looks heroic. Even “Ashley’s Story” was a made for Oprah moment, not a call to Bush’s great fatherly ability to keep us safe. He ran as Top Gun, not George Washington. There’s a big difference.

For most people in this country “terrorism” is an abstract thing, not a source of everyday fear. Biden is wrong that Americans would trade education, health care or social security for an end to terror threats. They don’t even feel the terror threats. What they cared about in this last election was patriotism and national pride (with a touch of old fashioned bloodlust and revenge) and that is something, particularly in this age of the televised campaign and pop politics, that can move people. But never think that people will trade their own immediate, personal well being for what up to now has been for most people a reality television show. They want it all. Bush’s war has not called for sacrifice for a reason.

This article is an interesting insight into this argument within the party about both the foreign policy differences and the fiercely partisan nature of our politics today. In my mind, they may be intertwined in certain ways, but it’s a mistake to think that we can solve the problem simply by speaking more hawkishly and voting with Republicans on military matters.

The fundamental misunderstanding is that we will be seen as “tough” if we just back a tough foreign policy. I don’t think that our alleged lack of toughness is the result of soft policy but rather a carefully designed negative image forged from years of Republican marketing. Most importantly, it once again completely misses the most important fact about our current state of politics. Bill Richardson doesn’t get it:

The Democrats need to stand with the President when he’s right,” Bill Richardson told me. “His emphasis on being more pro-democracy in the Middle East seems to have galvanized some movement. The Democrats need to establish their credentials on national security, and we get hurt by reflexive negativism.

Interestingly (and when you think about it, naturally) here’s someone who does:

Hillary Clinton says that she has been “forthright in agreeing with the Administration where I thought we could agree,” but she believes that the Administration has taken advantage of Democratic support—particularly in the days after the terror attacks of September 11, 2001. “Joe and I and others offered our support to the President and stood unified with him in response to these attacks,” Clinton said last week, referring to Biden. “The Administration saw our actions as a sign of weakness,” she said, adding that it “had a campaign strategy to exploit the legitimate fears of the American people.” Clinton also said that the Democrats must criticize the Bush Administration for its foreign-policy failings—of which, she said, there are many—but that they are hindered by their role as the opposition party. “It’s hard to describe a Democratic Party foreign-policy position, because we’re not in charge of making policy,” Clinton said. “We are, by the nature of the system, forced to critique and analyze and offer suggestions.”

It will not matter if we are agreeing with Bush and Cheney that we should immediately launch nuclear missiles and kill every arab in the middle east, by our very agreement the Republicans will deride us as weak. Politics are playing out on both a real and a kabuki level in which the theatre of the issue is actually more important than the reality in political terms. It’s not a matter of being right or wrong on an issue, as sad as that may be. It’s a matter of being willing to be aggressive against people who quite publicly hold you in contempt whether you agree with them or not.

Sam Rosenfeld on TAPPED, referring to what Josh Marshall calls the “convulsively neoliberal” pundit establishment points out:

The DC chatterers rank no value higher than “political courage,” and their special brand of policy dramaturgy demands that ennobled lawmakers demonstrate said courage by screwing over some constituency or another. Somebody has to pay. Someone must be sacrificed. Hence, when discussing Social Security reform, it is sacrosanct that benefit cuts will happen, one way or another, and that the only honorable lawmakers are those who assess the situation with cold-eyed realism and exact the necessary sacrifices in the name of reform.

This is where I think the real disconnect exists between the punditocrisy/party elites and the grassroots. The argument isn’t really about policy although their are some differences. It’s about what we define as political courage. Insiders still believe that the key is to distance itself from the base of the party as it did in the 90’s, as Rosenfeld outlines above. Out here in the hinterlands we think that political conditions obviously require us to unify behind what feels to us like an existential battle with the Republicans.

Here’s an example of the kind of beltway discussion that seems to me to entirely miss the point:

CROWLEY: With me now to talk more about the Democrats, including their new party chairman, is Bruce Reed. He is president of the Democratic Leadership Council.

We were interested in an article that you and your fellow chairman wrote in blueprint, which said in part about Democrats, “Voters don’t know what we stand for and have grave doubts about what they think we stand for.” You went on to say that changing this is going to require challenging party orthodoxy.

What part of party orthodoxy has to be challenged?

BRUCE REED, PRESIDENT, DEMOCRATIC LEADERSHIP COUNCIL: Well, Candy, politics is like anything else in life. The most important thing is what you stand for. And Democrats’ biggest problem is Americans don’t have a clue, most Americans don’t have a clue. And some Democrats don’t seem to either.

So the voters have given us some extra time. We think the best use of that time is to have a good, healthy debate within the party about what our values are, what our principles are, and what big ideas we have to back them up.

CROWLEY: So what is it in the party orthodoxy that you think has to be challenged from the DLC point of view.

REED: Well, the central issue in the last election, and a big issue going forward is, what are we going to do to keep the country safe? And, you know, it’s all well and good to criticize the administration’s many mistakes on this issue, but going forward, we need to come up with our own plan to promote democracy around the world, and come to terms with where we will be willing to use military force if necessary.

That seems pretty benign. But, in fact, when I heard this interview on in the backround I was fuming at the tone and the substance of those comments, but even more at what he wasn’t saying. “Party orthodoxy” is a code word — and I hate using code words against our own party — for the liberal wing. I’ve been hearing this trope about party orthodoxy for almost twenty years and it’s as stale as “tax and spend” and “hell no, we won’t go.” The only people who are still listening to this shit are the “convulsively neoliberal” DC establishment.

I was once an adherent of the view that moving to be middle was the smart move. But I finally hit a wall, a wall that apparently has knocked the Democratic establishment unconscious or stupid instead of awake. The other side now holds all institutional power in Washington and its power is strengthened by what the DLC is doing, namely promoting the position that the base of the Democratic party is outside the mainstream of the country. You never hear Republicans doing that.

Mostly, I am infuriated when Democrats do not properly defend our party against the Republicans and call the republicans out whenever they get the microphone. Reed could have made his points and still taken the opportunity to take the fight to the Republicans. Here’s what he did instead:

CROWLEY: You also talked about it’s not enough to say what we’re against, we have to say what we’re for. Looking at Congress right now, one of the criticisms coming from Republicans, but coming apparently through the poll, is that, look, what do the Democrats stand for when it comes to Social Security? Are they handling the Social Security issue well at this point, the Democrats?

REED: Well, I think they’re doing a very good job of pointing out the flaws in Bush’s plan, and they need to do that because it is a bad plan. President Bush seems to have finally found common ground in Washington, and most Republicans are scared of what he’s doing on Social Security as Democrats.

CROWLEY: But is it enough for the Democrats to say no?

REED: Once that plan crashes and burns, Democrats are going to need to step up with our own ideas. Because it’s an important issue for the country over the long haul, and we’re going to have to address it.

CROWLEY: One of the things that you also talked about in your article is, look, this is a false choice between sort of the DLC more moderate and the base. But I want to read you something from “The Nation,” which said this about the DLC: “After dominating the party in the 1990s, the DLC is struggling to maintain its identity and influence in a party beset by losses and determined to oppose George W. Bush.”

When you look at it, moderation and compromise is not what the Democrats have said from the grassroots that they’re about right now. They’re about confrontation. There’s no way you can square that, is that, with the DLC position?

REED: Oh, I think this is a false choice. We’re not about compromise. We’re about putting forward good, new ideas that bring together a majority of the American people.

Look, there are some — Bill Clinton is the only president to get re-elected. We’ve lost five of the last seven elections. There are some Democrats who would like to leave behind the one guy who broke that curse. We think there’s an important lesson from the Clinton years, which is that if you put forward a compelling agenda, you can excite your base and you can persuade new voters to come join your cause.

Well yes, it is about compromise. If Democrats put forward good, new ideas that bring together a majority of the American people, we’d like to think that the fifty fucking percent of us out here who don’t vote Republican are considered a part of that majority. When the moderates fail to get the support of Democrats either in the country or the congress, then they are not doing what they say they are doing, they are enabling the Republicans. Even worse, they are helping to promote the erroneous idea that Republicans are mainstream and we are not. Could we all agree that if a bill cannot garner the support of a majority of Democrats in the Senate and House — it isn’t a Democratic bill. Is that too much to ask?

I’m sure there are some Democrats who hate Clinton. There always were. Most Democrats, however, see Clinton as a man of his time. And if the DLC guys don’t recognize that TIMES HAVE CHANGED then there is no reason to listen to them anymore. The Republicans that were the minority leaders in the house and senate when Bill Clinton got elected were Bob Michel and Bob Dole. Those guys have been turned out to pasture. The Republicans today are systematically starting wars, bankrupting the country and repealing the bill of rights. Excuse me while I get a little more alarmed about that kind of thing than whether Michael Moore and Move-on are a little but unruly. I don’t think it’s too much to ask that centrist and moderate Democrats look at the Republican orthodoxy at least as often as they complain in the direction of the base of the Democratic party. I certainly think that they should take their ample opportunities in the media to make that point as long as they are distancing themselves from the “party orthodoxy.” Indeed, if I were asked to define what party orthodoxy is these days, I would have to say that it is the reflexive recoil against the unwashed masses out here in the grassroots who are tearing our hair out and screaming for the establishment to look at the rogue elephant that is trampling on everything we believe in.

Update: It’s good to see the Senate hanging tough with Reid on the nuclear option. more of this please.

UpdateII: James Walcott: Read Now

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Under Lenin’s banner for the second Five Year Plan!

Under the Bush administration, the federal government has aggressively used a well-established tool of public relations: the prepackaged, ready-to-serve news report that major corporations have long distributed to TV stations to pitch everything from headache remedies to auto insurance. In all, at least 20 federal agencies, including the Defense Department and the Census Bureau, have made and distributed hundreds of television news segments in the past four years, records and interviews show. Many were subsequently broadcast on local stations across the country without any acknowledgement of the government’s role in their production.

This winter, Washington has been roiled by revelations that a handful of columnists wrote in support of administration policies without disclosing they had accepted payments from the government. But the administration’s efforts to generate positive news coverage have been considerably more pervasive than previously known. At the same time, records and interviews suggest widespread complicity or negligence by television stations, given industry ethics standards that discourage the broadcast of prepackaged news segments from any outside group without revealing the source.

Federal agencies are forthright with broadcasters about the origin of the news segments they distribute. The reports themselves, though, are designed to fit seamlessly into the typical local news broadcast. In most cases, the “reporters” are careful not to state in the segment that they work for the government. Their reports generally avoid overt ideological appeals. Instead, the government’s news-making apparatus has produced a quiet drumbeat of broadcasts describing a vigilant and compassionate administration.

Some reports were produced to support the administration’s most cherished policy objectives, like regime change in Iraq or Medicare reform. Others focused on less prominent matters, like the administration’s efforts to offer free after-school tutoring, its campaign to curb childhood obesity, its initiatives to preserve forests and wetlands, its plans to fight computer viruses, even its attempts to fight holiday drunken driving. They often feature “interviews” with senior administration officials in which questions are scripted and answers rehearsed. Critics, though, are excluded, as are any hints of mismanagement, waste or controversy.

[…]

In interviews, though, press officers for several federal agencies said the president’s prohibition did not apply to government-made television news segments, also known as video news releases. They described the segments as factual, politically neutral and useful to viewers. They insisted that there was no similarity to the case of Armstrong Williams, a conservative columnist who promoted the administration’s chief education initiative, the No Child Left Behind Act, without disclosing $240,000 in payments from the Education Department.

What is more, these officials argued, it is the responsibility of television news directors to inform viewers that a segment about the government was in fact written by the government. “Talk to the television stations that ran it without attribution,” said William A. Pierce, spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services. “This is not our problem. We can’t be held responsible for their actions.”

Yet in three separate opinions in the past year, the Government Accountability Office, an investigative arm of Congress that studies the federal government and its expenditures, has held that government-made news segments may constitute improper “covert propaganda” even if their origin is made clear to the television stations. The point, the office said, is whether viewers know the origin. Last month, in its most recent finding, the G.A.O. said federal agencies may not produce prepackaged news reports “that conceal or do not clearly identify for the television viewing audience that the agency was the source of those materials.”

It is not certain, though, whether the office’s pronouncements will have much practical effect. Although a few federal agencies have stopped making television news segments, others continue. And on Friday, the Justice Department and the Office of Management and Budget circulated a memorandum instructing all executive branch agencies to ignore the G.A.O. findings. The memorandum said the G.A.O. failed to distinguish between covert propaganda and “purely informational” news segments made by the government. Such informational segments are legal, the memorandum said, whether or not an agency’s role in producing them is disclosed to viewers.

And Comrade Gonzales serves the Party once more.

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Talking Big

Daniel Munz sitting in over at Ezra Klein’s place takes issue with Matt Welch’s post in which he says:

There’s a better and arguably more attractive ideological option than being anti–”pro–free market,” and it’s sitting right in front of the Democrats’ noses. When the party you despise controls most of the levers of government, it’s an excellent time to run against government.

Disparate threads of limited-government rhetoric have begun to pop through the seams of the New Old Left unity. In the wake of the gay marriage wipeout and unpopular federal laws concerning the environment and medical marijuana, many Blue Staters are rediscovering the joys of federalism. “Fiscal responsibility” has cemented itself as boilerplate Democratic rhetoric, and not just as an excuse to jack up tax rates: Rising Democratic star Bill Richardson, governor of New Mexico, has been drawing praise from Cato for slashing his state’s income taxes, and pushing his fellow Democratic governors to follow his lead.

Munz disagrees entirely saying:

Unless we’re willing to abandon things like Medicare, Social Security, and good public education, we’ll never be able to take the argument to its logical conclusion. Opponents will say we’re half-assing an ideological commitment because it polls well. And if we adopt any strategy that garners Megadittoes from the guys at Cato, they’ll be right. More importantly, it’s not who we are. Liberals don’t dislike government. To many liberals, Reagan’s declaration that “government is the problem” amounted to political hate speech. I still bristle at Clinton’s “era of big government” schtick.

Just to make it confusing, I’ll agree and disagree with both of them.

I think Muntz is right that any tack to the right on “big government” will just further enable the wingnuts. We’ve gone as fur as we can go. (Richardson, in my opinion, is further degrading the liberal philosophy with his harping on more tax cuts.) Munz offers “We are the party of Real Solutions That Help Real People,” as a slogan. It’s not bad but I think liberalism is a lot bigger than that and we can make a much more compelling case.

Liberal beliefs are rooted in a belief in civil liberties and the American ideals of justice, fairness and equality, which offer a bit more inspiration than just saying that government helps people. American liberalism holds that democratic government is the only institution that can guarantee those ideals. Our concept of social justice follows from that. I think it’s important that we continuously marry these concepts together so the principles are entwined in people minds along with the practical result. People need to feel that their politics are tied to big ideas, even if it’s really just “freedom plus groceries” as Matt Yglesias so prosaically summed it up. And, in fact, liberalism is tied to big principles that we should constantly reinforce in our rhetoric. One of the reasons our politicians sound dull as dishwater is our laundry list style of communication.

In a practical sense, however, I think that Welch is right to say that there are some attractive ideological options presenting themselves but they have nothing to do with the specific issues he discusses. They are interesting in that they come from a slightly different direction than the usual liberal agenda, but they are representative of liberal first principles and give us a fresh opportunity to talk about our beliefs in a bigger sense. (Some of you are aware that I’m intrigued by the idea of forming a privacy/civil liberties coalition within the party to work on splitting off certain western MYOB types from the southern conservative evangelical base of the GOP and I think this might be helful to that end as well.)

This Choice Point scandal, for instance, is just the tip of the iceberg regarding corporate intrusion into people’s personal business without their knowledge and then selling the information to anyone who asks for it. This is a huge unregulated business that illustrates once again how dangerous the market can be to the individual when there is no government oversight. This issue represents an opportunity for us to make an affirmative case for regulation and consumer rights, pulling our belief in a personal right to privacy into the argument.

It also dovetails with the Republican assault on the Bill of Rights (the second amendment excepted, of course.) Liberals have a long and illustrious history of fighting for civil liberties. Freedom is not a word that traditionally belongs to conservatives except when it comes to property. As we see them willing to justify shredding the 4th amendment with a sweeping redefinition of executive branch power, I think we have every right to question whether their alleged commitment to liberty as expressed in the Bill of Rights, and the principles they represent, is anything more than an elaborate marketing scheme.

Whether or not there is any practical point in appealing to certain libertarian impulses in the American character is debatable but I think it is incumbent that we bring our big principles into the argument in some way. The bible isn’t the only source of “values” symbols and I would argue that liberals actually have a greater claim to the shared American symbols of the founding documents.

Here’s a little insight into how the GOP plans to “market” liberty from Frank Luntz:

As you are well aware, communication does not exist solely in our words, either written or spoken. Americans draw upon a shared well of symbols, images that evoke concepts fundamental to our country. As our politics are produced with these concepts in mind — freedom, liberty, opportunity — there are timeless American images that match them. Communicating policies within that context and harnessing these symbols to match their principles is perhaps the most powerful form of communication there is.

When you speak of the 2005 legislative agenda, do not be afraid to wax poetic about this link between American icons of freedom and opportunity and the very legislation that you are discussing. It will not seem trite. It will not appear sordid. Indeed, will resonate with a power that cannot match that of your words and phrases. Language is your base. Symbols knock it out of the park.

He’s right. But rather than being cheap and manipulative and trying to finesse words like fairness to mean “equality of opportunity” let’s just tell it like it is. I’ll give it a stab.

The case for responsive government that provides services to the people and keeps the market functioning in a healthy way springs from the liberal belief in justice, equality and liberty. The bill of rights is the founding document of American liberalism.

We believe that while property rights are fundamental to American law, liberty means more than property rights only. There is a reason that Thomas Jefferson wrote “life liberty and the pursuit of happiness” instead of the more familiar (at the time) “life liberty and property” in the declaration. Even then, America was about more than this cramped view that freedom is nothing more than freedom from taxes. Freedom is also the inherant right of each individual to dominion over his or her identity, body and mind.

We believe in free speech and freedom of religion with almost no exceptions because no individual can be trusted to make such distinctions without prejudice. We believe in the right to a fair trial and we believe that those who represent the government must be held to a very high standard due to the natural temptations the government’s awesome judicial and police power can present. We cannot have a free society where government does not adhere to the rule of law.

We have fought for universal suffrage, labor laws, civil rights and the right to privacy among many other things because we believe in fairness, equality and social justice. We believe those principles require a society such as ours to ensure that all people can live a decent and dignified life. We think that democratic government, being directly accountable to the people, is the best institution through which those pinciples can be successfully translated into action. We are always on the side of progress, looking forward, stepping into the future.

The founding fathers were liberals. Our tradition is as American as apple pie.

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Talking Ids

The Atlantic features a fascinating article this month about talk radio in which the author goes behind the scenes of a popular radio show here in LA. He examines the entire ethos of the business while focusing on one right wing talk show host named John Zeigler.

A couple of things about the business itself stuck out at me. Evidently, they really do make the case that it isn’t right wing politics that make them successful; it’s the “stimulating” nature of their format:

KFI management’s explanation of “stimulating” is apposite, if a bit slippery. Following is an excerpted transcript of a May 25 Q & A with Ms. Robin Bertolucci, the station’s intelligent, highly successful, and sort of hypnotically intimidating Program Director. (The haphazard start is because the interviewing skills behind the Q parts are marginal; the excerpt gets more interesting as it goes along.)
Q: Is there some compact way to describe KFI’s programming philosophy?
A: “What we call ourselves is ‘More Stimulating Talk Radio.'”
Q: Pretty much got that part already.
A: “That is the slogan that we try to express every minute on the air. Of being stimulating. Being informative, being entertaining, being energetic, being dynamic … The way we do it is a marriage of information and stimulating entertainment.”
Q: What exactly is it that makes information entertaining?
A: “It’s attitudinal, it’s emotional.”
Q: Can you explain this attitudinal component?
A: “I think ‘stimulating’ really sums it up. It’s what we really try to do.”
Q: [strangled frustration noises]
A: “Look, our station logo is in orange and black, and white—it’s a stark, aggressive look. I think that typifies it. The attitude. A little in-your-face. We’re not … stodgy.”

Ok, she’s a bozo, but probably less of a bozo than she sounds. The article doesn’t go there, but I strongly suspect that when you have an 800 pound elephant like Rush as your drive time cash cow, you’d better stimulate in a very particular way, if you know what I mean. She just can’t say that. This is particularly true in a business that is monopolized by a very few companies:

Radio has become a more lucrative business than most people know. Throughout most of the past decade, the industry’s revenues have increased by more than 10 percent a year. The average cash-flow margin for major radio companies is 40 percent, compared with more like 15 percent for large TV networks; and the mean price paid for a radio station has gone from eight to more than thirteen times cash flow. Some of this extreme profitability, and thus the structure of the industry, is due to the 1996 Telecommunications Act, which allows radio companies to acquire up to eight stations in a given market and to control as much as 35 percent of a market’s total ad revenues. The emergence of huge, dominant radio conglomerates like Clear Channel and Infinity is a direct consequence of the ’96 Act (which the FCC, aided by the very conservative D.C. Court of Appeals, has lately tried to make even more permissive). And these radio conglomerates enjoy not just substantial economies of scale but almost unprecedented degrees of business integration.

Example: Clear Channel Communications Inc. now owns KFI AM-640, plus two other AM stations and five FMs in the Los Angeles market. It also owns Premiere Radio Networks. It also owns the Airwatch subscription news/traffic service. And it designs and manufactures Prophet, KFI’s operating system, which is state-of-the-art and much too expensive for most independent stations. All told, Clear Channel currently owns some 1,200 radio stations nationwide.

The article goes on to discuss just how specious the ratings system really is and how much it depends on guesswork to determine who is listening and in what numbers:

An abiding question: Who exactly listens to political talk radio? Arbitron Inc. and some of its satellites can help measure how many are listening for how long and when, and they provide some rough age data and demographic specs. A lot of the rest is guesswork, and Program Directors don’t like to talk about it.

These big companies control as much as 35% of a market’s total ad revenue and they set the prices for these ads based mostly on “guess work.” Deregulation is credited with creating these big companies and enabling the economies of scale that are bringing them such huge profits. And the political view that dominates almost all talk radio station in the nation is Republican, the party that supports deregulation. A coincidence I’m sure.

The article looks closely at this guy John Ziegler who may or may not be typical of right wing radio hosts. His self righteous sense of victimization sounds so typical, however, that I think he may be fairly indicative of what makes people like this get up in the morning. He’s certainly a misfit. His main beef (although there are endless beefs) is that political correctness has cost him a decent life. He said something that people called racist and he thinks it was unfair. He said some things that people called sexist he feels put upon. The author of the piece is inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt but I see the problem entirely differently.

He used the word “ni**er”. Speaking of “the Arab world” he says, “We’re not perfect, we suck a lot of the time, but we are better as a people, as a culture, and as a society than they are, and we need to recognize that, so that we can possibly even begin to deal with the evil that we are facing.” And he goes absolutely nuts when people say that he is racist for saying these things.

What wingnuts like him don’t understand about this is that when they openly embrace the party of Strom Thurmond and Phyllis Schlaffley and Jesse Helms, they carry their extra baggage and they need to choose their words more carefully than others. The context in which he said those things could show that he wasn’t a racist but when you are a card carrying right winger don’t be surprised if people jump to conclusions.

They certainly have no trouble applying this standard to members of the party of alleged traitors like Michael Moore when they do not carefully choose their words on the subjects of terrorism and war. For some reason conservatives believe that the scourge of “political correctness” only goes one way when it is clear that they are enforcing speech codes just as rigid as anything seen on an ivy league campus. Instead, when they are called on their insensitive and racist remarks they immediately retreat into a whining mass of self pity (while they sit in the corner sputtering that liberals must disavow Ward Churchill’s every utterance.) As Thomas Frank so convincingly proved in “What’s The Matter With Kansas” this sense of grievance is simply what makes guys like him tick. In fact, there seems to be an abiding sense of grievance in parts of the American character that has manifested itself successfully in the right wing talk format.

I urge you to read this whole article if you can. It’s a fascinating look into a world that is as unglamorous as you can get and still be called media. (Well, except for blogging.) Talk radio is more than entertainment. Way more. It’s the conservative id.

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High School Confidential

Hudson over at Daily Kos has posted a provocative piece about a Republican tactic he calls “fencing.” He accurately describes this process of ritual humiliation that’s become a standard part of the Republican playbook over the last few years, the purpose of which is to “fence off” voters from feeling comfortable identifying with the Democrats and candidates who are widely seen as socially marginalized objects of derision — effeminate geeks. I suspect this tactic works particularly well with certain sub-sets of white males whose identity is wrapped up in machismo and high school jock style social hierarchies —- and the women who buy into those simple heuristic methods of determining leadership capability.(Old Mudcat pretty much came right out and said it. “It’s a macho thing.”)

Clearly, this tactic has been used to great effect in the last two presidential elections and I think it plays particularly well into the existing stereotypes of the two parties with respect to national security. Of course, one of the reasons this works so well is that it is partially designed to appeal to the media’s puerile sense of bitchy good fun, as well. It would not be nearly as effective if the MSM could resist the immature temptation to side with those they perceive as “real guys” and help them deride Democrats as weirdos and sissies.

Bob Sommerby has meticulously detailed the media’s heinous treatment of Al Gore in 2000. Here’s just one example:

RNC PRESS RELEASE:

Washington (June 14)—As Al Gore kicks off his presidential campaign on the front porch of his family’s hobby farm near Carthage, Tennessee, Republican National Committee Chairman Jim Nicholson will lead credentialed reporters on a tour of the real Gore homestead—the 8th floor hotel rooms that used to be the Gore suite of the former Ritz Carlton on Washington’s Embassy Row…

Nicholson will arrive at the hotel (now known as the Westin Fairfax and previously called the Ritz Carlton) in a mule-drawn carriage at 10:30, and will then hold a news conference at the hotel’s “Terrace Room” before giving reporters a tour of the former Gore suite.

Here’s how Time magazine dealt with the charming little stunt:

Meet Al-oise

Al Gore’s childhood is the stuff of classics. Specifically, the children’s classic Eloise, by Kay Thompson. Both Al and Eloise lived in a hotel, both were born in the late ’40s, both had busy parents, both have had to wage wars on boredom. And this month, the Eloise licensing campaign heats up with dolls, furniture and collectibles.

I won’t bore you with all the reasons that was such a nasty little piece of work but it doesn’t take a genius to see that the mention of Gore with dolls, boredom, rich parents and a spoiled little girl was no accident. Suffice to say that the press corps snorted in derisive delight and never looked back.

However, this ritual humiliation goes all the way back to Dukakis, at least, with the tank picture. Clinton was a little more difficult to paint with this stuff because he was a known womanizer and they weren’t able to turn him into a sexless geek or a cartoon pansy, even with the allegedly ballbusting wife. In the end they were reduced to calling him a pervert for liking blow jobs which didn’t work all that well, for obvious reasons. Kerry, however, was the subject of constant derision along this line. As Hudson points out:

In the Bush-Kerry campaign, “fencing” mostly took the form of playground insults and other humiliations:

Kerry looks French. Kerry spends a fortune on haircuts. Kerry is vain and pompous. Kerry has funny hair. Kerry’s voice is funny. Kerry reminds people of Lerch on The Munsters. Kerry wears Lycra–fluorescent-striped Lycra. Kerry rides a fancy European bike. Kerry looks fruity when he windsurfs. Kerry wears expensive suits, ties, sunglasses, shoes and belts. Kerry asks for French mustard when he orders a hot dog…

They didn’t exactly make a secret of it.

Karl Rove telegraphs a punch: “the GOP convention will portray Kerry as “an object of humor and calculated derision.” Meanwhile, Senator Trent Lott throws a haymaker at a ‘French-speaking socialist’

The convention, of course, famously featured those cute little band-aids. Dirty trickster Morton Blackwell took the heat before the press for it, but clearly it was planned at a much higher level. Perversely, this playground bully humor actually plays better if some “grownups” wag their fingers and show their disapproval. Mudcat’s macho guys just roar off in their fast cars spraying gravel in everybody’s faces while their sycophants cheer wildly on the sidelines. They actually gain currency when people tut-tut their nasty little jokes.

While talk radio is a purely macho power game, I think it’s interesting that in the mainstream media so many of the right wing pundits and their allegedly objective colleagues characterize a slightly different version of high school power structure — the snotty Heathers. Tucker Carlson, Robert Novak and chief dominatrix Ann Coulter personify the nasty tone and rigid hierarchy of the “popular girls.” Perhaps it is because guys like Tucker and Rich Lowry and Jonah Goldberg simply cannot credibly be seen as macho so this is the best they can do. (Coulter is in a class by herself.)But regardless of whether they are the macho jocks in the fast cars or the mean girl Queen Bees, they all smoothly work together to inflict the same adolescent ritual humiliation.

All of this is to say that there has long been a campaign to emasculate Democrats. (I suspect that there is a corollary in the defeminization of Democratic women as well.) This is powerful stuff and we’d best admit that it is going on so that we can formulate a response that actually works. Right now, we either try to out-manly them or we laugh it off, neither of which are working. (The worst advice that Paul Begala ever took was when Tucker Carlson told him to laugh when these kind of insults are hurled. He often sounds like a nervous hyena they come so fast and furiously and it has the effect of making him appear slightly unhinged.)

I think this tactic plays into many people’s anxiety about changing social and gender roles in our fast moving society. A lot of folks out there are genuinely freaked out by the rapid pace of change and because of it are very susceptible to rigid stereotypes. They just feel more comfortable on the side of the fence where the macho high school boys and the girls who love them are. It’s very hard to even get them to peek over and see what’s on the other side.

And all people refuse vote for someone whom they think of as weak. It goes to the very essence of what leadership is. Half the country is obviously able to see past this little high school game and evaluate the strength of a candidates on the basis of something other than image and macho rhetoric. The other half is clearly in thrall to the manufactured Hollywood image of manly leadership.

I’m not entirely sure what to do about this, but I think dealing with it is far more important than any single stand we take on foreign policy. The people who Peter Beinart thinks to reach are not going to be impressed with historical references to faceless “fighting liberals” of the 50’s. This aversion to voting for Democrats on the basis of national security is much more primal than that and it needs to be dealt with in the same way.

Any ideas?

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Wajda Expect?

Here is the problem when you put a person known as a war criminal back into a war zone in a position of responsibility. When stuff likethis happens it looks really, really, bad.

BAGHDAD, Iraq – U.S. troops who mistakenly killed an Italian intelligence agent last week on the road to Baghdad’s airport were part of extra security provided by the U.S. Army to protect U.S. Ambassador John Negroponte, a U.S. official said Thursday.

Italian intelligence agent Nicola Calipari was killed March 4 when U.S. troops opened fire on a car carrying him and Italian journalist Giuliana Sgrena, who had just been freed from insurgents.

“The mobile patrol was there to enhance security because Ambassador Negroponte was expected through,” U.S. Embassy spokesman Robert Callahan said, confirming reports in Italian media. The newspaper La Repubblica reported Wednesday that the checkpoint had been “set up to protect the passage of Ambassador Negroponte.”

It was not known if Negroponte, who was nominated last month by President Bush to be the new director of national intelligence, had already passed through the checkpoint.

When you have a guy with a reputation for enabling death squads involved in something like this you tend not to get the benefit of the doubt. Not that we care, apparently. Still, it’s just a tad embarrassing for the United States of Spreading Democracy to have to even try to explain to the world why once again John Negroponte is right smack in the middle of another hugely controversial shooting of innocent people. I know democracy is untidy and all, but this is ridiculous.

If this is true it defies belief that the government hasn’t known that this was the case since the first day. I wonder why they forgot to mention it?

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Of The Party,By The Party, For The Party

The next time a wingnut (or anybody) scolds you for being hyperbolic when you call the Republicans undemocratic authoritarians send them here. This report outlines the jackboot tactics of these legislators as they pretty much shut down any form of debate in the congress and govern by one party rule. Their hypocrisy, as always, is astonishing.

For those of you who don’t remember the early 90’s, there was an incessant whine and beating of breasts about the unfairness of the Democratic leadership and how they were elitists whose terms had to be limited in order to bring back the founders’ dream of a citizen legislator who put the people before themselves and the good of all before their party. I think people finally voted them into power in 1994 just to make them shut their mewling gobs as much as anything. And waddaya know? Once in power they are far, far worse than anything the Democrats ever dreamed of. What are the odds?

I realize that the concept of hypocrisy had been retired so there is no point in pursuing this line of thinking. But when you come across the occasional wingnut who says “the Democrats were worse” it would be handy to have read this report in detail so you can slap the supercilious smirk off his face.

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Time To Step Up

Ezra has been trying to find a way to accomodate the DLC in this polarized political world, and I appreciate his efforts to think it through. Today, however, he lost all patience with them. And he points out something that is very important. The DLC is always pushing the leadership to defy the shibboleths and toss aside interest groups to prove that they are the not captive of tired old fashioned thinking. Well, the DLC needs to take a page out of its own blueprint and defy the corporate establishment on the bankruptcy bill. It is the most heinous piece of legislation to come out of the republican congress so far and it is a potent symbol of the worst kind of special interest manipulation in that it blatantly hurts middle americans while protecting the interests of the rich and big business. They need to step up and do a little Sistah-Soljah on their ass.

I’m all for the big tent, but there is no excuse for the DLC not to understand how fundamental this kind of corporate racketeering is to average Americans. It goes against everything Democrats believe in. At some point you’ve got to pick a side. This is one. Social Security is another. These aren’t abstractions about the global economy or deregulation. This is about real, red blooded American people who are going to be hurt at the expense of greedy corporations and radical ideology. That is where the line must be drawn. The DLC could do a lot for its credibility with the rank and file if it would acknowledge this and make an effort to distinguish itself from horrors like this bankruptcy legislation. There is no good reason for them not to.

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The Vig

Atrios helpfully links to a freeper thread (so I don’t have to) in which they just discover that the bankruptcy bill is an abomination. My favorite quote is, “Conservatism must mean something more than simply doing what pleases big business.” There’s some serious cognitive dissonence going on over there.

Here’s the nurse now with a quick Kool-aid injection:

The administration supports the passage of bankruptcy reform because ultimately this will lead to more accessibility to credit for more Americans, particularly lower-income workers,” said Trent D. Duffy, a deputy White House spokesman. “The fact that the Senate was able to set aside those issues and move toward passage shows it’s another bipartisan accomplishment.

I won’t go into why the Senate “Useful Idiot” Club felt they had to enable Dear Leader to once again claim a bipartisan victory. I hope that they will hear from their contituents loud and clear, however. From the reaction in the blogosphere, anyway, there is some serious bipartisan shock and disgust at this bill.

I had thought that this bill was a bit of kabuki to placate the credit card companies. I never bought that the abortion amendment was really enough to keep the bill from passing the house if Tom Delay wanted it to pass. My reasoning was that nobody wanted to shut down the gravy train of consumer spending that was propping up this economy. And I figured that even if they felt they had to pass the bankruptcy provisions this time that they would use the opportunity to set a cap on these interest rates in order to keep the party going for a while. But, as with every other piece of domestic legislation, there isn’t even a single thought given anymore to the health of the economy as a whole. It’s just ad hoc pay-offs dependent on how much a particular special interest has slipped into the pockets of certain senators.

I certainly hope that anyone running against a Republican in ’06 (or incumbent Dem who voted with the pigs yesterday) makes hay out of this, and not just the bankruptcy bill itself, but the way that they enabled the credit card companies to continue charging usury rates of 30-40-50% interest while preventing people from declaring bankruptcy when they get caught in that increasing spiral. Everyday Americans know about credit card bills. Many people are finding out the hard way that if they are late with one bill all their credit card interest rates can very unexpectedly rise to a ridiculous level and compound a reasonable amount of debt into an unaffordable one. Or they are finding that their credit score drops when they take on a certain level of debt for a large purchase or an unexpected emergency like medical bills, thus triggering another huge rise in their interest rates across the board. Average, hard working folks I know in real life have been complaining about suddenly finding that their minimum payment has doubled from one month to the next because of completely unforseen circumstances. That the credit card companies are making record profits at the time they are whining about bankruptcy proves that this is just pure, unadulterated greed. It’s a racket and these pigs in congress just put their personal USDA stamp of approval on it. It is an outrage.

We are seeing the outlines of a potent broadside against the Republicans in 2006 if we are only bold enough to take it. Social Security privatization and this bankruptcy bill are full throated attacks on the middle and working class in this country. They are asking working Americans to take on more and more risk in order to enrich and protect big business. They want to cut your taxes by a couple of bucks and then force you to put thousands more into the hands of their friends on wall street and the big banks.

You can tell that the White House is aware of this by their typically orwellian formulation of the bill:

ultimately this will lead to more accessibility to credit for more Americans, particularly lower-income workers.

Has there ever been an administration with more gall? Low income workers already have access to loan sharks. The vig is the same, either way. Maybe next year they’ll pass legislation allowing the credit card companies to break your legs if you are unable to pay. It works for Tony Soprano, why not the Republican Mob?

I dearly hope that the Democrats are planning to nationalize these midterms and go after this administration with a fiery populist message.The time is ripe and this hits people right where they live. Even if we do not gain any seats, it’s imperative that we begin to make the argument that the Republicans own the government and that they are using their power corruptly. When the shit comes down, and it will, we must have very carefully laid out the case that this abdication of all common sense and concern for average Americans defines this corrupt Republican establishment.

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Tears Of A Klein

It turns out that Joe Klein is even thicker that I took him for. Josh Marshall put out a call to find cases where Klein explained his bizarre theory that social security would have to be privatized because we have moved from an industrial age to an information age.

Google has oodles of cites and none of them make any damned sense whatsoever. Here are a couple you might enjoy:

Joe Klein

Oh, it changed dramatically. Welfare, the Welfare Reform Programme, which I was opposed to, I was wrong, it has been a tremendous success and I’ll tell you why. Because Clinton had a coherent governing philosophy, which Tony Blair shares to a certain extent, which is that in the Information Age, you don’t deliver public services the same way you did in the Industrial Age. You don’t rule out huge bureaucracies, what you do is give targeted cash payments. He gave targeted cash payments to the working poor, so that if you were a mother on welfare, after, you know, after eight years of Clinton, you got $5,000 more a year, you kept your health benefit and your children got health benefits. That was no small thing. If you were middle class or below, you got college tuition tax credits, 10 million Americans take advantage of this. This is a social programme on a scale that dwarfs the GI Bill of Rights, which everybody speaks of as one of the great American social triumphs.

Charles Wheeler: Doesn’t dwarf the Great Society of Lyndon Johnson does it?

Joe Klein: The Great Society was an utter failure because it helped to contribute to social irresponsibility at the very bottom.

Oh my, I’ll bet that started a clatter of teaspoons in Georgtown, didn’t it? What a ballsy, no-nonsense, manly statement, and him a tried and true liberal, don’t you know. (And after he wrote that nasty book about Clinton and the black women, too.)

Yet, for some reason I still don’t quite understand why exactly in the information age you don’t deliver public services the same way you did in the industrial age. If he’s talking about automatic deposit and e-filing your taxes, then I guess he’s right. But I still don’t see what these targeted cash payments or tuition tax credits have to do with the information age or why they are so superior and don’t contribute to the social irresponsibility among the darkies … er … I mean “those at the very bottom.” (And is it even slightly believable that it dwarfs the GI Bill? is he talking about unadjusted 1953 dollars?)

Here he takes another stab at it:

Clinton did come to the presidency with a coherent, long term political philosophy and purpose. To a very great extent–a surprising extent–he lived up to it. I know because I was there and I was one of those who was involved in the formulating of this new philosophy, which has been called The Third Way. There was a general understanding that the Democratic Party had gone off the deep end and needed to come back. Clinton once told me that when he was hoping to be Mario Cuomo’s vice president, the job of the next president is going to be to move us from the Industrial Age to the Information Age.

Government was, and very much still remains, the last of our major institutions that stuck in the Industrial Age, where the paradigm is top-down, centralized command and control, assembly line, standardization, and one size fits all.

In the Information Age, Clinton knew that the paradigm was the computer, that the government had to be more decentralized, that bureaucracies had to become more flexible, and that our social safety net had to reflect that–the fact that people had more information and have to have more choices about where they get their health care, where their money for their retirement is held, and so on.

The government has to be more like a computer. Bureaucracies have to be more flexible and our social safety net has to reflect that because people have more information so they have to have more choices about where they get their health care and where they put their retirement money. Huh?

I can’t find anywhere where Klein actually explains why we need to have all these choices about our safety net or why having more information compels it. Indeed, as Josh Marshall pointed out earlier, it is counterintuitive. In a world in which people are asked to take many more chances in their careers, where pensions really are a relic of the past, where health care can be yanked from beneath you in a moments notice, it seems to me that government guarantees of basic security are more important than ever.

Klein’s DLC catechism has all the markings of someone who jumped on a sexy trend when he was younger and hasn’t realized the fashion has changed. There is no there, there. He’s like one of those e-venture capitalists of the late 90’s spewing fast talking bullshit about “new organizational paradigms where knowledge is defined in terms of potential for action as distinguished from information and its more intimate link with performance.” In other words, gibberish.

It was fashionable for one brief period to think that turning government into a collection of kewl, outsourced, totally, like, stand alone pods of individualized data collection and service modules, but most people sobered up sometime in early 2000. It was always crap.

Clinton did what he could to survive, reframe the Democratic image and move the country forward while under monumental pressure from the opposition. I do not blame him for doing what he did. But I have never understood that this discredited e-commerce comic book version of government was his vision. If it was, I imagine his enthusiasm has cooled by this time. Crashing stock markets and huge crony capitalist boondoggles generally make intelligent people think twice about utopian capitalist wet dreams. Klein doesn’t seem to have gotten the memo.

And, by the way, who knew that Joe Klein was personally involved in formulating the “third way?” Funny, I thought he was just a bad journalist and a worse novelist. I had no idea he was such an open Democratic partisan. Frankly, I think he would have been more helpful to the cause if he’d simply shut his gossiping, moralizing, judgmental trap during the administration.

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