From music from my childhood to music by children. Damn, are these guys young looking -- it looked like the performances at my kid's high school. Anyway, I quite liked it -- the two trumpets and accordion line-up is rather unique.
- Ross Douthat attempts to minimize concerns over the ties that Republican presidential candidates Rick Perry and Michelle Bachmann have to Christian extremists. Essentially Douthhat tries to make the case that if you aren't concerned about Barack Obama's connections with Jeremiah Wright or Bill Ayers, than you shouldn't get too exercised about Perry and Bachmann's links to some of America's loonier Christianists. It's an argument that sounds superficially reasonable, but doesn't withstand the most minimal scrutiny. Jeremiah Wright made controversial worldly rather than theological comments. Obama swiftly denounced those comments and there is simply no indication that Wright's sentiments were shared by him or influenced him in any way. As to Ayers, the actions for which he is pilloried occurred when Obama was a small child. Moreover, there is no evidence to suggest that the two of them have ever been close or that Obama has in any way advocated for the radical world view that the younger Ayers espoused.
This is simply not the case with Perry and Bachmann. Both of them have made repeated extreme statements with respect to matters of faith and public policy, including Bachmann's absurd contention that God is manifesting himself in earthly tectonic and climate disturbances in order to register his opposition to federal spending. (Yeah, I know, it was just a joke -- I'm dying of laughter here.) Neither of them has ever denounced these more extremist versions of alleged Christianity -- indeed, just the opposite: Perry and Bachmann show every tendency towards embracing this kind of theology and pushing it into the public sphere. A candidate who thinks God has a position on the federal debt or one who believes that prayer is a viable economic strategy is by definition operating at the very fringe of politics, one in which superstition is seen as a legitimate guide for the actions of elected officials.
Douthat strains to make all of this seem less nutty than it is -- it must be difficult to graduate from Harvard, write for the New York Times, and be surrounded by worldly east coasters, and at the same time choose these folks as your ideological bedfellows. Douthat's own extreme discomfort with sexual freedom seems to lead him to embrace some pretty unsavory characters.
Personally, I think if people paid more attention to those who have shaped Bachmann and Perry's thoughts on these matters -- such as they are -- they would be deeply alarmed at the notion of either of them running the country.
What are you doing to bring God's wrath down upon us all today (on this stunningly lovely day here in DC)?
A little nostalgia from my life as a Boston youth. I was talking to a young waiter at the local pizza joint the other night while out walking Stan -- I am sure his table was appreciative -- a kid who is a musician moving back to Cleveland where you can be a struggling artist and not starve -- or at least not as quickly as you do here in DC -- and he mentioned this band to me. It's a great garage rock sound -- reminiscent of "? and the Mysterians" and the Kingsmen. (One can really waste a prodigious amount of time on youtube -- this led me to a whole bunch of other Boston-based bands of the same time period, acts that had regional followings and local radio hits, when such a thing as local radio existed.)
Well, the big storm has not yet proven too terrible here in DC. A whole lot of warm rain -- Stanley and I just took a spin around the neighborhood and saw a few limbs down, but that's about it. I hope that this is as bad as it gets. If the power stays on I will be a happy camper.
Here's a few things that hot gotten my attention the past couple of days:
- Dave Weigel and Cornel West both remind us that Martin Luther King was a man of the left, a radical who was disliked by a large chunk of the American populace. I suppose it's great that he has become an unassailable icon, but I fear the real man and his politics have been lost in the process.
- I find the notion that building (or not building) a pipe line being a "make or break" environmental issue for Obama to be absurd hyperbole. So if this pipe line is greenlighted, I guess environmentalists are going to rally around Rick Perry. Evidently the Obama Administration is not afraid of the fall out.
- I never wrote much about the Libyan intervention. I was ambivalent and skeptical about the whole affair. But I never found the comparisons to Iraq to be very compelling. If anything, it reminded me much more of the Kosovo intervention, another situation where U.S. airpower was brought to bear with an insurgent local ground force. And, in the end, it has been very much of an allied effort, which makes it wildly different than the Iraq disaster.
- Glenn Greenwald really is an idiot about politics. I couldn't even write about this post for days, it made me so pissed. A ridiculous apologia for Ron Paul, a man who thinks we should get rid of FEMA, the Federal Reserve, shouldn't have passed the Civil Rights Act or Social Security or Medicare, who thinks women should not have the right to an abortion -- this guy is a right wing lunatic. And Greenwald thinks he deserves a serious look from progressives because he is opposed to military interventions and the war on drugs. Amusingly, while defending a guy who thinks Social Security should be abolished, Greenwald castigates Obama for contemplating changing its cost of living increase formula. Greenwald's politics, such as they are come down to two things: 1) he thinks that the maximalist civil liberties position -- at least those he cares about -- trump all things; and 2) he really hates Obama. He's a child. And how someone who thinks he is the ultimate civil libertarian can cozy up to a guy who wants to abolish the right to an abortion is beyond me.
Update: A must read column by Charles Blow about child poverty and attacks on family planning services and abortion rights. And, it should be noted, that the Obama Administration has 1) drawn a line in the sand against efforts to defund Title X, the federally funded family planning program for low income women; 2) intervened in law suits on behalf of Planned Parenthood in several states where Republicans have sought to defund its operations. and 3) made contraceptive coverage without co-pays a required benefit under health care reform. But hey, what's that as a progressive move compared to what Ron Paul has to offer.
They died in their hundreds with no sign to mark where Save the brass in the pocket of the entrepreneur. By landslide and rockblast they got buried so deep That in death if not life they'll have peace while they sleep.
Their mark on this land is still seen and still laid The way for a commerce where vast fortunes were made The supply of an Empire where the sun never set Which is now deep in darkness, but the railway's there yet
A plea for a massive infrastructure program undertaken by workers who will accept payment in whiskey.
- This was a really excellent piece in the Washington Post by Alexander Keyssar about the complete unraveling of the social contract in America. Keyssar posits that the American social contract consisted of three important components -- 1) the regulation of business to stop the excesses of capitalism that threatened the safety and stability of society; 2) the allowance for workers to organize in order to demand a greater share of the pie created by capitalism; and 3) social insurance to alleviate the hardships that could not be addressed in the marketplace or workplace. He argues in this article that all three of these pillars of the social contract, which have been under attack for decades, are now seriously threatened. Moreover, he points out that things like the Citizens United decision, the Republican pushed voter ID laws, and the attacks on the 17th Amendment and the direct election of senators, constitute an attack on democracy itself. A world in which this social contract is destroyed and the electoral means to rectify it made difficult, if not impossible, is not a world in which I am anxious to live.
Keyssar was my professor for post-Civil War American History back in 1979 at Brandeis. He was a terrific classroom teacher. Naturally those bastards over in Cambridge snatched him away with their big money and fancy chairs, as they were wont to do with our young star faculty in those days.
- I have to laugh at the desperate need of right wingers to have their hands held during even the most innocuous of events. And their obvious amnesia about what actually happened on 9-11 -- about the only time in my life where I think I was looking for some presidential leadership and got absolutely zero from "Pet Goat Boy." It was actually quite stunning being here in DC that day, with chaos afoot and an utter void at the White House -- an absolute shameful fucking silence. But we are made of strong stuff here -- we can pick our plastic lawn chairs up without government assistance. Did I wait for the Red Cross to show up yesterday to put Stanley's picture back up on the shelf? Fuck no!
- Jim Benton posed this question below in comments: "Why is it important to you that Perry -- and the majority of Republican Presidential candidates in the last two election cycles -- claim to be willing to consider creationism and evolution equivalent?" Here is my stab at it. I think it is important that politicians attempt to undertake policies that have an empirical basis indicating their efficacy. I would not want to elect someone who believes that the National Institutes of Health should promote "bleeding" or "hot cupping" as a means for treating illness nor someone who believes that the alleged grant of dominion over the birds of the air and the fish in the sea in the Bible means we should indiscriminately slaughter animals to the point of extinction. Nor do I want to elect someone who has no sense of the scientific method or other evidence-based modes of thinking. And I sure as hell don't want to elect someone who thinks that the abstinence-only approach to sex education and family planning works.
Everyone feel free to join in on this and anything else that moves you.
Had the excitement of my first earthquake a little while ago. It was quite interesting. All I can say is, with your help, we will rebuild! (Thanks kathy.)
I had hoped to have a chance yesterday to link to this article in the Post about Bayard Rustin, the organizational genius behind the March on Washington, and a man who was openly gay, black, Quaker, and a pacifist and socialist. Rustin was also a conscientious objector who was sent to jail for refusing to fight in World War II.
He is truly one of the great figures of the left in Twentieth Century America and a fantastic story to boot. This guy's life is a movie begging to be made. (If only I had talent and money.)
As a follow up to my post on the King statue yesterday, I was glad to see I wasn't the only one who thought it a bit hideous and Stalinistic and totally inconsistent with its subject.
So I hope the ground is steady where you are. What's happening out there?
On Sunday, the 48th anniversary of the March on Washington, a huge new statue of Martin Luther King, Jr. will be dedicated on the national mall. It should be a festive occasion, one in which I would normally be quite happy to join.
But, sadly no, as they say. The first blow was the decision to have the face of the sculpture assembled by workers imported from China -- workers who had no idea when or what they would be paid -- costing one of my clients several good paying jobs in a time of high unemployment. Ah, slave labor -- not exactly Dr. King's dream if you ask me.
So today my day began with a call from the statue site where my clients were advised by a National Park policeman that they could not pass out leaflets without a permit. I exploded -- this is the "United Fucking States of America!" "We have something called the first amendment here!" "Put the cops on the phone." My head was about to do a 360 as the spirit of Glenn Greenwald possessed my body.
Fortunately, the cop had walked away at that point. My clients spoke with the officer in charge and it was agreed that as long as they stayed off the staging area for the dedication that they could leaflet the public. (Note the Post's dismissive tone about the leafleting by the way.)
There won't be any leafleting on the day of the dedication out of respect to the memory of Dr. King. But there won't be any celebrating on my end, which is unfortunate.
Sorry for the absence. I just got back into town late on Thursday night and then my mother-in-law passed away the following evening after a lengthy illness. She was 91 and a lovely soul, who lived just a few blocks from us for the last thirteen years. She had 90 extraordinarily healthy years and one pretty lousy one, which if I could bargain for I know I'd take in a heart beat. She opted for in-home hospice care, which strikes me as the best of the crappy exit options in this world. (Well maybe a dead-before-you-hit- the-ground kind of heart attack has some virtues as well -- the lawyer in me likes the notion of a planned exit.)
I've barely looked at the newspaper or the intertubes over the last 48 hours as a result, but I did think this piece in the New York Times about America's increasingly uncomfortable yet idolatory posture towards the military is worth a read. I think it is especially true that in the post-Vietnam era a large segment of the liberal community is extremely reticent about criticizing the military. I am pretty sure that this phenomenon helps explain the absence of really large scale demonstrations against the Iraq War when it was at the very trough of its pretty limited popularity.
I've got to resume the chores once again. Hopefully get a chance to sit down and say hi this evening.
I am out trying to get a guy his job back who had the bad sense to complain about toxic materials on a job site. Clearly a fellow who is not in touch with our glorious new paradigm -- hey, are Chinese workers complainig about possibly deadly substances on their job sites?
So in the meantime, talk amongst yourselves and let me know what new and horrible things are happening.
"Sleep Now in the Fire" - Rage Against the Machine
There seems to be a glimmer of recognition out there that what is going on in the global economy is much more profound than a run of the mill recession -- even a quite severe one. Pundits finally seem to be grasping that the western economies are in a box from which escape will not be easy. Beyond that though, the prescriptions for recovery seem to be wanting. Thomas Friedman gives us the classic upper middle class striver solution -- study harder, work harder, be more productive. This is something that Friedman's professional class readers will intuitively relate to -- they are people who think of themselves as winners in a world of competition, people who got into the best colleges, law schools, medical schools, business schools -- people who became partners at big law firms and investment firms and the like. It is inconceivable to many of these folks that they, too, could somehow be rendered obsolete, that a world of unbridled competition, one in which their professions cease to be protected by licensing and state and international boundaries, is one where they might just be another superfluous and overpaid bit of personnel.
Nouriel Roubini weighs in with a similarly themed column, one that has more intellectual weight than Friedman's. but seems in the end to have a similar conclusion. And Joe Nocera looks to the forces of commerce to save us -- asking plaintively "what is business waiting for?" I've actually liked Nocera's early work as an opinion columnist, but this seems silly. Business is going to hire people when there is sufficient demand to buy that which workers produce -- individual firms are not going to waste money investing in workers who produce products or services that will not be purchased. Stimulating such demand must in the end fall to government.
(One false premise in Friedman's column and one reflected in much of current opinion is that the American social safety net is unsustainable. It's not. Unlike some of our European counterparts, we have a revenue problem, not a problem with overly generous common provisions to the citizenry. And, as Warren Buffet so ably pointed out, we have an easy solution to our revenue problems.)
The next "big idea" we need on the political/economic spectrum is one that helps get us through this moment of massive deleveraging and dislocation, while moving us toward some sort of equilibrium in terms of economic power. A world in which capital has its way virtually all of the time is simply not a world any of us should want to live in -- and all of the study and hard work and skills building is never going to change that.
Or as Thomas Frank put it far better than I can, praying to the God that sucked is always going to be an act of futile obeisance.
"You're sweating, you're fretting, but did you notice, you're not getting anywhere"
The New York Times has a piece today by Neal Gabler on the demise of "big ideas," the thesis of which is immediately confirmed by dumbass Thomas Friedman's column entitled "A Theory of Everything (Sort of)." Jesus, if the latter is what passes for an attempt at a big idea in today's world, may big ideas be dead forever.* Gabler points to big political and scientific ideas of the past -- from Marxism to Freudian Psychology to the Theory of Relativity to Keynsian economics, among others -- and argues that we are not producing similar kinds of big thoughts in this era. It was an interesting and enjoyable article until, inevitably, the moment came to blame this shrinking of ideas on Facebook and twitter. (I am not a huge fan of either medium, but as Kevin Drum points out, the demise of public intellectuals has been fretted about since at least back to the days when MTV was showing music videos.) You would think an article about big ideas would avoid this kind of glibness.
I think there are a few things worth discussing in the article though. First, I think there needs to be a distinction drawn between big scientific ideas and big political and cultural ideas. The former are subject to empirical proof while the latter are not. I suspect that in science today there are still a great many big ideas being thought -- however, my guess is that they are at such a level of sophistication and speciality that they are likely to be far beyond most of intellectually. Although I am pretty much of a scientific illiterate, I suspect as well that big breakthroughs -- like Einstein's -- tend to be the product of many years and much tumult within a field, work that suddenly yields a larger insight that transforms the way that things are seen. I also suspect that such breakthroughs are inevitably limited in mumber, but that this in no way diminishes the seriousness of work that is going on at all times in fields like biology, physics, astronomy, etc.
Second, there was once a time where one could be on the cutting edge of science while also being heavily engaged in politics, philosophy, law, and other fields -- people like Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin, for example, managed this feat in the late Eighteenth Century. This is a much more difficult task in a world of highly advanced knowledge. Being a world class physicist or astonomer or mathematician or doctor is more than a full time job. Hell, the practice of law, which I view as a considerably less intellectually advanced field, generally requires high levels of specialization. There are very few people who manage to master more than a couple of specialties -- and, trust me, dabblers tend to get their heads handed to them.
Paradoxically, an absence of big ideas may also reflect the accumulation of a greater collective wisdom. Big ideas are often, in the end, foolish, misguided, simplistic, pseudo-scientific, and, in extreme cases, even murderous. Marxism and Freudian psychology are the classic Nineteenth Century big ideas -- huge, totalizing systems of thought that attempt to explain the world -- or huge chunks of the world -- in a manner that purports to be scientific. Marx and Freud -- and those who later developed on and synthesized their thinking from Gramsci to Marcuse to Adorno to Sartre -- wrote potently and evocatively about human economy and psychology -- indeed, wrote so powerfully that they continue to influence today, despite the fact that much of what they propounded was pseudo-scientific at best and some of it -- I'm looking at your Sartre -- was quite pernicious.
Obviously, this would be the big leagues of big thoughts, but even more modern and modest efforts do not always withstand scrutiny, from Daniel Bell's "The End of Ideology" to Francis Fukayma's "The End of History and the Last Man," both of which grossly underestimate the power of the violent and the irrational and the continued resonance in many quarters of a politics based on tribalism, religion, and cultural antagonisms. Proclaiming the rise of this or the end of that is too often a fool's errand, one which the world has a nasty habit of rendering irrelevant -- often within weeks of publication it seems.
I assume that many smart people personally don't proffer big ideas because they have the good sense to realize that the world is an incredibly complex and dynamic place and that humans are a strange and unpredictable lot, factors that should prompt some degree of humility in any observer. (I refrain myself because I don't really have any big ideas.) I think that this modesty is a form of wisdom, although I enjoy big ideas as much as the next guy -- even if just as something to tear down.
Gabler also seems to me to conflate social movements and big ideas in a way that I think is slightly misleading. Certainly the civil rights movement for African Americans in the U.S. and the feminist and gay rights movements in the West have produced a great deal of thought and ideological ferment. But in the end, it seems to me that these movements have largely been anchored in expanding the basic enlightenment notion captured in the line "all men are created equal" and their success has been based on the simple elegance of promoting the universality of this idea, rather than more abstruse ideological efforts. Political progress in the U.S. is a lot easier when you are relying on Jefferson and Lincoln say, rather than Amiri Baraka, Katherine MacKinnon, and Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, as your ideological linchpins.
Like Gabler, I would certainly like to see a more intelligent and sophisticated public discourse in America. But I tend to think that our greatest needs now are less for big ideas than for political strategies that will inform, persuade, and energize lower information and lower income voters, encouraging them to be active in elections and in the political process in a way that will help advance their interests.
*I'll have to dismantle the Mustache of Understanding later. In the meantime, these Matt Taibi pieces are alway fun reading on that score.
Please feel free to share your big ideas here. I will steal the best of them.
"Screw You, We're From Texas" - Ray Wylie Hubbard*
Someone with a stronger stomach than mine is going to have to listen to the presidential announcement speech by the idiot governor of Texas.
Any of you who are so bold should make a report. I actually do think he will be the nominee, but I think such predictions probably unwise until we actually see him in action. Obama should have some fun with an opponent who believes Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid are unconstitutional and wants to repeal the direct election of senators, among other things.
What do y'all think?
*I am unfairly giving this song the "Born in the USA" treatment. Ray Wylie Hubbard is not striking a blow for mindless Texan chauvinism, but rather for the virtues of Texas music versus the crap that comes out of Nashville. As he notes in the song, Texas "corporations are corrupt, and our politicians are swindlers and loco." That sounds like a pretty good description of Perry.
"Man Out of Time" - Elvis Costello and the Attractions
" . . . real life becomes a rumour"
- Some days I wonder why anyone else bothers writing. Krugman with yet another brutal assault on the op-ed pages men of the center (of Flat Bobo Patio World):
Check out the opinion page of any major newspaper, or listen to any news-discussion program, and you’re likely to encounter some self-proclaimed centrist declaring that there are no short-run fixes for our economic difficulties, that the responsible thing is to focus on long-run solutions and, in particular, on “entitlement reform” — that is, cuts in Social Security and Medicare. And when you do encounter such a person, you should be aware that people like that are a major reason we’re in so much trouble.
I wonder what Thomas Friedman and David Brooks think when they read this stuff. I like that Krugman is committed to not backing off of this line of attack. His attempts to shame the Very Serious People are no doubt in vain -- they are shameless to their very core -- but I admire his relentlessness.
- As those of you who have been reading the blog for a long time now, I tend to be a China skeptic, finding claims of its imminent superpower status to be dubious. The hype around China's first aircraft carrier amplifies my feelings in this regard. The United States commissioned its first aircraft carrier nearly ninety years ago. It is not exactly a cutting edge technology. And their whole high speed rail thing doesn't appear to be quite so compelling either.
- I think I might enjoy this blog. Although I had a few outstanding professors. I pretty much hated the whole law school experience -- particularly being taught by people whom one had the sense would have their asses handed to them in most court rooms in the country. Law school remains a wholly unsatisfying blend of trade school and pretentious academia. I, personally, would have preferred more trade school and less pretense.
Are you all ready for the massive Rick Perry hype?
Crazy busy today, but I did want to suggest that in the face of the passivity by Democrats regarding joblessness -- and especially yesterday's hideous quote from Claire McCaskill -- there is a counter-narrative that they could embrace. It would not get enacted, but it would at least suggest to the electorate that there is another approach that could be taken.
As my friend Tim Noah likes to point out, with the blessing of FDR, Harry Hopkins put four million Americans to work in four months through the Civil Works Administration. The CWA lasted only from November 1933 through March 31, 1934. But in that brief period, the federal government directly put to work what would be the equivalent of ten million workers today. Hopkins then went on to run the Works Progress Administration("WPA"), which at its height employed 3.5 million people and spent the equivalent of 6.7% of GDP in 1935. In today's economy, that would require spending about $938 billion annually on a comparable program.
In other words, there really is an alternative vision that could be presented to the American electorate about what to do with the problem of unemployment. And it's one that made the Democratic Party the natural governing majority party in the United States for a period of about forty years.
"Radiation Vibe" (and 70s schlock medley) - Fountains of Wayne
I saw the full band on Monday (not just Chris and Adam) play an acoustic show (with bass and drums though) and they were quite fabulous. The 70s medley that evening featured, among other things, note for note performances of Steve' Miller's "Swingtown," Yes's "Roundabout," Kansas's "Dust in the Wind,"and Peter Frampton's "Do You Feel Like I Do" -- it was pure hideousness, expertly delivered, from the days of my middle teens.
- Last night's recall election effort in Wisconsin fell short of giving Democrats control of the Wisconisn Senate, which was disappointing. But like kos, on reflection, I think it was a victory. These kind of special elections, with lower voter turnouts, are not easy for Democrats to win. And to pick up two seats in reddish districts in a fight explicitly over collective bargaining rights has got to strike some fear in Republican hearts.
- I ran into one of my colleagues this morning and the very first words he uttered to me were "I canceled the Post two weeks ago, I guess it's time to do the same for the Times." He was referring to today's ultra hideous efforts by Thomas Friedman and Maureen Dowd, both of which read like bad self-parodies -- Friedman doing his centrist stroke fantasy schtick and Dowd playing out her daddy issues in a most pathetic fashion in a piece entitled "Withholder in Chief." Dowd complains of Obama's inability to "spontaneously assuage Americans’ fears" and castigates him for failing to "buck up the country on one of its worst days in history." Jesus, get a shrink. Last Friday was one of the worst in the nation's history?!! Clearly Dowd is not burdened by excess knowledge of American history. Or anything else. One wonders, is this really the best that our national paper of record can do? If so, then perhaps the speedy demise of newspapers is to be wished.
- And lastly, is Claire McCaskill kidding? I used to think her a pretty savvy pol, but when questioned on the possiblity of a jobs bill, she preemptively agrees that Congress will not spend money to create jobs, but rather will "look at patent reform, trade agreements and regulations that are getting in the way of business growth" as a response to unemployment. Isn't this a transparently silly notion? Does anyone think that patent reform or trade agreements are going to produce employment in any meaningful numbers? I understand that we will not be getting WPA style legislation through this Congress, but to simply concede the point and adopt Republican-style talking points on the issue seems a bizarre choice for someone who is likely to be facing a difficult fight in a marginal state in 2012.
I am anxiously awaiting the results from today's state senate recall races in Wisconsin. I think that these races could prove to be incredibly important in a variety of ways.
First, it is a chance for organized labor to show that it can still punish its enemies. And make no mistake, this is crucial to the survival of public employee unions throughout much of the United States. If some asshole like Scott Walker can deprive these state employees of collective bargaining rights and suffer no adverse consequences, it is only a matter of time before public employee unions are just as endangered as their private sector counterparts.
Second, the Democratic Party in Wisconsin rallied to the cause of these workers. They made an unabashed cause of protecting collective bargaining. It would be nice to see such unambiguous support translate into electoral victory. It might help Democrats actually learn the right lessons, while at the same time driving home to public employees -- often an inconstant constituency, especially in the police and fire fighting services -- who has their interests at heart.
And finally, it would be an important slap in the face to right wing Republicans. A political party will only change its stripes in the event of sustained electoral defeat. The Republican Party absorbed brutal defeats in 2006 and 2008. The lesson it took from those losses was that George Bush was unpopular -- hence George Bush was not really a conservative (since America is a conservative country) -- and that he was unpopular for deviating from right-wing orthodoxy. The GOP doubled down on an extreme right wing ideology and won a smashing triumph in the 2010 elections. This tendency can only be curbed by a series of electoral losses. Having multiple state senators recalled in a single election would be a beginning on this front.
Let's keep our fingers crossed. And hope we pick up at least three seats tonight.
Update: Ugh. The numbers as of 10:00 look like crap. Damn.
Further Update at 10:30: Slightly better, but likely to be disappointing. We've lost two of six, but are now leading in three -- one by just a handful of votes. I don't have enough sense of where the votes are yet. Waiting for a kos update.
Hmmm: kos gives some hope. The Dems look like they have two in hand and kos is predicting a narrow win by the currently trailing Dem in the 18th. Please, please, please.
Damn, damn, damn - I did not understand the vote coming in in the 8th District. What I thought was a pretty comfortable lead for Democrat Sandy Pasch is unraveling fast. kos seems to think it might be a lost cause.
It's tight: Dems do pick up the 18th as kos predicted after winning handily in the 32nd. It all comes down to the 8th where the returns are maddeningly slow being reported. Dem Pasch leads narrowly with 67% of the vote reported.
(As suggested the other day by Paula -- it seems perfect on a day when the market continues to slide deep into the toilet.)
Yesterday's New York Times featured a polemic by Drew Westin vigorously attacking Obama for having failed to present a cogent progressive narrative to the American people, leaving him (and us) to flounder in the wake of the American right, an implacable enemy that is never wanting for simple tales to sell to credulous voters. I have to admit that after last week's brutal financial news, I found myself nodding along a bit -- well, maybe even more than a bit. In discussing the piece today though with a friend of mine whose opinion I quite value in these matters, he was quite contemptuous of Westin's piece and thought it both inaccurate and unrealistic -- he pointed out this piece at xpostfactoid, which takes Westin to task pretty effectively.
In the meantime, Krugman issued yet another cri de coeur in favor of government action on joblessness on Friday, something that both Sullivan and Jonathan Chait find to be slightly absurd -- at least in Chait's case, not because they disagree with Krugman on policy grounds, but because politically there is no way that it is going to happen. In other words, for Obama to grab the bully pulpit and proclaim the need for a large federal jobs program would be to engage in a purely rhetorical and political act, one which Chait presumes would be unpopular with the public writ large. (I"d like to think the President could explain such a program in a way that would be well received by the public, but that may be my own delusion.)
I feel like I have occupied all of this ground myself over the last two years. I have argued both for political realism that acknowledges that legislation is only going to be as progressive as that 60th vote in the Senate, while also feeling the need for consistent and persuasive rhetoric and educational efforts by the President to push the country to the left on policy matters. At the same time, I find the attacks on Obama from some on the left to be astonishingly puerile -- see Scott Lemieux and Yglesias take down this wankfest for an example of what I am talking about -- the kind of thing where people argue that Obama and Bill Kristol have the same political views.
I think Obama wanted to avoid battling for more stimulus money because 1) it would be admitting that the economy really wasn't getting better (admitting to himself as much as anyone else); and 2) it would be a futile effort from the point of view of actually getting it done. (Maybe Obama could have gotten an additional hundred billion or two for the original stimulus bill back in January of 2009 under optimal conditions -- it does not seem like that would have been nearly enough to have alleviated our current unemployment problems.) Obama is not the kind of guy who likes to endure purely symbolic defeats. But, it seems to me, that sometimes political leaders need to push for things that will fail simply to let people know which side they are on.
What do you think? Has there been a failure of narrative and rhetoric on the Preisdent's part? Has it meaningfully impaired his policy effectiveness? And did it make sense to push for a larger stimulus bill than could obtain 60 votes in the Senate back in 2009? Does it make sense to push for a jobs program now that would be dead on arrival in this Congress?
Somehow the most cheerful song about long term unemployment seems an appropriate choice for this week. I went with the cover by the Bangles rather than the original by Katrina and the Waves, because we seem to be importing complacency about joblessness as part of a new political culture. Plus, really, where else are you going to see such an aggressive use of hairspray?
I was all set to write last night and my DC neighborhood got hit with a post-storm power failure. By the time the electricity was back on, I had lost myself in bad TV, which seemed vastly preferable to thinking about what is going on at the moment.
One of the things that has kept occuring to me over the last couple of weeks -- and with particular potency on Thursday as the stock market tanked -- is the consistent uselessness of the American business community in matters of policy. Business groups like the Chamber of Commerce continuously push to elect Republicans to office despite the fact that they are committed to harmful cuts in government expenditures, cuts that will ultimately harm the Chamber's own constituency. The Wall Street community, which got its collective nose out of joint over the all too tepid criticisms levelled at it by President Obama, helped to elect Republicans so out of touch with financial reality that they allowed the prospect of a governmental default to spook the markets. All of this despite the fact that historically the economy experiences much greater job growth under Democratic administrations and that the stock market has performed far better under Democratic presidents.
Business leaders could have played a useful role in the recent debates over both the move towards austerity and the debt ceiling. It would have been extremely helpful to have arguments made for expansionary policies posited by the business community, which rightly or wrongly, continues to have a ready microphone in the mainstream media, particularly on cable television. They chose instead to sit on the sidelines and let the crazies in the Republican Party have their way. Only after the fact have they reacted to the bad policy decisions foisted on us by the extreme right, past the point where they could have any positive input in the debate.
"There is a Power in a Union" - Mountain Goats (John Darnielle)
Sorry for the radio silence yesterday. I was traveling to Colorado Springs -- home of Focus on the Family -- for a meeting. I am up early contemplating my lovely mountain view and trying not to think of how much craziness resides nearby.
I wanted to post about this yesterday, on the thirtieth anniversary of Ronald Reagan threatening to fire striking air traffic controllers -- a threat on which he followed through -- an event which many rightly see as a seminal moment in anti-union activity in the country. I think about the PATCO strike as the signal from the Reagan Administration that it was open season on unions -- a signal management was all too happy to heed. (Having said that, even at the time I thought the strike incredibly foolhardy and arrogant -- an invitation to get slapped by someone who was waiting for just such a moment.) But I think there is a slightly different lesson to be learned from this event than is subscribed to by most observers -- the PATCO episode showed the incredible resilience of unions and their appeal when the workers in question are allowed to organize without intimidation and coercion. Before Reagan was even out of office, the air traffic controllers who had either crossed the picket line during the strike or had been hired as replacement workers began to organize a new union, the National Air Traffic Controllers Association. NATCA has been an effective advocate for its members and has helped address issues of pay and working conditions that continued to be a concern for air traffic controllers after their first union was broken.
In other words, left to their own devices, workers will more often than not seek the power of collective representation. And this is why in the last few decades, the number of workers in the public sector who belong to unions has climbed, while representation in the private economy, where employer lawlessness is a sad fact of life, has plummeted to near insignficance.
And this explains why the Republicans are seeking to change this fact at both the state and federal level. The ability to crush all union power in the country is the path way to a scattered, politically incoherent, and ultimately impotent white working class. And why this battle in Wisconsin is huge.
I must head off to a meeting, but have more to say on this subject.
Please join in on this or anything else that is on your minds.
I can never really decide if business jargon or political jargon is more annoying. In a just world both would be banished and their purveyors devoured by wild dogs in the public square. My hated DC word of the moment -- replacing "brand," a word whose use should subject the speaker to actual branding -- is "pivot," a word whose definition seems to be "we will unceremoniously flee from the debacle we've created and failed to solve, but of which we have grown tired, to launch a much heralded but inevitably ineffectual campaign against a new problem that we've created but really have no desire to actually do something about -- other than create the impression that we are doing something about it."
And thus, the much expected, but nonetheless groan-inducing "pivot on jobs" that Greg Sargent wrote about yesterday. Let's be clear -- there will be no "pivot" on jobs. There will be a public relations campaign by both parties (and I don't mean to engage in equivalence rhetoric, but here it is likely to be the case) about jobs, but no actual action taken on jobs. That is because creating jobs right now will require government spending, a course of action precluded by yesterday's debt deal (oh, and by the election of Republican majority in the House last fall). Now one could, I suppose, make the case for a jobs programs that would entail some additional spending, but I don't really see how President Obama could really push for it at this point. (It would be DOA anyway, but in a better context at least politically useful.) Anyway, expect to see talk on this score -- I guess the Republicans will be pushing still more tax cuts and the elimination of the EPA as their jobs program -- and nothing of substance. (Just to be clear, Sargent himself sees the absurdity in this turn of events and has no expectations of effective action.)
As for the debt deal itself, I tend to think it will have a minor negative effect on Obama -- I don't share Sullivan's optimism about it, but I think this reader's reaction is probably overstated, but touches on themes that we have all discussed here recently regarding the first time voters of 2008 and their continuing loyalty/enthusiasm. And this reaction strikes me as total overreach. But reminds me, now all eyes should turn to Wisconsin to see what we can accomplish next week. It could be just the boost to morale that we all desperately need.
I am afraid this pesky work thing is going to prevent my giving any kind of decent analysis of the debt deal. I am not happy with the fact that we got to this point -- I think that the extension of the Bush tax cuts should have been leveraged to get a debt ceiling increase simultaneously and that many people made this point at the time -- and not thrilled with the outcome and less thrilled by the precedent. For a balanced approach (to coin a phrase) to what was agreed to, I'd recommend this piece at TPM by Brian Beutler. I think he's got it about right in terms of the degree to which this is a bad deal and some of the factors that may help mitigate it in the long run. Jonathan Chait, at TNR, is a little more optimistic, although also disturbed by the precedent.
And Kevin Drum goes a step further and attempts to war game out how the Bush tax cuts will then play out in 2012. I'd be curious as to your reaction to this scenario -- what do you think happens with the Bush tax cuts if Obama is re-elected?
Finally, Mitt "Profiles in Courage" Romney announces that he opposes the deal and would support only a bill that was "cut, capped, and balanced." I am shocked that Mittens would pander to the worst that the GOP has to offer.
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