Streams Of Consciousness, Dec. 5

McConnell Says Obama Has Already Raised The White Flag And Will Allow Minority Republicans To Set National Priorities And Policy

Senate Minority Leader Miss McConnell was the big guest on Meet the Press this morning. Having blocked middle class tax breaks for the middle class-- even when craven Democrats allowed that to be defined as anyone making up to a million dollars-- this weekend, Miss was feeling his oats. "I think it’s pretty clear now taxes are not going up on anybody in the middle of this recession. We’re discussing how long we should maintain current tax rates... I and my members feel that the American People feel strongly that taxes shouldn’t go up. I know our colleagues on the other side don’t see it that way. But look, all of-- all of Republicans in the Senate and a significant number of Democrats feel the same way. It isn’t going to happen... [T]his argument is over."

And he feels like Obama is coming around smartly to the way the elites want things run. "We’ve had more conversations in the last two weeks than we’ve had in the last two years. And I think that’s a good sign. A growing awareness that the power’s-- gonna be more symmetrical in the next-- Congress. And I’m optimistic we’ll be able to come together." Miss wants a permanent, budget destroying (a goal), extension of tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires but his idea of a "compromise" is getting Obama to sign on to one that will expire just in time for another election so that Republicans can claim they stand for "tax cuts for all Americans." Obama is buying into this from some closet queen who never got more than 953,816 votes in his life-- and, obviously only from a segment of Kentucky voters-- while Obama was elected by 66,882,230 Americans.

He wants to be a two-term President. I want him to be a one-term President. The American People have put us both in charge for two more years. And we need to have a relationship with each other and see what we can do working together.

And in return for billions of dollars in tax breaks to the wealthiest Americans, the Republicans will agree to tossing a few scraps to working families with unemployed members. This way they're won't be anything unseemly, like dead children and whatnot this winter.

Band Of Broders

You don't want to get on Matt Taibbi's bad side if you can help it. Somehow I don't think that even in his best days-- when he wound up on Nixon's Enemies List-- David S. Broder would have ever quite measured up to this generation's Lester Bangs. And mixing him up with Matt Bai... well, only David Gergen could have come up with something like that. But I'm damn glad he did-- since it gave Taibbi cause to go after a whole set of social parasites weilding Bai as the club:

Bai is one of those guys-- there are hundreds of them in this business-- who poses as a wonky, Democrat-leaning "centrist" pundit and then makes a career out of drubbing "unrealistic" liberals and progressives with cartoonish Jane Fonda and Hugo Chavez caricatures. This career path is so well-worn in our business, it's like a Great Silk Road of pseudoleft punditry. First step: graduate Harvard or Columbia, buy some clothes at Urban Outfitters, shore up your socially liberal cred by marching in a gay rights rally or something, then get a job at some place like the American Prospect. Then once you're in, spend a few years writing wonky editorials gently chiding Jane Fonda liberals for failing to grasp the obvious wisdom of the WTC or whatever Bob Rubin/Pete Peterson Foundation deficit-reduction horseshit the Democratic Party chiefs happen to be pimping at the time. Once you've got that down, you just sit tight and wait for the New York Times or the Washington Post to call. It won't be long.
 
Bai is the poster child of those guys. So naturally Gergen must have been shocked to see, well, Matt Bai screaming kill-the-rich brickbats at him over coffee and pastries. A few of us that afternoon had a laugh imagining that somewhere, at that very moment, David Gergen was telling someone what an asshole Matt Bai is. I wonder if anyone's filled him in on the mistake yet.

That isn't really what Taibbi's post was about today. It was really about elites who think robbing Social Security a second time to pay for the continuation of the obscene Bush tax cuts...

... well, that's "demanding fealty to the one" and "brooking no dissent" and lacking "thoughtfulness and openness to new ideas."

On the other hand, approving those Social Security cuts and green-lighting the continuation of those insane tax breaks-- tax breaks that were extremely radical even by Republican standards when Bush originally passed them amid two preposterously expensive war effort -- well, that's being "pragmatic" and seeing "all dogma " as "anachronistic."
 
Here's what this all comes down to, dogma or no dogma: who is going to pay for a) the Bush tax cuts b) the bank bailouts and c) the Iraq and Afghanistan wars? If you want to get there by making janitors and pipe-fitters wait until they're 69 to retire, raise your hand. If you want to get there by making Jamie Dimon rent out his 900-foot rooftop terrace in Chicago two nights a year, raise your hand.
 
The really infuriating thing? Bai has it backwards. The real consensus, i.e. the consensus of actual human beings, outside Washington, overwhelmingly backs the idea of not fucking with Social Security benefits and ending the Bush tax cuts for people making more than $250,000. In fact, only 26% of Americans support extending the cuts for everybody.
 
So when Bai talks about "bipartisanship" and suggests that extending the Bush cuts is a move to the center, what he's talking about is the Washington consensus.
 
In some very vague way I suppose it could be argued that Barack Obama crawling into bed with John Boehner represents "post-partisanship," but if you want to talk about building actual political bridges, the only meaningful way to achieve that is through the union of voters on the left who want to end the Bush tax cuts, and the voters on the right who want to end the Bush tax cuts. Unite the elderly Democrats who want to hold on to their Social Security Benefits and the elderly Republicans who want the same thing. That's bipartisanship, but not in the way these Silk Road types like it.

King County Leading The Way For Grassroots Democrats Nationally

One of my buds in Congress got out of a Democratic caucus meeting one evening last fall and called me completely depressed and exasperated. He predicted at the time that the Democrats would lose dozens of House seats, more than anyone was expecting at the time, because the politicians in the congressional delegation no longer even knew how to ask voters to support them. The party, he was sure, has become more and more hollowed out as the career politicians in Washington lose touch with their bases. That's why last month we didn't only see freshmen's seats and open seats falling to the Republicans but also the seats of powerful Members with decades of seniority, like John Spratt (SC), Earl Pomeroy (SD), Solomon Ortiz (TX), Chet Edwards (TX), Paul Kanjorski (PA), Lincoln Davis (TN), Bob Etheridge (NC), and Gene Taylor (MS)-- that's 163 years of combined seniority there. Local party machinery is rusted and moribund, real campaigning given over to slick but incompetent and expensive TV ad makers. And he said the leadership was determined to make the DCCC worse-- much, much, much worse-- not better. He got me as depressed as he was.

I finally snapped out of it today when I read this post from one of the new members of the King County Democratic Party leadership team. King County (Seattle) is one of the largest and most Democratic counties in America. Population-wise, it's the fourteenth or fifteenth largest county in America-- and it's certainly the reason Patty Murray is still in the United States Senate, and the reason Chris Gregoire is Washington's governor. It's crucial that King County, and other urban counties like it across America, be home to a strong, democratic organization if Democrats are to have a chance to recover from the Obama/Blue Dog disaster. And as of yesterday, this is one County Democratic Committee that has moved confidently into the future.

Admittedly, the Democratic Party is not yet as democratic as it should be. Many Americans equivocate the Democratic Party with the current crop of Democratic officeholders in our nation's capital — including President Obama, who is sometimes referred to as the leader of the party, by virtue of his office. But the real leaders of the party are the hundreds of thousands of Democratic precinct committee officers and precinct captains across this country. They deserve a party leadership that is accountable to them and the Democratic voters they represent.

What needs to happen for the Democratic Party to become more democratic is this: The movement must become the establishment, while remaining the movement. I know that sounds confusing, so I'll put it another way: We have to crash the gate (as Markos Moulitsas and Jerome Armstrong said) and displace the establishment without becoming corrupted ourselves. We have to remain true to what we stand for, no matter what. Power entails responsibility.

I believe everyone who was elected this morning is committed to building a democratic Democratic Party. I am proud to be serving as King County's new Second Vice Chair alongside fellow NPI boardmember Steve Zemke, who has succeeded Suzie Sheary as the next chair, and the many other talented and enthusiastic officers who were elected or reelected.

Addicts Never Tell The Truth To Their Pushers

And Thomas Friedman may miss most of the big stuff on a very regular basis, but he sure got that one right. Arabs hate Persians... but they hate their own feudal brutal dictators-- and us-- even more.

While the Saudis are urging us to take out Iran’s nuclear capability, we learn from the cables that private Saudi donors today still constitute the most significant source of funding to Sunni terrorist groups worldwide-- not to mention the fundamentalist mosques, charities and schools that spawn the Taliban in Pakistan and Afghanistan. So basically our oil payments are cycled through Saudi Arabia and end up funding the very militants whom our soldiers are fighting. But don’t think we don’t have allies. ... The [wikileaks] cables tell us about Ahmed Zia Massoud, an Afghan vice president from 2004 to 2009, who now owns a palatial home in Dubai, where, according to one cable, he was caught by customs officials carrying $52 million in unexplained cash. It seems from these cables that the U.S. often has to pay leaders in Pakistan and Afghanistan to be two-faced-- otherwise they would just be one-faced and against the U.S. in both public and private.

...Yes, these are our allies-- people whose values we do not and never will share. “O.K.,” our Saudi, Gulf, Afghan and Pakistani allies tell us, “we may not be perfect, but the guys who would replace us would be much worse. The Taliban and Al Qaeda are one-faced. They say what they mean in public and private: They hate America.”

That’s true, but if we are stuck supporting bad regimes because only worse would follow, why can’t we do anything to make them reform? That brings us to the sobering message in so many of these cables: America lacks leverage. America lacks leverage in the Middle East because we are addicted to oil. We are the addicts and they are the pushers, and addicts never tell the truth to their pushers.

When we import $28 billion a month in oil, we can’t say to the Saudis: “We know the guys who would come after you would be much worse, but why do we have to choose between your misrule and corruption and their brutality and intolerance?” We’re just stuck supporting a regime that, sure, fights Al Qaeda at home, but uses our money to fund a religious ideology, schools, mosques and books that ensure that Al Qaeda will always have a rich pool of recruits in Saudi Arabia and abroad. We also lack leverage with the Chinese on North Korea, or with regard to the value of China’s currency, because we’re addicted to their credit.

Geopolitics is all about leverage. We cannot make ourselves safer abroad unless we change our behavior at home. But our politics never connects the two.

John Bolton Telling Brits Who The Real Enemy Is-- Barack Obama

What passes for conventional wisdom in GOP Establishment circles is that any Republican can beat Obama in 2012 except maybe Palin (more on that tomorrow)-- and Louisiana quack Bobby Jindal says Palin absolutely could win. But if you write Jindal off as just some southern hack pol with a lot of bucktoothed rednecks whose votes he'll need to be reelected governor, bucktoothed rednecks who will be interested in seeing who Palin endorses in that race next year, then you still have conventional wisdom claiming only Palin is inept and ridiculous enough to not be able to take out Obama, who even liberals want to see out of the White House as soon as possible. But what about, what about... what about self-declared possible candidate John Bolton? Is he too beneath contempt for the Republican Establishment to consider? Today he penned a "Comment Is Free" column for the Guardian over in England. His premise is that Obama is more a threat than wikileaks.

More troubling than WikiLeaks' latest revelation of US secrets, however, is the Obama administration's weak, wrong-headed and erratic response. Unfortunately, the administration has acted consistently with its demonstrated unwillingness to assert and defend US interests across a wide range of threats, such as Iran and North Korea, which, ironically, the leaked cables amply document.

Palin is too lazy and undisciplined and is making too much loot to really run but Bolton is someone Obama could beat too. They should talk him up more.