If Your Cup Of Tea Is A Nice Democrat With No Spine, I Have A Perfect List For You

Yes, Republicans check their spines at the front door-- but many Dems do too

Late Wednesday afternoon there was an interesting vote in the House. It was a GOP procedural move to prevent the Democrats from passing Pete DeFazio's infrastructure bill. The bill itself

• funds federal-aid highway, transit, and safety programs;
• reauthorizes surface transportation programs, including the federal-aid highway program, transit programs, highway safety, motor carrier safety, and rail programs;
• addresses climate change, including strategies to reduce the climate change impacts of the surface transportation system and conduct a vulnerability assessment to identify opportunities to enhance the resilience of the surface transportation system and ensure the efficient use of federal resources;
• revises Buy America procurement requirements for highways, mass transit, and rail;
• establishes a rebuild rural grant program to improve the safety, state of good repair, and connectivity of transportation infrastructure in rural communities;
• implements new safety requirements across all transportation modes; and
• directs the Department of Transportation to establish a pilot program to demonstrate a national motor vehicle per-mile user fee to restore and maintain the long-term solvency of the Highway Trust Fund and achieve and maintain a state of good repair in the surface transportation system.

Primarily because it deals with the Climate Crisis, the Republican Party opposes it. But they tricked the most weak and cowardly Democrats in the House into showing them colors by introducing an utterly anti-China amendment. They could have said, please raise your hands if you area gutless wonder who deserves to be defeated in November. There are only two Democrats who oppose the underlying bill itself, Blue Dog garbage Collin Peterson (MN) and Ben McAdams (UT). But 39 Democraps fell right into the Republican trap and voted for their recommit motion. You want to see a list of cowards and gutless wonders. Here they are, most of them the hideous DCCC recruits from 2018:

• Cindy Axne (New Dem-IA)
• Anthony Brindisi (Blue Dog-NY)
• Gil Cisneros (New Dem-CA)
• TJ Cox (New Dem-CA)
• Angie Craig (New Dem-MN)
• Charlie Crist (Blue Dog-FL)
• Jason Crow (New Dem-CO), who passed himself off as a courageous military hero in 2018
• Joe Cunningham (Blue Dog-SC)
• Antonio Delagado (NY)
• Abby Finkenauer (IA)
• Jared Golden (ME), who passed himself off as a courageous military hero in 2018
• Josh Gottheimer (Blue Dog-NJ)
• Josh Harder (New Dem-CA)
• Kendra Horn (Blue Dog-OK)
• Crissy Houlahan (New Dem-PA), who passed herself off as a courageous military hero in 2018
• Andy Kim (NJ)
• Conor Lamb (PA), who passed himself off as a courageous military hero in 2018
• Susie Lee (New Dem-NV)
• Dave Loebsack (IA)
• Dan Lipinski (Blue Dog-IL)
• Elaine Luria (New Dem-VA)
• Tom Malinowski (New Dem-NJ)
• Sean Patrick Maloney (New Dem-NY)
• Ben McAdams (Blue Dog-UT)
• Lucy McBath (New Dem-GA)
• Debbie Mucarsel-Powell (New Dem-FL)
• Stephanie Murphy (Blue Dog-FL)
• Chris Pappas (New Dem-NH)
• Collin Peterson (Blue Dog-MN)
• Dean Phillips (New Dem-MN)
• Max Rose (Blue Dog-NY), who passed himself off as a courageous military hero in 2018
• Harley Rouda (New Dem-CA)
• Kim Schrier (New Dem-WA)
• Elissa Slotkin (New Dem-MI)
• Abigail Spanberger (Blue Dog-VA), who passed herself off as a courageous military hero in 2018
• Xochitl Torres Small (Blue Dog-NM)
• Lauren Underwood (IL)
• Jennifer Wexton (New Dem-VA)
• Susan Wild (New Dem-PA)

Am I telling anyone to work against these people in November? No... although, if you do, I wouldn't blame you. What I am saying is that if you vote for spineless garbage, you get a Congress filled with spineless garbage. So don't contribute to them and please think carefully and think twice about voting for any of them. They are self-obsessed careerists who don't deserve any kind of support from progressives, even if they are the lesser of evils.

Not Every Vulnerable Candidate Folds And Joins The Enemy-- But A Lot Of Democrats Are Doing That

Sunday, Bill Jarman at Daily Kos created two charts of the most vulnerable Members of the House, a chart of Democrats (above) and a chart of Republicans (below). He combined data on the nature of their districts with data on how close their last race was to come up with his conclusions. I cut each chart off at the #25 most vulnerable. He explained his methodology by way of example:

Here's an example of how it works: Take, for instance, the Democratic House member that the Index deems most vulnerable, Jim Matheson of Utah's 4th congressional district. If you refer back to the earlier diaries, you'll see that he had the second-closest race of any House Democrat in 2012, winning against Mia Love by only 0.3 percent. And he has the reddest district of any House Democrat in 2012, as measured by the Cook Partisan Voting Index, clocking in at R+16 (thanks to Barack Obama getting only 30.2 percent of the vote there in 2012). Add together 2 (for the 2nd closest race) and 1 (for the 1st most red district), and you've got a total score of only 3 (a lower number means greater vulnerability). No other Democrat tops that, although Mike McIntyre, who had the closest race and is in the 3rd reddest district, NC-07, comes very close.

His fascinating post is mostly about methodology. I want to go someplace entirely different-- a place about... well, maybe character. Let me explain it and while I'm writing maybe I'll figure out what it's actually about. What I've done is made a list of the vulnerable candidates in accord with Jarman's calculations and then I compared them with each candidate's Progressive Punch crucial vote score. So what I want to see is if being vulnerable makes Democrats more or less progressive and if being vulnerable makes Republicans more or less reactionary. Let's look at the Republicans first, from most vulnerable to less vulnerable. The number next to their name is their 2013-only score. The names bolded and candidates the DCCC did not challenge in 2012 by spending serious money against them.

• Gary Miller- 4.55
• Rodney Davis- 8.70
• Mike Coffman- 0.00
• Chris Gibson- 34.78
• Jeff Denham- 0.00
• Joe Heck- 8.70
• Tom Lanham- 8.70
• Jon Runyan- 26.09
• Tom Reed- 18.18
• Michael "Mikey Suits" Grimm- 42.11
• Scott Rigell- 8.70
• John Kline- 0.00
• Lee Terry- 4.35
• Dan Benishek- 0.00
• Fred Upton- 0.00
• Kerry Bentivolio- 4.35
• Mike Fitzpatrick- 13.04
• Sean Duffy- 0.00
• Tim Walberg- 0.00
• Buck McKeon- 4.35
• David Valadao 0.00
• Justin Amash- 34.78
• Paul Ryan- 0.00
• Jackie Walorski- 0.00
• Jim Gerlach- 8/70

So what do we see-- aside from the fact that DCCC Chairman Steve Israel threw the election by not going after over half the most vulnerable seats? Almost none of the Republicans are trying to come across as moderates or even mainstream with their votes. Ten of them have 0.00 scores and another 8 have less than 10. The only Republicans among Jarman's most vulnerable who have moved towards the mainstream at all are Chris Gibson (NY), Jon Runyan (NJ), Tom Reed (NY), and Michael "Mikey Suits" Grimm (NY). A note about Amash. His raw score looks like he could be moving but he's on Planet Justin and isn't trying to be moderate ever; he just marches to a different beat than anyone else. Now the Democratic list looks VERY different.

• Jim Matheson (Blue Dog)- 21.74
• Mike McInyre (Blue Dog/New Dem)- 40.91
• Ron Barber (New Dem)- 39.13
• Patrick Murphy (New Dem)- 47.83
• Ann Kirkpatrick- 31.82
• Pete Gallego (Blue Dog)- 52.17
• Ami Bera (New Dem)- 47.83
• John Barrow (Blue Dog/New Dem)- 47.83
• Carol Shea-Porter- 77.27
• Bill Owens (New Dem)- 39.13
• Tim Bishop- 73.91
• Nick Rahall- 65.22
• Kyrsten Sinema (New Dem)- 43.48
• Sean Maloney (New Dem)- 43.48
• Raul Ruiz- 43.48
• Scott Peters (New Dem)- 43.48
• Elizabeth Esty (New Dem)- 68.18
• John Tierney- 81.82
• Ann Kuster- 43.48
• Joe Garcia (New Dem)- 52.17
• Bill Enyart- 47.83
• Rick Nolan- 91.30
• Julia Brownley- 52.17
• Tim Walz- 52.17

Here we see a lot more craven cowardice. Five of them-- Matheson, McIntyre, Barber, Kirkpatrick and Owens-- might as well be taking orders directly from Eric Cantor. It's absurd to consider them Democrats at all. A whole gaggle of freshmen New Dems are virtually just casting votes exactly the way Steve Israel of the DCCC tells them to based on how he thinks-- a guy who's has been proven to be politically incompetent-- and have voting scores that have move very much to the right. The only Democratic incumbents voting with the courage of their convictions are Rick Nolan, John Tierney, Carol Shea-Porter, Tim Bishop and Nick Rahall.

I noticed Monday morning that far right-wing extremist Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) is calling for the impeachment of President Obama. It doesn't matter how nihilistic and radical the congressmen get in deep red districts like UT-03. Romney won there with a startling 79-20% and Chaffetz was reelected 76-24%. The Hate Talk Radio-infused voters in this backward district expect this kind of behavior from Chaffetz. They're probably crazier than he is. Democrats in districts as deeply blue as that one is deeply red, don't elect left-wing extremists... or even, necessarily mainstream progressives. NC-12 went for Obama 79-21% in November. The folks there are represented by Mel Watt, a vaguely progressive middle-of-the-road Democrat. Any radical bone he ever had in his body has softened considerably with age. The DCCC has managed to control who gets nominated and that's why the freshman caucus is filled with conservative New Dems who vote with Republicans far more than Republicans cross the aisle in the other direction.


There are a lot of reasons these charts aren't predictive. The methodology is imperfect in regard to everything and some of these incumbents will have good opponents and some won't have any serious opponents at all. Steve Israel will continue protecting friends of his from the Center Aisle Caucus (like Upton). Some of these folks will raise immense sums of money and some won't raise enough to fend off determined challengers. Just another couple of factors to ponder.

Matheson & Nolan, respectively the most cowardly and the most courageous

Is there a more polished way to message the New Democratic Creed: "Vote for me 'cause, um, heh-heh-heh"?

In their recall-election debate last night, Wisconsin Governorissimo Scott Walker says to his Democratic challenger, Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett: "I worship at the toes of billionaires and am a sniveling crook besides, and did I mention my lovely full head of naturally dark hair? Is it any wonder that voters want me, you union-coddling old coot?"

by Ken

Just as I was preparing to fulminate a little about the art and science of political "messaging," I made the mistake of glancing at the POLITICS section of this morning's washingtonpost.com e-rundown (you can click on it to enlarge, if you're sufficiently strong of stomach):


Apart from the prevailing disgustingness -- the exceptions being Vice President Biden, talking about the tragedy of the loss of his first family, and the all-around-unspeakable John Edwards -- what's interesting is that these are tales of Republican loathsomeness. On some level the electorate does register the slime factor, but somehow when it comes to GOP perfidy, the way it generally registers is in general revulsion at the political system, of the "They all suck" variety. Traditional Republican consultants don't mind this, because depressing the vote has the effect of magnifying the electoral oomph of their core voters: the hard-core deranged.

One of the few recent Borowitz Report dispatches that I didn't pass along here was Thursday's witty-as-usual "U.S. Sends Emergency Shipment of Negative Ads to Egypt Aid to Fledgling Democracy," which began:

In what it is calling a mission to support a fledgling democracy in the Middle East, the United States this week sent an emergency shipment of negative ads to Cairo.

Explaining the secret mission, a State Department official said that with its first democratic elections getting underway, "Egypt had no access to the mother's milk of any working democracy: vicious campaign ads full of lies and distortions." . . .

Actually, it was the e-blurb for the story about the Virginia GOP Senate primary that got me thinking (this time) about the paradox of political messaging. For how long now have we been talking about a November showdown between GOP former Gov. and Sen. George "Macaca Man" Allen and nominal Dem former Gov. Tim Kaine? So long and so certainly that it hadn't even dawned on me that the Macaca Man first has to get through a primary. I saw that blurb, "The recent rejection of a gay judge is among the dividing lines in the final GOP primary debate" (referring to the shocking recent episode where the state's House of Delegates allowed itself to be intimidated by rampagingly unapologetic homophobes) and realized that there are shadings to be observed even among the slime-bound, who vie to persuade GOP core voters that they've got the most suitably slimy message.

It says something about the state of our political discourse, I think, that the most honest and illuminating media voices belong to the likes of Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, and of course Andy Borowitz. At least there's the added benefit that for the brief moments when they're holding forth, we get to laugh at it.

Then we turn back to reality. It's always still there. It's not going anywhere except maybe down. Possible exception: As we continue to ignore looming catastrophes like climate change, it may be going where we all are: down the tubes.

Even there we can see the depressing lowering of the already-too-low-to-believe right-wing standard of attention to reality. The standard right-wing response to the climate-change issue used to be: We need more studies. Perhaps because the very idea of "studies" suggests some adherence to a "knowledge" standard, this has evolved into: There ain't no such thing, you liberal devil, and your mother wears sweat socks.

And yet, somehow, the right-wingers continue to get away with it. One of my larger frustrations with out present-day political swamp is the Messaging Gap. The true right-wing message, after all, is something like:

I'm garbage; you're worse -- it's a marriage made by God in his Hell Heaven. And did I mention that if you don't vote for me, I'll make the world blow up the world will blow up.

Yet by the time the silver-tongued right-wing messagers have worked their magic, it's all about God, country, and puppies.

It goes without saying -- doesn't it? -- that Republicans don't believe those beautifully polished fake messages crafted for them by master strategists like Frank Luntz. That all falls under the heading of "stuff we say," which may or may not having anything to do with "what we do." It occurs to me that the Incorporated Willard may be the ultimate case: The man will say absolutely anything he thinks will get him either votes or campaign cash, and gets positively indignant when he's called to account for stuff he says.

RIGHT-WINGERS HATE, HATE, HATE HAVING
STUFF THEY'VE SAID QUOTED BACK AT THEM

As I've noted a number of times, this has become an exceedingly popular right-wing response, this gut-wrenched outrage at being confronted with stuff that they've in fact said or done. Dating back at least to the mercifully unsuccessful struggle to get ultra-right-wing zealot Robert Bork confirmed to the Supreme Court, few things aggrieve right-wing dears more self-righteously than quoting back to them stuff they've, you know, said. The Bork failure-to-achieve-confirmation spectacle gave rise to the term "Borking," which entered the political language without even ironic recognition that all those dastardly things said about the victim of Borking may in fact be 100 percent true. (No, 200 percent true!)

AND IT'S NOT AS IF WE DON'T HAVE
EXPERT MESSAGERS ON OUR SIDE

And they have the added advantage that their messages are true. I was just looking back at the chunklets of wisdom from Drew Westen I've quoted in previous posts. (Do yourself a favor and lick on the "Drew Westen" label at the bottom of this post, and then do yourself an even larger favor by clicking through -- as I always urged -- to read the full sources from which the chunklets were chunked.

Drew's cases are so rigorously as well as eloquently argued that, while they're quotable as hell (almost every sentence and paragraph in a Drew Westen piece can be usefully excerpted), the quotes don't fairly represent the rigor and sensibleness of the arguments. But let me just one example, from the September 2010 pre-election period (originally quoted in a post called "Can 2010 electoral disaster be averted? Drew Westen and Mike Lux weigh in"):

What Democrats have needed to offer the American people is a clear narrative about what and who led our country to the mess in which we find ourselves today and a clear vision of what and who will lead us out. That narrative would have laid a roadmap for our elected officials and voters alike, rather than making each legislative issue a seemingly discrete turn onto a dirt road. That narrative might have included -- and should include today -- some key elements: that if the economy is tumbling, it's the role of leadership and government to stop the free-fall; that if Wall Street is gambling with our financial security, our homes, and our jobs, true leaders do not sit back helplessly and wax eloquent about the free market, they take away the dice; that if the private sector can't create jobs for people who want to work, then we'll put Americans back to work rebuilding our roads, bridges, and schools; that if Big Oil is preventing us from competing with China's wind and solar energy programs, then we'll eliminate the tax breaks that lead to dysfunctional investments in 19th century fuels and have a public-private partnership with companies that will create the clean, safe fuels of the 21st century and the millions of good American jobs that will follow.

Call me slow, but it's only gradually dawned on me that there's a perfectly good reason so many Democrats -- including the Obama White House, to pick a random example -- don't avail themselves of Drew Westen's brilliant messaging. The reason is that they don't believe in the messages, or at least are afraid to be caught publicly believing in them. Maybe there's some depressing opposite-parallelism here: Republicans who don't believe the cunning button-pushing messages crafted for them by their master messagers have no trouble spouting them, while Democrats are unable or unwilling even to pretend to believe in truth-anchored messages that offer us a possible way out.

Is it any wonder we turn to Jon S, Stephen C, and Andy B?

#

The American Prospect's Ringside Seat asks, "Will the MSM ever call Republicans out on their extremism?" -- and two intrepid op-ed writers do

The bipartisanship scam: Would you buy a leaky, vermin-infested ship from self-proclaimed bipartisans like this?

"The elder statesmen of nonpartisan political analysis, Norm Ornstein and Thomas Mann, took to The Washington Post op-ed pages over the weekend to lay down a challenge for every political reporter: Quit this evenhandedness malarkey and start calling out Republicans as the extremists wrecking American government."

-- in "Call Them Out," from The Americn Prospect's Ringside Seat

by Ken

Around these parts "bipartisanship" is a dirty word, regrettably but inevitably. Regrettably, because surely there ought to be a range of issues on which sincere, reasonable people of widely diverse philosophical bent can come together to forge compromises that benefit the general welfare. Inevitably, in the here and now that's mere theory, because of the absence of sincere, reasonable people at the right and center extremes of the political spectrum.

(And yes, I do mean to target the "center extreme," because what passes as "centrism" nowadays is usually a form of corporate dictatorship almost as extreme in its way as, and usually far more corrup than, the wackadoodle out-beyond-Pluto extremism of the latter-day Right.)

The American Prospect's Ringside Seat has done a swell takeoff from the much-talked-about WaPo op-ed, "Let's just say it: The Republicans are the problem," by a pair of actually credible nonopartisans, Thomas Mann and Norm Ornstein. The Mann-Ornstein piece begins with a shrewd take on a nutty episode that Howie chronicled here:

Rep. Allen West, a Florida Republican, was recently captured on video asserting that there are “78 to 81” Democrats in Congress who are members of the Communist Party. Of course, it’s not unusual for some renegade lawmaker from either side of the aisle to say something outrageous. What made West’s comment — right out of the McCarthyite playbook of the 1950s — so striking was the almost complete lack of condemnation from Republican congressional leaders or other major party figures, including the remaining presidential candidates.

It’s not that the GOP leadership agrees with West; it is that such extreme remarks and views are now taken for granted.

We have been studying Washington politics and Congress for more than 40 years, and never have we seen them this dysfunctional. In our past writings, we have criticized both parties when we believed it was warranted. Today, however, we have no choice but to acknowledge that the core of the problem lies with the Republican Party.

In their takeoff from the Mann-Ornstein op-ed, the TAP writers manage to hit two of my favorite subjects: (1) the infotainment noozemedia's deadly practice of "evenhandedness" between two sides where one is lost in space out on the far reaches of the galaxy, and (2) the implacable obstructionism of the Republicans -- carried, as a matter of daily practice, to the extreme of not only accepting but welcoming further devastation of an already beleaguered American people as long as it furthers the power play of the extremists.

Take it away, Ringside Seat!

CALL THEM OUT

The elder statesmen of nonpartisan political analysis, Norm Ornstein and Thomas Mann, took to The Washington Post op-ed pages over the weekend to lay down a challenge for every political reporter: Quit this evenhandedness malarkey and start calling out Republicans as the extremists wrecking American government. It's a message that tickled our hearts at The Prospect; we've tried to hammer the point home over the past few years as the GOP becomes increasingly dominated by its loony fringe, a sect of anarchists dressed in politicians’ clothing who have no interest in serving as governing partners but would rather watch the whole institution (save the Pentagon) burn to the ground. But the mainstream media has hesitated to point out the unprecedented abuse of the filibuster, anonymous holds on appointments, and general hostage-taking in Congress that Ornstein and Mann highlight.

Unfortunately, their message didn't inspire journalists to recalibrate their framing overnight. Today Roll Call published a piece trumpeting a revival of bipartisan lawmaking in the Senate. "Don’t call it a comeback, or even a detente, but a strange thing is happening in the Senate: Democrats and Republicans are working together to pass legislation," the article opened. The evidence? A transportation bill, the Violence Against Women Act, and postal reform. Left unsaid is why Senate Republicans have the freedom to occasionally cooperate with their Democratic colleagues. They no longer need to oppose every single initiative favored by the president; they can shift that responsibility to the reliably intransigent Republican House majority.

If Senate Republicans had any true interest in crossing the aisles, they would have cooperated during the first two years of President Obama's administration, when they didn't have the safety net of a House populated by rightwing ideologues. Instead, just three voted for the stimulus, another three for financial reform, and not one for health care reform. Even during this current burst of newfound friendship, the Senate GOPers are as resistant as ever when it comes to the confirming Obama's appointees, the one area where they can't fall back on the obstructionist House. The truth is, Republicans on both sides of Congress are still operating from their plan from day one, as articulated by Representative Kevin McCarthy: "We've gotta challenge them on every single bill and challenge them on every single campaign." Let's hope a few reporters will listen to Ornstein and Mann and begin to take note.

I should perhaps add that "the Republicans" aren't "the problem" in the sense that they're the only problem. We can all cite voluminous chapter and verse of issues and initiatives where gutless and/or corrupt Dems have happily provided the margin of disaster. It seems to me, nevertheless, that Ringside Seat's banner question remains absolutely fair:

"Will the MSM ever call Republicans out on their extremism?"

#

Raise your hand if you're looking forward to a choice between one of the GOP presidential dwarves and President Obama

President Franklin D. Roosevelt delivering a "fireside chat," around the time of the January 1944 State of the Union address, in which he enumerated "a second Bill of Rights," consisting of "economic truths" he said "have become accepted as self-evident" -- though not by most present-day "Democrats"

"On March 28, 2011, President Obama was given a "transparency award" from five 'open government' organizations: OMB Watch, the National Security Archive, the Project on Government Oversight, the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, and OpenTheGovernment.org. Ironically -- and quite likely in response to growing public criticism regarding the Obama Administration's lack of transparency -- heads of the five organizations gave their award to Obama in a closed, undisclosed meeting at the White House."

-- opening of a WarIsACrime.org post,
"Rescind Obama's 'Transparency Award' Now!"

by Ken

As you may have noticed, our coverage yesterday of the New Hamphshire Republican presidential debate came by way of China, and let me tell you, I was plenty grateful to Howie -- not to mention relieved -- for tackling it from the other side of the globe. As I wrote him after the fact, I really did feel that we ought to say something about this, er, event, but the chances of me watching, or even reading, what this rogues' gallery has to say are the proverbial slim to none.

Here they are again: your NH GOP presidential field.

Here I was thinking the 2008 Republican presidential field had hit rock bottom. I mean, really, could you imagine a lamer collection of losers fancying themselves presidential timber? Well, now you don't have to imagine it. I give you the 2012 Republican presidential field, in which anyone caught saying anything sane, or anything that can be twisted into anything that might resemble something that could be said by someone not entirely insane, is subject to immediate ejection, except by personal dispensation obtained via prostrating yourself before Rush Limbaugh and claiming you really didn't say it, or mean it, and in any case will never say or mean it again.

So we have a "front runner" about whom the only thing that can be said for certain is that he will never say what he actually believes on any subject, but only what he judges to be most acceptable to a mob of screeching ignoramuses and lunatics. I suppose there's some entertainment value in spectating what Sahil Kapur in The New Republic calls "The Campaign Within the Conservative Movement to Take Him Down." But there's not much entertainment value, when both sides are this repellent.

However, I can understand the sentiment of a colleague who reacted to this quote, "If the guy at the top of the ticket goes against the free market, goes against what we believe in, then we’re not really motivated by just getting a Republican in office,” by saying that he actually admires the attitude, that "this is how you move the conversation in your direction," something we on our side of the political spectrum are all kinds of terrible at doing.

And with the Democrats seemingly ever more hopelessly ensorceled the chimera of "centrism" (a more benign-sounding name for corporate conservatism) -- weren't we already confident, months before the 2010 electoral debacle, that the Village principals would "learn" wildly wrong lessons from it? -- that brings us back to the other half of the 2012 presidential equation, reminding us that however used we become to describing each successive election-cycle choice we're offered as the worst ever, we still manage to be surprised when the next one is even worse.

Far be it from me to suggest that there's no difference between Democrats and Republicans, or that the difference isn't important enough to matter. Look how well that thinking worked in the case of the Republican recapture of the House of Representatives. But that doesn't mean I have to like it when Democrats offer a merely less crackpotty and rhetorically less savage rendering of what is in so many areas essentially the same policies. And case in point is this business of President Obama and "transparency." It does seem true that transparency is something he likes to talk about. Practicing it, however, is something else.

My goodness, is it really possible that nobody involved in the bestowal of this award at the end of March noticed the disconnect represented by bestowing it in secret? It's understandable that the administration wouldn't want to encourage media busybodies to go rooting around its actual record on transparency, but how did those five organizations that bestowed the award let themselves get snookered into doing it under cover of darkness?

It's a symbol of the administration's cynicism or ineptitude (take your pick) on transparency that they've actually gifted a low-life thug like House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa with an issue, deficient governmental Freedom of Information Act response, to bludgeon them with. It should go without saying that this would never happen if it was a Republican administration thumbing its nose at FOIA response (c.f. "Bush regime, eight years of"), in the same way that Republican voices would never be heard moaning about a Republican president taking on war powers unimagined ore even specifically barred by the Constitution. Still, the fact is that the Obama adminstration, either by misadventure or conviction, has found itself in the role of transparency opponent.

Here is just the start of the bill of particulars "drafted by FBI Whistleblowers Sibel Edmonds and Coleen Rowley," as part of an appeal to the five award-bestowing organizations, urging them to take the award back, an appeal that's already been signed onto by two dozen individual whistleblowers and more than two dozen organizations. (You'll find links as well as the rest of the list onsite.)

• President Obama has not decreased but has dramatically increased governmental secrecy! According to a new report to the president by the Information Security Oversight Office (ISOO) -- the federal agency that provides oversight of the government's security classification system -- the cost of classification for 2010 has reached over $10.17 billion. That's a 15 percent jump from the previous year, and the first time ever that secrecy costs have surpassed $10 billion. Last month, ISOO reported that the number of original classification decisions generated by the Obama administration in 2010 was 224,734 -- a 22.6 percent jump from the previous year. See "The Price of Secrecy, Obama Edition".
.
• There were 544,360 requests for information last year under the Freedom of Information Act to the 35 biggest federal agencies -- 41,000 requests more than the year before. Yet the bureaucracy responded to 12,400 fewer requests than the prior year, according to an analysis by the Associated Press.

• Obama has invoked baseless and unconstitutional executive secrecy to quash legal inquiries into secret illegalities more often than any predecessor. The list of this President's invocations of the "state secrets privilege" has already resulted in shutting down lawsuits involving the National Security Agency's illegal wiretapping -- Jewel vs. NSA and Shubert vs. Obama; extraordinary rendition and assassination -- Anwar al-Aulaqi; and illegal torture -- Binyam Mohamed.

• Ignoring his campaign promise to protect government whistleblowers, Obama’s presidency has amassed the worst record in US history for persecuting, prosecuting, and jailing government whistleblowers and truth-tellers. President Obama's behavior has been in stark contrast to his campaign promises which included live streaming meetings online and rewarding whistleblowers. Obama’s Department of Justice is twisting the 1917 Espionage Act to press criminal charges in five alleged instances of national-security leaks -- more such prosecutions than have occurred in all previous Administrations combined.

• The Obama DOJ's prosecution of former NSA official Thomas Drake who, up till June 9, faced 35 years in prison for having blown the whistle on the NSA's costly and unlawful warrantless monitoring of American citizens typifies the abusive practices made possible through expansive secrecy agreements and threats of prosecution.

• President Obama has set a powerful and chilling example for potential whistleblowers through the abuse and torture of Bradley Manning, whose guilt he has also publicly stated prior to any trial by his, Obama's, military subordinates.

• Obama is the only president who has reenacted Fahrenheit 451 by actually having his agency collect and burn a book due to a never-justified classification excuse: Lt. Col Tony Shaffer’s Operation Dark Heart.

And the list goes on, to cover FBI harassment of antiwar activists; instituting a a secret assassination program; codifying by executive order the government program of secret kidnapping, imprisonment, rendition, and torture; going after reporters to reveal sources; protecting the secrecy of White House visitors' logs; aggressively pressuring foreign governments to refrain from investigating possible U.S. government crimes in matters of international law (consistent, it should be added, with its own refusal to do so).

We're all well aware by now that the hard-core "centrists" to whom the president almost always listens (and why not? they're his people), even beyond their generally visceral hatred of everyone to their left, believe there's a substantial net electoral plus from not just ignoring but actually spitting on us, that there are more votes to be gained from the phantom "middle" than lost from us crazy radicals. In reality, their only electoral hope is that the Republicans make themselves so egregious to voters that they'll give their votes to Democrats as a slightly-less-odious alternative.

And just as we've seen in numerous elections since 2010, starting with the Virginia gubernatorial disaster, voters who believe in core Democratic values will be left sitting on their hands on Election Day. Maybe President Obama doesn't care, since he stands a good chance of being reelected anyway. But I sure don't see much hope of preventing the all but inevitable Republican take over of the Senate, or of making the House Republican majority any less intractable. (Maybe the president doesn't care about that either, since the compromises he'll be "forced" to accept --as with the crippling of Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid -- seem to be compromises he's eager to make anyway. And with that implacably hostile Congress, how can he be expected to accomplish any of the things Democratic voters assume, wishfully, he really wants to?)

WHAT DO I MEAN BY "CORE DEMOCRATIC VALUES"?

I would encourage you to take a list at the 1944 State of the Union address of Franklin D. Roosevelt, which Howie, again from China, appended to my post yesterday on the Congressional Progressive Caucus's summer 2011 12-city Speakout for Good Jobs Now "listening tour," which kicks off Saturday in Minneapolis. In that speech, you'll recall, the president enunciated some points that are part of "a second Bill of Rights," economic rights, which he insisted had already "become accepted as self-evident." I know this post is running long, but I think it's important to look again at the rights he insisted were included:

The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the nation;

The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation;

The right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living;

The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad;

The right of every family to a decent home;

The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health;

The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment;

The right to a good education.

"All of these rights," the president continued, "spell security."

And after this war is won we must be prepared to move forward, in the implementation of these rights, to new goals of human happiness and well-being.

America's own rightful place in the world depends in large part upon how fully these and similar rights have been carried into practice for all our citizens.

For unless there is security here at home there cannot be lasting peace in the world.

Can you imagine how the Republican scum in Congress would react if a president dared to give such a State of the Union speech today? More important, can you imagine how most of the Democrats in Congress would react?

Howie refers a lot in his DWT posts to the betrayal by today's Democrats of "core Democratic values," and I suspect some readers sometimes wonder what values he's talking about, or whether they're really "core" values. Well, here they are.

On that day in January 1944, with World War II still raging, and with a whole reelection battle still to be waged (successfully, of course), I don't know whether President Roosevelt knew how close he was to the end -- just 15 months, almost to the day. But on that day he left a powerful testament. It's a shame so few Democrats choose to accept, let alone honor, that legacy.

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In Tom Tomorrow's war between Tepid Moderates and Right-Wing Nutjobs, do we even have to ask who'll win?

[Don't forget to click to enlarge.]

"The only way to ensure compromise when parties are polarized as they are is to make the failure to compromise politically costly to individual members of the minority party."

-- Jack Balkin, in the Balkinization blogpost
"Parliamentary Parties in a Presidential System"

by Ken

As of this morning, at least, the much-bruited -- in Village circles, at least -- "compromise" between the administration and congressional Republicans on extension of all the Bush tax cuts had fallen apart. But as Howie has been suggesting, given the administration's track record in these matters, it seems just a matter of time before the administration capitulates totally, or maybe more than totally, giving the R's more that they're demanding, in the name of "compromise."

Of course, in return for all this "compromise" the administration will in return get . . . well, nothing. You have to laugh, or maybe cry, at the GOP's dire threat to allow virtually nothing to pass Congress while the matter of the imminent expiration of the Bush tax cuts is dealt with, meaning of course dealt with the way they want it dealt with. Not that I doubt the Rs' sincerity. I'm prepared to believe that they'll make good this threat. What's left unsaid, though, is what happens after the capitulation. Exactly what legislation do you suppose the Party of Nonono is considering allowing to pass?

Of course, the question remains to what extent the Administration is uncomfortable about the policy result. I specify policy result to distinguish it from the political result, which you'd like to think the folks in the White House can't be happy with. The usual justification for icky policy choices is that they're necessary to achieve desirable political goals. This administration has the distinction of having produced basically right-wing results in a wide range of policy areas while while getting the political crap beaten out of it. Well done, Master Rahm!

Howie has been pointing out, this is a crucial calculation in figuring out why so many of the Obama administration's policies -- once we separate out what appear to be actual policies from stuff that just happens -- turn out to be wholly consistent with what one might expect from a right-of-center Republican administration. (You could certainly make a good case that the Nixon administration was a lot closer to the actual center, at least on domestic issues.) The evidence has become pretty overwhelming that these policy outcomes are what the president actually believes in. Like the so-called health care "reform" package that so studiously preserves the prerogatives and profits of the insurance and drug industries. Oh sure, during the campaign he said a lot of stuff that could have been interpreted to mean that he was really offering us hope and change. But that was, you know, during a political campaign. During a political campaign people say stuff.

A "PARLIAMENTARY" PARTY IN OUR PRESIDENTIAL SYSTEM?

By now this is all old ground for DWT readers. Goodness knows, Howie and I have both railed endlessly about it. Tonight I want to throw in a case offered by Jack Balkin, Knight Professor of Constitutional Law and the First Amendment at Yale, where he also directs the Information Society Project. My attention was just today directed -- via a lovely post by Digby -- to the piece from which I quoted at the top, on the "Balkinization" blog, so I'm just now directing your attention to it.

Balkin's suggestion is that the American government has fallen victim to a disconnect between our "presidential" system of government and the realignment of our political parties into something closer to a European "parliamentary" system.

Parliamentary parties can work well in parliamentary systems with proportional representation; majority coalitions are formed by bargaining between parties to form new governments. In parliamentary systems ideological coherence and relatively tight control over individual members may actually help coalition parties make credible bargains to form successful governments.

But parliamentary parties are not well designed for the particular forms of give and take that are generally required in a presidential system. In a presidential system, members of different parties are expected to regularly cross party lines to form coalitions on particular questions (rather than on the formation of a government as a whole). Ideologically coherent and politically polarized parties do not perform these functions particularly well. Indeed, the most recent example of the rise of parliamentary parties in the United States is the party system shortly before the Civil War, in which political compromise increasingly became impossible.

In Balkin's terms, it seems clear that the Republican Party has completed its "parliamentary" transformation. We made fun of the R's while they were (a) jettisoning everyone leftward starting from what was once the political center and (b) enforcing strict party discipline on everyone left behind. But the result is a party capable of maintaining strict ideological discipline. (All they have to do to take power is con enough voters to go along with them.) Oh sure, Susie Q. Collins and those few others who like to make believe they're not party hacks are allowed to talk about the possibility of voting contrarily, but it will most always be under conditions that won't ever exist in our real world. When it comes to voting time, they'll vote right.

Professor Balkin does note that the Democratic Party hasn't been quite so completely transformed. This seems to me to be understating the case. True, the party has shed, or lost, its most extreme right-wing elements. The old Dixiecrats have long since migrated to the party of Lincoln (ha!). But the reason the Democrats are so woefully unable to stand up to the Republicans seems to me precisely because it has steadfastly refused to stand for anything, the better to maintain the ideologically wide-ranging coalition it is.

Why does it matter that the R's have transformed themselves into a parliamentary-type party?

In a parliamentary system, the party out of power has no obligation to govern, since the majority party (or coalition of parties) controls the levers of power. Instead, the main goal of the party out of power is to destroy the party in power's coalition and take over control of the government. The party out of power hopes to win a vote of no confidence or force the majority to call for an election in a disadvantageous political climate.

In the American system, with fixed terms for the president, it is not possible to call for a vote of no confidence. As a result, a parliamentary party in a presidential system will do the next best thing. It will attempt to force the wheels of government to grind to a halt and make the populace sick of the president's party, reasoning that if the voters become disgusted with government, they will take out their anger on the party associated with the current Administration.

The key point is that even though cooperation from the minority party may be necessary to govern effectively in a presidential system, the minority party does not have sufficient incentives to cooperate if voters will not punish them--and may even reward them at the next election--for making things worse instead of better. An opposition parliamentary-style party in the Senate can also seek to prevent the president from staffing his Administration or appointing new judges. An opposition party in control of either House can use the appropriations process to defund policy initiatives, undermine efficient administration, and hinder legal enforcement. Finally, an opposition parliamentary-style party can attempt to harass the President through investigative hearings and (as in 1998) through impeachment.

Balkin summarizes very nicely, I think, the fix we're in:

The original goal of separation of powers was to create incentives for deliberation and compromise. With parliamentary parties, deliberation and compromise are not taken seriously, because they do not assist the opposition party. Equally important, the opposition party can use its various forms of intra-party control to keep individual members from defecting and making too many deals that would advantage the president's party. The goal of the minority party is decidedly not to reason with the President's party, or to enable a series of deals between moderate factions for which the President might take credit. The goal, rather, is to make governance impossible so that the voters will punish the President's party and the minority party can take over.

This is what our current system has come to, and in my view, it is both pathological and unsustainable in the long run. Not only will it will produce ever more bitter and more polarized politics, it will also produce bad and ineffective government that will harm the national interest.

So how does the good professor see this playing out?

One should not assume that Congressional Republicans are acting this way because of bad faith or some set of personal failings. Rather, given the evolution of the Republican Party into an ideologically coherent parliamentary-style party in a presidential system, the Republicans are acting rationally. The Democrats, conversely, need to understand that they must work hard to break the Republicans' united front. They will not be able to do this simply by being nice to Republicans, or by attempting to meet the Republicans half-way, for if the Republicans are smart, they will not be assuaged by compromise. Their best strategy is to make Americans thoroughly disgusted with government in general, so that they will throw Barack Obama out of office in 2012. If the Democrats want to achieve anything legislatively in the next few years, they must create strategic problems for individual Republicans, causing them to break ranks despite the best efforts of the Republican leadership. The only way to ensure compromise when parties are polarized as they are is to make the failure to compromise politically costly to individual members of the minority party so.

The next time the Democrats become the minority party, they will have abundant incentives to do precisely what the Republicans are doing now, precisely because the Republicans have shown these strategies to be effective in a climate of ideological polarization. The Republicans fully developed many of their current tactics before the Democrats for three reasons. First, the failure of the Bush presidency and the tarnishing of the Republican brand made the development of these oppositional strategies more urgent for the Republicans following Obama's 2008 victory, when the Democrats controlled the presidency and both Houses of Congress. Second, the Republicans became a more ideologically coherent party more quickly than the Democrats did because they continue to be driven by a powerful conservative social movement. Third, the Republicans have learned how to use campaign finance to discipline their members more effectively than the Democrats have. (In fact, the Democrats, eager to regain power, had recruited a more ideologically diverse group of candidates in 2006 and 2008). But there is no reason to think that the Democrats will not eventually adopt many of the same tactics that the Republicans have perfected if, once again, they find themselves out of power.

To which Digby (here's the link again) adds an eminently sensible take:

I actually think there is every reason to believe the Democrats will not adopt many of the tactics Republicans have perfected because they are just not temperamentally equipped to do it. I think they will continue to pretend, as the media still does, that the beautiful world of Tip and Ronnie will return if only these awful people would just stop making their congressmen and Senators do things they don't want to do until they are pushed hard by the people to change their ways. At this point they do not have a whole lot to lose by losing --- the revolving door takes very good care of them if they promise not to make too many waves, which is exactly what they hate.

Read the whole piece, it's not long and it explains how we got here and why it's a problem for a presidential system. (For instance, you can't call for elections when gridlock makes it impossible to govern.) And although he doesn't mention it, it's also why silly centrist notions like this are destined to do nothing but split the same party that's already outmatched by the hardcore Republicans, thus ensuring that the lunatic fringe of the GOP will continue to have the upper hand.

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Between a rock and a hard place: Who's worster, the R's or the D's? (Or doesn't it matter?)

Welcome to Rahm Valley, the lowest point in North America

by Ken

I've only just started George Packer's interesting-looking piece, "The Empty Room," in the new (Aug. 3) New Yorker, which based on extended firsthand exposure to the beast poses the question: "Just how broken is the Senate?" At the outset, responding to an especially egregious feat of Republican obstructionism in the wake of the passage of the health care bill, Carl Levin expostulates, "“It’s unconscionable. The obstructionism has become mindless.”

Since, as I've pointed out with numbing frequency, Republicans now feel free make every word, every breath that comes out of their grubby maws a super-whopper lie, they pretend not to understand why they are regarded as shameless, country-destroying hooligans. But of course they know. They just think that at this point in time there are political rewards to be reaped by being shameless, country-destroying hooligans.

Sometimes all it takes to shake a little honesty out of them is being dumped unceremoniously out of office. Scott Keyes offered this example in a Think Progress post today:

Rep. Inglis tells all: GOP using racism, demagoguery in response to Obama.

by Scott Keyes

In June, Rep. Bob Inglis (R-SC) became one of the first incumbent Republicans to be knocked off by an insurgent Tea Party candidate. Although he maintained a 93 percent lifetime rating from the American Conservative Union, primary voters deemed Inglis to be insufficiently conservative. In an interview with Mother Jones, Inglis said that one of the reasons for his defeat was because he refused to demagogue like other conservatives in the House. In one instance during the primary, Inglis was chastised simply for not calling President Obama a “socialist.” He also noted that many of the GOPs criticisms regarding Obama’s response to the economic crisis were motivated by racism:

Instead, he remarks, his party turned toward demagoguery. Inglis lists the examples: falsely claiming Obama’s health care overhaul included “death panels,” raising questions about Obama’s birthplace, calling the president a socialist, and maintaining that the Community Reinvestment Act was a major factor of the financial meltdown. “CRA,” Inglis says, “has been around for decades. How could it suddenly create this problem? You see how that has other things worked into it?” Racism? “Yes,” Inglis says.

Inglis also had particular criticism of House GOP leader John Boehner and GOP whip Eric Cantor, whom he accused of being unwilling to “summon the courage” to stand up to Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, and Tea Partiers.

To which the only response I can imagine is: "Ooh, those Republicans!"

Only then there's the damn Democrats, or should I say Rahmocrats? Whose only political strategy is to be just ever so slightly less hooliganish than their cross-aisle fellow doodyheads. As you know, I swear by every word uttered by Ian Welsh, so I've been grappling with this post of his from yesterday:

Stating the Obvious: Obama wants to gut social security

2010 AUGUST 2
27 COMMENTS
by Ian Welsh
Let me state the obvious, which we all know, one more time.

Obama intends to gut social security. Republicans failed, it requires Democrats. If Obama did not intend to gut social security he would not have set up the SS comission with the members it has.

Nancy Pelosi is onside with this (or she wouldn’t have forcefully scheduled a vote for the lame duck session.)

The Democrats most of us supported in 08 intend to gut Social Security.

Betrayal: the most bitter sauce.

But why shouldn’t they betray us? No matter what they do, most folks say “well, the Republicans are worse”. All it requires is that Democrats beat ordinary people with canes instead of chains.

They’re not the suckers.

OK, so the Dems can be counted on to betray us, and the R's can be counted on to just dump on us, so . . . so we . . . we, uh . . .

I dunno. Ya got me.

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What Does The Shirley Sherrod Case Tell Us About Ourselves?

I always thought Rahm Emanuel was the 4th Stooge

When I woke up yesterday CNN had an elderly Georgia farmer's widow on the phone talking about how some lady named Shirley Sherrod had saved their farm and there was something about picking tomatoes, which she pronounced tomaters, and then I remembered it was primary day in Georgia and I ran downstairs to tweet a last minute incantation for Regina Thomas in her courageous battle against stinky-- and loaded-- Blue Dog John Barrow. Then, over the morning, I saw a billion tweets about Ms Sherrod. I'm sure everyone knows the story now about how Andrew Breitbart, apparently Obama's Director of Personnel, had managed to find some tape, pull a piece out of context and get Ms Sherrod-- an assertive African American woman (3 strikes in Breitbart-world)-- fired by that walking Profile in Courage, former shady DLC head, current corporate Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack. The next time I went upstairs Rick Sanchez had apparently resurrected the elderly Georgia farmer-- he is definitely not dead-- and he and his wife were waxing poetic about the fabulousness of the Ms. Sherrod who Andrew Breitbart and his pack of lying right-wing hyenas had somehow persuaded Vilsack too sack. As of this writing Obama hasn't sacked Vilsack or even reinstated Mr. Sherrod. Reading Digby, one would think Obama is waiting for a call from Breitbart about what to do next.

"Her decision 'rightly or wrongly" will be called into question" because some right wing hitman put out an edited tape that makes her sound as if her point is the opposite of what it is, so she had to be fired.

They are telling wingnuts everywhere that all they have to do is gin up a phony controversy (especially about a black person, apparently) and the administration will fire them so as not to shake confidence that they are "fair service providers."

This is sheer cowardice.

We're going to have to be more careful about the character of the candidates we nominate for big jobs in the future. A blue t-shirt, a bunch of corporate cash and some kewl slogans just cannot be enough any longer. Which brings me to a column I read in the NY Times yesterday by David Itzkoff about Family Guy, or at least about an episode of the show that was banned by Fox. Partial Terms of Endearment was produced for the 2009-10 season, never shown and about to be released (also by Fox) as a stand-alone DVD, sure to make Murdoch plenty of money. Humor me for a moment and read the statement by the NAACP, which had backed Vilsack's moronic reaction to the Sherrod case:

The NAACP has a zero tolerance policy against racial discrimination, whether practiced by blacks, whites, or any other group.

The NAACP also has long championed and embraced transformation by people who have moved beyond racial bias. Most notably, we have done so for late Alabama Governor George Wallace and late US Senator Robert Byrd-- each a man who had associated with and supported white supremacists and their cause before embracing civil rights for all.

With regard to the initial media coverage of the resignation of USDA Official Shirley Sherrod, we have come to the conclusion we were snookered by Fox News and Tea Party Activist Andrew Breitbart into believing she had harmed white farmers because of racial bias.

Having reviewed the full tape, spoken to Ms. Sherrod, and most importantly heard the testimony of the white farmers mentioned in this story, we now believe the organization that edited the documents did so with the intention of deceiving millions of Americans.

The fact is Ms. Sherrod did help the white farmers mentioned in her speech. They personally credit her with helping to save their family farm.

Moreover, this incident and the lesson it prompted occurred more than 20 years before she went to work for USDA.

Finally, she was sharing this account as part of a story of transformation and redemption. In the full video, Ms.Sherrod says she realized that the dislocation of farmers is about “haves and have nots.” "It’s not just about black people, it’s about poor people," says Sherrod in the speech. “We have to get to the point where race exists but it doesn’t matter.”

This is a teachable moment, for activists and for journalists.

Most Americans agree that racism has no place in American Society. We also believe that civil and human rights have to be measured by a single yardstick.

The NAACP has demonstrated its commitment to live by that standard.

The Tea Party Federation took a step in that direction when it expelled the Tea Party Express over the weekend. Unfortunately, we have yet to hear from other leaders in the Tea Party movement like Dick Armey and Sarah Palin, who have been virtually silent on the “internal bigotry” issue.

Next time we are confronted by a racial controversy broken by Fox News or their allies in the Tea Party like Mr. Breitbart, we will consider the source and be more deliberate in responding. The tape of Ms. Sherrod’s speech at an NAACP banquet was deliberately edited to create a false impression of racial bias, and to create a controversy where none existed. This just shows the lengths to which extremist elements will go to discredit legitimate opposition.

According to the USDA, Sherrod’s statements prompted her dismissal. While we understand why Secretary Vilsack believes this false controversy will impede her ability to function in the role, we urge him to reconsider.

I'm not sure how many teachable moments we need to understand cancers on the ass of American society like Andrew Breitbart and Fox broadcasting. But what does this all have to do with Family Guy?

The creator of the show, and the producer, is Seth MacFarlane and he didn't criticize Fox for refusing to air the Partial Terms of Endearment episode. Instead, he told the Times that the decision reveals more about mass audiences-- i.e., the American people (also voters, of course)-- than about the networks.

“People in America, they’re getting dumber,” Mr. MacFarlane said. “They’re getting less and less able to analyze something and think critically, and pick apart the underlying elements. And more and more ready to make a snap judgment regarding something at face value, which is too bad.”

Which makes even more chilling the decision of the Obama Administration to curry favor with the extreme right by taking out the budgeting to save 140,000 teachers' jobs in order to get Republicans to vote for another year of futile, catastrophic war in Afghanistan.

Maybe they can take a look at the context to which they were dancing Andrew Breitbart's racist tune and just fire Vilsack-- and then we can talk about the war after:

Even low-rent thug Chris Christie has more political cred than the Obama administration -- but then, who doesn't?

“The most important thing in public life, in a job like governor, is for the people you’re representing to know exactly where you stand. People who disagree with me on things at least have a sense of comfort in knowing where I’m coming from.”

--NJ Gov. Chris Christie, quoted in today's NYT

by Ken

My position on Chris Christie hasn't changed since last year's New Jersey gubernatorial election, when he couldn't even muster a majority against widely despised incumbent Gov. Jon Corzine. The guy is a sleazy goon, who should by now be in prison following his first few trials, preparing for the next few, for his serial malfeasances as Rovean political-hack U.S. attorney for the District of New Jersey, the kind who served as an answer to the question posed by Paul Krugman among others: We know pretty well what those loyal GOP U.S.A.s who were shitcanned did to earn the wrath of Karl Rove (not devote themselves heart and soul to destroying political enemies), but what in God's name did the others have to do to keep their jobs? And of course we only know about the Christie U.S.A. scandals that have bubbled up through the muck of the political cesspool he presided over in Newark.

Now comes this report by the NYT's Richard Pérez-Peña, which includes this not entirely undeserved tribute:

Mr. Christie has turned out to be a far more deft politician than his detractors — and even some supporters — had expected, making few compromises as he pursues a broad agenda for remaking New Jersey’s free-spending political culture. So far, polls suggest, the public is giving him the benefit of the doubt.

“The most important thing in public life, in a job like governor, is for the people you’re representing to know exactly where you stand,” Mr. Christie said in an interview on Friday. “People who disagree with me on things at least have a sense of comfort in knowing where I’m coming from.”

Now, I think of Pérez-Peña as a good reporter by NYT standards, but those standards dictate that as a reporter you must never allow context to color what's in front of your eyes, guaranteeing that much of the paper's reporting manages to be "true" without being "the truth." And so it wasn't surprising that colleagues on the ground in New Jersey, and elsewhere around the country, were quick to call a foul on the beatification of the governor.

One financially focused colleague in the Garden State points out that all Christie is really doing is "implementing failed supply side/'trickle down' nonsense in the state," that his famously "austere" budget is full of "fees" that are really taxes, that his great triumph in clamping down on the permitted rate of property-tax increase merely whittles down a limit already in place, and that neither the old nor the new limit deals with any of the state's real problems, that "he is also taking a page right out of the Bush era playbook with a push for privatization of many services -- but it isn't going to save the much money," and is a potential for corruption catastrophe.

Another colleague thinks the property-tax cap looks like a replay of the stunt former Republican Gov. Christie Todd Whitman pulled when, for cheap short-term political gain in the early '90s, she lowered the state's income tax, insisting -- despite Democratic predictions to the contrary -- that it wouldn't lead to prperty-tax increases, thereby setting the stage for their explosive growth.

Yet another colleague suggests: "Christie's following a successful model: if you break public unions, cut revenues to education, attack public employees and pensions and cripple the property tax to help reduce government to the size of your bathtub, you can create . . . California."

And yet, and yet . . .

There's no question that the new governor has had more political success at the outset of his administration than anyone would have expected, especially when you consider that the killing economic problems besetting the states, which had a lot to do with former Governor Corzine's unreelectability, have only gotten worse since November. And I don't think the governor is wrong when he attributes his political successes to date to being (relatively) straight with his constituents, and acting decisively in accordance with his beliefs.

Do I have to underline the contrast with what's going on now in the White House? Where confusion about core principles is only surpassed by wishy-woshiness about implementing them.

In the matter of what those principles actually are, I've been meaning -- ever since I presented our friend Ian Welsh's brilliant analysis ("So THAT's Why we're in Afghanistan! It's 'military Keynesianism'") that the administration is stuck fighting in Afghanistan in good part because "war spending is one of the only reliable forms of stimulus he has" -- to pass on a piece Ian recirculated recently as "Obama's Personality," written originally in December 2006 [all emphasis added]:

I Believe Obama

One of my rules of analysis is that I believe people when they tell me who they are. That doesn't mean I believe everything they say - I never believed Bush was a moderate, for example, because I believed what he told me when he refused to correct obviously false budget numbers. His budget plan spent the surplus twice, and I believed that's what he would do. And, needless to say, I was right (well sort of, he spent even more than that, but you get the point.)

People tell you who they are all the time; all you have to do is listen, separate out the noise intended to distract you, and then believe them. Bush's record of failure at everything he did, for exmaple, was clear. His slurring of words and inability to talk coherently was clear. His code-speaking to the Christian right was clear. All these things were there to see in 2000.

So, let's talk about someone else. Obama. I've been listening to Obama and I've been hearing what he has to say. He's been pretty hostile to the netroots, contemptuous and dismissive, and I've heard that and I believe it. Obama is telling me he has no respect for the sort of people who make up the netroots. I think he's sincere - I don't think it's "just" a tactical move. He genuinely dislikes people getting worked up over issues. It makes him uncomfortable. He wants everything and everyone to be "nice". I believe him when his words and actions tell me that, just as when he backed down from McCain when McCain unfairly attacked him, I believed what that told me about his spine and about the fact that he prefers peace to conflict, even when he's in the right. I believe him when he says he admires John McCain and that he admires Joe Lieberman and I understand what that says about him (because, of course, if you actually follow McCain and Lieberman you know they aren't even close to men of their word. And Obama knows that.)

Obama has told me who he is, and I have listened. If he gets into power he will compromise/compromise/compromise, because he believes in it - not as a means, but as an end. He will shy away from big fights, because he doesn't like fighting. He may "believe" in universal healthcare, but he believes in compromise more. And I'm betting I know which belief will win out.

I'm sure many will disagree, but when people tell me who they are I listen. Obama has spoken, I've listened, and since I don't believe that compromise is an end rather than just a means, he's not the person I think should be president.

Again, this was written in 2006. Nevertheless, I really don't have anything to add!

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