Chained CPI... Is Suddenly An Orphan

America doesn't have a spending problem; America has a problem with its elites forgetting who they work for

The angry uproar over the Obama-Boehner proposal to lower Social Security payments through Chained CPI has both parties backing away from it as fast as they can.

Republicans, including House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner of Ohio, said Obama's offering-- made Wednesday in his budget plan for the 2014 fiscal year-- did not go far enough to cut spending.

Many Democrats thought it went too far, with House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of California saying that it should be debated, but not be part of any deficit reduction deal or budget proposal.

And White House spokesman Jay Carney said it was not originally Obama's idea, but was included in the budget because the president thought Republicans wanted it as part of any deficit reduction deal.

"This is a Republican proposal," he said in his daily briefing.

...Obama also proposed increasing means-testing for some beneficiaries of the government sponsored health insurance program for seniors, Medicare.

The fact that these were Republican proposals did not stop the head of the National Republican Congressional Campaign Committee, Representative Greg Walden of Oregon, from calling Obama's budget "a shocking attack on seniors" in a CNN interview Wednesday.

...Pelosi told reporters she thought Democrats ought to hear both sides, arranging a debate conducted by outside experts for Democrat members.

Pelosi joined the rest of her membership at the weekly House Democratic Caucus meeting where lawmakers heard from Damon Silvers of the AFL-CIO labor federation, representing opposition to Obama's proposal, and Robert Greenstein, executive director of the liberal Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, which favors including entitlement reform in budgets.

Representative Keith Ellison of Minnesota told Reuters after the meeting that while there were a few Democrats in favor of maintaining an open mind to Obama's proposal, the caucus as a whole "overwhelmingly" delivered the message that the so-called chained-CPI was a non-starter.

"There was a lot of concern," Ellison said.

On the Republican side, Boehner, while saying he was "encouraged that the president acknowledged that our safety net programs are unsustainable," said Obama's offer was "nothing close to what we need in order to preserve these programs and to put ourselves on a path to balance the budget."

Boehner, at a news conference, distanced himself from Walden's comment on CNN but Walden's remarks served as notice that supporters of changes to Social Security could find it being used as political ammunition against them.

"The Walden statement has had a huge impact," Greenstein said. "There is a very large, very palpable fear" among House Democrats that if they support the chained CPI, that Republican challengers running against them in 2014 will do attack ads against them and campaign against the Democrat voting to cut senior Social Security benefits.

The fear is rooted in Democrats' memories of how the cuts to Medicare spending in Obama's signature health legislation were used against Democrats in 2010, he said.

"Prior to the Walden statements there were some making the arguments that Democrats would be played for suckers in 2014," Greenstein said. "I think the Walden statement just confirmed this. I saw firsthand today the viral effect it's had," Greenstein said Thursday.

Democrats are up in arms at the very idea that a Democratic president-- even one as much of a transparent corporate shill as Obama has always been-- would try to remove the "third rail" status from Social Security allowing future Republicans to come in and destroy the system the way Bush tried (and failed). Party hack James Carville on Morning Joe Friday said Obama loves the idea of angering the progressive base and making nice-nice with the corporate right (his natural constituency): "I think he likes that. I don't think he's upset. He got a very favorable Washington Post editorial. Morning Joe, very favorable commentary right here. I guarantee you if he's up watching this right now. Got a good David Brooks column. He's kind of excited this morning. This is kind of important to him."

That's why I can't overemphasize how important that Grayson Takano No Cuts letter has always been and continues to be. It's the gold standard for House Members who want to protect benefits for seniors. Those who sign it do; those who don't sign it... have to be, at best, suspect.

Friday, a New Dem non-signer, conservative upstate NY Congressman Dan Maffei wrote Obama a letter asking him to take Chained CPI off the table. He says budget negotiations are the wrong venue for discussions of Social Security reforms.

Any reforms should aim to strengthen the program for current beneficiaries and extend its long-term solvency for future generations. Shifting to the chained-CPI is bad policy because it fails to accurately track seniors’ and disabled beneficiaries’ real expenses. The chained-CPI is not a technical tweak to reduce runaway cost-of-living adjustments. To the contrary, beneficiaries have gone without increases in recent years and are often managing meager household budgets. We appreciate your efforts to reach a budget compromise, but cutting Social Security would compromise the hard-earned benefits of America’s seniors and disabled.

The Secretary of the Treasury and former Director of the Office of Management and Budget have clearly stated, Social Security is not the problem. As you know, not one penny of the deficit or our national debt is due to Social Security. Built up for the express purpose of supporting the retirements of the Baby Boomer generation, Social Security’s $2.7 trillion Trust Fund will fully fund benefits into the 2030s and 75 percent of owed benefits thereafter. Social Security is a self-sustaining social insurance program that protects every American against absolute destitution due to old age, a disabling accident, or the death of a breadwinner. At your inauguration you made clear that Social Security frees us to take risks that make this country great. Therefore, we strongly urge you to reconsider making benefit cuts in order to pay for deficit reduction.

...The chained-CPI is a benefit cut that compounds throughout retirement. Cutting the benefits earned and relied upon on by retirees may seem to be a modest change, but even slight reductions will meaningfully impact the quality of life of millions of Americans. The chained-CPI will result in a cut of nearly $1,600 by the time the average beneficiary is in his or her nineties, taking away a month’s worth of benefits in the final months of one’s life.

The chained-CPI will disproportionately hurt women and cut veterans’ disability benefits. The average yearly benefit for women is $2,000 less than for men, women rely more heavily on Social Security as a greater proportion of their retirement income and live longer than men. Finally, we should not forget that veterans would also be hit with enormous cuts. A fully disabled veteran who began receiving benefits at age 30 would have a yearly benefit cut of $3,200 by age 65. We simply cannot do that to our veterans.

We appreciate the difficult position you are in as you attempt to reach a budget compromise that will reduce the deficit, but we respectfully ask that you consider the impact the chained-CPI will have on Americans already relying on fixed incomes from Social Security. We must work to reduce the deficit, but do it the right way; not on the backs of seniors and working families who have contributed to Social Security their entire lives.

Good-- as far as it went... which wasn't even close to far enough. The Obama budget-- part of a minuet he and Boehner have scripted-- also savagely goes after Medicare benefits while being oh so gentle with the self-righteous prerogatives of the multimillionaires and billionaires who fund political careers. Back to the simple heart of the Grayson Takano letter:

"We will vote against any and every cut to Medicare, Medicaid, or Social Security benefits-- including raising the retirement age or cutting the cost of living adjustments that our constituents earned and need."

Maffei's letter to the president is ok in terms of Chained CPI-- but it doesn't go far enough, and coming from someone like Maffei who has refused to sign the Grayson Takano letter, it should have alarm bells ringing. Rhode Island Congressman David Cicilline is a signer of Grayson Takano so I'm not alarmed by the congressional resolution he proposed Friday:

Expressing the sense of the Congress that the Chained Consumer Price Index should not be used to calculate cost-of-living-adjustments for Social Security Benefits

Whereas the Social Security program was established more than 77 years ago and has provided economic security to generations of Americans through benefits earned based on contributions made over a worker's lifetime;

Whereas the Social Security program continues to provide modest benefits - averaging approximately $14,000 per year-- to more than 53,000,000 individuals, including 37,000,000 retired workers in February 2013;

Whereas the Social Security program has no borrowing authority, has accumulated assets of $2,700,000,000,000, and, therefore, does not contribute to the Federal budget deficit;

Whereas the Board of Trustees of the Federal Old-Age and Survivors Insurance Trust Fund projects that such Trust Fund an pay full benefits through 2032;

Whereas the Social Security program is designed to ensure that benefits keep pace with inflation through cost-of-living adjustments (COLAs) that are based upon the measured changes in prices of goods and services purchased by consumers, currently the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers (CPI-W) published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics;

Whereas the Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes a supplemental measure of inflation, the Chained Consumer Price Index for all Urban Consumers (C-CPI-U), or "Chained CPI," which adjusts for projected changes in consumer behavior resulting from price fluctuations known as the "substitution effect," which occurs when consumers buy more goods and services whose prices are rising slower than average and less of those rising faster than average;

Whereas studies indicate typical Social Security beneficiaries spend significantly greater shares of their budget than consumers generally on health care, prices for which have increased at higher than average rates, and health care may not easily be substituted by consumers such as seniors;

Whereas the Congressional Budget Office has estimated that using the Chained CPI to calculate Social Security COLAs would reduce Social Security benefits by .25 percent per year as compared to current policy, resulting in a reduction in outlays of $112,000,000,000 over the first decade;

Whereas reductions in Social Security benefits from using the Chained CPI to calculate Social Security COLAs would continue to compound over time, and the AARP Public Policy Institute estimates that such reductions would grow to 3 percent after 10 years and 8.5 percent after 30 years;

Whereas Social Security Works estimates that using the Chained CPI to calculate Social Security COLAs would reduce annual Social Security benefits of the average earner - who is making $43,518-- by $658 at age 75, $1,147 at age 85, and $1,622 at age 95; and

Whereas reductions in Social Security benefits would harm some of our most vulnerable populations: Now, therefore, be it

Resolved by the House of Representatives (the Senate concurring), That it is the sense of the Congress that the Chained Consumer Price Index should not be used to calculate cost of living adjustments for Social Security benefits.

I bet Boehner will never allow a vote on that one!

Obama Making Empty Gestures Towards His Base While Pursuing A Conservative Consensus Agenda

Late last night, Peter Wallsten, new to the Washington Post but not to Beltway political journalism-- as an L.A. Times correspondant the legally blind reporter was chided by a deranged George W. Bush for not removing his sunglasses at a press conference-- published an inside baseball story about how Obama is making a lame attempt to shore up his progressive base. Obama has been a big disappointment to many progressives who see him as an essentially conservative insider, which is what he was as a senator, so no surprises there for anyone who had bothered to watch his voting record (basically the same as Max Baucus'-- less liberal than Lieberman but to the left of Ben Nelson's). For many, the Conservative Consensus tax-cut deal for millionaires and billionaires was the last straw.

Blue America refused to endorse or raise money for Obama in 2008 because we did follow his record. During the debate this month we warned our friends in Congress that anyone voting for the Obama-McConnell tax sellout to the political class's donor base at the expense of the rest of the country would automatically disqualify them from Blue America fundraising in 2012. And we're not the only progressive group disappointed in Obama. Even the Inside the Beltway progressives, the ones vying for invitations to White House parties and pats on the head from minor administration officials, have had their feathers ruffled. So, according to Wallsten, the White House is "reassuring liberal groups, black leaders and labor union officials who opposed the tax compromise that Obama has not abandoned them." 

Feel reassured? After all, on Friday Obama himself "hosted a group of union presidents in the Roosevelt Room for what participants described as a cordial meeting in which the two sides agreed to look beyond their differences." Cordial isn't good under these circumstances-- not with this president, who has been able to use "cordial" as a cudgel to wield against any semblance of a progressive agenda. 

Everyone knows Social Security is the next item in Obama's sights, that he's determined to do for Big Business that what Bush and 75 years of unadulterated Republican opposition to Social Security never could: open the door to dismantling the most popular social program in the history of America.

The White House faces challenges in soothing the raw feelings. A number of liberal activists said in interviews that the tax deal further depleted their confidence in the president, and they worry he will give ground on other issues to work with newly empowered Republican leaders and shore up the political middle.

Hickey's group [Campaign for America's Future] sent a warning to activists Friday suggesting Obama, left to his own devices, might join with the GOP to cut Social Security benefits to trim spending and avoid raising the federal debt ceiling-- a move it warned would "shatter his grassroots base" and lead to "political suicide." Liberal concerns were heightened when the leaders of Obama's bipartisan deficit commission recommended Social Security cuts.

Hickey said he and other liberals have raised such concerns in private sessions with White House officials but have received no clear assurances. "The responses we get are ones that leave their options open," Hickey said.

Another liberal movement leader, Daily Kos blog founder Markos Moulitsas, said he "long ago" cut off contact with the White House. "It's clear that they want to double down on their capitulation strategy," he said in an e-mail.

Liberal groups were part of the broad coalition that helped elect Obama in 2008, and activists had high hopes that he would govern as a left-of-center president. But tensions with the White House increased as many liberals complained Obama took a more centrist view on issues.

They criticized him for not pushing harder for a government-run insurance option as part of his health-care overhaul, for example, while some viewed his economic team as too closely tied to Wall Street banks and voiced frustration that his economic stimulus plan was too small. Obama further angered some activists in announcing the initial tax deal, accusing some on the left of being "sanctimonious" in their opposition to compromise.

...The latest Post-ABC poll found that 87 percent of liberal Democrats approve of the way Obama is doing his job, close to the 90 percent average for the year but a drop from his 94 percent approval rating in that group shortly before the election.

Support has even lessened slightly among African Americans, Obama's most stalwart constituency, with just two-thirds of blacks now saying they strongly approve of his job performance, a low point in his presidency. Eighty-eight percent of blacks approve overall.

...Liberal organizers said they hope the White House will want to work closely with them. But Ilyse Hogue of MoveOn.org wondered if Obama's top aides appreciated the potential political damage to his 2012 chances if the party's liberal base feels left out.

"If this administration has a pathway to victory that cuts out the sort of core constituency that has been fighting with him and for him, I'd like to see it," she said.

Ilyse makes a good point, one that was borne out in midterms that saw millions of Democrats and left-leaning independents stay home in disgust. And did Republicans and right-leaning independents reward Democrats who supported conservative policies? Ask the Blue Dog caucus, which lost over half its members while most of the rest had extremely close calls. Ask non-Blue Dog reactionary-leaning, mealy-mouthed sellouts who voted against issues like Choice, social equality and economic fairness, from Tom Perriello (VA, for whom Obama personally campaigned), Melissa Bean (IL), Bob Etheridge (NC), Solomon Ortiz (TX), Suzanne Kosmas (FL), Rick Boucher (VA), Michael McMahon (NY), Ike Skelton (MO) and John Boccieri (OH) to hardcore conservatives like John Adler (NJ), Artur Davis (AL) and Ann Kirkpatrick (AZ). The exact same strategy that Obama is following didn't save any of their careers.

Obviously none of this should be taken to mean that Blue America won't be as active as ever helping raise awareness and contributions for members of Congress who stand up for working families against the Conservative Consensus-- like this guy, whose Senate term is up for reevaluation by the voters, and who we would love to see challenge Obama, though we know how unlikely that is. He certainly has earned our support.

It's All Right, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)

God bless Lady Gaga, but if you're too young to have ever gotten into Bob Dylan, he had a good line or two in some old song from 1964: "...he not busy being born, is busy dying,"-- something that always stuck with me, even among verses like--

While preachers preach of evil fates
Teachers teach that knowledge waits
Can lead to hundred-dollar plates
Goodness hides behind its gates
But even the President of the United States
Sometimes must have
To stand naked.

An' though the rules of the road have been lodged
It's only people's games that you got to dodge
And it's alright, Ma, I can make it.

Advertising signs that con you
Into thinking you're the one
That can do what's never been done
That can win what's never been won
Meantime life outside goes on
All around you.

and

Although the masters make the rules
For the wise men and the fools
I got nothing, Ma, to live up to.

For them that must obey authority
That they do not respect in any degree
Who despite their jobs, their destinies
Speak jealously of them that are free
Cultivate their flowers to be
Nothing more than something
They invest in.

While some on principles baptized
To strict party platforms ties
Social clubs in drag disguise
Outsiders they can freely criticize
Tell nothing except who to idolize
And then say God Bless him.

While one who sings with his tongue on fire
Gargles in the rat race choir
Bent out of shape from society's pliers
Cares not to come up any higher
But rather get you down in the hole
That he's in.

You know, it's a swell song. Why not just listen to the whole thing, albeit a live performance, before YouTube deletes it:



So what brings me back over 4 decades... when I could be catching up with something more indicative of the times we live in from Justin Bieber? It was that line that stuck with me about busy being born or busy dying. And it popped into my head when I was trying to figure out what would happen with the progressive agenda now that the Republicans have seized the one progressivish piece of the government. Sure, Democrats still have the Executive branch and the Senate but, let's be real, both have been bastions of conservatism for the past two years. Don't get me wrong; conservatism is better than the destructive, incoherent reactionary claptrap that is today's Republican Party. But is that all there is? A choice between conservatism and reactionary claptrap? Neither bespeaks busy-ness of being born. That would be progressivism-- and there was a bit of that alive in the House. A bit. Gone now... at least as a positive force that could push an aggressive agenda.

The inherently conservative nature of the Senate-- it was, after all designed that way-- and the inherently conservative nature of the presidency (apparently Obama was designed that way too), has been, literally, frustrating for progressives in the past two years. And now we have to look to their conservatism to protect us from the radical reactionary nature of the mob that's taking over? Will Obama ally himself with conservatives among the reactionaries to move forward with the essentially conservative platform he's been eager to pass all along-- like "reforming" Social Security and more "free" trade? Will the new political power nexus see Obama working with an essentially conservative Senate and kindred spirits among the Wall Street-owned Republicans, while progressives in the Senate-- there are a few-- and in the House howl in the wind?

Raúl Grijalva was reelected in 2008 in a landslide-- 124,304 to 64,425. This year Grijalva squeaked to a hard fought victory 72,059 to 65,894. Looks like all the Republicans from 2008 turned up this year-- and some brought their friends-- while more than 40,000 of Grijalva's voters didn't bother to vote. Raúl is the chairman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. He's all about fighting for ordinary working families against the encroachments of the powerful unbridled special interests. Let's keep in the back of our minds it's a tough row to hoe: the percentage of the national wealth held by the top 1% has gone from 9% in 1976 to 28.9% in 2007. That's a trend that cannot sustain... well, neither a middle class nor a democracy. Grijalva's fighting that tide, that very well-funded tide. Obama isn't. And neither is the Senate.

A couple days ago Ryan Grim looked at one way this is playing out policy-wise already: Grijalva Vows To Defend Public Education From White House-GOP Alliance. Expect a lot more reporting like that over the next couple of years.

A key element of President Obama's post-midterm agenda is already coming under fire from House progressives worried that the president will attempt to rehabilitate himself with a triangulation strategy modeled after President Clinton's gutting of welfare in 1996.

On Thursday morning, Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-Ariz.), the co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, was asked on the radio/TV/Internet news hour Democracy Now! whether it was his sense that Obama hopes to make education his welfare reform.

"That's my sense and also my concern, to be quite honest," said Grijalva, who narrowly won reelection in his Tucson-based district. "We had an opportunity to reauthorize elementary and secondary education. We didn't do that. Now we go back to a session in which the Republicans are going to control the Education and Labor Committee, of which I'm a member."

Grijalva said that large parts of Education Secretary Arne Duncan's education efforts had already been rejected by Democrats. "Arne Duncan's four prescriptions for fixing public schools, which were essentially to privatize, close them... we rejected them as a caucus on that committee," Grijalva said.
Grijalva's opposition, however, could galvanize Obama if he decides that voters were telling him to oppose his base and work with Republicans to go after teachers unions, the element of organized labor that it is now acceptable for liberals to dismiss.

Grijalva, though, said that progressives would organize around a defense of public education. "When 80 to 90 percent of the kids going to school in this country are coming from urban and poor communities, this is a time we invest in public education. So yes, I see that as a place where people are going to look for a common agenda between Republicans and the White House, but I also see it, as it could be for public education, a very, very slippery slope. We have to be very cautious and very protective of public education as one of the agenda items."

My pal Roland works as a public school teacher in an inner city school system. Even before the election he told me the African-American women who make up the majority of the teachers in his school feel they made a terrible mistake by not backing Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primary. Too late!

Pollboys Dougie 'n' Pat explain why no pollster will ever be elected to . . . well, much of anything

"Democrats can avoid the electoral bloodbath we predicted before passage of the health-care bill, but in one way: through a bold commitment to fiscal discipline and targeted fiscal stimulus of the private sector and entrepreneurship."

-- the Puling Pollboys, Dougie 'n' Pat, in a WaPo op-ed piece,

"How the Democrats can avoid a November bloodbath"

by Ken

In their Washington Post op-ed piece today, the dynamic polling duo propose a midterm congressional election strategy to President Obama and the Democrats which is, well, exactly what you'd expect from a pair of Village idiots. First, Dougie 'n' Pat are at pains to remind us:

We are Democratic pollsters who argued against the health-care legislation ["Democrats' blind ambition," Washington Forum, March 12] that the Obama administration chose to pursue. Instead, we advocated incremental health-care reform. With the passage of health reform, some harsh political realities have emerged.

Recent polling shows that despite lofty predictions that a broad-based Democratic constituency would be activated by the bill's passage, the bill has been an incontrovertible disaster. The most recent Rasmussen Reports poll, released on April 12, shows that 58 percent of the electorate supports a repeal of the health-care reform bill -- up from 54 percent two weeks earlier. Fueling this backlash is concern that health-care reform will drive up health costs and expand the role of government, and the belief that passage was achieved by fundamentally anti-democratic means.

Mulling over the poll numbers they piece together, from polls taken by morons designed to prove that the American people are morons too, they conclude, "What all this means is that Republicans are ripe to pick up major gains in both chambers this November."

Unless --

Unless, of course, Democrats "start embracing an agenda that speaks to the broad concerns of the American electorate. It should be somewhat familiar: It is the agenda that is driving the Tea Party movement and one that has the capacity to motivate a broadly based segment of the electorate."

And the Puling Pollboys proceed to announce an agenda that would gladden the hearts of Sen. Miss Mitch O'Connell and Rep. "Sunny John" Boehner: pretend to be Republicans.

The Pollboys never stop to question the imbecility of the positions of the Teabaggers. If that's what the polls -- which of course were designed to ratify the Teabagging lies and imbecilities, clothed in platitudes that carefully seal off both questioners and respondents from any glimmer from the daylight of reality -- show, then that's pollworld reality.

The swing voters, who are key to the fate of the Democratic Party, care most about three things: reigniting the economy, reducing the deficit and creating jobs.

But do either the morons asking the questions or the morons answering them have any idea -- and I mean any idea -- how to reignite the economy or to create jobs? Oh, they think they do. Because they, like the poling morons, have been listening to even bigger imbeciles and more dishonest demagogues. As for the deficit, we know from the history of the Depression that the recovery was stalled by pulling back out of concern for deficits, and that the recovery went no further until the giant stimulus of World War II. Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke knows this too, but now that he's slithered through his renomination and confirmation, he's free to reward the megacorporate wheels who made possible his continuing employement. (Who would know better than Chairman Ben how rough the job market is?)

According to our Puling Pollboys, "Voters are outraged by the seeming indifference of the Obama administration and congressional Democrats, who they believe wasted a year on health-care reform. These voters will not tolerate more diversion from their pressing economic concerns." I'm sure the poll questions carefully examined respondents' knowledge of how you pick an economy up out of the toilet of a depression.

And of course it's not the pollboys' job to try to educate voters that the future of the American economy depends on getting control of health care costs, and that demands meaningful health care reform. (Actually, it doesn't appear to be anybody's job!) Whether the package that was actually passed will do it remains to be seen, but this casual acceptance that dealing with the subject is a waste of time -- really now, isn't there a level of shame below which even Pollboys should be reluctant to sink?

As if you couldn't write it yourself, their ringing conclusion is:

Winning over swing voters will require a bold, new focus from the president and his party. They must adopt an agenda aimed at reducing the debt, with an emphasis on tax cuts, while implementing carefully crafted initiatives to stimulate and encourage job creation. This is the agenda that largely motivated the Clinton administration from 1995 through 2000 and that led to a balanced budget and welfare reform. It promoted a modest degree of social welfare spending. This agenda is enormously popular with the electorate and could eventually turn around Democratic fortunes.

Democrats can avoid the electoral bloodbath we predicted before passage of the health-care bill, but in one way: through a bold commitment to fiscal discipline and targeted fiscal stimulus of the private sector and entrepreneurship.

I'm not saying there isn't going to be electoral mayhem, but the notion that the solution, or even a partial solution, is to embrace lies and dishonesty in the interest of political expediency not only isn't "bold," it's cretinous. There are already scads of gutless right-wing Dems running for their lives, trying to sound like Republicans. Do they really not understand that this only guarantees them defeat?

"Bold"??? Only in that quiet Village on the Potomac -- the District that brains forgot -- could this exhausted old regurgitation be passed off as "a bold, new focus." In part, of course, the president is in this fix because, inexplicably, he stopped his campaigns of public education on the issues of recovery and health care about a second after he began them, I'm theorizing because he didn't want to have to field questions about the gaps between his rhetoric and the crappy watered-down versions of solution his administration was actually pursuing. Now we all pay the price.

I believe the people who voted for Barack Obama thought they were voting for a leader, someone who was going to crusade tirelessly for the hope and change he talked to them about. It's still hard to figure out what kind of change he thought he was actually going to be able to accomplish by listening only to the people who opposed the change. When it comes to the idea of "leading" by following, following deep into the swamps of triangulation, well, you know he'll have his faithful companion Master Rahm cheerleading him on.

And of course the Puling Pollboys, who somehow remain in business. What would they ever do without the Village Tattler -- I mean the Washington Post?

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WILL NEW HAMPSHIRE FINISH OFF THE CLINTON MACHINE-- AND THE DEMOCRATIC ESTABLISHMENT'S COWARDICE?

How predictable was the momentous unraveling of Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign, once seen as a stately procession to a coronation, now a shambles? How predictable was it that the moment the rubber met the road, her overconsulted, out-of-touch Insider Establishment campaign would completely collapse and just disintegrate?

Well... very predictable, but not predicted by me. I fell, ruefully, for the inevitability the Clinton Machine was doling out. How predictable was it that Democrats-- the real ones, not the whores in DC-- would have grown sick of the Clintons, with their self-serving and greasy triangulation, policies and strategies that led directly to George Bush?

Maybe it would have been more easily predictable if I had read the insightful soon-to-be-published book by netroots legends Lowell Feld and Nate Wilcox, Netroots Rising. Feld and Wilcox write eloquently about the seemingly irreconcilable differences between the grassroots heroes of the Draft [retired Gen. Wesley] Clark movement in 2003-4 and the very same Insiders and hacks who are currently presiding over the painful demise of the Hillary campaign.

Yosem Companys points to the top-down vs. bottom-up culture clash:

"Professionals are trained in perfectly calibrating the message and controlling every aspect of the campaign, while grassroots organizers are all about openness and participation."...

According to Donnie Fowler [short-lived original Wes Clark campaign manager], "The decision for General Clark not to compete in Iowa typified a disdain for local people... and a belief that if you live in Washington you know everything that there is to know."

Hillary did compete and was thrashed. The day of these top-down Insiders-- at least in the Democratic Party-- is coming to an end. They are dinosaurs whose day has passed. Rahm Emanuel, Chuck Schumer, the DLC, the Clintons, Lieberman, Harold Ford... they are not part of the solution. Quite the contrary.

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