...will he ever win?

Well, I suppose I had to make the announcement at some point, so here goes.  I won't be blogging at OpenLeft for some time.  I've taken a job inside the House of Representatives (more on that when I've cleared what I can say) to see how the place works and to help create the space for more progressive policies.  

Ultimately what I've learned, from many of you as much as from the task of writing for the public for the last five years, is that there is a serious leadership gap in this country.  And by leadership gap, I mean something very specific, so specific that I'm going to give it a name.  I call it a 'rootsgap'.  A rootsgap occurs when a leadership is dramatically out of step with its base or the public at large.  In the 1970s, the conservative base felt consistently sold out by its politicians, like Gerald Ford, who pushed centrist unpopular pieces of legislation, like the Panama Canal Treaty, through the levers of government.  Birth control, abortion, public sector unions, civil rights, consumer rights, the Equal Rights Amendment - all of these provoked a fierce reaction from the conservative base who felt betrayed by the Republican politicians who did not oppose liberalization fast enough.
In 1978, the first midterm election dominated by the New Right, conservatives undermined moderate Republicans and liberal Democrats all over the country.  They forced Carter to the right, and Reagan rode the conservative backlash into office.  The Club for Growth is only the most recent echo of the New Right, Karl Rove, Ralph Reed and Grover Norquist following along the well-grooved tracks created for them by the Phyllis Schafly, Milton Friedman, and John Olin.  After literally forty years of organizing, we are now in a situation where the town of DC is entirely populated by the ghosts of the New Right, in both parties.  Tax cuts are deified, the national security state is beyond reproach, and the economy of conservative political influence can prevent nationalized elections from having impacts on policy, as the election of 2006 showed.  The conservatives fully closed their rootsgap - their political leadership and their activist base are in many ways indistinguishable.  This is both useful for conservative ideologues, and a problem for the political system at large.  Politicians shouldn't be conservative movement activists, they should be politicians representing all the people.

The Democrats have the opposite problem.  Our politicians, who believe that the press is basically an honest mediator, and that expertise is honestly held within elite universities, do not consider the base particularly important.  And on the more difficult issues, the public is rarely considered a possible source of political support.

I first noticed the rootsgap problem during the impeachment of Clinton, when the 60 plus percent of the public supported him in office, but the Republicans, the media, and even some Democratic officials, did not.  That was when Moveon was created, via a simple petition that asked Congress to censure him, and Moveon.  This rootsgap, which we saw grow during the run-up to the war in Iraq, produced new leaders in the form of Howard Dean and Wes Clark, and new forms of communications and organizing, in the form of the blogosphere.  The public, having always preferred a war under UN auspices, turned against the Iraqi adventure as early as 2003.  It's been written out of history, but the $87 billion the administration requested for Iraq was opposed by more than 60% of the public.

The rootsgap has been the single most salient feature of modern American politics, at least since I've been paying attention.  It cuts across economic issues, media policy, foreign policy, national security, civil liberties, you name it.  Conservative (and often bipartisan) political elites ignore, usually the left but often the public itself, with almost no political consequences.  Joe Lieberman built an entire career, and even elevated himself to be the Vice Presidential candidate, on this feature.  A lot of people think Lieberman changed after 2004; I think such a view underestimates the consistent streak in his career, and how sharply the environment shifted after Bush's relection.  Lieberman was elected Attorney General in Connecticut based on family values issues in the 1980s, won his Senate seat by red-baiting Lowell Weicker on Cuba and drug policy in the 1980s, and was picked as VP because he was the most outspoken Democratic critic of Clinton's behavior.  It was only the primary, incomplete a response as it was, that saw some measure of reaction.  That was the first time this new progressive movement, which Chris and I tentatively called the 'Open Left', really tried to shift the calculus of leadership.  And we did.  But not enough.

The invasion of Iraq, the Protect America Act, the condemnation of Moveon, the $700 billion bailout, the Bankruptcy Bill, the Kyl-Lieberman amendment, the Patriot Act, and a thousand actions large and small were instances where the rootsgap maintained its hold on the political order.  In a lot of ways, Obama's triumph in the primaries was a response to this phenomenon; the caucus-goers who won it for Obama took Iraq very seriously, and took the nomination from Clinton, who had simply refused to apologize for her vote for the war.  The follow-on consequences of this decision, one by the Democratic rank-and-file, are not clear, but there are both depressing and promising signs.

This is not, of course, new.  Liberal leaders have ignored and mocked their base since, well, the good sensible liberals wrote Aaron Burr out of the revolution because of his proto-feminist and anti-slavery views.   So-called liberal journalists have carried this even further; Arthur Brisbane, who said that he took in "socialism with his mother's milk", didn't think much of the muckraking classic 'The Jungle'.  He told Upton Sinclair, the author that "a slaughter-house is not an opera-house", and gave him a nice "fatherly pat on the shoulder,".  We've always been called shrill, that's as American as apple pie.

The right presents us with a model, though an imperfect model, of organizing, of closing this rootsgap.  That is why Reagan is such a hero (or anti-hero) to people like Obama, because Reagan was the messenger for a wave of grassroots organizing that changed the country profoundly in a conservative direction.  But Reagan wasn't just a messenger, he both led the conservative movement by opposing detente, the Panama Canal Treaty, unionization, the Equal Rights Amendment, and abortion, and profited from the organizing work these people had done to lay the groundwork for his governance.  This syncretic approach is key to any successful movement.  Movements must have leaders, and these leaders must both listen to, lead, and be led by the activists and the public that supports them.  There must be bonds of trust, even with inevitable disagreement.  The right built up those bonds over forty yearss.

What we have now is a powerful political apparatus that can elect, raise money, engage in policy debates, work through our own media channels, push back on mainstream media channels, and a set of grasstops who organize on behalf of a progressive identity.  It's ten years old, and there are now thousands of trained organizers and millions of activists (like you).  What we're missing, among other things, is links to direct political leaders.  One of the reasons Reagan succeeded is because he had a political machine borne of the conservative activist class, one well-versed in the standard centrist trickery that led to such an infuriating rootsgap on the right.  His direct mail people and his evangelical liaisons knew what they wanted, and they knew they wanted more than what the mainstream GOP was offering.  While there are great people around our leaders, what is striking is how politicians are considered to be 'over there' making decisions, and activist movement people are considered to be outsiders and reactive to these decisions.  This doesn't make sense; cooperation can benefit everyone involved.

Now, I don't think the analogies of our party to the Republicans of the 1970s or 1980s are perfect; the Democratic Party has different problems than the Republican Party did back then, and different opportunities.  And it can't be emphasized enough that we believe in very different models of the ideal American polity.  But the rootsgap is a commonality, and the rootsgap is the space in which both New Right organizing and this new progressive organizing took place.  Ultimately, I don't think this problem of liberal organization can be addressed without more of us from the outside going into areas where we must take some direct (as opposed to indirect) responsibility for the decisions that happen.  I believe that the next few years are going to be very hard for this world, and we desperately need a vibrant progressive world, with strong leadership and good strong liberal policies.  Liberals have been correct about the war in Iraq, the financial meltdown, the Bankruptcy Bill, the deficit, the Patriot Act, and, well, pretty much everything.  What they haven't been is powerful enough to prevent the mistakes the country has made.  And this is a leadership problem that we can and will fix.

As a movement, we need to be promoting and helping our leaders make the right decisions, pick the right policies, and surround themselves with individuals who will frame policy choices in real human terms, without the weak bromides that mask the cruel impact of bad policy decisions.  That's the problem I want to start solving.  And so I'll be moving away from public blogging, though I'm pretty sure I will return eventually, perhaps soon.  Politics is always volatile.

I'm going to miss writing for you and being a part of these conversations tremendously.  I still feel honored that anyone reads our blog, and even a little shocked.  You have helped shape, pretty profoundly, the way I see the world, and the conversations here have always been interesting and lively.  Though I'll miss blogging, I'll be around, of course; this is my home, and I won't venture too far.  But with the new administration taking office in a few weeks, and a new Democratic Congress taking shape, it's time to experiment with different ways of making change, and different ways of taking responsibility for our great country.

As always, if you want to drop me a line, email me at stoller at gmail.com.  Onward.

January 06, 2009 05:56 AM

A Million Republican Movies To Make

• The reason why the terrorists hate the United States is that the villains in movies made by liberal Hollywood are corporations, the CIA, the FBI and the Armed Forces. That’s why I’ve just created a new website documenting how conservatives are oppressed in Hollywood.

---

‘Shorter’ concept created by Daniel Davies and perfected by Elton Beard. We are aware of all Internet traditions.™

---

January 06, 2009 05:23 AM

A video in support of The Alternative Invocation blogswarm. PS. The Weblog Awards voting has started. In an embarrassment of riches, Crooks and Liars is competing with its own writers David Neiwert (Orcinus) and Blue Gal (Blue Gal) for Best Liberal Blog. Our own Susie Madrak (Suburban Guerrilla) is up for Best Midsize Blog, and regular C&L contributor Driftglass is up for Best Individual Blogger. You can vote once in each category every 24 hours. Open thread below...

January 06, 2009 04:30 AM

An old song that's still as fresh, delicious, and downright decadent as room service blueberry pancakes at the Hilton.

January 06, 2009 04:00 AM

Mads Gilbert, a Norwegian doctor in Gaza, tells Sky News that the number of civilians injured and killed in Gaza proves that Israel is deliberately attacking the population. The people of Gaza continue to be caught in the middle of the power play between Israel and Hamas: JERUSALEM, Jan 5 (Reuters) - People in Gaza were in dire need of food and medical supplies, aid agencies said on Monday, but Israel's ground assault and air raids were hampering relief efforts. Freezing cold is compounding the misery of children caught in the conflict. And body bags for victims are in short supply. "The situation in Gaza since the Israel Defense Forces launched their ground offensive on Saturday night has become both chaotic and extremely dangerous," the International Committee of the Red Cross said in a situation report. Air raids had damaged hospitals, water supply systems, government buildings and mosques but it was difficult for ICRC staff to move around to assist, it said. About 530 Palestinians have been killed, at least a quarter of them civilians, since Israel launched its offensive on Dec. 27 to curtail Hamas rocket attacks from Gaza. Ground troops invaded the enclave, home to 1.5 million Palestinians, on Saturday night after a week of bombardments from the air and from naval vessels. Hospitals were inundated with Palestinian wounded, the ICRC said. Fresh supplies were urgently needed, including painkillers and anaesthetics but also body bags and sheets to wrap corpses.

January 06, 2009 03:00 AM

Above: “[O]ne of our foremost observers of Iran” - J. Buttmissile, Esq. Right.

“Is Iran in Trouble?”

• Never mind that for years I’ve asserted that Iran is a greater menace than Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, and the legions of Mordor combined; now I’m telling you that it’s a paper tiger! What better time, then, to launch an invasion of Syria and Persia than right now?

---

‘Shorter’ concept created by Daniel Davies and perfected by Elton Beard. We are aware of all Internet traditions.™

---

January 06, 2009 02:51 AM

Mark Steyn dutifully quotes Steve Forbes; both demand that the Obama Administration copy the Irish government’s corporate tax scheme which they allege is totally awesome. Or else:

The growing gap between US corporate rates and other developed nations is a massive disincentivization for real human beings to start and grow a business here. And for those already here it encourages the kind of short-term thinking that leads to Bailoutistan and American sclerosis.

ZOMG I should just pack up now and go to the land of my ancestors, a near-glibertarian paradise where sound non-government has enriched not only the citzenry but, as per the Laffer curve, the government as well! Oh yes where Guinness falls from the sky and Lucky Charms grow on trees…

Except for this. And this.

Ireland’s bubbleburst, from my equally-as-inexpert-as-Steyn’s opinion, will be worse than ours. It’s true their economy boomed, but only because of a sort of Cayman Islands effect by which so many wealthy jackasses moved money from lands of higher tax rates. Cumulative incidental investment from a mass of weasels shirking their responsibility did the trick, not ‘higher returns’ because of the alleged infallibility of the Laffer theory. Ireland was like the Delaware of the Western World: it only worked not because it was right or because its particular structure was better or even sound, but because it was such an outlier. (The Times piece implies the relationship between Ireland and America and the EU was symbiotic; I think the better word is parasitic.) In effect it cheated its neighbors; now it’s ended up cheating itself. It too will get drastically Keynesian as it surveys the rubble, and the wealthy criminal class will then move like locusts to some other country whose government it can bribe or co-opt, unless… everybody gets together and agrees not to tax the bastards at any rate less than a certain amount.

Bonus Freedom-loving Fun: Click through to read Forbes gush over Libya’s recently-stated desire to become the new Singapore. Glibertarians love Singapore, as it is exactly the kind of authoritarian state that develops from school-of-Miltie policies; like Pinochet’s Chile, you can be killed there for next to nothing — your civil liberties there are for shit. But you have a large degree of economic freedom and power of property, which is the only thing people like Forbes care about. (Steyn has actually come to care about freedom of speech since it allows him to indulge his habit of smearing Muslims, a touchy point up Canada way.)

January 06, 2009 02:21 AM

Download | Play    Download | Play It probably goes without saying that I avidly support appointing Latinos to key positions within the Obama administration, but I've always been hesitant about Bill Richardson. Not only is it well known behind the Democratic scenes that he has certain horndoggy vulnerabilities in his personal life, but he's always carried a certain air of corruptibility peculiar to Western politicians. I know that scent well and it always made me leery. So I can't say I'm sorry to see him bow out, because my gut instinct was that he spelled T-R-O-U-B-L-E for Democrats generally and the Obama Administration in particular. His press conference today did nothing to alter that impression, especially when he flatly refused to discuss the investigation into the influence-peddling matter and wouldn't even say whether or not he had lawyered up. It all smells very fishy to me. Note that Richardson wants us to think he had been perfectly forthcoming with the Obama transition team about the case. Turns out that's not true either. I'm just glad all this happened before confirmation hearings arrived.

January 06, 2009 02:00 AM

Over the holidays, video hosting site Veoh won another victory under the DMCA safe harbors, this time against Universal Music Group (UMG). The ruling should put to rest the argument that transcoding and other activities necessary for making content accessible on the web are not covered by the DMCA's Section 512(c) safe harbor for storing material on behalf of users (i.e., hosting user-generated content). This is good news not just for Veoh, but also for YouTube and every other site that hosts material uploaded by users.

Like many other companies that host content on behalf of users, Veoh has been bedeviled by copyright lawsuits. The copyright owners make the same argument in each of these suits: the hosting service should be liable for every infringing bit uploaded by naughty users and responsible for the full cost of policing for infringement. Fortunately, Congress enacted the DMCA's safe harbor provisions back in 1998 to protect service providers from exactly these risks, offering immunity from copyright damages to those who implement a notice-and-takedown system. In August 2008, Veoh won a big victory against adult video purveyor Io Group, relying on these provisions.

Veoh's latest victory was against UMG, which sued Veoh because Veoh users allegedly uploaded UMG music videos without authorization. The issue before the court was whether the DMCA safe harbor for hosting only covers the actual act of storing bits on a server, or whether it also covers related activities, such as:

1. automatically transcoding video files uploaded by users into Flash format;
2. automatically creating copies of uploaded video files that are comprised of smaller “chunks” of the original file;
3. allowing users to access uploaded videos via streaming;
4. allowing users to access uploaded videos by downloading whole video files.

Relying on the statutory language, as well as the legislative history, the court concluded that all of these activities are covered by the DMCA Section 512(c) safe harbor. Lots of online service providers will greet this ruling with relief. If the court had accepted UMG's arguments, every web host would lose the safe harbor as soon as it made web pages available to the public. The ruling should also help YouTube in its ongoing battle with Viacom, which also turns on the continuing strength of the DMCA safe harbors.

But the Veoh ruling also points out a surprising irony: while YouTube and Viacom are fighting their interminable litigation trench war, many interesting DMCA legal questions are being resolved in smaller, faster-moving cases involving companies like Veoh. At this rate, the highly-anticipated Viacom v. YouTube lawsuit may end up a footnote in the legal fights that define the rules governing user-generated content.

January 06, 2009 01:29 AM

Today, Chief Judge Vaughn Walker of the United States District Court in San Francisco denied the government's third motion to dismiss the Al-Haramain v. Bush litigation. The ruling means that the case can proceed and the court also set up a process to allow the Al Haramain plaintiffs to prosecute the case while protecting classified information.

Al-Harmain Islamic Foundation, the Oregon chapter of an Islamic charity, sued the Bush Administration for the illegal surveillance of the organization and its attorneys as part of the NSA warrantless wiretapping program. The case was based on a secret document that was inadvertently disclosed by the government that, according to the plaintiffs, demonstrates that they were subjected to unlawful electronic surveillance outside the scope of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).

In late 2007, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that despite the disclosure, the "Sealed Document" itself was a state secret, but sent the case back to the District Court to determine whether the FISA law nonetheless allowed the case to go forward, under a doctrine called "preemption." Last summer, the Court had ruled that FISA does preempts the state secrets privilege, and gave Al-Haramain the right to amend its complaint to show that they were "aggrieved persons" within the meaning of FISA through evidence other than the Sealed Document. If they could do so, the case could proceed.

In today's ruling, the Court held that in their amended complaint the Al-Haramain plaintiffs had presented sufficient evidence that they were "aggrieved persons" and rejected the Government's claims to the contrary, saying: "Without a doubt, plaintiffs have alleged enough to plead 'aggrieved persons' status so as to proceed to the next step in proceedings . . ."

In order to allow litigation to proceed while keeping the secrets under wraps, the Court ordered the government to arrange security clearances for Al-Haramain's attorneys. The Court also ordered the government to allow Judge Walker to review the Sealed Document in his chambers by January 19th. Finally, the Court required the government to review the classified submissions in the case, and declassify as much as possible. The Court will schedule a hearing later this month to plan next steps.

January 06, 2009 01:23 AM

And a new day is born.

Ann Coulter was scheduled to appear on the "Today" show Tuesday morning to promote her new book, "Guilty." But it's now been canceled, according to her website.

"I guess this ends the 'they just want to get ratings' argument about liberal media bias," Coulter wrote underneath.

As County Fair notes:

Coulter is still scheduled to appear on CBS' Early Show tomorrow, according to her web page. This follows the recent revelation that CBS considered including Coulter on the "independent" panel it created to investigate a 60 Minutes report on President Bush's National Guard record.

Matthews will still beg for her to come on Hardball I would imagine.

January 06, 2009 01:00 AM

Now that all of the counting is finally done for the 2008 elections, it is possible to compare how different election forecasters fared. The three I have long been most interested in comparing are:

1. My method, which takes the simple mean of all non-campaign funded, telephone polls that were conducted entirely within the final eight days of a campaign. My rationale for this method is described here: No Special Sauce Needed For Electoral Projections. This is an intentionally rudimentary "election forecasting for dummies" method that anyone can reproduce.

2. Pollster.com, which uses all polls ever conducted in a state, and creates a regression line based on those polls. This is the ultimate "don't cherry pick polls and don't argue with polls" method. It was developed by a professional pollster and a political scientist, and is explained here.

3. Fivethirtyeight.com, whose complicated methodology is essentially the opposite of Pollster.com's: adjust every poll based on demographics, previous house effects, and previous error rate.

How did these three distinct prediction methods fare against each other? Results in the extended entry.
To compare the three methodologies, I looked at the 65 Presidential and Senatorial campaigns that ended on November 4th, 2008, for which at least one non-campaign funded telephone poll was in the field entirely from October 27th through November 3rd. This was done to create an apples to apples to apples comparison where, for all 65 campaigns, there are either publicly available predictions or publicly reproducible predictions (Pollster.com and Bowers don't work when there are no polls, and 538 didn't forecast House or Governor campaigns). The final predicted margin was used for all campaigns to maintain the apples to apples to apples comparison, since not every website predicted the final percentage for each candidate in every campaign. The mean and median errors were calculated for each method, and results were also sorted based on how many polls were available for each campaign. That last bit was done to try and answer the age-old question, "can polls be combined to create more accurate forecasts?"

The data for this comparison can be found here:

Prediction error rates: Bowers vs. 538 vs. Pollster.com (PDF)

Here were the results:

Median Error

# of Polls	Bowers	538.com	Pollster	# of Cases
1 or more	2.55	2.23	2.23	65
2 or more	2.26	2.17	2.09	44
3 or more	2.43	1.61	2.05	31
4 or more	1.57	1.34	1.68	24
5 or more	1.37	1.15	1.43	17
6 or more	1.26	1.12	1.50	14
7 or more	0.98	1.12	1.17	8

Using the median prediction error, all methods were very accurate. Once four or more polls are available, all methods can predict the final margin within less than 1.7%, plus or minus, most of the time. Comparatively, 538's was a bit more accurate, usually finishing in 1st and never finishing in 3rd. The differences, however, are very small.

Mean Error

# of Polls	Bowers	538.com	Pollster	# of Cases
1 or more	3.99	3.28	3.34	65
2 or more	3.03	2.72	2.77	44
3 or more	2.97	2.41	2.37	31
4 or more	2.00	1.69	1.92	24
5 or more	1.55	1.37	1.65	17
6 or more	1.44	1.21	1.69	14
7 or more	1.32	1.09	1.40	8

Overall error is noticeably higher using the mean, mainly due to occasional extreme outliers, such as a bad Research 2000 poll of the Wyoming Senate races (check the data to see just how bad). Once again, error decreases in direct correlation with an increase in the number of polls. Also, once again, when four or more polls enter the equation, error drops to plus or minus 2%, or even less. Further, once again, the 538 methodology slightly outperforms the Pollster.com methodology (although they are equal with three or fewer polls), with my method slightly further behind.

Here are what these numbers tell me:

• Combining polls works: There is a minority belief that polls cannot be combined to produce more accurate results, due to different methodologies and sample sizes. This is clearly wrong. All three methods combine polls, and all three methods become more accurate every time an additional poll is introduced to the equation.  So, don't ever let anyone say "combining polls doesn't work." Clearly, it does.

• Four is the magic number? Looks to me like having four polls or more polls on a general election campaign dramatically increases the forecasting accuracy for that campaign. If there are four or more polls in the final week, you can use pretty much and method and hit the target.

• 538 and Pollster.com even, I'm further back: Pollster was equal to 538 when all campaigns are included (the "1 or more" line) and with all campaigns exvept the ouliers (the "2 or more line). Kind of funny that not adjusting any of the polls, and adjusting all of the polls, results in the same rate of error. To no one's surprise, my method was much better among more highly polled campaigns, but still about 10% behind the other two once poll averaging (2 polls or more) comes into play. I make no pretense about my method needing polls in order to work.
  

• Anti-conventional wisdom: 538 had the edge among higher-polled campaigns, which means Pollster.com was superior among lower-polled campaigns. This goes against conventional wisdom. Many thought Silver's demographic regression gave him an edge among less-polled campaigns, but that Pollster's method only worked well in heavily polled environments. Turns out the opposite was true, and I'm not sure why. Maybe Silver's demographic regressions don't work, but his poll weighting does.
  

• Still very close: While Nate's was the most accurate, the difference between the methods is minimal. I'm a little disappointed, but clearly anyone can come very close to both 538 and Pollster.com in terms of prediction accuracy with virtually no effort. Just add up the polls and average them. It is about 90% as good as the best methods around, and anyone can do it.

Even with this all in mind, the worst thing a forecaster can do is to sit on his or her laurels, and not look through the numbers to produce a more accurate methodology. These numbers might point the way to an even better forecasting method than these three, and I am eager to try and find it in advance of 2010 and 2012.

Update: I just realized that these numbers actually mean that 538 and Pollster.com are equal, not that 538 was better ("1 or more" means all polls, not just those with one poll). Article updated to reflect this. Also, the best way to judge my method against the other two is the "2 or more" polls line, since that is the moment when polls are "averaged." I was about 10% behind. Not bad for never taking a statistics course, and for only spending between one-third to one-half half my election writing on forecasts.

January 06, 2009 12:56 AM

It’s O-fficial. At least until it isn’t again.

Al Franken will be standing - in a puddle of some controversy - along with appointed Illinois would-be Senator Roland Burris at the gates of that exclusive DC institutional club filled with a mixture of brilliant public servants and besotted stiffs (sometimes in the same person.)

Which one will actually get in the Senate door and which one won’t? Members-only seating on the underground Capitol Hill railway and exclusive elevator use are at stake here.

Mr. Burris arrives with the fingerprints of felonious intent on his back from the Blagojevich hands that pushed him toward the seat. That’s like starting your first day at a new job just as your primary resume reference gets busted for lying. It doesn’t make you a bad guy, but why do it? Because you can get away with it?

I’ve never been part of the Rod Blagojevich lynch mob - he’s the most interesting political counterpoint going to the slightly slowing Barack Obama bandwagon. And how hilarious that the governor’s response to his indictment is to throw this messy curveball at all those people who want him removed? It’s in some territory beyond cynicism.

What about Roland Burris, though? What’s his motivation? Why go through such a festering birth canal to get to the US Senate? I’d think he’d have the taste of sulfur on his tongue for quite some time. It would make many strong points to show up as the only black sitting US Senator. But in our supposedly Obamian post-racial world, is that the reason to be associated with (allegedly) crooks?

On the other hand, Mr. Franken’s declared victory in the seemingly endless Minnesota senate battle has generated some cheering, for sure, but surprisingly little laughing or hilarity. And what a shame that is. We need the laughs now more than ever. What happened to the comedian who cracked us up as Stuart Smalley? Now is not the time, sir, to dispense with satire and goofy skits in the name of politics.

Some years ago I was at a dinner party in Los Angeles where the most committed of SoCal political liberals were weeping over the state of the world: George Bush was President. Fox News dominated the media. They felt they were living in Hell. In the room were people (Norman Lear, for instance) whose cultural sensibilities and creativity had touched millions of people over many years. So how, I asked them, could they miss the point, here? Any message is better heard by an audience that’s engaged. You’re not being very engaging. You just need to be funnier than you are right now… more entertaining than Bill O’Reilly or Rush Limbaugh. Why let your opponents and their audiences have all the kicks while you’re trying to sell your programs?

Al Franken, purely coincidentally, came out as an active Democrat/comedian some time thereafter. I’m sure that was a relief to all those progressives whose laugh boxes had dried up. After all, he was that SNL guy who was now wrapping dogma in laughs. What a great way to get people’s attention.

Then he started getting serious. Not only serious but downright agitated. His speeches still got chuckles from audiences but he seemed to spend more and more time on an angry soapbox than he did with humorous riffs assaulting the other side. Gone was the scalpel; out came the bludgeon. He began to remind me a little of Lenny Bruce after his SF obscenity trial, when his stand-up performances were all about reading from the court transcripts that weren’t that funny, and about his own outrage, instead of being outrageously funny for his audience.

At a Commonwealth Club event I moderated a few years ago, Mr. Franken, otherwise very nice, cornered me beforehand and asked me to read a transcript of a Bill O’Reilly TV show to establish that O’Reilly was lying about something. In front of the audience, he pressed me to confirm that he was right and Bill O’Reilly wasn’t. Like that could never happen.

Now that you’re almost in, lighten up, Al. For your sake and ours. Make your colleagues laugh a little while you wrangle their support for your issues. If not, we can only hope that Senator Burris knows a joke or two.

For more, read Bronstein at Large.

January 06, 2009 12:16 AM

Remember when they explained to us we needed to have the Republicans in charge "because they're good with money"? Remember how excited the Villagers were about having a Harvard MBA president? Ah, good times!

The deep river of private money that helped knit together the global economy has abruptly dried up, new government figures show.

As the global financial crisis grew more severe this summer, foreigners sold almost $90 billion of U.S. securities — the greatest quarterly fire sale by overseas investors since the government began keeping track in 1960. U.S. investors also are retrenching; they unloaded about $85 billion worth of foreign holdings in the quarter, says the Commerce Department's Bureau of Economic Analysis.

"We've had a global panic. Everyone is pulling their money home," says economist Adam Posen of the Peterson Institute in Washington, D.C.

That's bad for economic growth in the U.S. because it threatens to starve capital-hungry companies and entrepreneurs. But it's especially serious for emerging-market countries that rely heavily on outside financing. Capital flows into countries such as South Korea, Turkey and Brazil were evaporating even before the mid-September Lehman Bros. bankruptcy made things worse.

The reversal of private capital flows signals an abrupt end to a nearly two-decades-long era of financial globalization, says economist Brad Setser of the Council on Foreign Relations. Private flows into and out of the U.S. for purchases of stocks, corporate bonds and federal agency bonds have dropped from around 18% of economic output to near zero "in a remarkably short period of time," Setser says.

January 06, 2009 12:00 AM

Above: Juggs Magazine subscriber since 1994.

The 7th Annual “20 Most Annoying Liberals of 2008″

• Annoying jackass, muslim, hypocrite, fag [LOOK AT THOSE TITTIES], gay homo fag, loudmouth dyke moonbat, fag-loving negro, [MORE TITS] godless commie, fag [BODACIOUS TATAS], fag shitter, bitchslutwhore, [NICE RACK] ginormous homotron robofag monster.

---

‘Shorter’ concept created by Daniel Davies and perfected by Elton Beard. We are aware of all Internet traditions.™

---

January 05, 2009 11:13 PM

As billionaire Republican Michael Bloomberg dispatches his thuggish aides to presumptuously berate Democratic Gov. David Paterson for daring to consider appointing anyone other than Caroline Kennedy to the New York Senate seat, a new poll shows New Yorkers are incredibly uncomfortable with the idea:

44% of the state's voters now say they have a lesser opinion of Kennedy than they did before she started vying for the position. 33% say it's made no difference, and 23% report now having a more favorable opinion of her. A plurality of Democrats, Republicans, and independents all say that her efforts have caused them to view her less favorably.

When it comes to whether they would prefer to see Kennedy or Andrew Cuomo appointed, 58% now prefer Cuomo to 27% for Kennedy. Cuomo is favored by 65% of Republicans, 59% of independents, and 54% of Democrats.

I know what you're thinking - Cuomo is a version of political aristocracy, right? Well, sure - but the point here is not that aristocracy is automatically horrible - it's not, and I never said it was. There are terrific leaders with ties to political aristocracy, from Ted Kennedy to Ned Lamont. The point here is that political aristocracy* ALONE should not be the sole or even most important determining factor in American politics - and most especially in appointments.  
Kennedy has never run for office and hasn't strongly delineated her positions on most issues. The most we really know about her is that she campaigned for Barack Obama and is the daughter of John F. Kennedy. By contrast, you can say what you will about Cuomo, but the guy has run in statewide elections, and won one, meaning he has clearly elucidated many public positions on key issues, and has had experience representing constituents.

Of course, IMHO, aristocracy shouldn't be the sole or even most important determining factor in elections either, but as evidenced by the electoral success of do-nothings like Evan Bayh, clearly it is. But at least in that case, the citizenry makes the choice. That's democracy, baby - you live by it and you die by it.

That's different than an appointment - which is, by definition, undemocratic. I would argue that in appointments, governors should actually prioritize putting people in office who have very deep experience representing as many of the people they will be representing in the new office as possible. Why? Because in a democracy, it seems appropriate to try to limit autocracy (ie. representation without election) as much as possible - even in an undemocratic process like an appointment, where one person gets to select the representative of millions of people. In that case, the way to mitigate the inherently undemocratic nature of the situation is for a governor to at least try to put someone in office who constituents have a prior representational relationship with. After all, the U.S. Senate may be the House of Lords, but officially, senators are still supposed to be representatives, no?

This is why I - and many other Coloradoans - are so incensed about Gov. Bill Ritter's selection of Michael Bennet to replace Ken Salazar (and most of the criticism deserves to be directed not at Bennet, but at Ritter for making the inexplicable selection). Bennet has barely lived in state for a decade**, hasn't ever run for or won elected office, and has no record - or even public positions - on most key issues before the U.S. Senate. Indeed, at the press conference announcing his appointment, Bennet smugly shrugged off questions about where he stands on the issues - as if that's less important than the fact that he's already launched a 2010 election campaign website. Evidently, getting elected to a seat he was given by virtue of his connections to the Beltway Establishment and Colorado corporate community is more important than telling us how he will cast his Senate votes in our name.

If even one of these factors weren't undeniably true, there might be some shred of meritocratic legitimacy to the Bennet appointment, even in the face of other far more qualified candidates. But there isn't - and the problem with that is obvious. To be "represented" in the Senate by someone like this - regardless of how he ends up voting as a Senator (and I sure hope he casts progressive votes) - isn't to really be "represented" at all, because Coloradoans have not only had no say in that representation, we have no idea what we are really being represented BY.

The forces of money and power in New York are trying to replicate what their counterparts engineered here in Colorado. And I'm guessing that what this new poll really shows is that New Yorkers have caught onto the shenanigans and are disgusted. That's not a surprise. New Yorkers - like most Americans - probably don't like the idea of someone getting to represent them who has never represented anyone, and who would get the office almost solely on her last name. We may be a culture organized around celebrity, and at times that cultural organization seems intent on creating a quasi-royalty out of our congressional representatives, but perhaps there are limits to that kind of thing. Even as we celebritize the presidency and politicians, perhaps there are still certain lines that the mass public doesn't want crossed - the line separating hype-created quasi-royalty from actual, real hereditary royalty.

* Previously defined loosely as insider connections, ties to money/privilege, power derived from genetic lineage, etc

**By the way, I've only lived in state for about 2 years...but before you say its hypocrisy to question Bennet's tenure living here, remember: I'm not running for, or asking to be appointed to, the U.S. Senate to represent this state.

January 05, 2009 11:04 PM

Download | Play    Download | Play The economy is very sick," Obama said before meeting with Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid. "The situation is getting worse. ... We have to act and act now to break the momentum of this recession." "The reason we are here today is because the people's business cannot wait," "Economists from across the political spectrum agree that if we don't act swiftly and boldly, we could see a much deeper economic downturn that could lead to double-digit unemployment and the American dream slipping further and further out of reach... "This is not a Republican problem or a Democratic problem at this stage. It is an American problem and we're going to all have to chip in and do what the American people expect." In Obama's "bi-partisan Congressional" presser today, he called the economy "sick" and stressed the need for accountability on how the money from his massive stimulus package will be spent. As we've seen with TARP, and with no real oversight in place, you can't trust CEO's to do the right thing. The AP contacted 21 banks that received at least $1 billion in government money and asked four questions: How much has been spent? What was it spent on? How much is being held in savings? What's the plan for the rest?None of the banks provided specific answers and most refused to explain why they are keeping the information secret. Obama is stepping into an economic situation that is eerily similar to FDR and he's hitting the right notes when he says transparency and accountability are a high priority for him. That is going to be paramount if his new economic package is going to move forward. In FDR's time, just the fact that "change" was happening in America that didn't have the name "Hoover" attached to it gave FDR a huge boost to his agenda and to the American psyche that helped him get through his first 100 days. Hope and change do matter to the American public and Obama is using it wisely so far. Obama is in a similar position to FDR, but what will Conservatives do? Will they try to block his policies that he wants to sign into law as soon as his first 100 days begin or will they become part of the solution? I think we know where Mitch McConnell's head will go. They want to appear to be relevant, but it was their control that has put us in this position to begin with. I hope Obama's love affair with bipartisanship will come to an end very soon. Not because I don't think it's a good idea to have both sides working together, but because Conservatives are incapable of doing just that. They do not want Obama to succeed because it will weaken their grip on American politics for years to come at the expense of average Americans just trying to get by. It's about ideology for them and not about the healing that our country is in desperate need of. I think Obama will soon feel their un-partisan wrath sooner rather than later and hopefully it will snap him out of any thought he had that he could work with Conservatives, no matter how "centrist" he goes. So here's the question. How fast will Obama get fed up with Conservative obstructionism? Will it be in his first 100 days or shortly after? I do know they filibuster Franken (who has just declared victory) and Holder as soon as Conservatives can. Will that be the beginning of the end to this bipartisan nightmare? If Conservatives did join in then at least Obama would be able to start healing the country, but don't expect any help from them.

January 05, 2009 11:02 PM

In one of the more, forgive me, torturous staffing processes, it looks like Barack Obama has finally settled on the last major appointment he had left to make, that of CIA director. Given that the Bush administration has done so much long-term, institutional damage to our intelligence superstructure, basic tenets of human rights and the rule of law, and the really nearly impossible to overstate damage done to the very idea of America itself, and almost all of that has fallen under the scope of the CIA at one point or another, bloggers like Glenn Greenwald, Andrew Sullivan, and other leading voices in the fight for not buying into the false choice of security over freedom, have been keeping a very close, very wary eye on what Obama was going to do here.

Remember that Obama’s first floated choice for CIA Director, John Brennan, had to withdraw his name from consideration due to a mostly blogosphere-induced backlash against his previous advocacy of Bush positions on wiretapping, torture, and the like. While it remains unclear how complicit Brennan actually was in any of that (probably not very, in truth), those of us hoping for a clear indication of new direction were happy to see him go.

But that left Obama in a difficult bind. For CIA director, you kind of need somebody who has been working at a high level in the intelligence community. But, given that that would have been under Bush’s tenure, that also would be someone who almost certainly, on some level, had a hand in the aforementioned abuses.

Obama appears to have squared this circle by bypassing it entirely, nominating instead a man with not one iota of intelligence experience–former Clinton White House Chief of Staff Leon Panetta.

NBC News has confirmed that President-elect Barack Obama has chosen former Clinton White House chief of staff Leon Panetta to run the CIA.

Panetta was a surprise pick for the post, with no experience in the intelligence world. An Obama transition official and another Democrat disclosed his nomination on a condition of anonymity since it was not yet public.

Panetta was director of the Office of Management and Budget and a longtime congressman from California.

If you have to make a quick trip to wikipedia, I don’t blame you.

However, despite the fact that he has no intelligence background, I find myself a bit optimistic about his appointment.

For one, it indicates that Obama is very serious about changing direction–he was responsive to the Brennan criticism, and in response he has gone out of his way to choose an outsider. A way, way outsider. As Andrew Sullivan notes, Panetta is clearly “significantly, detached from the torture regime and its apparatus in a way that anyone involved in the CIA in the last eight years would not be.” And as Glenn Greenwald adds, “it does seem clear that the Obama team was serious about avoiding anyone who had any connection at all to the Bush torture, surveillance and detention programs.”

For another, Panetta does have some thoughts on the germane issues of the post. Atrios uncovers a March op-ed by Panetta (and here’s a related one in the Washington Monthly) in which he more or less unequivocally condemns torture, wiretapping, and in general using fear as a justification for legality. It’s a thin record, to be sure, but at least it’s in the right direction.

And finally, what I think is thus far being missed, is the decision to choose not a spook, but a manager for the post. Panetta’s history is that of a human resources guy, a liason problem-solver. To that end, the smartest early take I’ve read yet on his appointment comes from Marc Ambinder. Panetta is there to clean house and, like much of what Obama does, to provide competent, pragmatic, and not-particular-ideologically driven leadership. In other words, like Obama himself, the hope seems to be that Panetta is being appointed to be the adult in the room at Langley, with the considerable added benefit of not having any particular baggage or loyalties himself.

Since nobody knows much about Panetta (at least not of the bloggers I read) and this is an entirely new role for him, it remains to be seen if he’ll prove effective or not; we can really only make generalized guesses. But as somebody who’s been watching this one decision closely, I’m cautiously optimistic.

January 05, 2009 10:27 PM

Download | Play    Download | Play Today President-elect Obama threw the political world a curveball and chose former California Congressman Leon Panetta to head the Central Intelligence Agency. Although Mr. Panetta brings with him little experience in intelligence affairs, the pick signals that Obama recognizes the dangers of politicizing the CIA like Bush has. Expect Panetta to play the role of "public face" while he allows the real intelligence experts to do their jobs. We should all welcome that after eight years of crap like this. MSNBC: Two Democratic officials say President-elect Barack Obama has chosen former Clinton White House chief of staff Leon Panetta to run the CIA. Panetta was a surprise pick for the post, with no experience in the intelligence world. An Obama transition official and another Democrat disclosed his nomination on a condition of anonymity since it was not yet public. Panetta was director of the Office of Management and Budget and a longtime congressman from California. He served on the Iraq Study Group, a bipartisan panel that released a report at the end of 2006 with dozens of recommendations for the reversing course in the Iraq war. We should probably also expect some unhappiness among the Village set.

January 05, 2009 10:00 PM

I cannot stop laughing about this graphic:

RedState has officially passed over whatever glory years it ever had and has prematurely entered the “Smell the Glove” phase of its career. Brandon Friedman at VoteVets remarks:

Like many chickenhawks who struggle with what it means to be a man in the modern era, Erickson and the “soldiers” in his budding “Strike Force” have again tried to imitate serving in the military without actually having to don a uniform, pick up a weapon, or sacrifice much of anything at all. However, by creating this make-believe world in which RedState activists are members of a military-like “Strike Force,” they’re actually quite a lot like the Dungeons and Dragons fans LARPers in the video below pretending to be wizards, basilisks, and gorgons.

So not only has RedState designed a military unit crest, but they’ve now painted themselves as hopeless dorks, lunging clumsily for political relevance with a ham-handed attempt at jumpstarting a field organization.

I concur with this analysis, although I’d say it’s a bit unfair to the LARPers, who actually do get some form of real exercise running around in the woods and who do have some experience in weapons training, even if it’s only with foam swords and spell packets. Put it to you like this: you give me the choice of going into a fight with an average LARPer or Dan Riehl, you bet your ass I’m taking the LARPer.

[Thanks to whichever commenter pointed this out to me in the comments a while back.]

January 05, 2009 09:41 PM

Drinking Liberally Shot of Truth

Last year, Rachel Maddow, Lee Camp and others offered their resolutions for 2008.  Below are a round-up of this year's progressive goals from friends in progressive media, progressive organizing, and...well...just friends.

What are your resolutions?  Here are a few of ours.

Fred Gooltz, Advomatic:
A few days ago I saw Holiday Inn which reminded me how it takes an audience's protest to move hate from the mainstream. This armchair activist resolves to make a point of telling friends and family exactly why I refuse to watch movies riddled with cheap bigot jokes.  For homophobia to go the way of blackface minstrel routines, the actors and producers responsible for the homophobia need to hear that we think they are shameful embarrassments who spread hate for money.

John Javna, 50 Ways To Fight The Right:
Number one on my list is to reuse stuff more instead of buying new things. Finding ways to reuse household consumer goods, for example, saves me money and also cuts back on the production/packaging/ transport etc of stuff. Freecycle is a great site for this. Another approach is just finding ways to reuse items for other purposes, e.g. an old shoebox helps me organize my closet. For me, this will also include shopping more at consignment and second hand shops to update my wardrobe. I've gotten addicted to online shopping, so this is gonna be a good challenge.

Negin Farsad, Laughing Liberally/Nerdcore Rising:
Mentor a young woman! If your field is anything like mine - standup comedy, film & tv production - you're surrounded by a veritable and exhausting sausage fest. Only 15% of directors, producers and editors are women which seems downright medieval. The figure among professional standup comics is equally abysmal. So if you're a VIP in whatever field, mentor a young woman. Yes we can... shift those numbers!
Sam Seder, Air America Radio:
Never let your friends, family or neighbors forget that it was conservative "governance" that dug this massive hole our country finds itself in.

Seth D. Michaels, Coordinator, Working Families Vote 2008:
Eat less meat, and remember that being a consumer is a political act - whether you intend it to be or not - so be an aware shopper.

Buy from locally-owned stores.  Not only does this shift income (slightly) lower on the income distribution, it also has the potential to be a huge stimulus, given that the owners of these stores are more likely to patronize other stores in your area--and if you go to a store like Fleet Feet, where Phil Fenty is going to spend his profits at other locally-owned stores, the multiplier is just huge. Also, get off Verizon.  AT&T, or even better, CREDO, does not spend its energy attempting to destroy the American workforce.  Verizon does.

Amanda Mittlestadt, The Liberal Card:
Become a card-carrying liberal. It'll give you a chance to show your liberal pride, help support Living Liberally, and support and sustain liberal businesses with the
liberal discounts you'll receive.

Matt Browner-Hamlin, SEIU:
The power of the liberal blogosphere is only as great as the willingness of bloggers, commenters, and readers to take action when called upon by our peers. When we work together, we can compel Congress to hear us. In my experience this is best done with direct phone calls and visits to the offices of our Congressional representatives. So here's my resolution: when I see the bloggers I read and trust make a call to action, asking me to pick up the phone, I'll do it. Not just on the issues I care the most about, but on the ones that you all care about.  Solidarity means we can get more done and solidarity ensures that our movement can bring more change to our country every day. So I'll stand in solidarity with all of you in the New Year...I hope you'll join me.

Matt Filiopwicz, HeadzUp:
Make your local Democratic Party more liberal by showing up.  Go to local meetings of the party and speak that sweet progressive mind of yours.  Especially if you live in a conservative area.  You can help steer your Democrats in the right direction.  Which is the left direction.

Mike Connery, Future Majority:
The Obama Presidency - through wireside chats on YouTube, calls for ideas on Change.Gov, and house parties across the country - offers us the first real chance to be more than spectators in our democracy, grading politicians at the polls once every four years.  My resolution is to take full advantage of these new opportunities - to contribute ideas when I have them, support Obama when he advances progressive causes, and raise a ruckus when I think he's making the wrong decisions.

Jamie Kilstein, Laughing Liberally:
- Not to become complacent after electing the cool black guy. Racism is not over. American imperialism is not over. We have a lot of work to do. There are corporate lobbyists working everyday to move Obama to the right. That is their job. If we are not there to counter, if we don't make countering our job, it doesn't matter how good a guy Obama is, we will lose.

Erin Hofteig, Media Matters For America:
Changing the world happens in small, personal steps and large institutional (or revolutionary) leaps. Something as small as bringing your own bags to the grocery store ensures less trees are cut down and less petroleum is needed to make new plastic bags. Not buying products manufactured in countries that use child labor, don't abide by environmental standards or health standards helps everyone. These small steps make a real difference. Support the organizations that are fighting for the values you hold dear. Take actions and let those in power know what you think, and give money.  The flagging economy is going to make it extremely difficult for these groups to operate effectively and ten dollars from you will help them remain relevant. Most importantly, stay informed. The policy debates coming on energy, health care and other important issues are going to be twisted with half truths and spin. Only an informed and engaged electorate will give legislators the backing, or the push, they need to stand up against the special interests.

Josh Bolotsky:
I want to say the same thing I said last year.

January 05, 2009 09:26 PM

It's time for Norm Coleman to move back to Brooklyn.

The Minnesota Supreme Court today rejected a bid by Republican Norm Coleman to have hundreds of rejected absentee ballots considered in the U.S. Senate recount, apparently clearing the way for a state board to certify election results showing Democrat Al Franken on top — and also opening the door to a post-recount lawsuit that the Coleman campaign said "is now inevitable."

The state Canvassing Board is scheduled to meet this afternoon to review recount results. Heading into the meeting, Franken holds an unofficial 225-vote lead.

We will then be able to witness the ritual of a "Bill O'Reilly head explosion" at every mention of Franken's name on his show.

Harry Reid called Coleman and told him to concede.

I believe that tomorrow the bipartisan state canvassing board will certify Al Franken the winner. After all, early on Senator Coleman criticized Al Franken for wanting a recount and wasting taxpayer money. I would hope now that it is clear he lost, that Senator Coleman follow his own advice and not subject the people of Minnesota to a costly legal battle.

I don't think it helps Reid's cause not to seat Burris at this time. Blags played everyone, even Fitz. Legally speaking, how can Reid block his appointment?

Conservatives try to paint themselves as the law-and-order folks. Yeah, it's a funny concept, I know, but at this point it's time for the Coleman camp to think about "America" and concede. Instead they are talking about filibustering the seating of Franken, so we're in for another round of Conservative whining.

Malkin writes a title to a post that could describe the Republicans in Congress since 1994: "A real clown takes a Senate seat". It's always a scream when Conservatives whine about the recount process. Oh, how they forget.

January 05, 2009 09:00 PM

“In 2006, when then-Sen. Obama voted against the Federal Marriage Amendment, he said, “Decisions about marriage should be left to the states.” He was right then; and as I have come to realize, he is right now in concluding that DOMA has to go. If one truly believes in federalism and the primacy of state government over the federal, DOMA is simply incompatible with those notions.”
- Bob Barr today arguing against the Defense of Marriage Act in an LA Times editorial

January 05, 2009 08:29 PM

So, the day after I break my left arm, Open Left crashes. Great. At least I'm getting all of 2009's bad luck out of the way early. Here are some items for Monday:

• Tim Kaine will be the new DNC chair. Kaine is pretty conservative, but I will have only one question for him: will he revive the fifty-state strategy?

• On a more positive appointment note, Glenn Greenwald praises Dawn Johnson, the new head of the Office of Legal Consul. Commenting on some fantastic articles by Johnson, Greenwald writes:

  Beyond these articles, I don't know all that much about her, but anyone who can write this, in this unapologetic, euphemism-free and even impolitic tone, warning that the problem isn't merely John Yoo but Bush himself, repeatedly demanding "outrage," criticizing the Democratic Congress for legalizing Bush's surveillance program, arguing that we cannot merely "move on" if we are to restore our national honor, stating the OLC's "core job description" is to "say 'no' to the President," all while emphasizing that the danger is unchecked power not just for the Bush administration but "for years and administrations to come" -- and to do so in the middle of an election year when she knows she has a good chance to be appointed to a high-level position if the Democratic candidate won and yet nonetheless eschewed standard, obfuscating Beltway politesse about these matters -- is someone whose appointment to such an important post is almost certainly a positive sign.  No praise is due Obama until he actually does things that merit praise, but it's hard not to consider this encouraging.

• Also, Leon Panetta to head the CIA. First reaction: much better than the other names being floated.

• On December, Democrats extended their lead on Republicans in partisan self-identification to 8.7%, according to Rasmussen. That is our biggest lead since June, and bigger than any lead Democrats have held outside of the extended Clinton vs. Obama primary contest.

• The Minnesota Supreme Court has rejected a key lawsuit from Norm Coleman, denying him his last chance to win. Franken will be declared the winner later today, but it still may take a while to get him into the Senate.

• New Yorkers no longer want Caroline Kennedy to be their Senator, and now prefer Andrew Cuomo, according to a new poll from PPP. Not that polls matter in a process as undemocratic as Senate appointments. We need a Constitutional amendment for special elections for Senate vacancies.

• Tax cuts are being piled onto the stimulus in order to win Republican support. These cuts are now larger than Bush's, and are not just of the middle-class variety. Not good. We don't need Republican support, but Obama is seeking it anyway. My best guess is that this is a repeat of the Democratic leadership's strategy on the bailout. This way, Republicans won't be able to be able to say "I told you so" if it doesn't work, or if it becomes unpopular. Bad idea if you ask me, since we will be blamed if the country doesn't turn around, no matter what.

  Or, maybe Obama considers bipartisanship good for its own sake, which would be sad.
  

• The Congressional Progressive Caucus releases a detailed trillion dollar stimulus plan. It looks pretty great, but we are still not at 18 progressive votes in the House, and talks on the stimulus seem pretty well advanced at this point. Still, at least producing these plans, and winning over 100 votes for them, is progress. The Nation has more on this.

I'll be back later today with a look at how different election forecasting methods performed in 2008. This is an open thread.

January 05, 2009 08:13 PM

Download | Play    Download | Play You Tube Dick Cheney on Face the Nation doing his last bit of spin on Iraq and Saddam Hussein before we finally get these criminals out of office. Cheney seems to think that Iraq is better off now than before the invasion and occupation. Somehow I think that the over a million dead and millions more displaced there would tend to disagree with him but hey, what do I know. Maybe they love living in a country poisoned by DU, with filthy conditions where they're separated from their friends and family that they have left and wondering if they'll have clean water, food or electricity to look forward to in the next day, week or month. I'm sure other than that all those Iraqis are eternally grateful to Dick Cheney and the Bush administration and all of those in the United States Congress that allowed themselves to be bullied or scared into approving us invading their country for helping to have "liberated" them. Bravo. Mission accomplished. The rest of the world just loves us now, right? But of course, as far as Cheney is concerned, they can just go **** themselves, those ingrates. I really don't know why he even bothers with the Bush history revision. Everyone knows he could care less what anyone thinks of him or the U.S. or the Bush administration and the damage that's been done while he and Bush have been in office.

January 05, 2009 08:00 PM

I’m still not sure why this guy is trying to force his way into the Senate on the back of Blago, but he had to see this one coming.

From CNN:

Robert Baxter says Erickson rejected Burris’ appointment because it does not conform with Rule 2 of the Standing rules of the Senate, which specifically says that the secretary of state must sign the certificate of election along with the governor. The Illinois secretary of state has not signed Burris’ certificate of appointment — only Blagojevich has.

CNN’s Susan Roesgen reports that Burris has filed a motion, a “writ of mandamus,” with the Illinois Supreme Court to force the Illinois secretary of state to sign the certificate. There court has not yet issued a ruling on the issue.

Again, I return to the logic of this. It only hurts Burris and helps Blago. Why would Burris do this?

More as it develops…

January 05, 2009 07:24 PM

Me, elsewhere:

Over the last few months, there has been much finger-pointing as to which particular sect of the old GOP coalition is to blame for the policy failures of the last 8 years and the electoral failures of the last 2 years…..I think these accusations are deeply misplaced - the problems have not been caused by religious conservatives or adherence to free market beliefs, but instead by a sort of “talk radio” dogmatism in which any given issue becomes a litmus test for whether one is a “true” conservative or Republican.

This dogmatism has become terribly pervasive, dominating the party infrastructure and including many of the most prominent faces of conservatism both online and on the air. It is a dogmatism that is in some ways pushed by a wide variety of conservatives - free market conservatives and libertarians, religious conservatives, and defense conservatives. And yet it is also a dogmatism with which large elements of each of those groups take significant umbrage.

In and of itself, though, a little dogmatism is not necessarily a unique hindrance to a political party or movement’s electability or even its legislative agenda - political dogma has existed for at least as long as political parties have existed, and without some of it political parties cannot distinguish themselves from their competitors.

Instead, the problem with this particular form of dogma is its all-around meanness. Under this dogmatism, dissenters of any stripe are treated as the enemy, regardless of whether the dissenter’s general viewpoint could be described as “conservative,” and regardless of the dissenter’s political affiliation. Wide nets are cast to stereotype anyone who may be adversely affected by implementation of one of the dogma’s tenets. Where a particular tenet relies on a particular fact, and a suggestion is made that the fact is inaccurate, the personal loyalties of the questioner are called into question - even if the fact is demonstrably wrong.

What’s important here isn’t that GOP dogmatism (or political dogmatism more generally) is overly ideological - quite the opposite, actually. Instead, the problem is that it doesn’t recognize its lack of a firm ideological basis, turning the individual policy preferences of whichever strain of conservatism is most passionate about a given issue into a litmus test for some imagined “master conservatism.” Because this dogmatism represents the conclusions of numerous different philosophies, though, it cannot rely on the ideological arguments that gave rise to the policy preference in the first place. For instance, relying on principled libertarian arguments for a particular economic policy is not possible when you take a position on social policy that is inherently at odds with those arguments; similarly it is not possible to rely on principled religious conservative arguments for social policy when you take a position on economic policy that is directly at odds with those arguments. In short, the problem with dogmatism isn’t that it elevates principle over the common good - it’s that it is almost completely devoid of principle in the first place, a fact which Conor Friedersdorf seems to get. The result is that this imagined “master conservatism” is forced to rely on arguments that rely on a sense of fear and an “us against them” mentality.

This is not to say that this type of dogmatism is without value - it’s useful as a means of creating party unity and “getting out the base.” Nor is it particularly the province of conservatives - liberals and Democrats most certainly have their own type of fear-based, “us against them” dogmatism. Instead, the problem here is that the dogmatism has become far too pervasive, both in terms of those who insist on this dogmatism and - as importantly - in terms of the number of issues to which it extends (even extending to issues that have no inherent connection to policy preferences, such as whether Iraq had WMD’s, whether global warming is real or imagined, or whether AirTran was morally correct in its refusal to permit a Muslim family to reboard a flight after they were cleared by the FBI).

For instance, it’s one thing for talk-show hosts to rant and rave about “Defeatocrats,” the “homosexual mafia,” etc., since their purpose is not to persuade but is instead almost exclusively to rally the people who are already predisposed to agree with them. It’s a far different thing, however, when that attitude extends to campaign tactics, and/or a huge percentage of “talking heads,” whose purpose is at least nominally to persuade people to either vote Republican or to support a particular policy position.

Similarly, it’s one thing to rant and rave against a particular group as a means of motivating your “base” and maybe to scare the bejesus out of some fence-sitters into supporting your position. It is a far different thing, though, to do this on virtually every issue. So while Muslims, for instance, may be a tiny minority group whose support on any given issue is not worth being concerned about losing, the combination of Muslims, gays, social safety net beneficiaries, Latino immigrants, war opponents, etc. is a pretty large group.

By relying on rhetorical arguments that demonize so many groups and by making those arguments through so many different mediums, this form of dogma dramatically reduces the “pie” to whom conservatives may appeal - both for voting purposes and for purposes of winning support on policies that have nothing to do with the issue on which that group has been demonized. As Rod Dreher points out: “…if you build your political movement around constantly pointing out that it’s Us vs. Them, pretty soon you’ll find that there aren’t too many of Us left.”

But again - this problem is not one that is uniquely the province of conservatism or the Republican Party. Instead, it is a problem that will inevitably arise as any particular political coalition becomes ever-larger and attains a certain level of political success on issues where there is near-uniform intra-coalition agreement; in order to maintain the successful coalition, the party needs to manufacture loyalty on issues where there is less intra-coalition agreement. This is, however, an unsustainable strategy due to the way in which it “shrinks the pie” by demonizing policy opponents, even if they happen to be in the same political party. Eventually, the pie becomes small enough that the party can again find a coherent set of positive principles around which to build, and the cycle will begin anew.

The extremes of this cycle are just exacerbated today due to the way in which modern technology allows politics to pervade so much of everyday life. Eventually, the Dems will face similar problems as a result of their own successes, even as the GOP rebuilds around some as-yet unknown set of principles with a relatively broad appeal.

(Cross-posted at Publius Endures).

January 05, 2009 07:21 PM

In the grand tradition of Lee Siegel, it seems that Andrew Keen has discovered that the absolute worstest thing evar in the world is to let the Little People express their opinions by sending them over the Intert00bz. Indeed, giving people an online forum to share their views is the most certain way to bring about the return of the Nazis. No, that’s what he really thinks:

The Internet Is Bad For You

by Andrew Keen

On December 6, Barack Obama announced his intention to fund a massive public works program of somewhere between $400 and $700 billion which will create enough jobs to avert the economic catastrophe of the 1930s. But I fear that one element in Obama’s well-intentioned infrastructure plan—his goal of providing all Americans with broadband Internet access—might one day be seen as inadvertently laying the foundations for a return to fascism, the political catastrophe of the 1930’s.

In the Europe of the 1930s, representative democracy’s abject failure to confront the rage of mass unemployment and dislocation led to the rise of fascist organizations such as the Spanish Falangists, the German National Socialists, and the Romanian Iron Guard. What the interwar fascists provided—with their messianic leaders, their torchlight parades, their xenophobic propaganda—was a placebo to the hopelessness that had enveloped ordinary people’s lives.

The 1930s fascists were expert at using all the most technologically sophisticated communications technologies—the cinema, radio, newspapers, advertising—to spew their destructive, hate-filled message. What they excelled at was removing the the traditional middlemen like religion, media, and politics, and using these modern technologies of mass communications to speak with reassuring familiarity to the disorientated masses.

Imagine if today’s radically unregulated Internet, with its absence of fact checkers and editorial gatekeepers, had existed back then. Imagine that universal broadband had been available to enable the unemployed to read the latest conspiracy theories about the Great Crash on the blogosphere. Imagine the FDR-baiting, Hitler-loving Father Charles Coughlin, equipped with his “personalized” YouTube channel, able, at a click of a button, to distribute his racist message to the suffering masses. Or imagine a marketing genius like the Nazi chief propagandist Josef Goebbels managing a viral social network of anti-Semites which could coordinate local meet-ups to assault Jews and Communists.

The idea here is pretty basic: the Little People are far too dim to think on their own and reach their own conclusions, and they will inevitably turn into Nazis unless a class of Enlightened Beings oversees the information that they are allowed to consume.

Now, I don’t buy into the Ole Perfesser’s “Army of Davids” theory that we can replace the traditional media with the bed-wetting loonies who read his blog, but I also don’t think that people such as Keen should be allowed to appoint themselves the Grand Overseers of Our Enlightened Discourse, as he so obviously proposes doing. Some balance is needed, my friends. Continuing:

Now fast forward to the digital world of 2008 and what even the normally cheerful Economist has predicted will be a “long and deep recession”. Like in the 30s, we are faced with a systemic crisis not only to free market capitalism but also possibly to representative democracy. The 2008 economic meltdown is beginning to rival the 1929 Great Crash for its catastrophic impact on the lives of ordinary people. The United Nations has described today’s world economy as the “weakest since the ‘30s”. And 2009 promises to be worse, much much worse, with the U.N. predicting that the entire world economy will actually contract for the first time since those bygone days, and Princeton’s Nobel prizewinning economist Paul Krugman forecasting that American unemployment may rise to the “double digits”.

In the Thirties, mass unemployment lead to the catastrophe of fascism; in today’s crisis, I fear that it will lead to digital fascism.

And what would this dread face of digital fascism look like, you ask? Behold:

Even before the October crash, Americans had become ever-increasingly suspicious to all institutional forms of authority—from traditional political parties to mainstream media organizations to Wall Street executives, educators, and lawyers. As Harvard University’s Center for Public Leadership reported late last month, 80 percent of Americans believe there is a leadership crisis in the country. And that research was conducted in the fall—before AIG, before Lehmann Brothers, before the public humiliation of Detroit’s elites.

Gee whiz. I cannot imagine how the events of the past year could have made anyone skeptical of our nation’s governing and business elite. They’ve done such a bang-up job, after all.

The question is: In our democratized world of individual empowerment, how will the newly unemployed millions, the victims of the meltdown, react to their economic disempowerment? In a culture that prioritizes the personal, how will the masses vent their rage against a system that no longer personally works for them?

Even today, the Internet’s unholy synthesis of immediacy, intimacy and anonymity has created an online culture of insult and vulgarity.

No fuckin’ way! I didn’t know people would dare use profanity on the Internets!

Silicon Valley utopians argue that blaming the Internet for online hatred is like blaming Johannes Gutenberg, the 15th century inventor of the moveable type printing press, for Mein Kampf. And that’s true, of course.

You’ve just admitted that your original thesis has no basis in fact. Why, then, are you still trying to support it?

Yet given the way in which we know that the unfiltered Internet spreads corrosive lies and inflames prejudice, why would we want to give all Americans universal broadband access at the very moment when millions of them will be unemployed, disorientated and angry? Rather than spending billions of dollars in telecom technology, wouldn’t it be better to invest that money in local libraries and librarians, where their education could be supervised by accountable human beings.

This is truly unbelievable.

I sometimes roll my eyes when libertarians whine about “nannystate” rules, as if being barred from lighting up a cigar in a children’s hospital is the most grueling form of oppression known to man. But what Keen advocates here is a literal nannystate mentality: he thinks of people as children who must be guided by “responsible” elites to think and behave a certain way. The “responsible” way of thinking and behaving, not coincidentally, involves showing reverence and deference toward the enlightened elites. Call me crazy, but this sounds a lot more fascistic than some guy call another guy a n00b after getting his ass handed to him in a War Craft tournament.

For another sneak preview of digital fascism, it’s worth looking at South Korea, another country with universal broadband infrastructure. In April, the new democratically elected South Korean President, Lee Myung Bak lifted a ban on imported American beef. This resulted in an eruption of anger on the Internet—first amongst teenage girls, then on the popular online portal Daum, and finally through teenage “citizen journalists” on blogs, videocasts, and social networks. The rumor spread that all the American beef was tainted with mad cow disease and an online petition for Lee’s impeachment got 1.3 million signatures in a week. And for an even more real-time example of digital fascism, take a look at the way in which this week’s raging anti government violence in Greece by the young and unemployed (already at over 9% in the Greek economy) has been coordinated by Facebook, Twitter and other viral digital networks.

Without the Internets, people would apparently be happy to be chronically unemployed.

Get outta here, ya maniac!!!

January 05, 2009 07:20 PM

A little clip from way back shows us how different the George Bush of then is from the George Bush of now.

Question: what if Obama had this foreign policy view? Wouldn’t he be viewed as a wimpy liberal dove?

I’m just saying…

January 05, 2009 07:15 PM

Download | Play    Download | Play [H/t Heather] Conservatives have a gift for pretending the obvious isn't there. Take Brit Hume yesterday for example. He gets all worked up -- even angry-seeming -- over the terrible injustice being done to Rod Blagojevich and Roland Burris. Why? Because the prosecutor is Patrick Fitzgerald. Seems Hume harbors a grudge from one of Fitzgerald's previous prosecutions ... It's all wrapped up in defense of Blago's selection of Burris to fill Barack Obama's Senate seat: Hume: Why is it that he's thought to be under a taint? He's thought to be under a taint because an accusation has been made against him, not yet an indictment, by a prosecutor -- [Crosstalk] Hume: -- Against Blagojevich, not against him -- by a prosecutor who for all of his success in court, has a propensity, as we saw in the Scooter Libby case, to say things in news conferences that he ultimately chooses or is unable to prove in court. That is all we have. We have his say-so. Someone was saying on the air the other day, 'Well, we have the tapes.' No, we don't have the tapes. All we have is quotations from the tapes by the prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald, and it's not at all clear when we'll see them, what they'll show, what the context was or anything. This man is innocent until proven guilty. That's all a stirring and noble defense of Blago, but Hume doesn't seem to realize that the breadth and depth of the case against the Illinois governor involves a great deal more than just those tapes and just the Obama Senate seat matter. And really, do we need to spell out that any selection in which there is an appearance of impropriety in the process is tainted, especially when it involves the sale of the selection? But I gather that if you live in RightWingLand, it's difficult to imagine why anyone would consider the selection of Roland Burris tainted. After all, criminal complaints laying out a politician's desire to corruptly sell off federal appointments -- hey, that's ordinary. Routine! Everyone does that! Is it something in the water that conservatives drink, or what?

January 05, 2009 07:00 PM

UPDATED, 5:00 p.m. ET: Al Franken declared himself the winner of the Minnesota Senate race moments ago just hours after the state's canvassing board certified a final vote tally that put him 225 votes ahead of Sen. Norm Coleman. "After...

January 05, 2009 06:05 PM

I'd guess that bipartisan cooperation on this will be slim to non-existent (see Mitch McConnell's quotes in this article), but you never know:

WASHINGTON — President-elect Barack Obama plans to include about $300 billion in tax cuts for workers and businesses in his economic recovery program, advisers said Sunday, as his team seeks to win over Congressional skeptics worried that he was too focused on government spending.

The legislation Mr. Obama is developing with Congressional Democrats will devote about 40 percent of the cost to tax cuts, including his centerpiece campaign promise to provide credits up to $500 for most workers, costing roughly $150 billion. The package will also include more than $100 billion in tax incentives for businesses to create jobs and invest in equipment or factories.

The overall economic package, of $675 billion to $775 billion, is taking shape as Mr. Obama arrived in Washington and planned to begin trying to build support in Congress and among the broader public for his approach to stimulating the economy. Mr. Obama, who flew to the capital on Sunday to join his family in a hotel suite while awaiting his inauguration, planned to meet with Congressional leaders on Monday and deliver a speech on Thursday laying the ground for his emerging economic program.

Although some tax cuts were always expected to be included in Mr. Obama’s economic package, his team disclosed the scope and some details of the plans on Sunday at a time when Republicans have begun voicing criticism of what they describe as an open-checkbook approach to spending. By focusing more attention on the tax cuts in the plan, Obama aides hope to frame it as a balanced, pragmatic approach.

January 05, 2009 06:00 PM

“Israel has a special place in each of our hearts. But we recognize that neither Israelis nor Palestinians have a monopoly on right or wrong. While there is nothing “right” in raining rockets on Israeli families or dispatching suicide bombers, there is nothing “right” in punishing a million and a half already-suffering Gazans for the actions of the extremists among them.”
- J Street’s statement on the Gaza conflict.

For those of you who don’t know, J Street is a new organization dedicated to finding a two-state solution in the Middle East.

Here’s more…

J Street was founded to promote meaningful American leadership to end the Arab-Israeli and Palestinian-Israel conflicts peacefully and diplomatically. We support a new direction for American policy in the Middle East and a broad public and policy debate about the U.S. role in the region.

J Street represents Americans, primarily but not exclusively Jewish, who support Israel and its desire for security as the Jewish homeland, as well as the right of the Palestinians to a sovereign state of their own - two states living side-by-side in peace and security. We believe ending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is in the best interests of Israel, the United States, the Palestinians, and the region as a whole.

J Street supports diplomatic solutions over military ones, including in Iran; multilateral over unilateral approaches to conflict resolution; and dialogue over confrontation with a wide range of countries and actors when conflicts do arise.

Like it or not, it’s up to Israel to be the bigger party in all of this. And they’re going to have to give up some of the land they’ve taken over the years. There’s really no other solution at this point.

January 05, 2009 05:56 PM

Coleman will challenge this in the courts, but it appears as if Al will become the Senator from Minnesota.

From CNN:

The canvassing board on Monday will say a recount determined Franken won by 225 votes, Secretary of State Mark Ritchie told CNN.

However, Coleman’s campaign, which contends the recount should have included about 650 absentee ballots it says were improperly rejected in the initial count, has indicated it will challenge the certification.

Coleman campaign manager Cullen Sheehan said his team believes the recount process was broken and that “the numbers being reported will not be accurate or valid.”

“The effort by the Franken campaign, supported by the secretary of state, to exclude improperly rejected absentee ballots is indefensible and disenfranchises hundreds of Minnesota voters,” Sheehan said.

After the results are certified, Coleman’s campaign will have seven days to file a challenge.

Honestly, this feels like a tie to me and I wish they’d just do a runoff election. That seems to be the only truly fair way to determine who is actually the winner in this one. And if I were Franken, I’d request something like this because he could be seen as an illegitimate winner. Hardly what you want if you’re a junior/celebrity Senator.

January 05, 2009 05:47 PM

The fighting is growing more intense as Israel has started their ground offensive. And if Israel doesn’t realize that they’ve overreached here and are losing sympathy around the world, then they better wake up and realize it soon. You can’t kill this many women and children and not get a ton of backlash.

From CNN:

“Every couple of minutes we hear an explosion,” Safa Joudeh, a Gaza City resident, told CNN early Monday. “We can see tanks coming closer and closer into Gaza.”

She said most residents are confined to their homes, without electricity and running out of food and water.

Palestinian medical sources say Israeli forces have killed 37 Palestinians — both civilians and militants — since moving into the territory Saturday night.

With those deaths, at least 507 Palestinians, including about 100 women and children, have been killed since Israeli airstrikes began December 27, and 2,600 Palestinians have been injured, most of them civilians, sources said.

The question now: what will Obama say? He’s being put between a rock and a hard place because of the whole “there aren’t two presidents” thing, but would it be better for him to say something sooner rather than later?

January 05, 2009 05:38 PM

Oh deary. It seems that Michelle Malkin is (shock) outraged again because some nasty people have been saying that right-wing bloggers produce nothing but crazy-assed bullshit. When pressed for counterexamples, she gives us this:

Who says conservative bloggers don’t do reporting?

[...]

Bob Owens at Confederate Yankee/Pajamas Media published several original reports and scoops — including the op-ed the NYTimes refused to run and an interview with FBI informant/Weather Underground insider Larry Grathwohl, and early in the year, the results of a massive FOIA request related to the Beauchamp controversy.

Robert Stacy McCain, a two-decade newspaper reporter/editor-turned-blogger, provided campaign reporting on the road from Hillary in Harrisburg, Pa., and in Shepherdstown, W.Va., to the Libertarian convention in Denver, to John McCain in Pennsylvania, back to Denver for the DNC, and in Ohio and Pennsylvania for Sarah Palin.

Internet journalist/blogger and Little Green Footballs regular Zombie (not “conservative” per se, but rather anti-sharia/anti-jihad/anti-anti-American/anti-extremist Left) did extraordinary work digging up documents related to Barack Obama and left-wing terrorist Bill Ayer’s relationship — most notably, unearthing the Weather Underground manifesto Prairie Fire and Obama’s review of Ayer’s book on the juvenile court system.

See, yeah.

The insane, paranoid rantings of the Gun-Counter Gomer, racist ex-Moonie Times reporters, and some anonymous dude at LGF do not constitute “reporting” in the sense that we’ve typically come to define the term. No, I don’t care how many times you’ve kerned Obama’s birth certificate to prove that he’s Chuck D’s love child, or whether you’ve written a 50,000-word manifesto analyzing the linguistic similarities between Obama’s DNC speech and NWA’s “Straight Outta Compton.” Everything you guys write is tainted by the simple fact that you’re crazy assholes. If you’d like your work to be taken seriously by anyone who isn’t on your own personal LISTSERVs and Twitter accounts, the first step is to stop being crazy assholes. If you enjoy being crazy assholes and don’t want to give up the habit, that’s cool, but don’t expect to earn much respect from normal people. Make sense?

January 05, 2009 05:10 PM

Download | Play    Download | Play (h/t Heather) We've known for some time that Fox News is merely the propaganda arm for the GOP. However, they usually couch their partisanship with claims of being "fair and balanced" and token ineffectual Democrats. But Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace was perhaps a little unintentionally forthright about where his loyalties lay in Sunday's interview with House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer on Congress's priority to pass the Employee Free Choice Act. WALLACE: Big Labor’s top priority is what’s called “union card check” and that would be eliminating the right to a secret ballot in determining whether or not you’re going to organize, unionize a working place. [laughs] I love the way you’re smiling already. Are you going to move on that in the first month? HOYER: I’m smiling because of the way you phrased it. It’s the Free Choice Act, of course, and what it does is … WALLACE: Well, “union card check”, Free Choice, both sides have their euphemisms. HOYER: Of course, and you use one side. That’s why I was smiling…[laughs] WALLACE: And you used the other. Sadly, Wallace obviously has access to the GOP talking points soundbytes that the Democrats are never savvy enough to replicate. Nice, neat, and sound sensible if a little weak on facts. "Union card check" sounds like something a Dem-voting life-long union member would be leery of. But Hoyer never retorts in a way that eliminates this fear. The Employee Free Choice Act simply gives the employees the right to decide whether to unionize, rather than the company. It's easy to understand and say, right? But instead, Hoyer gives this mush-mouthed reply: HOYER: Well, okay, my point being that we believe that one of the problems that has existed in America is that working people have had a very, very difficult time in getting represented by unions in the work place. Work place has resisted that. The NLRB has not been very vigorous in assuring the lack of unfair labor practices. We believe that the employees…if over 50% of them sign and say that we want to be represented by a union, they ought to be able to be represented by a union. Let me say that many, many employers currently, under existing law, recognize such signatures right now and start to bargain and have a union representative. C'mon, guys, it's bad enough that you go on Fox, can't you do a little prep work to be able to respond to the Republican framing first? Transcripts below the fold: WALLACE: Let’s talk about the rest of your agenda. There’s talk that you want to move quickly on what’s called “low hanging fruit,” to pass the measures that could get bipartisan support and move through Congress quickly. Expansion of the State Children’s Health Program, or S-C