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Man Of Steel

by Elias Isquith on May 14, 2012

Responding to the Obama campaign’s latest anti-Romney ad, “Steel,” which focuses on a steel company bought and closed under the management of Mitt Romney’s Bain Capital, The Atlantic‘s David A. Graham sees evidence that Team Obama is not only willingly redirecting the conversation toward the economy — after a week-long foray into same-sex marriage — but is doing so in an effort to cast Romney as the villain protagonist ofAmerica’s post-industrial story. Graham sees the commercial’s intended subtext to be: “Romney wants to make the election about the economy, but his vision is to lay off American workers and redistribute wealth upward.”

Graham’s right, but I think the ad’s criticism is even more sweeping. Not only is Romney’s vision questioned, but the entire model of American capitalism over the past quarter-century, manifested most obviously in the embrace of a finance rather than manufacturing-driven economy, is presented as an amoral mistake, achieved only through elites completely alienating themselves from the middle class (read: working class) experience. Coming on the heels of Obama’s embrace of same-sex marriage, a move that represents the future of the Democratic Party more than any event since Obama’s election, “Steel” is an encapsulation of the pitch Obama will make to what’s left of the New Deal coalition’s white working class. It’ll air in most of this cycle’s most-prized battleground states: Iowa, Virginia, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Colorado.

Successful financier and former White House advisor Steve Rattner has expressed his displeasure with “Steel,” accusing it of being “unfair.” In its own way, Rattner’s complaining also speaks to the transitional phase Democrats find themselves in; Rattner is no less a representative of modern Democrats than is “Steel,” and in truth he’s actually more representative of the President’s vision than is this attack ad. I suppose Democrats care more about the fate of working people than do the Republicans; a lot of Republicans genuinely believe that a vulgar free market absolutism, combined with good-old-fashioned and bare-knuckled union busting, will result in rising wages and more jobs for all. I don’t know why they believe, despite the evidence; but I don’t know why Orthodox Jews believe pork to be too dirty to eat — but on and on believing they still persist. At the least, Dems have the better track record as of late when it comes to putting folks to work, so let’s give them the benefit.

As Jonathan Chait notes — probably less ruefully than I might — none of this means Obama’s an heir to Walter Reuther. And this despite the fact that, according to polls, most voters wouldn’t mind some of the economic security (less-than-optimized profits be damned) of that earlier time,

Democrats are not proposing to roll back the staggering rise in income inequality, and they have no plan to restore [pre-Bain]–style capitalism. They do, however, believe that the diverging fortunes of the middle class and the ultra-rich offer more urgency to the case for a government that supports the unfortunate and extends opportunity to the middle class, and at the very least militates against the Republican plan to make the government far less redistributive. That is why Obama has, since December, been hammering home the theme of rising inequality, the role of government in mitigating it, and the ways the Republican program would exacerbate it.

…[T]his is a true political vulnerability for the Republican nominee. The transformation of American business is deeply unpopular. It has made working life less secure and has failed to deliver broad-based prosperity even while it has bestowed enormous riches on the most fortunate. The locus of public opinion on it in many crucial ways sits well to the left of what either party proposes. Many Americans want to go back to the days when corporations offered secure employment and generous benefits.

In a real act of chutzpah, Team Romney will attempt to use Obama’s less-than-total devotion to blue collar populism against him. Byron York of The Washington Examiner reports,

[L]ook for the Romney campaign and its surrogates to counterattack by focusing on an instance in which Barack Obama, in essence, took over a company and laid people off in an effort to save the larger enterprise.

That was, of course, the auto bailouts, and while Obama often cites his success in “saving” the car industry, few remember today how many (non-union) workers lost their jobs in the Obama administration’s handling of the matter. During the economic crisis, General Motors and Chrysler shut down more than 700 dealerships, resulting in the loss of tens of thousands of jobs. And the companies did it under pressure from Obama.…

The Obama administration argued that the loss of jobs was necessary to save far more (union) jobs at GM and Chrysler. Now, the Obama campaign will likely say the same thing. But in the auto bailouts, whatever else one thinks of them, Barack Obama pushed for downsizing and laying people off in a failing business he had taken over.

Of course, a key component of criticisms of Bain — at least in individual cases, like the one depicted by the “Steel” ad — is that it took over what were healthy companies, loaded them up with debt, and then blew ‘em apart and sold off the pieces. York is trying to push the misleading impression of Romney as fixer-upper, which despite being untrue (for good or ill, Romney’s job was to make money for investors, not to destroy companies, nor to save them) has patent advantages as a campaign pitch.

But, again, Obama’s appeal only goes as far as the repulsive powers of the Republican Party can take him. Fundamentally, Obama’s not a guy who’s going to have much ill will towards “private equity” types like Romney. Especially not those he counts among his donors! What we’re left to wonder about the kind of voters targeted by “Steel,” and being jockeyed over by both campaigns, is whether they’ll care enough about Romney’s past to vote against him or whether they’ll ignore Romney and vote against Obama’s economy instead.

As far as these folks are concerned, one thing’s certain: They’ll have no one to vote for; only against.

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Harry Reid Has Had Just About Enough Of This Filibuster Business

by Elias Isquith on May 11, 2012

smhr

Some good-ish news today — it looks like Senate Majority Leader Reid is ready, finally, to talk about reforming the filibuster:

An angry Harry Reid took to the floor Thursday and demanded changes to the Senate’s hallowed filibuster rules, siding with junior Democrats who have sought to substantially weaken the powerful delaying tactic…

“If there were ever a time when Tom Udall and Jeff Merkley were prophetic, it’s tonight,” Reid said on the floor. “These two young, fine senators said it was time to change the rules of the Senate, and we didn’t. They were right. The rest of us were wrong — or most of us, anyway. What a shame.”

Reid added: “If there were anything that ever needed changing in this body, it’s the filibuster rules, because it’s been abused, abused, abused.”

In near-perfect Harry Reid fashion, this announcement comes about three years too late. But better late than never, I suppose. And when you consider just how long it’ll take before reform, which requires a two-thirds majority of Senators, to pass — if it ever comes to pass, that is — three years begins to look like a drop in the bucket.

A lot of the response to Reid’s declaration here is likely to be of the shirt-rending variety. People will worry that what we’re witnessing is nothing less than yet another step in a process of dissolution for US government. They might be right.

But I think this is a positive sign, and not just because the filibuster has become the most significant impediment to progress  — after all, the likelihood that Republicans will soon find themselves the Senate majority is higher than Obama winning while Democrats hold the Senate and retake the House. What I find encouraging is the prospect that our political system will finally begin to reflect the political reality that surrounds it. The Republican Party already behaves like a political party in a parliamentary rather than Presidential system (i.e.,rigid, disciplined, ideologically coherent) and while nothing would result in the Democratic Party becoming a left-wing inverse of the GOP, filibuster reform would at least result in results.

Some of those results I’ll no doubt hate, but I’d rather that people could see the consequences of the ideologies they’re voting for — whether they realize it at first or not — than blithely assume the President is some kind of pseudo-King who can do nearly whatever he wants (that’s only true as regards foreign policy, just as James Madison always wanted) when the truth of the matter is considerably different. For more along these lines, check this recent Noam Scheiber post.

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Inequality And Same-Sex Marriage

by Elias Isquith on May 11, 2012

The rise of inequality in the United States — and the West, generally — over the past 30 years has led to a lot of changes in both our culture and politics. A lot of these changes have been for the worse. But I think the President’s recent public endorsement of same-sex marriage (SSM) stands, alongside last year’s legalization of SSM in New York, as a rare example of a positive development that may never have occurred, were wealth in America more evenly apportioned.

First, let’s briefly remind ourselves of New York Governor Andrew Cuomo’s 2011 push to legalize SSM in his state, and the essential role wealthy persons in the gay community (or members of their family) played in its ultimate success.

Here’s an upside to living in the political word of the .01% that conservatives already know but with which liberals are less familiar: there’s no better friend, no more honorable private citizen, than one with whom you agree who just so happens to walk around with nine zeros trailing their every step. Not only can these folks bankroll a think tank dedicated to a shared pet project, and not only can they provide much-needed campaign finance security when you take a stand the public may not like. A public spirited member of the .01% can also lend their largesse to any other politicians willing to take the plunge, so long as assurances have been made that they won’t consequently find their reelection campaign woefully underfunded.

Those kind of assurances are what it took to get a handful of Republican New York State legislators — inclined to vote in favor of SSM, but concerned that they’d find themselves going the way of Mike Castle as a result — to play their role in making history. As a New York Times history of the bill’s passage reported,

In the 35th-floor conference room of a Manhattan high-rise, two of Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s most trusted advisers held a secret meeting a few weeks ago with a group of super-rich Republican donors.

Over tuna and turkey sandwiches, the advisers explained that New York’s Democratic governor was determined to legalize same-sex marriage and would deliver every possible Senate vote from his own party.

Would the donors win over the deciding Senate Republicans? It sounded improbable: top Republican moneymen helping a Democratic rival with one of his biggest legislative goals.

But the donors in the room — the billionaire Paul Singer, whose son is gay, joined by the hedge fund managers Cliff Asness and Daniel Loeb — had the influence and the money to insulate nervous senators from conservative backlash if they supported the marriage measure. And they were inclined to see the issue as one of personal freedom, consistent with their more libertarian views.

Within days, the wealthy Republicans sent back word: They were on board. Each of them cut six-figure checks to the lobbying campaign that eventually totaled more than $1 million.

Turning to the case of President Obama, the story isn’t much different. Most of the funders putting pressure on the President to “evolve” didn’t come from across the aisle. And Obama had no reason to worry about a primary challenge. But in this instance, too, it was the outsized power of the purse — and the abnormally severe concentration of that power among a relatively small group of people — that spurred a politician to take a step posterity will almost certainly cheer. Greg Sargent of The Washington Post shares how Obama’s big announcement has initiated a honeymoon period for the President and the subset of his fundraising base in the LGBTQ community:

Here’s something else Obama accomplished with his announcement yesterday: He has basically wiped away whatever tensions existed between him and the gay fundraising community over a range of issues, of which marriage is only one.

The other day I reported here that some angry gay donors were witholding funds from the Obama effort because of the President’s failure to pass the executive order barring same sex discrimination by federal contractors.

The effort to get Obama to reverse course on the executive order was led by Jonathan Lewis, the major gay philanthropist and fundraiser, whose office told me that in some cases, big donations were being held.

But now the money is decidedly flowing again.… A source familiar with the situation tells me that Lewis maxed out to the Obama campaign within hours of his announcement yesterday. And Lewis is also soliciting funds from many of his colleagues and family.

Sargent rightly notes that roughly 17% of Obama bundlers — super rich donors who bundle-together donations from their super rich family and friends — are gay. A President looking at a tough reelection, likely to be suffused with outside spending in favor of his opponent, definitely wants to keep folks like these happy. Especially if, as is the case for Obama, finding other revenue streams of equivalent force is easier said than done.

Historically, a Democratic President in a similar situation would look to the unions. And it’s certainly still true that the country’s unions, diminished as they may be, remain an integral part of the Democratic Party’s fundraising apparatus. Still, they’re not what they once were; and it’s white collar types — the kind of people we think of as socially liberal and fiscally moderate — who have stepped in to fill the void:

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Although we tend to associate unions with the center-left, it’s worth remembering that one of the chief reasons there came to be a breakup of the New Deal coalition (of which unions were the backbone) was due to the rising salience of social issues, not the least of which being gay rights. But in our neo-Gilded Age political economy, with its chicken-egg dynamic of faltering unions and a shrinking middle class, Democrats no longer care so much about what union leaders — who, ideally at least, listen to their members — have to say. And with unions nationwide in something of an existential struggle, they can’t afford to waste their limited political influence by fighting over social issues and alienating other members of the Democratic voting bloc.

The result is a Democratic Party that, as Ron Brownstein of National Journal understands, is increasingly embracing a post-union model for electoral success — and it’s a model that, by a choice born of necessity, is going to privilege the concerns of a hyper wealthy, socially liberal few, over its traditional base: the middle class, socially conservative many. For those who shudder at the prospect of a future in which both major Parties are even more unconcerned with issues of class than they are today, this is a potentially worrisome development. But when you consider how tolerant of SSM the vast majority of young people are — as well as how much more comfortable many of these same youth claim to be with government policies focused on reducing inequality — there’s reason to believe social and economic liberalism soon won’t be an either/or proposition for Democrats.

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Not So Queer, Really

by Elias Isquith on May 9, 2012

A very touching, even beautiful, blog post from The American Prospect‘s E.J. Graff speaks to how the President’s announcement today, as riddled with federalist caveats and political expedience as it may be, is nevertheless a profound moment in the history of equality in this country:

In 2004, I sat in a Unitarian pew while my friends Hillary and Julie Goodridge said their vows. I was absolutely fine with all the lead-up—they’d been together as long as I had been with my beloved partner, and I’d known them before that. Then came the phrase “By the power vested in me by the commonwealth of Massachusetts”—and I was sobbing harder than I knew was possible. So were the hardbitten LGBT activists around me, even those who weren’t especially happy about the pursuit of marriage. As we all managed to sit up and dry our eyes, a little embarrassed at how raw the emotion was, one of the latter said, “I guess being ready for something intellectually isn’t the same as being ready emotionally.” 

There’s something very deep about having your government declare you a stranger to its laws, defining your love as outside all respectable recognition. For my president to stand up and say that I should belong fully to my nation, that my wife and I should be considered as fully married as my brother and his wife—well, it reopens and washes out some very deeply incised sense of exclusion, a scar inflicted when, at age 15, I first panicked at the realization that I might be queer. 

But not so queer, really, if even my president believes that my marriage is the equal of his. Politics tomorrow. Today is a good day.

I’m not advocating journalists across the board praise Obama to the Heavens as some kind of Lincoln-like prophet and sage of love and acceptance — even Lincoln wasn’t quite Lincoln, after all — but I do wish some of the more quick-to-scoff in the commentariat would reflect for a moment on how, in their hurry to prove their savviness, they may be neglecting some small part of their humanity.

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On The Origin Of Barack Obama And Same-Sex Marriage

by Elias Isquith on May 9, 2012

Lgbtqobama212400

Update: Well, consider this post as something of an explanation for this.

[Note: There's a chance that this post is imminently going to become OBE, but what the Hell…]

I don’t think anyone in their right mind who has paid any attention to his career believes that the President is opposed to same-sex marriage (SSM). His famous claim to be “evolving” on the issue has been rightly and thoroughly mocked by both the Left and the Right, both for its cravenness as well as its self-conscious insincerity. (If I were a different kind of blogger, in fact, I’d probably feel inclined to go on at length about how the entire “evolving” trope is supremely post-modern. But Stanley Fish has scared me away from that terrain for the indefinite future.) It’s certainly long been my assumption that, sometime during his second term — or during Romney’s first — Obama would announce his support for what is increasingly becoming an uncontroversial practice.

Events seem to be conspiring, however, to force Obama to hurry up already and evolve, sooner than he’d like.

Vice President Biden is responsible for the push that first sent this boulder rolling down the mountain. On Meet the Press last weekend, he told host David Gregory he was “absolutely comfortable with the fact that men marrying men, women marrying women, and heterosexual men and women marrying another are entitled to the same exact rights, all the civil rights, all the civil liberties.” Understandably, many took this to be a rather opaquely stated but nonetheless genuine endorsement. Whether it was intended to be taken as such is difficult to say. Some anonymous Administration officials seemed to indicate it was not and that Biden had let his mouth get away from him (a.k.a., was being Joe Biden) . Yet on a conference call with reporters not long thereafter, Obama’s longtime chief political advisor, David Axelrod, insisted that the Vice President’s remarks weren’t simply nothing new, but were in fact the long-held views of the President:

“I think that [Biden's comments] were entirely consistent with the president’s position, which is that couples who are married — whether gay or heterosexual couples — are entitled to the very same rights and very same liberties,” Axelrod said. “That’s why the president and the administration has stood down on the DOMA court case and believe that the law is unconstitutional, and when people are married, we ought to recognize those marriages and import the rights to which they’re entitled.”

Axelrod continued that those views were “the essence” of what the Biden was saying in his remarks on marriage on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” which lit up the Internet and were characterized as an endorsement of same-sex marriage.

“That was the essence of the policy basis of what he was saying, and that’s where the federal government comes into play,” Axelrod said.

As is his wont, Axelrod is being cute — though when one considers the muddled mess that Obama’s stated position on SSM marriage has always been, it’s hard for Axelrod to do anything but. While it’s true that Obama has always said he’d like same-sex civil unions to carry all the same rights and benefits as marriage, he’s described himself as ambivalent over calling these unions marriages. He says his religious faith is the source of his indecision. A literal reading of Biden’s remark, then, is something like old news; but the lack of the ambivalent caveat, the breezy nature of his endorsement (“absolutely comfortable”) represented a tonal shift. Noting the weird half-forward, half-backward trajectory of the Administration’s official stance on the issue, Talking Points Memo’s Josh Marshall wondered if perhaps the White House wasn’t hoping to change Obama’s stated position without anyone noticing.

All this maneuvering, bobbing, and weaving; is it necessary? Does the President still need to pretend he’s against SSM in name, if not in fact, lest he risk crucial support from swing voters and the like? Coming less than 24 hours after voters in North Carolina — the home of this year’s Democratic Convention and a crucial swing-state Obama won by the barest of majorities in 2008 — overwhelmingly voted to amend their state Constitution so as to ban SSM, it’s not difficult to argue that he does. Add to this the failure of the legislature in Colorado (another swing-stage) to pass a bill authorizing same-sex civil unions, and the picture looks rather clear. Emphasis on looks.

Yesterday’s results don’t, in my mind, render a definitive judgment, though they do indeed suggest one. The main reason to be wary of overestimating their import: the demographics of the electorate for a ballot initiative held in May are not at all the same as those for a Presidential election. In North Carolina, for instance, only about 500,000 people voted — yea or nay — on Amendment 1. What’s more, surveys conducted by Public Policy Polling indicate that a majority of voters didn’t even understand what they were voting over. Despite 53% of North Carolinians supporting either SSM, civil unions, or both, Amendment 1, which squashed all of the above, cruised to victory. Some of the disparity likely has to do with respondents lying to pollsters about their real beliefs; but there’s also little doubt that people were confused. Similarly, the demise of a civil unions bill in Colorado — which, it’s worth noting, failed due to parliamentary shenanigans rather than a popular vote — did not reflect the recorded will of the people of Colorado, 62% of whom claim to support same-sex civil unions.

So let’s place yesterday’s voting aside. The argument that Obama should not endorse SSM still remains more or less what it was when Dan Savage (of all people) stated less than a year ago:

While national polls show a slim majority of Americans now support marriage equality, supporters of marriage equality aren’t evenly distributed throughout all 50 states. They’re over-represented in populous blue states that Obama is going to carry, under-represented in purple states that he needs to carry, and thin in the ground in red states that he has no hope of carrying. Electoral College Goddam. And maybe I’m a pessimist… but… I don’t think Obama endorsing marriage equality would convince any Republicans who support marriage equality (all six of them) to vote for him, I don’t think it by itself would convince independents to vote for him, and I think it would convince some conservative Democrats to vote against him.

While the two groups are by no means mutually exclusive, others point out that African American voters, in addition to conservative Democrats, might find themselves less enthused about voting for the President, were he to change his mind about SSM. As poll after poll has shown black voters are outliers within the Democratic coalition when it comes to SSM, opposing it by a clear majority. However, it’s worth noting that African American voters, like most voters in general, have increasingly come to support SSM over the past 5-10 years. Perhaps more importantly, the idea that black voters would switch to Romney or stay-at-home in response to a shift on the issue from the President is highly contestable. Jamelle Bouie, for one, isn’t buying it — nor for that matter any of the other arguments proffered by those who’d council Obama to keep evolving:

The important thing for President Obama to realize is that his base—the supporters he needs to energize to win reelection—are largely among those who support same-sex marriage. African Americans are opposed, yes, but it’s also not a voting issue, as evidenced by the politicians—black and white—who support gay marriage and consistently win the large support of African American voters.

There’s two arguments circulating about why Obama shouldn’t support same-sex marriage, even his opposition is a political ploy. The first is that he might polarize the issue; the bully pulpit calcifies opposition more than it rallies support, and coming out for gay marriage might throw an obstacle in the effort to win hearts and minds. But this only works if support for same-sex marriage reaches across partisan lines. In the real world, it doesn’t; Americans are already polarized on marriage equality. At most, Obama would harden opposition and deepen support, and in a close election, that’s not a bad thing.…

[T]here is political value in presidential courage. For the LGBT community, Obama’s support would be a huge symbolic victory and a tremendous mobilizer; it would inspire hope, heighten the stakes, and give many people a reason to work hard or harder for the president’s reelection

It’s on that last point that I think Bouie gets closest to the truth. As I’ve written about often over the past year or so, I do think this election will be primarily about base-turnout. And it’s certainly the case that SSM is an issue that the Democratic base is very passionate about. For young voters especially, but not exclusively, a politician’s support of SSM is a major motivator. In general, being seen as good on the issue can cover up a host of other blemishes — just ask Governor Andrew Cuomo. Equally important is the fact that Obama’s dawdling on this issue hurts him with wealthy LGBTQ supporters, a contingent that, according to The Washington Post, makes up a full one-out-of-six of Obama’s “bundlers” (superrich supporters who go about collecting large sums of money from other superrich supporters) and group with whom Obama’s relations have as of late experienced something of a strain. In an election that will be about money to a degree not seen in perhaps 100+ years, having those folks fired up and ready to go would be no small thing.

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Big Time Democratic Donors To Get Out Their Wallets

by Elias Isquith on May 9, 2012

Money

Everyone knows that an unfathomably large sum of money will be spent this year in service of either Obama or Romney. Romney’s official campaign has raised just shy of $100 million, and he’s got about 10% of that still on-hand. Obama’s raised a whopping $191 million thus far, of which he’s spent about $90 million. But, of course, the reason there’s been so much focus on spending for 2012 has little to do with the campaign fundraising apparatuses, proper. Citizens United and Speechnow.org have created something of a shadow electoral-financial system, one in which, thus far, Republicans have been dominant. Romney’s chief Super PAC, Restore Our Future, has already raised $52 million; Obama’s Priorities USA has only logged $9 million. Sure, we tend to associate big money (slightly) more with the Republicans — but what explains the mammoth disparity?

Well, the explanation provided up to now has been about the liberal moneyed class being too delicate and righteous to engage in the sordidness inherent in third-party fundraising. But a new report from Nick Confessore of The New York Times indicates that many big-spending Democratic Party backers are backtracking on their earlier reluctance — to a point. Now, it turns out, left-of-center folks like George Soros have decided they will write some checks for the Dems, but not for the reasons you’d expect. In a move that smacks not only of petty sanctimony but also desperation, they’ll primarily or only be funding get-out-the-vote (GOTV) efforts rather than the attacks ads that have thus far defined the Super PAC influence:

After months on the sidelines, major liberal donors including the financier George Soros are preparing to inject up to $100 million into independent groups to aid Democrats’ chances this fall. But instead of going head to head with the conservative “super PACs” and outside groups that have flooded the presidential and Congressional campaigns with negative advertising, the donors are focusing on grass-roots organizing, voter registration and Democratic turnout.

The departure from the conservatives’ approach, which helped Republicans wrest control of the House in 2010, partly reflects liberal donors’ objections to the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, which paved the way for super PACs and unbridled campaign spending.

But in interviews, donors and strategists involved in the effort said they also did not believe they could match advertising spending by leading conservative groups like American Crossroads and Americans for Prosperity, and instead wanted to exploit what they see as the Democrats’ advantage in grass-roots organizing.

“Super PACs are critically important,” said Rob Stein, the founder of the Democracy Alliance, a group of liberal donors who will convene near Miami this week to discuss where to steer their money this year. But the liberal groups, he said, believe that local efforts and outreach through social media “can have an enormous impact in battleground states in 2012.”

The response to this story among Obama sympathizers and partisans has been, well, less than exuberant. Another piece in the Times has high-level Democrats fretting over the plan of Soros et al. They understandably worry that these big spenders are throwing money where it’s likely to have the least value: due to unions, primarily, the Democrats nearly always have a superior GOTV infrastructure. Besides, this is an area where the Obama team has not only excelled previously, to an unprecedented degree, but has already planned to spend a huge chunk of its own money in order to register young and latino folks and combat Republican voter registration laws. In its mix of sanctimony, incompetence, cluelessness, and narcissism, the decision comes off as an exercise in self-parody. As The Atlantic Elspeth Reeve put it:

Here are a few stereotypes about liberals this decision embodies: Liberals fetishize the idea of community. Liberals are disorganized. Liberals don’t like to compete. Liberals interact with the world as it ought to be, not as it is.

I’d add: Liberals only espouse the politics they do because they think it makes them better than conservatives, regardless of how they actually live their lives. Oh, sure, it might help the President’s chances to spend money on Super PAC attack ads — but what’s really important here? Supporting the candidate whose policies will help the most people; or proving how benevolent and forward thinking you are by only funding a politics of wide-eyed, bushy tailed hope? Jonathan Chait goes a step further along this same road, calling the decision a manifestation of “the weenie attitude that periodically afflicts liberalism” citing it as evidence of a “confused definition of morality.” He writes:

Obama isn’t arguing that a donor who funds ads is doing something that’s inherently wrong. He’s arguing that a system that allows such donors to wield disproportionate political power is wrong. Given the fact of the system’s existence, there’s nothing morally wrong about participating in it.… If [it's] legal, then there’s no reason to think that a world in which one party’s billionaires fund an advertising blitz is superior to a world in which both parties’ billionaires do so. Indeed, the latter world at least has the virtue of mitigating the political power enjoyed by said billionaires, by having a second group cancel out the effect of the first. Staying out of the advertising race isn’t going to make the system any more fair.

Another point, related to Chait’s focus on systemic dysfunction: If these Dem donors are the types who won’t engage in a system they find odious, even if the goal is to support a political movement that (ostensibly at least) seeks reform, then I see no reason for them to shrug off the oft-volleyed critique from conservatives that, if they want people to pay higher taxes so bad, why don’t they send a larger-than-necessary check to the government themselves? The answer usually, of course, is about society-wide decisions and programmatic responses, yadda-yadda-yadda; how’s that any less the case when it comes to Super PACs than anything else?

To be fair, it’s not clear how large a difference will be made by big donors refusing to play the game under its new rules. John Sides rightly notes that most of the political science on this score, Presidential campaigns and advertising, indicates that too much is made of ad expenditures. It’s only as regards down-ticket races, where the candidates are lesser-known and thus more liable to be defined in the minds of voters by their opponents, that cash for ads can make a huge impact. But that doesn’t mean Obama can get outspent on advertising by a ratio of 5:1 and not suffer for it on election day. Soros and the like need to get over and quit kidding themselves about the country they live in and the powers that they, as the .01%, wield. Hold your noses if you gotta, people; but write the damn checks and let the professionals decide how to spend ‘em.

Taking a step back and reflecting on this post, I’m struck by how depressing this whole debate is. We really have reduced our democracy to a kabuki grudge match between warring cliques of the super-wealthy. I sure do hope Lord Soros and the House of Geffen swoop in to save us in time.

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Joe Biden Says Innocuous Thing, Rightwing Media Flips Out

by Elias Isquith on May 8, 2012

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Oh, Lord, steel me for the next 6 months. Here’s what Vice President Biden said today to a bunch of Rabbis, defending the Obama Administration’s efforts to cease Tehran’s alleged march toward building a nuclear weapon:

Vice President Joe Biden on Tuesday vigorously defended the Obama administration’s record on Israel on Tuesday, crediting President Obama for strengthening America’s position in the region and for imposing “the most damaging sanctions in this century” to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. “We were the problem,” Biden said of the global view of the United States before the president took office. “We were diplomatically isolated in the world, in the region, in Europe. The international pressure on Iran was stuck in neutral.” “We were neither fully respected by our friends nor feared by our opponents,” he told guests at an annual convention of the Rabbinical Assembly. “Today it is starkly, starkly different.”

And here’s the response from some of the online Right which, I must confess, is even stupider (or more disingenuous) than I’d expected:

  • Philip Klein of The Washington Examiner titles his post “Biden is a problem” and repeats a bunch of talking points on Iranian perfidy. He also chastises Biden et al for failing to stop Iran’s “pursuing nuclear weapons.”
  • Daniel Halper of The Weekly Standard merely posts a clip of the soundbite, but later updates his post to literally repeat talking points from the Romney campaign.
  • Guy Benson of Townhall calls Biden’s comments “mindless blame-America-firstism at its hyper-partisan worst,” then goes on to list all the awful things the Iran’s current regime has done.
  • Jim Geraghty of The National Review wins the afternoon with a post that not only claims “Biden’s type” is the kind to blame America first, but also posts the same Romney campaign response that graced Halper’s missive.

To their credit, Geraghty and Benson seem to understand what Biden was saying, that the previous President had so alienated the US from the rest of the world that strained relations were the main obstacle to the global community implementing harsh sanctions against Iran. Unfortunately, the demands of being a rightwing pundit being what they are, both also mouth the sacred catechism decrying those who would “blame America first.” The disconnect is clear: as Morrissey might’ve said, George W. Bush is not America. It’s a shame, the way the ideological rigidity of today’s GOP infects even ostensibly clear-thinking journalists. But I suppose we should thank them for making their shilling so upfront and reposting Romney spin without comment. Clearly, last week’s sit-down is already paying dividends.

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How The NYPD Prepared For May Day

by Elias Isquith on May 8, 2012

NYPD

Alisa Chang of WNYC reports that, prior to last week’s May Day demonstrations, many Occupy organizers were gobbled-up by the NYPD, arrested by the authority of long outstanding — and often extremely petty — warrants. On its face, there’s nothing illegal about acting on old “bench warrants” (warrants for activity not necessarily understood as criminal) but, as Chang notes, it is illegal for police to use warrants as an excuse to collect intelligence. Going by Chang’s report, that certainly appears to be what the NYPD was doing in the days before the first of the month. Here’s a representative example:

Officers visited up to six homes the day before the May 1 protests, but Shawn Carrié found himself getting questioned the evening of the protest. He was coordinating all internal communications for the Occupy movement on May Day. At about 9 p.m., he was walking near Wall Street, heading home.

“And somebody comes up to me and says, ‘Shawn?’  And just grabs my arm and nine dudes surround me,” said Carrié.

He said nine plain clothes officers wearing NYPD jackets asked if he had anything sharp in his pockets.  He shook his head no. He said they started pulling possessions out of his clothes, including his cell phone, his wallet and keys.

Within seconds, he said, they bound his hands with zip ties, but didn’t explain why. Then the officers placed him in a red van waiting nearby that was marked with an NYPD sticker, he said.

When he arrived at Police Headquarters in Lower Manhattan, Carrié said there were several other people waiting to be processed, but he skipped ahead of them. He said he police quickly led him to a room filled with boxes of files where he was alone, except for one officer staring at him from a table.

“And he said, ‘Go ahead, sit down,’” said Carrié.  “He asked me, ‘Do you know why you’re here?’” said Carrié.  “And he said, ‘Tell me about what you were doing today.’”

Carrié said he didn’t say anything. The NYPD declined to comment, and would not verify Carrie’s account of events.

Adding a measure of stereotypical incompetency to Carrié’s whole bureaucratically authoritarian experience, it would turn out that the warrant the NYPD had was for another person entirely. Not that that saved Carrié from spending 13 hours in jail. Something tells me, however, that bringing the “real” Carrié to justice wasn’t quite the number one priority of the arrest, anyway.

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The Real Debate Over What Is To Be Done

by Elias Isquith on May 7, 2012

Post image for The Real Debate Over What Is To Be Done

Ed Kilgore makes an argument I haven’t heard before, one in service of swatting down some liberal convention wisdom. And, in a roundabout way, his post helps explain why I write so much more about the Left than I do the Right.

Kilgore’s target on this one is the oft-repeated truism that as the Republican Party has moved to the right, it’s dragged the center — and Democrats — along with it. Usually you hear this in the context of left-of-center folks contesting the article of faith among Americans Elect-styled “centrists” that Democrats and Republicans have shifted toward their respective bases. Kilgore doesn’t deny Republican have gone hard-right; but he thinks the Dems’ trajectory hasn’t been quite as linear (be it to the right or the left) as many seem to believe. He focuses on the two frequently cited pieces of evidence, Clinton’s TANF and Obama’s PPACA.

Kilgore’s emphasis:

On some issues, notably welfare reform, Democrats “moved right,” if that’s what you want to call it, for a combination of reasons that initially had little to do with cutting deals with Republicans: the existing system wasn’t working very well to accomplish its own stated goals, and was massively unpopular with voters of every persuasion. Yes, Bill Clinton wound up compromising with Republicans on actual welfare reform legislation in 1996 (after vetoing two significantly more draconian bills), but was pursuing his own version of welfare reform before Republicans gained the power to force him to the table.

On health care, it’s not accurate to say that Barack Obama embraced the framework for what became the Affordable Care Act strictly because Republicans had supported something similar. A private-sector-based “managed competition” proposal was in the mix earlier, back during the ClintonCare debate, and was supported by a lot of fairly conventional Democrats, such as Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan. In the 2004 and 2008 Democratic presidential primaries, every candidate other than Dennis Kucinich proposed a “hybrid” system as well, and not because they were anticipating negotiations with congressional Republicans. A single-payer system, while popular among many liberal Democrats, was never some party-wide policy preference that was later “abandoned” by Clinton or Obama, and the polling on it never showed it to be a world-beater, either. Maybe these two Democratic presidents should have pursued it anyway, but again, it’s not so clear that a craving for Republican approval was the key, much less the only, factor.

Concerning welfare reform, I’ll have to defer to Kilgore. At the time of its implementation, I was focused more on T-rex than TANF; and although I think the current policy has proven itself to be woefully inadequate — and to represent a fundamental shirking of the social responsibility that ostensibly defined the Democratic Party — I can’t speak to the virtues, if there were any, of what it replaced. In general, I think those who want to help the  economically oppressed empower themselves do better focusing on health care, education, and labor rights rather than the traditional wealth redistribution of welfare. Beyond fulfilling the most basic economic needs, direct payments don’t do much to combat systemic forces bearing down on the poor. And as we all know, they’re politically toxic, arguably even counterproductive.

On Obamacare, Kilgore’s point — that there never was a decisive contingent among Democrats in favor of single-payer — should be all too clear to anyone who remembered the ignominious end of the Public Option. It’s always worth remembering: the Democratic Party is home to most of America’s liberals, but is not itself a liberal Party. This unwavering fact of the country’s political life can be enormously frustrating and, what’s more, makes comprehending US politics even more difficult than it is already. But it’s the reality that the President, Speaker Pelosi, and Majority Leader Reid in 2009, and they tailored the ultimately passed bill accordingly. There was a real political value in Democrats touting their plan’s similarity to earlier Republican ideas; but that wasn’t the reason why Obama went with the PPACA model rather than something more clearly resembling the New Deal.

All right: so the past two Democratic Presidents probably get more blame for moving the Party to the right than they deserve. At the same time, there’s no doubting that, by and large, the Democratic Party today is more interested than it was previously in using markets, rather than the state, as a first resort. Liberals could get all worked up and search for villains to blame, but keep in mind that this process has occurred throughout the West. There’s really no leftwing Party in the developed world that hasn’t embraced markets more than it had before; the problem — if indeed there is one — is not one of bad actors. Ideas mattered too.

People tend to focus on their perceived adversaries’ ideas, and most understandably think the other Party is where they’ll find their adversaries. True enough — but it’s not the only place. Although this isn’t so much the case today with the GOP, there are plenty of ideologically adversarial relationships within the two major Parties; and in some ways, the result of intra-Party conflict is more important than what happens on election day. Republicans were likely to win big in 2010, no matter what. But it wasn’t inevitable that they’d do so advocating the Tea Party line. A Republicanism of compassionate conservatism might have rocketed to the fore in 2011. It didn’t. Why? Because the Tea Party types, by and large, won their internecine squabbles.

Looking at the Democrats, Kilgore makes the same point:

[N]ow that everyone agrees “bipartisan compromise” on most vital issues has been made simply impossible by the devolution of the GOP into a rigid ideological cult, Democrats still have to decide what policies to propose, and still must, to the limited extent possible, try to govern. And there’s still not an automatic, default-drive “true progressive” position on many national priorities other than resistance to conservative assaults on the New Deal, the Great Society, corporate regulation, environmental protection, civil rights, and peaceful international cooperation.

Once the specter of feckless bipartisanship is banished, there will remain internal disagreements among progressives, so we might as well get used to it and stop pretending it’s a simple choice between courage and cowardice.

Among those left-of-center, the internal disagreement has understandably quieted down as we’ve gotten closer and closer to the election. But once November’s in the rearview mirror, it’ll pick back up again — especially if the President loses. So for those who still believe the Democratic Party can still be a vehicle for progress and improvement, the next few years are much more important than you may think.

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This Is What Concern Trolling Looks Like

by Elias Isquith on May 5, 2012

 

 

 

 
 
When in doubt, talk about messaging!

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