We lived in a 51-49 political environment for a long time. Far too many people were ripe for the picking as long as you told them what to fear. The Republicans were better at making noise about fear. They suffered from a similar "victory disease" to what helped doom Japan to an earlier than otherwise likely defeat in the Second World War. They figured to roll over us all because no one was going to stand up to them.

I believe we owe our election victories as much to the emergence of Democrats as to Republican mistakes. A group of Democratic leaders emerged to point out time and time again that there was a choice to be made. You didn't have to put up with Republican malfeasance because there was a second party ready to take over.

The single biggest difference between 2004 and 2006 was the quality of leadership shown by people like Reid and Pelosi. Voters were ground down by two more years of corruption and mistakes but that seemed ready to happen in 2004. This time, we had Democrats pointing out the choices behind each Republican "mistake."

Posted at December 26, 2006 2:28 PM in response to Event of the (Two) Year (Cycle)?

It's American political tradition that a former President avoid criticizing the foreign policy of the sitting President. As far as I know, there's no idiot exemption to let President Clinton go after Bush. It is a credit to Clinton that he took as much garbage as he did before replying. I just wish the Republicans had the guts to follow the same rules.

Posted at September 24, 2006 5:45 PM in response to Facing the Bullies in their Pulpits

The FDCPA, as it's called in the business, only applies to third party collection agencies. In house collections are generally instructed to comply with the regulations voluntarily. As long as the Act is not extended to in house collections, companies like my former employer are free to resort to unpleasantness.

In the good old days of the Clinton administration, there was a certain degree of civility to the system. Since there was a genuine fear that the FTC (or some other agency of whom I am unaware) would rule that the FDCPA applied to everyone, collectors had to be careful.

Now, the pressure starts at the top. Company bigwigs tell their floor managers to squeeze the employees and it rolls downhill from there. I suspect that it would not have been possible to keep up with company standards without at least crossing into legal grey areas. The bad news is that the FDCPA requires intent to break the law.

When you have fire up floor managers walking up and down through the bullpen yelling out for everyone to get "phone pays," it is tough to say that the employee intended anything more than to get that manager off his or her back. The managers have cover because they never told employees to break the law specifically. In any case, would anyone expect a Bush run agency to rule against monied(sp?) interests?

On a personal note, I must insist that there were lines no one I knew would cross. Despite the fact that we had access to personal information, we never faked payments or stole from debtors. We also never took their personal information out of the building no matter how angry we got with them.

For the most part, it's not the people you speak to who are the problem. We're all victims of the system.

Posted at September 24, 2006 9:49 AM in response to Congress Emboldens the Debt Bullies

My problem with the democracy first concept is that it has been tried before. Between the two World Wars, quite a few small nations attempted to function as democratic republics. Many of them ended up as dictatorships that were better loved by the populations.

The problem was not that these people lacked some native intelligence required to live in a republic. Simply put, their societies had metaphorical growing pains as they attempted to modernize and liberalize at the same time. People associated "democracy" with the "freedom to starve."

Democracy promotion seems like the grade school version of nation building to me. The United States did not have to learn how to be a nation all at once. We enjoyed the rights and priveliges of British subjects so human rights came before the republic. (Obviously, slavery is the great blemish of the early republic.) We experienced the ups and downs of what was then a pretty modern economy. We had extensive experience with the British constitutional monarchy and we modified it to suit our needs.

With all of this training and time to get it right, we still needed more time for reforms like direct election of senators. One might say that we still have much further to go with structural changes like abolishing the Electoral College. Few people have good answers to the problems of money and politics.

Shouldn't we look at the idea of promoting a crash course of democracy very carefully? I believe that human rights are a better first step. This includes the rights of women, minorities and those considered "undesirable" by the autocracies. Let's promote freedom of the press and the right to peaceful assembly.

I could go on and on. If democratic republics are the eventual goal and benchmarks are set to head in that direction, I'm all for it. It's just not right to set the cart before the horse.

Posted at September 21, 2006 1:07 AM in response to Democracy Promotion and Democrats

I believe what Matt is writing is that this war was a bad idea no matter who was in power. If the greatest general in the history of the world had planned it out and gotten complete cooperation from the government, the result would have been pretty much the same. Therefore, saying so and so is incompetent gets in the way of realizing this.

Olmert's competence or incompetence is another issue altogether. We have a similar situation here in the United States. Bush is so blatantly incompetent that it hides the other, more important, issue. Like starting a land war in Asia, attempting to carry out a conventional campaign against guerrilla forces is a bad idea. We get so caught up in trying to give Bush what he deserves that we fail to remember the other problem. We may need to fight such a war against a real enemy like Al Qaeda so we need some new ideas.

If we get too caught up in incompetence, it will come back to haunt us.

Posted at August 29, 2006 12:17 AM in response to Incompetence and Israel

Right wing tax theory possibly isn't so much incorrect as it is out of date. Extremely high top marginal tax rates do produce a break on economic growth. On the other hand, that theory has gone far beyond the level of diminishing returns. Even assuming that the right wing is correct, there comes a point where each tiny bit of economic growth costs too much in reduced tax revenues and/or social inequality.

Right wing friends of mine like to use JFK in defense of the Laffer curve. After all, he lowered taxes and gained revenue. Nevermind that the Shrub's tax cuts came on top of Reagan's tax cuts that came on top of JFK's. They see this idea as an absolute when it is so obviously absurd.

Perhaps the right wing's supposed distaste for moral relativism prevents some of them from seeing any nuance. To them, there is no difference between lowering the top rate from 90% to 70% and from 35% to 0.

Posted at August 22, 2006 11:21 AM in response to More Inequality

Unless I'm mistaken and I may be, Lee is calling for France to send troops and for the United States to provide money and logistical support. In other words, we would not be attempting to win over hearts and minds ourselves. We'd be asking the French to do so.

There's a good chance that France will send more troops if they are placed under French command. This is a common demand. When the United States stationed vast numbers of soldiers in Europe to be ready for World War III, NATO's structure dealt with the twin needs of the military and civilian issues. Since the US had the most troops and the most military might, NATO's commander was always American. Since this ruffled a few feathers, the civilian side of NATO was always headed by a non-American.

Something similar could be worked out on the ground in Lebanon. Place French officers in command of the troops and have someone culturally appropriate lead aid and reconstruction.

Posted at August 21, 2006 11:13 PM in response to Courting Failure in Lebanon

Thank you. I knew that I could get a name by looking it up. What I am asking is slightly more. I'm asking people to evaluate candidates based on their local observations. Even if I could remember Mike Castle's opponent, I doubt I'd list him here anyway. Castle has just been too popular to beat.

I am going to join my local Democratic community and may have access to new information. If Castle looks beatable, I will toot the challenger's horn here and ask others to support him.

There must be more "Ned Lamont types" (intentional oversimplification) who face vulnerable Republican opponents. If only the netroots knew about them to solicit money and other things needed for a campaign. Someone more versed than I in election law would have to make sure we avoid even the appearance of coordination.

We will have another election in two years so we can spend time after November organizing for 2008.

Posted at August 19, 2006 10:43 PM in response to Challenger Money, Incumbent Money

Despite my disability, I'm going to start volunteering as much as I can on a local Democratic Committee. What I would like to suggest is that all of us list the candidates we'd like to see money go to here.

Let's find a good place for it and some sort of format. I'd suggest giving us the name of the candidate, party affiliation (for those progressives who aren't Democrats), contact information and what you believe they need.

For example, if I were the Democratic nominee for our one House seat, I would list the following:

John Stapleford - House of Representatives (DE - at large distric)

Democrat

(address of my campaign HQ)

(website for my campaign)

need volunteers, donations and name recognition

This might help us get the right help to the right races whether local, state or federal. Unfortunately, I don't know the name of our candidate who will probably lose to Mike Castle. When I find that stuff out, I'd like a place to post it. My own weblog space doesn't get enough traffic.

Posted at August 19, 2006 10:46 AM in response to Challenger Money, Incumbent Money

Thank you for a most civil post, Hoppy. I'd like to continue in that same spirit because ranting against rants forces me to get on my own nerves. I would say that the problem is not the DLC giving cover to certain Democrats but that certain Democrats use the organization as cover.

My personal opinion is that the media pays so much to self proclaimed "New Democrats" because those of us a little to the left keep flaming each other. On my little weblog here at the site, I've been working on some positive ideas. They may be terrible ideas but they are ideas.

So far, we internet liberals/Democrats have had trouble getting the message out when we do mostly agree. An example is how the press has pigeon-holed Lamont supporters as insurgents, etc. I believe we give them some excuse with our rhetoric toward other liberals and Democrats.

Lieberman had to go. He was the exception that proved the rule so to speak. Someone else may reach Lieberman levels of being a pet Republican but I don't think it's happened yet. Until then, I would suggest that we save our savagery for the right wing/Republicans.

Since the leadership in both the House and Senate gets to decide what measures come to a vote, we should concentrate on getting Democrats in those positions. I believe Nancy Pelosi would make an excellent Speaker of the House. I know less about Reid but he has done a fine job keeping his caucus together. As long as the elected Democrat is willing to vote with the caucus on the leadership positions and stays off Fox News (or disagrees with the hosts), I think we should tolerate him or her.

Getting a truly liberal party will take a lot of time and effort. My ideas that I mentioned earlier are along those lines. For lack of any skill at titling, I'm calling the series (of 2 at the moment) "Liberal Majority in 2026."

Posted at August 12, 2006 3:32 PM in response to Dems Better Exploit UK Terrorist Plot -- Or They'll Lose