Nothing new to say here, but I am hoping that the political arm of the WH monitors sentiment in the blogosphere and that if they hear this enough, it will sink in.

You guys have to get back control of the national dialog.  You are letting right-wing whackos define the memes for the mainstream media.  Yes, the Tea-Baggers are a minority and yes, Rush Limbaugh is hateful and offensive to most Americans.  But you are mistaken if you think this is enough to protect the majority in 2010. 

The economy is in tough shape; growth is going to remain low and unemployment is going to remain high for a long time; you will not be able to engineer a new bubble (and it is irresponsible to try).  This will weigh on Dems in 2010.  But what makes it much worse is that you are letting the following memes take hold across the electorate (not just with the Tea-Baggers but across the entire political spectrum):

- The Obama admin puts the needs of the big banks ahead of the needs of ordinary Americans

- The Dem in Congress put the needs of special interests ahead of the needs of ordinary Americans

- Fixing the economy is not the top priority of either the Obama admin or Congressional Dems

Your political strategy since the election has been, I think, to push the Republican party to the far right; you think this will build a sustainable Democratic majority.  In better economic times this would work; it is not enough in these times.

You can get health care done.  You can push cap & trade forward.  You should.  But this is not enough.  You have to get a strong economic message out there (and please, stop putting Romer out as your key spokesperson on this; she does not inspire confidence).  You need to start telling Americans that this is going to be a long recovery but that you have a plan (and you need to spell out the top points of the plan).  You need to talk about this ALL THE TIME so that no one can convincingly argue that it is not the top priority.  You need to push real reforms on Wall Street.  You need a narrative here - not just a bunch of isolated short-cycle topics (e.g. Cash for Clunkers).  You need to own the memes. 

If you do not get on top of this very soon you are going to hand Congress to the crazies next year.  We cannot risk this.  WAKE UP!

Winning elections is about succeeding at three things:

1.  Motivating and mobilizing your base.  You don't need to convince these people that you're the better candidate - you just need to get them out to vote.

2.  Avoiding motivating and mobilizing your opponent's base, or even de-motivating them.  If the other guys don't think this election is a matter of life & death, they may not show up.

3.  Convince those who are truly independent or undecided that you're the better option, or at least the lesser of two evils.

Modern elections - and especially off-year elections - are much more about #1 and #2 above than #3.  Dems need to take this to heart going into 2010.  If they react to last night's losses by slowing down initiatives and trying harder to appeal to the mythical center, they play right into the hands of the Repubs.  What Dems need to do is push harder at real reforms - especially of our financial system as Taplin & others have argued - and hope that the economy improves enough by 2010.  We need candidates who will appeal to the coalition that elected Obama, not to independents who might've voted for McCain.

 

National Democrats, wake up.  2010 may not be a replay of 1994, but you should be worried.

The electorate is angry, with good reason.  The economy is weak; unemployment is high and households are forced to make sacrifices in their standard of living.  Those responsible for the economic crisis have not been, for the most part, brought down; they are richer and more powerful than ever.  The world feels more dangerous and uncertain than ever, but Washington seems to be bogged down and not necessarily focused on the same priorities as Main Street. 

At a rational level, many people will realize that blaming the Democrats for all the above is terribly unfair, and that it was right-wing economic policy and Republican misrule that led to many of the problems.  But at an emotional level, the urge to "throw the bums out" is very strong.  This is a big factor in upcoming NJ and VA races; this is the heart of Arlen Specter's problems.

The Republicans know what is happening, and they have a strategy.  They will fire up their base, stoking their rage but working to focus it on Obama, Pelosi, Reid.  They will target winnable races with "moderate" candidates who can distance themselves from extreme positions while still receiving strong base support; they'll count on "throw the bums out" thinking to win the votes of independents.  They will fan the flames of discontent to depress turnout from liberal Dems.  2010 isn't going to be a debate about who has the best policies for the future, or who is truly to blame for our problems - it's going to be (if the Reps have their way) a referendum on the moment:  are you better or worse off than you think you deserve to be?

One thing Dems need to do in order to fight back is get some new faces out there.  2010 is going to be an anti-incumbent year; if the party puts all its muscle behind the same tired old men, we are going to get hammered.  So far I don't think the party has gotten this message (certainly not in Spector's case).  Maybe the results in Virginia and (?) New Jersey will shake things up. 

 

The US employment picture is bleak, and it's likely to remain bleak for a long time.  Krugman, Reich and others are calling for more fiscal stimulus, and perhaps a new WPA to provide jobs while the underlying economy recovers.  I think this is misguided.

In the 1930s, the US was "minimally globalized" - fiscal stimulus was virtually certain to remain within the domestic economy.  Further, the US economy was "labor-centric" - economic growth produced large numbers of productive, medium-skill jobs within reach of most of the unemployed.

Today we are massively globalized:  US fiscal stimulus will still be beneficial, but the benefit flows through our economy into other connected economies; it will take far more stimulus to generate the same domestic benefit (since we are stimulating all of our trading partners).

Today our economy is much more "knowledge-centric" - economic growth produces fewer jobs overall, with a heavier tilt towards higher-skill jobs out of the reach of many unemployed workers.

The government cannot become the long-term employer of a major segment of the population.  And it is not the US taxpayer's job to provide fiscal stimulus to the economies of all our trading partners.  What we are facing is a long-term problem, not to be solved with short-term programs or reflexive replays of the New Deal.

We need a 20-year vision for the American workforce, insuring that our schools are turning out workers capable of competing in a 21st century globalized economy.

We need a 20-year vision for American industry, insuring innovation in key areas and re-establishing the US as a leading exporter.

We need a 20-year vision for American competitiveness, addressing the key problems that our industries face (health care costs especially).

If we go after more short-term stimulus, or just reflexively replay the New Deal, we won't solve the underlying problems.  The political ramifications of failure here are truly horrifying.  Mr. Krugman, Mr. Reich - you guys are both brilliant; please stop pitching short-term solutions and focus more on the long-term changes needed to restore our economy!
 

Is it too cynical to see this as McChrystal's "Petraeus Moment"?  Just give him 40,000 more young Americans and another $60 billion a year or so, and he'll succeed - in making himself a viable contender for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016.

The main reason to be in Afghanistan, it seems to me, is to deny terrorists intent on attacking the US and its allies a comfortable base of operations.  But we need to do this globally, not just in one inhospitable patch of mountains.  And it seems to me that it is primarily a problem of intelligence and technology, not one of manpower.

Why can't we use all our satellite, aircraft, monitoring, computing power etc. to find terrorists, and then use surgical military force to eradicate them?  And why on earth would we need to pacify Afghan cities to accomplish this goal?

And by the way, what happened to capturing Al-Qaeda leadership as the top goal?

Are angry right-wing outbursts against President Obama based in racism?  Yes.  Would any Democratic president, of any color or gender, see the same animosity?  Yes; the tone might not be so overtly racial but the hostility would be just the same.

The right-wing mindset - especially in the South (where I grew up) - has a deep belief that historically prevailing social order is "right"; that it is a product either of divine intent or social Darwinism or both, and that it is inherently wrong for liberal government to interfere with it (e.g. through redistribution of wealth, legislation protecting minority rights, affirmative action, etc.).  The right-wing base believes that all of us - not just minorities - should "know our place" in the prevailing order and hold to it.  It is not a surprise that market fundamentalism is attractive to the far right:  market fundamentalism is simply a form of social Darwinism, proposing that markets have a "natural" output that it is anathema to interfere with.  One could easily substitute "God's will" for "the Invisible Hand".  It is not a surprise that illegal immigration is the hot button for the right wing:  Hispanic immigrants, legal or otherwise, are perceived as a tremendous threat to the culture.

Modern Southern racism is not rooted in obselete views of racial superiority; it is based on cultural exceptionalism - the view that white, Christian "culture" has demonstrated its superiority by building the world's greatest nation, and that liberalism is an effort to undermine the prevailing culture.  Minorities who aid in promoting the superiority of the prevailing culture are welcomed, embraced, even venerated by modern racists.  

Very important not to simply view today's right-wing rage through the outdated prism of the Civil Rights era.  

There's been a lot of blogging and reporting about the rise of right-wing anger over the Obama presidency.  Is this something new and dangerous, or just politics as usual? How comparable is the anti-Obama energy on the right to the anti-Bush energy that animated the left for most of 8 years?  Is Rush Limbaugh the equivalent of Michael Moore?  Is the depiction of Obama as the Joker equivalent to depictions of George Bush as Alfred E. Newman?  This is worth examining.  

When it come to harsh, sometimes unfair criticism and contemptuous mockery, I think we on the left give as good as we get from the right.  (We may not quite match the rhetorical ugliness of the Hannitys and Coulters, but our mockery is much funnier than theirs.)  Politics is a rough game and we play rough just like the other guys do; we can express dismay at the nastiness coming from the other side but to be fair I think we do it too.  

But there are two other elements where I think the anti-Obama rage is way out of balance with anything from the left in recent history:  unhinged paranoia and the threat of violence.  

Perhaps the 9/11 conspiracy theorists are the moral equivalent of birthers, but crackpot theories about the 9/11 attacks never gained any traction in the Democratic mainstream.  By contrast, a majority of Republicans seem to be either firm birthers, or "I'm not sure" fellow travelers.  In all of 8 years of anti-Bush agitation, I can't think of any mainstream example of leftie reality-denial that's comparable to birtherism.  Can anyone?  I know that Michael Moore injected a little paranoia into Fahrenheit 9/11, but implying that the tobacco industry lobby might've been behind allowing lighters on planes seems like pretty tame stuff compared to the birther conspiracy and its ilk (Obama as Muslim, Obama as terrorist sympathizer, Obama as racist, Obama as anti-Semite, Obama as antichrist ... well, the last one doesn't have a lot of traction, at least not yet.)

I also see a strong threat of violence in the anti-Obama movement that just wasn't a factor in Bush bashing.  Cindy Sheehan might've been a huge pain to Dubya on his vacation, but she never (to my recollection) urged her supporters to take any violent actions against him.  Michael Moore might be unfair, shrill and even a little bit paranoid, but I never heard him ask us to do anything but get out and vote.  The subtext of violent armed overthrow of our elected government seems to be exclusively a right-wing phenomenon.

So where does this leave us?  It's not about how we play the game of politics - both sides play rough.  It's about the deliberate stoking of paranoid delusions and the threat of violence.  I'll argue with anyone that the mainstream left just didn't do this even in the heat of Bush-bashing - and that the mainstream right is playing with fire.  A violent, paranoid and delusional mob is an unreliable ally.

Here is Obama, trying to bring a new voice of moderation into an environment dominated by anger and extremes, trying to reanimate the "center" and establish dialog.

Here are the established political leaders, tainted by corruption and authoritarian behavior, quietly seething as Obama takes the stage.

Here are the ranting radical leaders, trying to paint Obama as the enemy, demanding that their followers engage in a never-ending, uncompromising war with all Obama represents.

Here are the silent majorities, deeply religious, poor and uneducated, mistrustful of Obama but not entirely radicalized.  We cannot hope to win all of them over, but we may convince some of them to put aside destructive, radical views and work towards a better future.

OK, so what am I describing?  The Middle East?  Or Red State America?

For conservative activists, demonize her and fund-raise like mad from the base for as long as you can.  The ultimate outcome doesn't matter - all that matters is raising a lot of money while stoking paranoia and partisan rage.

For the mainstream media, cover this like a boxing match and pray for a scandal.  The ultimate outcome doesn't matter - all that matters is getting eyeballs and filling ad inventory.

For "moderate" Senate Democrats, subtly threaten to deny your support while negotiating in the back room for special favors.  The ultimate outcome doesn't matter - all that matters is bringing home pork for your friends and insuring your re-election.

For Senate Republicans & the GOP establishment, pontificate over the Senate's role and drag things out.  The ultimate outcome doesn't matter - all that matters is keeping one liberal off the court as long as you can get away with it (maybe through the whole next court session, so the conservative bloc of Roberts-Scalia-Alito has even more influence) and convincing the right-wing base that you did everything you could to block her.

Barring some major revelations of personal scandal, her confirmation is assured - eventually.  But it will take time.  What is the longest it has ever taken in the past to confirm a Supreme Court justice?  Bet on beating that record.

Why has opposition to the stimulus become the defining issue for today's Republican party?  The party's base cares deeply about abortion, gay rights, gun control, the war on terror and no doubt many other issues.  But the stimulus seems to generate passion and anger that's a quantum step above any of these.  The general noise level post-Specter suggests that there is room in the Republican party for different opinions on many issues, but not on this one.  Why?

Is it too simple to view the stimulus vote as a proxy for racial animosity?  Ignoring the details, the stimulus is big spending by Democrats & liberals on domestic programs.  To much of the Republican base, this means helping "them".  They would rather see no Federal spending at all than see it benefit those groups that they despise.

Is it fair to say that the last issue inspiring this kind of anger in the right-wing base was Bush's attempt to reform immigration?

Clearly the rage over the stimulus is not motivated by deficits ("Reagan proved that deficits don't matter") or by the details (tax cuts vs. infrastructure spending vs. direct grants to states vs. other).  This is primal, emotional, deep-seated.  I am not one of those folks who sees racism lurking behind every shadow but in this case, it's hard to not see the anti-stimulus rage as a proxy for racial animosity. 

Hard to believe that some pundits are spinning the SCOTUS opening as good news for the GOP.  Even our beloved cable talking heads aren't this dumb, and they shouldn't assume we are either.

Obama is going to choose a respectable center-left jurist for the seat - he will be sure to pick someone who rankles some progressives, and his media team will insure that pushback from the left gets some play.  It's a good bet that he will choose someone whose name is already out there, so some positive public & journalist opinion is already formed on them.

The Republicans are going to make this a cause celebre just as they did the stimulus - every elected Republican must vote to filibuster the nominee or face expulsion.  It's just not conceivable that they will approach this in any other way (at least unless David Addington is the nominee).

The filibuster will fail, and the Republicans will end up with an even more angry and energized radical base, fewer moderates and an even more marginalized position with the mainstream electorate.  And then the whole media cycle on their future will start over again.   

Olympia Snowe & probably others are circulating this Reagan quote, hoping that echoes of the Gipper will help to tame the radicals:

"We should emphasize the things that unite us and make these the only 'litmus test' of what constitutes a Republican: our belief in restraining government spending, pro-growth policies, tax reduction, sound national defense, and maximum individual liberty."

But in truth, these aren't Republican values, they are American values.  I don't think there are many Democrats who are opposed to these principles, and if there are, they aren't relevant.  And Snowe's view (shared by many) that this is fundamentally about ideology is wrong.

In Reagan's day, both parties shared a commitment to govern.  When there is a shared will to govern, you can differentiate based on ideology - the voters decide which ideology should lead and the other guys are left to play "the loyal opposition".  But the two sides still work together to find solutions to problems and in general try to make things better.

As the national Republican party has moved more and more to the right, the commitment to govern has lapsed.  The rump Republican party in Congress explicitly does not want to collaborate in governance - they are very clear that they will only obstruct.  This is the heart of their problem.  

Give the American people two parties equally committed to governance, and they'll choose between competing ideologies.  Give them one party willing to govern and one saying "it's our way or the highway", more voters choose the party willing to govern even in spite of ideological misgivings.
 

Is Arlen Specter a craven opportunist, a Republican Joe Lieberman, jumping parties so he can avoid a humiliating primary defeat and hang onto a cozy government job for 6 more years?  Sure, but come on, he's a politician. 

Is he going to vote with Republicans most of the time?  My guess is, more than we'd like but less than some expect.  He doesn't have the Repug leadership bullying him any more, he needs support from the Dem leaders and he does sincerely want to be part of governing, not just obstructing.  I think it's more likely that he will forge partnerships with a bunch of other center-righters (mostly Dems at this point but Snowe & Collins could join in) and insist on watering down a lot of key legislation in exchange for supporting cloture.

Why not just let him hang in the breeze and run a more liberal Dem for the seat?  Because we might not win.  This is a sure thing and it would be reckless not to take advantage of it. 

Is it bad for the Democratic party that there are so many center-right Dems nowadays?  Well, it's better than having these guys be Republicans, isn't it?  There is always going to have to be negotiation and compromise between the center-right and the center-left to get things done (the less centrist folks are going to be less inclined to compromise by nature).  So now instead of compromise happening between the parties, it happens within a supermajority party.

The Senate by design underrepresents the densely populated urban centers of our country - this tends to put it to the right of center on most issues.  We are better off with a strong center-right block inside the Dem caucus that wants to be an active part of governing, than with a larger Republican caucus focused only on saying no.  So let's celebrate this as a win, which it certainly is, and welcome Specter in spite of policy disagreements and general distaste for such obviously self-serving opportunism! 

As I watch the sorry spectacle that used to be American conservatism continue its descent into absurdity, I think that "left" vs. "right" is a much less meaningful distinction today than "reality-based" vs. "reality-blind".  It is deeply disturbing to see adult citizens (voters!) who demonstrate no logical coherence or intellectual openness at all in their deeply held beliefs on taxation, government spending, economic fundamentals, climate science, evolution, religion, race, culture or even the history of the United States itself.  Ideological blindness is not limited to the political right - it has been found (and continues to exist) at all extremes of the political spectrum.  But at the present time in our country, the political right seems to be overloaded with willful ignorance.  This can be morbidly entertaining but it is actually a very bad thing.  Government policy-making would benefit from serious, thoughtful conservative input; effective single-party rule will inevitably lead to corruption and waste; our democracy itself can be threatened if the willfully ignorant through some unforeseen circumstance achieve political power.  

How did this happen?  What "broke" the right (and could the left "break" for the same reasons)?  I'd guess this subject has been written on already; here are some theories.

1.  Over-reliance on issue-based polarized voters

Political parties exist to win elections.  They spend money to convince voters to support their candidates - they win when they beat the other party in cost-per-vote.  Highly polarized voters - motivated partisans who would never vote for the other guys - are valuable because their cost-per-vote is very low.  Both major parties pursue polarizing strategies with various subgroups, seeking to maintain a "base" of loyal partisans with low cost-per-vote.  

Republicans and Democrats have both seen success with "identity polarization".  To be white and Southern is to be Republican.  To be African-American is to be Democratic.  These alignments are deeply rooted in individual identity and can mostly be relied upon even when parties pursue policies that are against the interests of the polarized groups.

Republicans have been much more successful than Democrats in "issue polarization".  Abortion, gay rights and gun control are all highly polarizing issues; opponents of each are much more likely to be "single-issue" voters.  Republicans seized upon this and widened their polarized "base" with aggressive positions on these issues.  However, this comes at a price:  a loss of flexibility around these issues.  Identity-polarized voters will live in a "big tent"; issue-polarized voters will not.

2.  Agenda conflict with right-wing media leaders

The media landscape has changed enormously over the past three decades, and a strong right-wing media has emerged - talk radio and Fox News.  Within right-wing media, certain individuals - Rush, Hannity and others - have established themselves as strong opinion leaders with a sizable audience.  This has largely benefited the Republican party, giving them a "propaganda arm" to build support for right-wing positions and demonize political opponents.  But this is a marriage of convenience for right-wing opinion leaders:  their agenda is to make money, not to win elections.  

There are left-leaning opinion leaders with large audiences too:  Keith Olbermann, Michael Moore, John Stewart.  But the Democratic party has so far not made the mistake of entangling its electoral agenda with these figures.  By contrast, the Republicans - at both a party and individual level - have sought out the endorsement of right-wing opinion leaders.  This is a winning strategy when partisan fevers are running high and the country is tilting rightwards, but it's a disaster when the party needs to seek the center.

Centrism is not where opinion leaders make money.  They thrive on controversy and extreme opinion - this is what sells ad time and books.  Rush would bite the heads off live guinea pigs if he could make enough money from it; he may prefer Republican government, but he won't help Republicans win elections if it costs him advertisers or audience.  The entanglment of Republican politics with right-wing media and its opinion leaders is preventing Republicans from staking out centrist positions.

3.  Failure of key "big ideas"

Conservative intellectuals were buoyed by successes in the 1980s-90s.  The economy was booming under supply-side economics; the Soviet Union collapsed when the US took a more confrontational, muscular approach to foreign policy.  These two "big ideas" were central to modern conservative thought:  deregulation and lower taxes to fuel economic growth; an aggressive, hard-power foreign policy to build a more free and peaceful world.  Both ideas were pushed too far and led to catastrophe.

When the intellectual underpinnings of a movement are so badly discredited, the intellectuals hang their heads and shut their mouths.  They don't want to say that the ideas were just plain wrong (and they weren't; they were just pushed too far).  But they don't have strong new ideas to put forward, and they don't want to try to defend the old ideas when there is so much evidence that they brought about disaster.  So they stay quietly out of sight.

Unfortunately it is the thoughtful intellectuals in the conservative movement who are badly needed by Republicans right now to shape more centrist views and sell them.  With these guys off the stage, the only voices being heard are the loud and unreasonable ones, spouting the old ideologies in more partisan terms.  

Will this situation fix itself over time?  Possibly.  My worry is that single-party rule by Democrats will lead to corruption and scandal, angering independent voters, and that Republicans will get back into power (at least partially) before they've worked out these problems.  

We were outraged over the Merrill Lynch bonuses; now we're outraged over the AIG bonuses and no doubt there have been many other outrageous bonus payments made by companies on the taxpayer dole.  Yet we're told that there is nothing to be done; deals have been made and can't be abrogated legally.  It seems to me that there is one easy way to go after the bonuses:  we make a short-term modification to the tax code.

Consider something along these lines:  for a period of 3 years (starting with 2008 - we should be able to do this retroactively), we make bonus payments from institutions receiving TARP or other federal rescue funds taxable at a rate of, say, 110%.  Congress should be able to pass this quickly (would anyone in Congress stand on the "no new taxes" principle here?)