I've seen a lot of my fellow Democrats, here and elsewhere, hoping to see Doug Hoffman win in the NY-23 election even though it would mean a Democratic candidate losing. They want our candidate to lose because of the effect it will have on who the GOP nominates for future races. I can certainly sympathize with this desire but I'm not absolutely sure it's the best idea. The questions we need to ask ourselves to decide if we want Hoffman to prevail are whether enough Republican candidates of his ilk can win general elections to make this outcome even worse than if a greater number of more moderate Republicans win and, furthermore, if having Republican moderates in office will be any better.

 

What do you think? Here's why I ask.

 

 

Background for those not following NY-23:

Doug Hoffman, a total right-winger, forced moderate Republican candidate Dede Scozzafava out of the NY-23 race for a US House seat and now faces our guy. If he wins it will embolden the extreme right-wing GOP faction that got him where he is (though it should be noted that there isn't much else left of the GOP anyway). They will do their best to challenge moderate Republicans like Charlie Crist in primaries all over the country, contests which they have proven themselves capable of winning, and end up nominating intensely conservative ideologues like Mark Rubio and Michelle Bachman. We know they will do this because they have said so.

 

I disagree with a guy like Crist on a lot of issues - and he's been tacking hard to the right as Rubio has picked up steam - but Charlie Crist is not crazy. He supported the stimulus and welcomed Obama to his state. On the whole he would have a negative effect in D.C. but I bet Democrats could at least productively work with him on some things. Conversely, Michelle Bachman is crazy. We can't work with her on anything and she will be a model for crazy right-wing candidates everywhere.

 

Why this may or may not be advantageous:

The assumption behind Democratic hopes for their nominations is that these candidates will be too far out of the mainstream for the electorate and they'll lose. That makes sense and I am totally down for kicking some Tea Partier ass in elections but it's also risky. What if a bunch of those GOP candidates win the generals? Yes, they are far to the right of the national electorate. Then again, the most challenging races for Democratic candidates/incumbents are in really conservative districts and states. The NY-23 seat has been in Republican hands since the civil war. If the national mood at election time has shifted even just a little against Democrats could these Bachman-like freaks win in such states and districts? I don't know but that's a scary thought.

 

Further questions:

If Hoffman wins and Republicans only nominate candidates like him and Bachman how many of them win? Isn't that worse, at the very least for the country even if one can find a silver lining for our party, than having a greater number of moderate Republicans win? Since the legislative and national GOP leadership has embraced the Tea Partiers maybe moderate Republicans won't make the congressional GOP's behavior any less crazy. If they do decrease the crazy, what are the numbers? How many fewer Republicans in office does it take to offset the fact that the ones that do get in are crazy as hell?

 

What do you think?

All this focus on the fight to get Sotomayor confirmed is fine because it will probably have significant political repercussions. That said, I'm not worried about the eventual outcome, if she's not confirmed you can paint me red and call me conservative because that there's no way that is happening.

My problem is: with democratic senators generally supportive of her candidacy and republicans opposed it will be republicans driving the substantial questioning. I trust Obama to have nominated someone I will like having on the SCOTUS but there are questions about her views on issues that will be in front of the court that I would like to have answered, if only out of curiosity. I don't imagine that many of my concerns will be addressed by conservative senators because their's are different from mine and I doubt liberal senators that do share my concerns will press her too much on any question. Furthermore, who among you thinks that her answers to any tough question will be substantive? We need a source of information outside of her hearings; I'm not sure what we can use.

Do any of you share this concern? What questions would you like answered?

I would like to know how she views state rights and more narrowly how she thinks the Commerce Clause applies to various regulatory disputes. That covers things like a national ID, the enforcement of drug laws when state and federal law is in conflict, the expansion of aspects of election standards and regulations that the federal government can impose on states (Let's get rid of gerrymandering!), and countless more. Then there's the other big one: executive power. What does she think of state secrets, executive privilege, the Freedom of Information act, etc.?

Again, I'm sure these topics will be broached in her confirmation hearings but I don't think republicans are going to come at them from my angle of interest and I don't think we'll get substantive answers.

What are your questions for her? Does anyone have ideas on where we can look for answers to these questions? I don't think a few speeches she's given are enough to draw conclusions, despite what GOP operatives are saying on TV.

I support Gates's defense budget proposal as a first step. I hope that eventually we will see actual cuts to defense spending, as compared to a 4% increase, but I understand that one has to ease into these things - witness the opposition in the House to a reallocation of resources even when combined with a budgetary increase. Cutting funding for expensive programs that don't address the current realities our military faces and using those funds for programs that do is a good initial measure.

That being said, though I may be an adult I cannot help also being a boy. Laser planes? Multiple Kill Vehicles (AKA hovering murderbots of doom)? Weapons in Space? The F-22? Do you have any idea how COOL the F-22 is?! So cool! It's stealthy, fast as hell, it can quickly and stably take off and land vertically (So can the Harrier but the British designed that; we can one-up them if we do it better!), it can detect radar from other sources over 250 miles away, it can overload and break enemy sensors and disable cruise missiles, it can behave sort of like a WiFi hub - which will be useful when it coordinates other planes' actions like an AWACS, and I'm sure it has even COOLER capabilities that are classified! For Pete's sake, when a wing containing F-22s underwent their first Operational Readiness Inspection they scored a simulated kill-ratio of 221-0!

BEST. PLANE. EVER.

I realize we're going to get 187 of them but halting the program still hurts my deeply ingrained (What kind of boy didn't read Tom Clancy at age 13? A sissy, that's what kind.) love of awesome gear.

Yes, I support cuts to defense spending. I hope others on my side of the debate can admit to themselves that some of the stuff we're giving up is TOTALLY AWESOME.

I mean, laser planes. Seriously.

(This post is about a funny comic strip I read, the link is at the bottom if you'd like to skip the background.)

I think you're going to love this, I was cracking up for a solid minute. The Washington State Legislature recently passed a resolution honoring the creators of Penny Arcade, a thrice-weekly comic strip about video games and related subjects they publish on the internet. Their home page can be found at: http://penny-arcade.com/. Penny Arcade's topics are not usually germane to the discussions we have here but after seeing government in action as this bill made it through the legislature they made a HILARIOUS comic about it. Here's part of the newspost that accompanied the comic which is also worth reading:

You might have heard that we were recently honored by the state of Washington. We do not absorb accolades especially well, being surrounded by a nearly impermeable membrane of self-doubt and residual teen vengeance. Even so, the grandeur of the setting elevated things to almost New Hope, medal ceremony levels. The addition of the following line:

WHEREAS, Mike Krahulik and Jerry Holkins did, without the use of their targeting computers, destroy the Death Star by launching proton torpedoes into its exhaust port; and

would perfect it.

After the bill passed the House, it needed to pass the Senate, which is the way of things. We had a chance to see sausage being made in real time, and it is not a process I think I could endure for long. I understand that - particularly in these troubled economic times - people rail against waste in government and demand to know what their elected representatives could possibly be doing in their marble capitols. Let me tell you that what they are doing is incredibly boring. Eventually, we started just making up the speeches. Whatever we're paying those people, it couldn't possibly be enough.

As for the comic itself, I can't figure out how to put images in my posts. Maybe we can't do that yet? Here's the link (it contains gratuitous, hilarious profanity):

Democracy Exposed

Investors in a corporation collectively own it. They elect board members who are supposed to look after their interests. The board appoints executives, pays them, and can fire them. When the government gave all that taxpayer money to those banks we became stockholders - partial owners of them. That's how the system works when individuals or companies invest money into a corporation and there's no Fundamental Law of Economics that makes it different for governments. As owners, we should now get votes on who to hire as executives, which ones to fire, and how much to pay them. That's how corporations work.

I am so sick of hearing that we shouldn't influence how the bank executives are compensated and who gets fired. We're investors in these banks, that's what investors get to do! I do think that in principle it is better for the government to regulate markets rather than the affairs of individual companies. That is why I only support the government buying chunks of companies when their failure would be catastrophic. The upshot of this is that when the situation warrants our doing so it also warrants us having a say on the board.

IN SUMMARY: if the banks screwed up so badly that they needed a government bailout than they also screwed up so badly that they forfeited their right to run themselves independently from us, their new owners.

It would appear that the pundits on cable news are just telling what they think is a good story: that the Republicans are controlling the stimulus debate and that public support for Democrats and the bill itself is plummeting. The Gallup poll just released tells us otherwise. That's the best news I've heard about the bill in quite some time.

Now, ask yourself: if the pundits on the cable news networks were not making claims like, "The public is getting a look at what is in this bill and they don't like it" what would the poll numbers look like? I'll wager that they would have been even better than they are now. Thanks cable news, you might be more interested in telling a good story than the truth but it looks like you aren't as influential as we thought. Get out of the way.

Reader beware: this got long. (One of the problems with being trained as an academic is that you sytematically marshal all of your evidence to make an argument at the expense of concision. I can't help it. I'm sorry. If you actually read all of this I appreciate your time.)

Last night before going to bed I was listening to the BBC on NPR. It was a piece on Israeli politics. I tuned in after it had begun but what I caught was quite interesting.

I am not nearly as familiar as the history and particulars of Israeli politics as is someone like Josh Marshall. Since I have a great deal of respect for his analytical capability, knowledge, and experience in political matters I'll take him at his word when he calls Benjamin Netanyahu a charlatan (which is, by the way, a fantastic word). As someone who sympathizes with the Israeli Left on matters pertaining to their conflict with the Palestinians this plays to my biases anyhow.

So then! Netanyahu's a bastard. Unfortunately he's the front runner for PM in Israel's next election. Bastard though he may be, Israel is our ally and will remain so if and when he wins. That makes him our bastard. I think we can all agree that we can't wait to work towards peace between Israel and its adversaries. Just as it is foolish to refuse to talk to our enemies in the Middle East, preferring to hold out for more amenable leadership, we'll have to work with whatever government the Israeli's elect. The question we must therefore answer is: with an Israeli government led by Likud with Netanyahu at the helm, what progress can we make - what steps can we take - towards peace?

Let me return to that BBC segment. There is a key fact (and here I am putting my faith in the BBC's veracity) about the Israeli Left and Right's histories of dealing with Palestine that I hadn't heard until last night: no leftist Israeli governing coalition has ever given up land to the Palestinians or any Arab nation, or shut down settlements in the (nominally) Palestinian territories; in contradistinction, while the Right has been in power, they have.

One could argue that the Left hasn't been able to make such concessions because as non-hardliners they don't have the political leeway to do so - they would be accused of treason. I agree with this argument but no matter the reason, this failure, as I would argue it is, remains. I see no reason to believe that conditions have changed in such a way that would allow them to take such action. Yes, the Right has have done all sorts of terrible things to Palestinians. And yes, elements of the Right have been the biggest champions of the settler movement. We can debate their motives and argue that this was not done purely in the pursuit of a lasting peace - perhaps Sharon closed the Gazan settlements and planned to eliminate many in the West Bank in order to draw back to more secure lines, to redraw them on his own terms. Such an approach would make sense for an old soldier. But giving up land and closing settlements is a big deal - I agree with Josh when he writes that there can be no peace without resolving the problem of the settlements, which means eliminating them or at least the vast majority of them. Even if this is not currently doable, we need to work towards peace now and it looks like we'll be doing it with an Israeli government led by Likud under Benjamin Netanyahu. One encouraging trait possessed by Netanyahu as described in the BBC segment was his willingness to go along with a lot of US policy positions, as being almost deferential (probably too strong a word) to our government. For one thing, he grew up here.

Can we expect him to shutter existing settlements? I doubt it, but I've been wrong before. Maybe we can at least get settlement expansion halted. It is important to remember, however, that while the issue of the settlements is perhaps the most significant obstacle to a lasting peace, it is not the only one. Let's not forget that there are other entities in conflict with Israel. The Arab states, for instance, Syria, are also of great importance.

As far as I am aware the biggest sticking point between Israel and Syria is the Golan Heights. I get the impression that control of the Golan Heights is not in the same emotional league for the Israeli people as whether they are being hit with rockets from Gaza and the settlements in Palestine. They certainly do not seem as important to their security to me. Furthermore, I would wager Netanyahu has the reputation and public persona to politically afford a withdrawal from the Golan Heights. Perhaps, with some pressure from the USA, Netanyahu would be willing to offer control of the Golan Heights to Syria and to work from that initial concession towards the same kind of peace treaty that was achieved with Egypt.

Could negotiations from this offer of concession lead to formal peace between Syria and Israel after a few years? No one knows. What we do know is that we must work towards peace starting now. I think this avenue may be the best way to begin on that path now that Bush is gone (man... my psyche hasn't adjusted yet). With the recent war in Gaza settlement elimination is probably both politically impossible for any Israeli politician and absolutely out of the question for Likud and Netanyahu. Peace between Israel and Syria would have many important benefits. Perhaps most importantly it might reassure some of the Israeli people that peace with Arabs is still possible.

I'm just an armchair diplomat. If you've made it this far, what do you think?

I am listening to The Bob Edwards Weekend on NPR right now. He is interviewing Eugene Jarecki about US military policy and the military industrial congressional complex. You owe it to yourself to listen to it, it's the best piece about US policy I have heard or read in a while.

The blurb on the BEW website about this part of the show says: "There is a lot of thought being put into how things could and should change under the new administration of Barack Obama, both domestically and abroad. For the past few years, Eugene Jarecki has been studying America's foreign policy and the history of our wars. Now Jarecki has written a book called The American Way of War: Guided Missles, Misguided Men and a Republic in Peril. He's also the director of the award-winning documentary Why We Fight, about the military-industrial complex and its relationship with politics. That relationship is great for "war" presidents, weapons manufacturers and the Pentagon, but it's not so good for freedom, liberty and the American people as a whole. In his outgoing address in 1961, former general and president Dwight Eisenhower warned us about the growing power of the military-industrial complex to shape policy. Eugene Jarecki thinks it's a lesson we should all learn."

Check it out. http://www.bobedwardsradio.com/

It seems as if we're beginning to worry about losing Obama's senate seat. An article about this is at the top of TPM Election Central right now. I don't know how likely it is but I will say this: if Obama campaigns for the democratic nominee, he or she will win. I don't know if he'll decide he has time or if he is not as confident in this outcome as I am and won't want to risk being embarrased, so I have no idea what the chances are that he will. But seriously folks, speaking as an Illinoisian, if he campaigns here we will vote for his candidate.

There is a lot of outrage amongst us Obama supporters about the campaign that John McCain is running and the intensity of his crowds' hatred for Obama. Given his campaign's use of dishonest robocalls, attempts at voter suppression, distortions, and outright lies this is understandable. It is also understandable that the shouts of "Kill him!" and "Treason!" outrage us. However, while they are indeed vile and disgusting, and they do make me angry sometimes, they do not elicit outrage in me.

In my mind the term outrage contains within it an element of surprise and disbelief. I was outraged when the Democrats folded on warrantless wiretapping because I expected more from them. When I read about it on the el - the train here in Chicago - in the New York Times on my way to work I loudly exclaimed "Are you kidding me?! Those pansies!" on a crowded train (it might have been more... graphic than "pansies"). That's as big a faux pas as I have ever made on the el; I did it because I was so surprised and angry, i.e. outraged. I don't feel this way about McCain's campaign or the way the crowds at his and Palin's rallies behave. None of that surprises me.

Why not? It's not because I knew all along that McCain was a total scumbag and that he'd run this sort of campaign, I didn't. Although I stay pretty well informed about politics my knowledge of McCain coming into this primary season was limited to what happened to him in the Republican presidential primaries of 2000. I knew that he had called some of the worst parts of his party and political movement out for what they are, e.g. "agents of intolerance." I knew that the Bush campaign had slimed and lied about him. I could sympathise with that. Seeing as how he's a Republican I did expect negativity and some dishonesty from him in this election but I cannot claim to have expected it to go as far as it has. That's not it.

So why am I not surprised and therefore outraged by his lies, tactics, and especially the passionate hatred that pours out of the crowds at McCain/Palin rallies? It's pretty simple, really.

Did any of you ever honestly believe we were going to get a black president without a fuss?

Dennis Kucinich brought articles of impeachment against George W. Bush today.

http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Kucinich_presents_Bush_impeachment_articles_0609.html

Why is no one talking about this yet? I am not hopeful that the attempt will be successful but if it gets a decent amount of support that will certainly change a lot of perceptions in the game right now. At the very least I expected to see the news on TPM.

Let's get excited!

I don't remember after which primary vote or caucus this happened but it was one that McCain won. I think it might have been SC. In his victory speech he gave his supporters some "straight talk." In that speech, which I saw here on TPM, he claimed that the Global War on Terror was not over yet and that there would be "more wars." He even repeated that last line. He was mocked for it on Fox. During the general I'm thinking that the democratic candidate should just make an ad with a clip of that speech, you could end it with an ominous voice saying "John McCain: more wars." Play it heavily in every state where support for the war is low (all 50?) and then just sit back and act presidential. Maybe raise some money and talk about hope and change. And not starting any new wars.

I'm not even sure you could call it negative so much as truthful. After all, it's just a recording of what the man said in a speech after winning a primary. By rights you would expect an ad with a clip of a candidate making a victory speech something he'd make for himself.

If such an ad were made and played I'd be a lot less worried about a McCain/Whoever candidacy.