While Obama's reception in Europe among the general population has been impressive, the reaction of Europe's leaders to his visit it truly remarkable - perhaps even unprecedented. Usually foreign leaders prefer that the incumbent party in the U.S. be re-elected, since they will know what they are getting and are generally risk averse. But this time they aren't making much of a secret of the fact that they would rather deal with a 47 year old novice on the international stage than the experienced heir apparent to the present administration.

Which tells you a great deal about how unpopular George Bush's policies have been. Usually our European friends prefer the devil they know. This time they've decided that the devil they know is so bad that anybody else would have to be better.

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<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/52685153@N00/2564358351/" title="Flash by third.estate, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3126/2564358351_2b661b66c5.jpg" width="386" height="500" alt="Flash" /></a>

The generous interpretation is that McCain is attacking Obama on the latter's opinion that we should negotiate with other nations. The less generous interpretation is that McCain is not-so-subtly calling Obama an "Anti-American Foreign Leader." I'll leave it for you to decide.

One of the most consistent themes on the internet is the liberal critique of the national press corps (the "MSM"). Supported with the works of people like Eric Alterman, liberals argue that the political press at best superficial and at worst the willing dupes (active supporters?) of Rovian hitjobs on Democratic candidates. Glenn Greenwald and Digby have spoken with particular force on this issue, but they by no means are alone. Last night's travesty of a presidential debate is probably the best example of what liberals are so upset about. It's becoming increasingly clear that either the entire political discussion is debased, or there is a systematic bias against Democratic candidates, or both. Probably both.

But having accepted our unfortunate situation - that the mainstream media has become fundamentally corrupted, that it is not only not doing its job but doing the opposite of its job - it remains unclear what we are supposed to do to rectify the situation.

The first option might be to launch a concerted effort to criticize the press, in much the same way that conservatives did starting in the 1960's. This has begun to happen to an extent, although not in any well-funded, systematic way. I suppose that over the long term this might bear some fruit, but I must confess I'm somewhat skeptical that elite journalists would pay sufficient attention to what bloggers say to make any difference. It's not like they care what we think anyway.

The second option is that Democratic political leaders could begin shaming the media and freezing out journalists that displease them. This approach holds promise (because as far as I can tell it's how the Republicans do it), but it would be very risky in the short term. Democratic politicians rely on media exposure. They could boycott a particular journalist or news outlet, but since the problem is system-wide, the task becomes far more difficult. They would effectively absenting the entire party from the public discussion. Furthermore, there would be enormous incentives for each officeholder to "defect" in what looks like a classic prisoner's dilemma.

Of course there is the third option, which is to work for institutional reforms in how news content is disseminated and how political journalists are trained, but that is a very long term strategy that would likely to decades to yield benefits - if ever.

I'm not trying to minimize the problem. The political press has grown enormously in power over the last few decades, and what is worse, they know it. Their malpractice is at least partly responsible for the Iraq War and the election of George Bush. They have enabled Bush's abuses while in office, since Bush and his cronies would never have been able to get away with what they have done for so long and with so little price if the press had been doing their job. The media hated Gore, Dean, and Edwards and played no small role in blocking their candidacies. And the media's bizarre love affair with John McCain probably helped him win the Republican nomination and could very well help him reach the White House.

In effect, it is beginning to appear that the national press corps is the one choosing who will serve in public office and what policies they can pursue - not the voters; that we're becoming not a Democracy, but a Mediocracy. And to honest, I'm not entirely sure what can be done about it.

Cross-posted at the Third Estate.

It looks like I'm all alone on this one. While other liberal bloggers are giddy at the prospect of Barack Obama opting out of the public financing system in the general election, I'm pretty uncomfortable with it. Oh, I understand the tactical advantages - Obama will be able to outspend the cash-strapped McCain by 2 or 3 to 1. But I've always been a supporter of public financed campaigns, and it seems hypocritical to abandon that position for the sake of a temporary convenience.

Public financing is supposed to level the playing field for all candidates, so that it's campaigning and issues rather than fundraising that determines elections. It doesn't really matter if my candidate is benefiting from the imbalance - it's still wrong.

You don't find my argument from principle convincting> Well how about this one? Do you really think that Democrats will enjoy a permanent small donor advantage? And below the presidential level, what is the likelihood that candidates without big wallets or famous names will be able to raise this kind of cash? It's a disastrous mistake to assume that other candidates will be able to do what Obama has done. In many ways he's a sui generis candidate.

In a conversation before Super Tuesday, I told a friend that I'd rather Clinton blow Obama out on February 5th than have Obama win at a contested convention after a long and bitter primary campaign. I prefer
Obama, but the longer this thing goes on, the starker the lines between the two candidates' supporters will become. I've been pained to watch liberals for whom I have great affection relentlessly attack not just the other candidate, but the supporters of the other candidate. There are only two discernible policy distinctions between Clinton and Obama - the Iraq War and health care mandates - but somehow anyone supporting Clinton has become a racist pseudo-Republican corporate shill, and anyone supporting Obama is a misogynistic elitist naive cultist. Please.

It's not surprising, I suppose. It's natural that the longer a battle goes on, the more entrenched the two sides become. World War I started over a minor regional concern, but by the time it was done the Central and Allied powers were determined to grind each other into the dust.

I'm all in favor of enthusiasm, but remember - both of these candidates are Democrats. I think it's essential to treat those who are fundamentally on the same side of the great political questions of the day with a degree of charity. Let's not assume that our intra-party rivals are conniving, unprincipled monsters. Clinton probably meant to be insensitive racially no more than Obama meant to sound sexist. People make mistakes, and any statement can be misconstrued into something it wasn't.

Finally, it's important to note that those of us deeply invested in this primary election aren't really representative of the Democratic electorate, as we have been shown time and again. There is no deep-seated animosity between Obama and Clinton's voters (unlike the internet). They each enjoy very high approval ratings, and
the defeated candidates' voters will quickly rally behind the nominee. Let's keep this all in a bit of perspective, shall we?

arack Obama is a fascinating politician. A dazzlingly eloquent orator, community organizer, viable black candidate, and a pure enigma. He's a riddle that many liberals are trying to solve, myself among them.

I've read his 2nd book (although not yet his first), watched all of his major speeches, read the biographical pieces, and considered his candidacy for months. I have ultimately narrowed the possibilities down to two: the Little Obama and the Big Obama.

Little Obama is a liberal, to be sure, but one scarred by his defeat in 2000 at the hands of Bobby Rush, well aware of the role that dumb luck has played in his rise, and deeply aware of the vulnerabilities confronting any black candidate for national office. Little Obama uses sweeping rhetoric that inspires liberals, while delivering consensus-based policies that give few targets for attack. If elected, Little Obama will support liberal policies when circumstances allow, but will in the end be about re-electing Little Obama. In essence, Little Obama is the true successor to Bill Clinton.

Little Obama is the Obama that many liberals fear, and his vagueness is the lever by which the Republicans and their tame press corps will strike at him. Little Obama is a worthy candidate for office, but nothing to get so excited about. Except, of course, that he would be the first African-American President - no small thing.

But there is another Obama, one that peeks out from between the pages of his book and whispers in background of his speeches. That Obama is the Obama that might be - Big Obama.

Big Obama is first and foremost a student of rhetoric. His campaign is therefore a sustained act of public persuasion - it is in fact structured like a single speech. First you establish a rapport with the audience, then you lay down core principles which earns their consent, after which they are locked into the policies that flow from those principles. He is presently only in stage I and hinting at stage II, so you can't complain that he doesn't have specifics. It is, after all, only February of 2007.

Big Obama understands that appeals to national unity can be the greatest ally of liberalism. The unity propagated by the right is one that demands obedience to authority, while the unity of the left calls for civic engagement. If one has hope that we can solve our problems, and demands of his fellow citizens that they help do so, then government is no longer the problem or the solution. Government, in fact, becomes merely one instrument among many.

Big Obama realizes that the problems facing the country today are not simply a matter of laws, but of attitudes. The conservative hegemony of the last generation is predicated on our own inability as a community to solve problems - it denies in fact that there is any we at all. The reason Big Obama's rhetoric is so powerful is that it speaksinstead to deep-seated but long-ignored desires in this country to be one country, and a juster one at that.

Big Obama's aim is not only to change party control or public policies, but to revive democracy itself. Democracy is not just a matter of substance, but also of process, a process of public debate and elections that has become thoroughly debased. Big Obama is trying to elevate the tone for its own sake, but also by doing so he reduces to conservatives to a gaggle of screeching, unattractive naysayers.

A Big Obama would be the most formidable liberal political leader since Robert Kennedy, and would have the opportunity to smash the long stalemate in American political and social life. He would also have deployed the rhetorical weapons to fatally undermine conservatism's ideological dominance. It would be the liberal renaissance we have all been waiting for.

So which is it? As of yet it is impossible to know. Either Obama would at this stage of the race behave in the same way. The question remains whether Obama will be a Cicero or a Demosthenes, for when Cicero spoke, the people said "How well he spoke." When Demosthenes spoke, the people said "Let us march."

A little New York History....

In 1989, Ed Koch had been the mayor of new york for 12 years and was seeking re-election. He faced a difficult strategic dilemma. Koch was challenged in the Democratic primary by the popular African-American candidate David Dinkins, who had rallied liberal support. Koch also faced a serious general election threat in Republican prosecutor Rudy Giuliani. Koch's problem was this: if he attacked Dinkins, he could win the primary, but in doing so he would so alienate African-Americans that he would have no hope against Giuliani. If he didn't attack Dinkins, there was a very real possibility that he would be denied re-nomination. Koch (probably correctly) decided to take his chances by not attacking Dinkins, and lost the primary. Dinkins went on to become the first African-American Mayor of New York City.

So what does this have to do with Barack Obama? Everything. I have argued before that Obama would have an excellent chance to deny Hillary Clinton the nomination because of his ability to unite liberals (who are uneasy about Hillary) and because he would monopolize the black vote, a constituency Hillary has been counting on.

But Obama presents an even graver threat to Hillary's chances than I originally realized. Obama is no Jesse Jackson, who white Democratic candidates could safely ignore. He has a legitimate shot at the nomination. He also underscores all of Hillary's perceived weaknesses. But worst of all for Clinton, from a strictly tactical perspective Obama re-creates the "Dinkins Dilemma" for Hillary. She would need to attack Obama in order to defeat him, but doing so would thoroughly alienate African-American voters and (fatally) damage her chances in the general election. But if she didn't attack Obama, he would retain his "Golden Boy" image and likely defeat her the primaries.

I have said before that Obama could win the nomination. I am going to take a risk and say that if he decides to run, he probably will win it. Which I think he's probably smart enough to have figured out.

Stu Rothenberg has criticized partisans of both sides (particularly Howard Dean and Tom Coburn) for arguing that the parties should expand the playing field by recruiting and supporting candidates in supposedly hopeless districts. Defenders of Dean's 50-state" strategy argue that the last election demonstrates the success of a broad-front strategy as opposed to the narrow targetting advocated by most political consultants.

So who's right?

Rothenberg is correct to point out that we can't use the last election as a real test, since there was a pro-Democratic wave that brought down a number of Republican incumbents. In most elections, those incumbents would have been re-elected. One might argue that reducing an incumbent's vote share from 60% to 55% might feel like a moral victory, but it is scarcely a method for building a congressional majority. According to Rothenberg, there really are only so many potentially competitive seats, and under normal circumstances even incumbents in marginal seats are going to be re-elected. Why waste precious resouces on races you aren't going to win?

Chris Bowers over at MyDD has one good argument. Democrats need to field credible candidates in every district in order to take advantage of unexpected events. If the Democrats had given Mark Foley and Tom DeLay a pass, we would never have won those seats. You just never know. Dean has also made the argument that parties need to contest every seat in order to build up a long-term infrastructure so that when a seat opens up, the party is in a better position to take advantage.

Rothenberg could of course poo-poo these points. Why waste money on races on the off chance that something funny will happen? It seems terribly inefficient, doesn't it?

Which is where my argument comes in. I suspect that challenger spending has an asymmetric effect on incumbent spending. Let's say a long shot challenger can only raise $10,000. The incumbent will spend around $100,000, and will be persuaded to hand over a good chunk of his war chest (say half a million) to the national party to spend in competitive races. Now if the DNC puts $100,000 into a long-shot, the Republican incumbent there is going to spend $1,000,000 - just to be safe. Presto! For the cost of $100,000, the Democrats have just eliminated $500,000 of Republican attack ads in another seat.

As of yet, I have no concrete evidence to support my claims, only impressionistic observation. But it wouldn't really be all that difficult for a political science researcher with spare time to find out, since the data if freely available. If my hypothesis is true, then it makes a lot of sense to fund challengers even against seemingly invincible incumbents. Not because you expect to win that race, but because it will help you win another one.

I like to think of myself as a reasonable person. If there is strong argument in support of a position, I will seriously consider embracing it, even if that means reversing a previously held belief.

I have taken economics courses. I have read books on political economy. I understand the basis of the discipline. And despite all this, I have had a very difficult time accepting the dominant view of the economics profession, that free trade is always a good thing. This view is based on the law of comparative advantage, the pareto efficient outcomes can be achieved when all parties specialize in those tasks for which they are best suited. I get the arguments. I'm just not persuaded.

Historically, no nation has industrialized without some form of government support - usually in the form of outright mercantilism. In addition, just because there are net efficiencies does not mean that both parties will benefit equally from the exchange. If I'm good at making corn and you're good at making cars, I'm just not going to make as much as you. And why precisely is the "race to the bottom" argument wrong? Why won't the huge numbers of well-educated, low-paid workers in the 3rd world virtually eliminate the American middle class? Isn't a convergence in living standards almost inevitable?

I'm completely supportive of the freest possible trade with similarly constituted economies, like those in Japan and Western Europe. But with nations that have no environmental or labor protections, with grossly lower wages? Are you kidding me?

I like Max Sewicky and Paul Krugman. I respect what they have to say. But I just can't seem to figure out why I'm wrong and they're right. But I'm willing to listen.

And the terrorists won.

We were told that there would be no great final victory in the War on Terror, no symbolic surrender on the deck of an aircraft carrier. But that isn't true. We saw something very like that yesterday in the U.S. Senate. And it was America that surrendered; surrendered every good thing we ever believed in.

The Senate voted yesterday to abolish the Constitution of the United States. Since the terrorists "hate us for our freedoms," the surrender of those freedoms represents the fulfillment of their war aims. Senators voting for the bill have therefore given aid and comfort to the enemy. Not only does this place them at risk under the treason statute, but under the provisions of the new law the President has the power to label them enemy combatants, place them in prison for the rest of their lives, and torture them. Congratulations.

If that sounds a little dramatic, it should. This execrable piece of legislation gives the President the power to imprison American citizens without a trial or due process. It prevents the Courts from intervening, giving sole discretion to the Executive. Any person found "materially supporting" terrorism can be thrown in jail forever, without recourse to a lawyer or the courts. The interpretation of the phrase "materially supporting" is left up to the President. Furthermore, the Congress has now become the first legislative body in the history of the United States to endorse the practice of torture.

Yesterday was saw the most important vote in the U.S. Senate since the cloture vote on the Civil Rights Act of 1964. This is as shameful a day as that was a glorious one. This generation of Americans will be apologizing for this event for the rest of their lives. In the future we will look in the face of evil and see that it is our own face.

Yesterday saw the humiliation of the Congress, the emasculation of the Courts, the elevation of the President to unfettered powers, the gutting of our civil liberties, and the abandonment of our identity as a free people. As far as I'm concerned, the people who voted for this bill don't even deserve the name "American." I didn't think Americans were cowards so petrified by their fears that they were willing to be sold into slavery. Make no mistake - we have exchanged the prospect of physical harm for the reality of oppression.

We have witnessed the final debasement of the Republican Party. I am not surprised that they wrote this bill. They have been so corrupted by their ambition that I have come to expect anything of them. I will of course take great pleasure in ridiculing those Republicans who trumpet their commitment to small government. But I must confess a certain pang that the party that brought us Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt has become the enemy of liberty. They are just a party of little Richard Nixons now, not a man of parts among them.

It is the Democratic Party that has broken my heart, however. I do not fault them for failing to defeat this legislation. I fault them for not really trying. They opposed the bill, of course. What they failed to do was treat this issue with the seriousness it deserved. Reid explains his course of action by saying that, since the Democrats did not have the votes to sustain a filibuster, they agreed to limit their efforts to eliminating the habeus corpus provisions. Once they lost that vote, a third of the caucus defected on final passage.

I should make a list of the Democrats voting for the measure, since they have earned my special enmity. Dear Senators Carper, Johnson, Landrieu, Lautenberg, Lieberman, Menendez, Nelson (Fla.), Nelson (Neb.), Pryor, Rockefeller, Salazar and Stabenow: I wonder how you shall ever sleep again.

I presume those Democratic Senators who voted for the bill did so for fear of 30-second ads accusing them of being "soft on terror." Perhaps on another issue this would have been a reasonable strategy. But not on this one. There is a difference between a vote on tax cuts and a vote on torture. The niceties of political tactics might be appropriate for a Supreme Court nomination, but not for the death of due process.

Perhaps the Democrats think that the Supreme Court will rescue them by declaring this law unconstitutional. But I ask you, how often as the Supreme Court overruled the Congress on national security measures? Do you really trust your liberty to the courage of Anthony Kennedy? Do you have faith that the Court that decided Bush vs. Gore will protect democracy? Those are very tenuous assumptions.

The Democrats feared being defeated on the Senate floor, and they feared defeat at the polls. It is this fear that prevented them from doing everything in their power to block this legislation. I believe that both fears were unwarranted. And even if they were, it shouldn't matter.

I do not think that this vote will help them politically. In fact I find the Democratic strategy simply absurd. Do you believe that the Republicans will not attack you anyway? Why not take a stand here? If the election must be about an issue, let it be about this one: the Republicans as the party of torture and tyranny, the Democrats as the party of freedom and human dignity; the Republicans as the party of fear, and the Democrats as the party of courage. How difficult would it be to run a campaign on that basis? It takes no sophisticated explanations. It only needs the simple statements that torture is wrong, that no President should be given unlimited powers, and that every man has the right to his day in court. And if the Democrats think that this campaign would not have worked, then we know something about how much faith the Democrats have in the people to choose wisely. I do not think they are right. I do not think that the American people would endorse torture. Perhaps I am wrong, but if so the democracy is dead already.

I am scandalized by the cowardice of the Democratic Party. They have decided that the worst thing in the world is political defeat, and that the most important thing is their political careers. To which I say, we do not elect you to office to "be there." We elect you to fight for justice. There are much worse things than political defeat - there is complicity with evil. If the Democrats had remained united, they could have successfully filibustered and prevented this law from passing. That act alone would have justified their tenure in Senate. They could have looked back with pride and said "If I did nothing else, I did that."

But even if the cloture vote had been successful, the Democrats should have filibustered the legislation anyway. Force the country to focus on this issue. Highlight the differences between the parties. Explain why this bill is so awful, and why any and everything that can be done to stop it must be done. Reject unanimous consent agreements, place holds on that and every other piece of legislation. If you must smash the Senate to defend the Constitution, so be it.

And if the filibuster had failed, the Democrats had been demonized as weak on terror, defeated in the election, and the bill passed next year anyway? I would say the price was worth paying. It would be better to make it clear to all the world that the Democratic Party stands for liberty, whatever the price. The Democrats lost their political majority in the 1960's because they chose to do the right thing and vote for civil rights. It was a price worth paying. They could have done the same yesterday, but they didn't.

I waited for even one Senator to break with their party, to stand alone if they must, and filibuster despite an inevitable defeat. I would have been proud to be a Democrat if even one member of my party had stood in the well condemning this law, holding out until they collapsed and had to be carried out of the chamber. But no Democrat did.

And for that I will never forgive them.

Over in the American Conservative, there are a bunch of articles trying to define the difference between liberalism and conservatism. One of the writers I like to read Michael Lind. I disagree with him as often as I agree, but I always find him interesting. In this piece he argues that ideology no longer exists, that it has been replaced by partisanship. The cleavages between the 2 parties are along the lines of identity politics, with the white christian majority ranged against an aggregation of ethnic and religious minorities. Because the various minorities cluster in cities, the result is a geographic division in American life between the urban Democrats and the rural Republicans.

This is a very strange view of American politics. The empirical evidence simply doesn't support Lind's description. Even in the most rural areas, Democrats get between a quarter and a third of the vote. Is there some big secular/minority group out there I'm not aware of? If not, where are all these Democratic votes coming from?

Certainly identity politics is central to the contemporary political divide. But there is a lot more to the liberal coalition than just identity politics. The Democratic Party is divided into Pluralists (identity politics), Populists (working class), and Progressives (issue-oriented middle class reformers). While the Pluralists are probably the dominant element of the Democratic party in terms of voters, but the Progressives have had control of the party leadership and agenda ever since FDR.

Similiarly, I would take issue with Lind's suggestion that ideology is now no more than a front for party loyalties. Liberalism is dedicated to equality of opportunity and personal autonomy, values which all of the elements of the liberal coalition support, albeit from different perspectives. There is real intellectual content here, not just shallow justifications for ethnic or religious groups seeking political power.

Lind goes so far as to say those who have real ideologies - which he lists as libertarians, populists, greens, and social democrats, among others - should avoid attempting to take over either of the 2 parties and instead should attempt to influence both. For someone has grounded in history as Lind, this is a bizarre suggestion. Every ideological group in American history has used one of the 2 major parties as the vehicle for its agenda. The one group that didn't, the Progressives, were isolated and crushed in both parties during the 1920's. It took their rallying to the Democrats before they were finally able to accomplish anything lasting.

Having said that, I do think that it is a waste of time for the ideological groups mentioned to align themselves with the Republican party, given its evident disinterest in anything other than making demagogic appeals to mask the rape of the country by the American elite. But there is another alternative, isn't there?

Yes.

Matt Yglesias thinks that liberals should beware being too sympathetic to small businesses. While it may make good rhetoric, he thinks that the benefits of the mom & pop store have been oversold. I think that Yglesias's position is near-sighted as policy and foolhardy as politics.

The argument levied by Yglesias, Krugman, and others against "small business liberalism" is that small businesses tend to produce minimum wage jobs with low benefits and also provide worse products at higher prices to consumers. They believe that while there may be a romantic attachment to the independent propreitor, like the small farmer, they think they really aren't worth saving.

There are ready replies to all of these points.

1. Small businesses may produce lower-quality jobs, but they also tend to produce all of the new jobs. It makes sense to use government policy to subsidize benefits for those workers, rather than just pretend they don't exist. Also, big businesses are moving towards a low pay, no benefit model, so the apparent differences may evaporate.

2. Small businesses tend to distribute economic power more broadly once one takes into account the proprietors themselves. Compare 50 small stores to 1 megastore, and you'll see 50 people making $100,000 a year compared to 1 making $1,000,000 a year.

3. Small businesses could have greater economies of scale if they were able to form cooperatives by industry to negotiate lower prices. This would give most of the advantages of big corporations with fewer of the disadvantages.

4. Yglesias's focus on the convenience store misses the thousands of other independent stores that do provide good products.

5. To the extent that the mom & pops do have lower-quality products, I would think it is because of exclusive contracts between big corporations and the producers of products. Why shouldn't the neighborhood concern be able to sell Martha Stewart?

6. The lower costs of the retail chains is largely due to unjust market exploitation, bad labor practices, and public subsidies. Make them absorb the real costs of their business, and I expect that the price differential would disappear.

7. Abandoning a small business also neglects non-economic benefits derived from them. Areas with lots of small businesses tend to be a lot more vibrant and socially coherent. There are also enormous psychological benefits to economic independence. And whatever the petty problems of working directly for your employer, compare this with working in a giant corporation. Come on Matt, have you even seen Office Space?

This last point brings me to the politics of the situation. Owning a small business is a basic American aspiration. To the extent that Democrats can bring them into our coalition, we can co-opt a politically powerful group, while at the same time exposing Republicans as tools of big business. It would revive our political prospects in rural areas and small towns, give great power & coherence to our political narrative as the party of opportunity, and deprive the Republicans of a key constituency all at the same time.

To throw away this group, to jettison an important part of the American Dream, because Yglesias went to a crappy corner store - well that's just silly.