At the very least, Lanny Davis is the worst Democrat in politics.
Archives for August 2009
Robert Novak RIP
Novak did a lot of sleazy stuff, but the Evans-Novak report was excellent and he could be thoughtful on some issues. I liked his columns better than the average WaPo column.
The Dave Neiwert Decade
The sad part is that we do not even have to wait to see what happens next. Half a mile from my house a relatively ordinary freeper/stormfronter shot three policemen because he thought Obama would take his guns away.
All these guys need is one martyr to put on their t-shirts and name blogs after. Nobody needs to get shot, although they would love it if someone did. Their intense police state paranoia will be validated enough when a local cop confiscates some bubba’s precious AR-15. Rumors were enough to send several recent crazed shooters over the edge. How many more need just one aggrieved victim of guvmint overreach with a photo and a name?
The second funny thing is that I don’t think that any of these guys have any idea what to do when they have their little revolution. I suppose they hope to take power just by making America ungovernable by anyone else. That works of course, but you need a crippling depression (ergo, anti-stimulus frenzy). You need a credible enemy group to rally against, and demonizing ‘liberals’ (and attendant hate magnets such immigrants, minorities, poor people, rich people who don’t hate the first three groups enough, etc) is just stupid. The word means nothing any more. If a fire-breathing Republican crosses Glenn Beck, the base calls him an Obama-loving liberal. Pick any three guvmint-hating bubbas and one of them will inevitably be more ‘liberal’ than the other two.
Honestly, I would pay good money to watch people who associate book learnin’ with the enemy try and fail to produce a modern-day Federalist Papers. If they do manage something it will be the first book ever written in all caps.
Reports of its death…
Ezra explains how the public option may end up in the final bill even if it isn’t in the Senate bill.
The Recession is Only Over for Wall Street
Some data in the NY Times:
New figures showing a decline in wholesale prices and a drop in new-home construction highlighted how weak the economy remains, even as some optimists declare the recession to be over.
Producer prices fell more than expected in July as the costs of food and energy slipped, the Labor Department reported on Tuesday. The 0.9 percent monthly decline came after three months of increases, and suggested that demand was weak up and down the ladder of production, from consumer goods to intermediate goods like chemicals and rubber to raw materials.
Producer prices declined a record 6.8 percent from last July, when crude oil prices soared above $145 a barrel and pushed the costs of fuels, food and other products sharply higher, before they fell back amid the global financial crisis. The decline in the last 12 months is the largest drop in 60 years, since the government starting keeping such records.
How long do you all think it will be before there is a meaningful economic recovery?
The Recession is Only Over for Wall StreetPost + Comments (63)
They got money for wars, but can’t feed the poor
One thing I’ve been hearing a lot is the idea that what Democrats really need right now is Repubilcan-style salesmanship and media relations. Here’s Jon Stewart, for example:
“Why is this so hard? Why can’t you guys just stay on message? Remember the Bush team? Little bit of discipline, little bit of repetition. They sold us a WAR nobody wanted and nobody needed.”
Stewart then played a series of clips featuring former President George W. Bush, Colin Powell, Condi Rice, Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney speaking about weapons of mass destruction in the lead-up to the Iraq war.
“Salesmanship!,” Stewart said, after the clip. “Those guys could sell ice cubes to Eskimos. The Democrats, I don’t even think could sell Eskimos BEEP they need — insulation, heating apparatus.”
It’s a silly comparison, of course. Wars are easy to sell. As Goering put it “just tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism.” It’s that simple.
Big domestic programs (other than tax increases cuts) are nearly impossible. The Bush people went 0-for-2 on big domestic proposals. It’s difficult to turn immigration reform or Social Security privatization into a war against the worst enemy ever.
For all the talk about how Congress did whatever Bush wanted — and they did — he didn’t pass much of import domestically, aside from the big tax cuts (something else that’s always easy to pass) and (EDIT) Medicare Part D, a big corporate give-away (these are also relatively easy to pass). The last president to have success with ambitious domestic policy initiatives was probably LBJ.
Castigating Obama for not being another LBJ seems a little unfair to me.
They got money for wars, but can’t feed the poorPost + Comments (99)
Late Night Open Thread: Gubmint Suxx, and Then You Die
There sure has been a lot of hand-wringing today, hasn’t there?
A commentor on an earlier post complained:
Believe me, I would love to have a realist-libertarian party that I could vote for.
Then go run for your local school board, or find a similarly-minded Realist-Libertarian you can support to do so. Srsly. The “Permanent Republican Majority”, such as it was/is, came about because the Republican true believers spent 30-plus years finding & supporting anti-science school board candidates and anti-choice city council candidates and anti-government state drainage commission auditor candidates. These tiny community nuisance larvae, nurtured by wingnut welfare and protected by low-information-voter apathy, eventually pupated in state legislatures, before emerging as full-blown leeches, ticks, and lampreys battening on our misfortunate nation’s lifeblood during the anti-Clinton congressional “Class of 1994” and the Bush/Cheney Kleptocracy. (It also bound the sane conservatives into a death pact with the Insane Klowns Posse, but that’s their problem to solve, or not.)
The Realist-Libertarians — and their counterparts on the other axis, like the Greens — believe they can find a magical all-purpose Savior Candidate, like Ralph Nader, whose enormous logical appeal and sheer personal charisma will make all us disaffected voters smack our foreheads and change our party registration. And also possibly bring in a whole! new! wave! of former non-voters enchanted by the MESSAGE, which has never before been so brilliantly embodied. This is like trying to change the Titanic’s direction by tying Leonardo DiCaprio to the bowsprit — no matter how much media attention it may attract, the laws of political physics will not work in your favor.
Of course Green and Libertarian candidates do sometimes run for one of those humble bottom-level civic offices, and even win. But all too often, prospective third-party Political Leaders leave the field, if not the party, after their first loss. The voters are too stupid, apathetic, or abused to appreciate one’s political genius, so they don’t deserve a second chance. Or the Entrenched Interests are too evil and/or powerful to understand that immediately surrendering their picayune personal fiefdoms to the New Perfect Goal is the only logical choice if they are not to be swept into the dustbin of history. Compromising, horse-trading, persuading other individuals (many of them self-involved greedy hacks and nutbags of dubious intellect and no obvious achievements) to vote in favor of the New Paradigm is tedious and soul-soiling.
It’s much easier to stomp off the field and then sit on the sidelines bitching, but Rush Limbaugh only achieved his current status because thousands of other Republicans were willing to expend their efforts in the actual political game. Even President Obama’s “overnight” success came as the culmination of many years of not-obvious-to-the-mainstream-media work and planning on his part and that of hundreds of other Democratic professionals and committed amateurs.
*****
On a semi-related topic, I found this particular one-star review
of Duck for President entertaining:
“America has a broken electoral system, a polarized electorate, and a dysfunctional Congress, yet somehow this book is amusing?
The book could be construed as funny if we ignore the fact that we have a representative form of government. When we remind ourselves that we’re a self-governing society, we are reminded that what we now call Duck is what we used to think of as a citizen in public service.
In a representative democracy we are all Ducks. And while it may not be fair to judge a light-hearted children’s book on the basis of underlying sociopolitical assumptions, it’s our responsibility as citizens to accept that we are ultimately responsible for the what’s wrong in government, not just teach our children to blame it on Duck. We have met the Duck, and it is us.”
Late Night Open Thread: Gubmint Suxx, and Then You DiePost + Comments (123)