(Tom Toles via GoComics.com)
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Greg Sargent is querulous about the “Dems push for national debate on whether GOP is sabotaging economy“:
… There was a time when charges like these were approached with a bit more caution by Democratic leaders. Now top Obama and Dem officials are going out into every conceivable forum and repeating the claim that Republicans are actively rooting for widespread economic misery and are doing all they can to block solutions designed to alleviate it.
I don’t really know how effective this strategy will be. Paul Krugman writes today that Obama has no choice at this point but to run with this argument as aggressively as possible. The bad jobs numbers mean Obama no longer has the option of running on claims of economic success. Better to admit that the policies he was able to get passed weren’t enough, and that we’d be doing better today if it weren’t for determined GOP obstructionism…
But all this aside, let’s face it: If Dems want a national media debate over whether the GOP is deliberately sabotaging the economy or is actively rooting for economic failure, they aren’t going to get one. This is not a topic that will get sustained media attention or discussion, no matter what Dems do.
I think the determined unwillingness of the mainstream media to acknowledge the dead Republican elephant currently stinking up the room may be related to one of the far-below-the-lede graphs from Thomas Edsall’s much-circulated NYTimes piece on “political heterogeneity“:
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If I am reading this correctly, it would seem that Republicans just choose not to care about fairness — a stance always easier for those to whom inequality has always tipped in their favor. Such as, for instance, those members of the media paid to explain that highlighting inequality and its consequences is at best shrill and at worst unpatriotic. And such high-minded ‘agreements’ are always seen as unbreakable… right until they shatter catastrophically.
WereBear
I hope that this is the election year when the big talking heads on television become strikingly irrelevant.
It’s like the old joke about the pet who suddenly starts talking in English, like a human: everything was fine up to now.
Things are not fine, and we’ve been hearing for years that it’s all the Democrats’ fault. Except it’s different this year: Mitt Romney can’t sell.
Anyone in business knows what I mean. W, for all his faults, was a glad-handing, nickname producing, good ol’ boy salesman. Mitt is so used to deference, his whole life, that he cannot be ingratiating and would be offended if you told him he had to try.
I don’t believe the polls that show Romney is overcoming his unfavorables. Because I have yet to hear a single person in my daily life say one good thing about him.
WereBear
For cheering up purposes:
Portrait of a thoughtful Tristan
Gypsy howell
The graph pretty clearly demonstrates (like we needed to have a picture drawn for us) that “Tea Party” is in fact just another name for “republican”, and for the most party, “independent” is just another term for “too embarrassed to call themselves Republican”
Gypsy howell
@WereBear:
I’ve seen 3 Romney bumper stickers in my neighborhood in the last week. (No, I don’t get it either)
.
joel hanes
It would be a better cartoon if a tiny Republican elephant was shown using cartoon scissors to snip the power cord on Obama’s stimulus
Schlemizel
WTH? Are you trying to break my weakened brain? “Monday Morning Open Thread”
I’m already thinking I need to step away from the political blogs for a bit in order to save my sanity. Then my poor pre-coffeed self has to work backwards from going to bed last night to be sure it didn’t just dream it already suffered through a Monday this week
Baud
That’s where I’ve been for the last few days — avoiding all media except BJ.
geg6
The good news for me is that Rmoney seems to have given up on PA. We are being inundated by official Obama ads, sprinkled with his super PAC ads. Every now and again, a Rove or Teabag PAC ad runs, but they aren’t money bombing the state. There is no Rmoney organizing here that anyone can see on the ground. Even his campaign has admitted that he won’t be doing much campaigning here.
This is good stuff. For my own peace of mind (the GOPer ads make me insane) and for anyone who needs some good news for Obama.
Mike Koch
In this dangerous cabal filled world a person can’t ever let honesty get in the way.
amk
Someone get sargent a fainting couch, stat.
Love such cocky certainty, especially when there is no citation to back it up.
Notwithstanding bory cookers, bill cilntons, patrick duvals, greg sargents and other such concern trolls, the Obama campaign team will continue to speak the truth about mittbot and the rethugs. With “Chicago style politics” too.
Baud
@geg6: That’s incredible news if it lasts. I hadn’t realized that Penn. was out of the swing-state category.
Davis X. Machina
@Gypsy howell: Team spirit. Indistinguishable from those big-ish white italic numbers from various NASCAR drivers you see stuck on back windows.
Anne Laurie
@Schlemizel: Fixed, thanks. Obviously I should’ve gone to bed earlier myself…
300baud
If I understand how it works, it isn’t that Republicans generally choose not to care. It’s more that people who don’t care choose to be Republicans. Although I’m sure there’s flow both directions.
I heard a researcher on the radio the other day who had a number of interesting things to say on the topic. Their site is YourMorals.org, and I’d be very curious to see how BJers rank compared with others.
gaz
@300baud: What if you are opposed to registering to a site that demands it in order to give you a moral assessment? Or what if you are morally opposed to a site that attempts to ham-fistedly wedge morals into a true and false test over a number of fixed questions?
I ask merely for information.
cheers =)
Matt McIrvin
I don’t think it actually matters whether they’re deliberately sabotaging the economy. It could well be that they just delude themselves into becoming hardcore deficit hawks whenever the Democrats are nominally in power and doing the spending, but regard spending on their own terms (massive wars, handouts to cronies) as A-OK as long as Republicans are in charge. You don’t have to tell yourself “I will endeavor to torpedo the US economy until my guy is elected”; you can just tell yourself “their kind of spending will make the public soft and dependent, whereas our kind is morally uplifting.”
You don’t need any grand Bond-villain plan to get there; it’s just human nature, ignorance and bullheadedness, but the effect and the incentives are exactly the same as if they’d set out deliberately to hold a gun to everyone’s heads.
PeakVT
Love the comic.
SiubhanDuinne
@Anne Laurie: Although FWIW, the URL still says Monday:
https://balloon-juice.com/2012/06/05/monday-morning-open-thread-15/@WereBear: Great picture! He is a beautiful boy!
Schlemizel
@Anne Laurie:
Hey! Its nice to serve a purpose other than to be pointed and laughed at!
I did my calling yesterday but I still have a very hopeless feeling about the assholes to my East today. That this is even close crushes any hope I might ever have that we are going to pull out of this nose-dive in time to keep from auguring into the ground so deep we’ll never see the light of day again.
danielx
A beautiful day and my daughter is nineteen years old today. I still regard her with some amazement on occasion, since when she was delivered at thirty weeks she weighed 2 lb 10 oz. Summer of 1993 was not a good time, but we got through it, albeit with her medical file growing to a thickness of roughly three inches. (Yes, I measured.) Last Saturday was her graduation party, Thursday is baccalaureate, and this coming Saturday is graduation. Next fall she starts an internship for special needs students at a local hospital….
I feel old.
gene108
@amk:
Didn’t think the Big Dawg was anything but a loyal Democratic surrogate for any Democrat seeking office. I’ve never heard him say anything to undermine elected Democrats, since he left office (with the exception of Hillary’s Presidential campaign in 2008 being a natural exception).
Would be nice to seen him stumping for team Democrat in Arkansas or wherever he’s still popular and Democrats could use some help.
I know he tilted the Democratic primary for PA AG.
Baud
@gene108: Clinton hosted a fundraiser for Obama last night. Not sure why he’s getting piled on.
Knight of Nothing
I think the graph is pretty stupid. Even when push-polls give results that make the other side look bad, they are still push-polls. They are deceptive and can be made to say anything.
What you hear right-wingers crow on and on about is that “all anyone should get is equal opportunity (as if the emphasis itself provides such equal opportunity). If option (b) was simply the mirror of option (a), the results would be less inflammatory. Sure, there are sociopaths, but my guess is that most respondents who chose (b) are really just avoiding answer (a) – the idea that the U.S. has a problem with equal opportunity.
arguingwithsignposts
@300baud:
This will not end well.
Valdivia
@danielx:
a hearty congrats.
Valdivia
@Baud:
Because he went off last week on how Romney has had a stellar business career and has on occasion lost the plot. I think once he is on the road campaigning full time it will be different.
arguingwithsignposts
@danielx: let me add my two cents worth of cheer as well. don’t feel old, feel accomplished.
WereBear
Thank you! He is a source of joy.
WereBear
I like that!
Ash Can
And I don’t really know if this is just Sargentese for “And they’re absolutely right, but if I say so I’ll get fired.”
Ash Can
@WereBear: Whenever you post pictures of Tristan now I’m amazed, because I remember all those pictures of him when he was no more than a cotton ball with eyes. He’s all grown up now!
amk
@gene108: @Baud: – bill clintion has always been about bill clinton, fuck hillary, fuck obama or fuck any other dem for that matter.
bystander
First! Happy birthday to your daughter danielx. And, to you and your wife, simply, Well done!
Anne Laurie, That final chart prompted my recollection of an interview Bill Moyers did with social psychologist, Jonathan Haidt. Haidt did some analysis of the moral predispositions of Liberals and Conservatives (IIRC) along 4-6 (?) dimensions. [Sorry, on the fly or I’d look all this up.] I’m thinking that Haidt would argue that it’s not that Republicans/Conservatives “choose not to care,” so much as their expression of “caring” is revealed along a different moral dimension.
I found Haidt difficult to listen to, but he has some interesting things to say. And, I found his research particularly interesting through the lens of Altemeyer’s Authoritarians.
Haidt says of himself,
Anyway… if you hadn’t seen that Moyers episode, thought you might find it interesting.
300baud
@gaz:
Yeah, the registration mildly bothered me. But it’s a legitimate scientific research process, and I trust them to manage the data responsibly.
I imagine the researcher would agree that morals can’t be reduced to a set of multiple-choice questionnaires. However, it’s nice to see somebody treating it with some rigor, and for that you’ll need numbers.
Mauve Lantern
You can disagree with Sargent’s analysis if you like, but there’s nothing “querulous” about his column.
Speaking of botching the language:
“Instead of high-fiving each other on days when there is bad news, they should stop sitting on their hands and work on some of these answers.”
Give Axelrod a banana and he can make a metaphor smoothie.
300baud
@arguingwithsignposts:
Maybe. But I took a similar set of surveys a few years back and discovered that I was measurably different than either typical Democrats or typical Republicans. Looking at the graphs, I thought, “Wow, no wonder I never felt at home with either group.”
I suspect Balloon Juice regulars have some common moral stances that drive us all here and away from the typical poles. Plus we are, I’m sure, better looking and more charming than average, but that’s harder to measure.
...now I try to be amused
For what it’s worth, conservatives like to talk about “tough love” and being “cruel to be kind”.
What Have The Romans Ever Done for Us? (formerly MarkJ)
Shorter Greg Sargent: We in the media will only be talking about what the Republicans want to talk about.
gypsy howell
@geg6:
And yet this is where I’m seeing Rmoney signs
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Matt McIrvin:
It’s a little bit more to that. It’s been proven that their “morally uplifting” ideas don’t work, so in their minds we’re all scum and we all deserve to suffer. That’s why a President Mittens and a GOP congress if it happens will be a national disaster. Notice there entire their policy stance is tax cuts for the good people and everyone else gets benefit cuts. That’s it.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@WereBear:
Mittens will do alright as long as he doesn’t have to be on stage and can play Generic Republican. Once it goes into the fall and people have to chose then he will drop like a rock like he did during the primaries.
Linda Featheringill
@300baud: #36
And all our children are above average.
:-)
ruemara
@danielx: Feel joy. Experienced joy. Congratulations!
Ed Drone
I read part of an article in the Washington Post — I can’t find it now online, but I think that’s where I read it — that baldly stated that the country would be better off with Rmoney simply because the Republicants wouldn’t kill the hostage (us) if he wins. Really The writer said that the Republicant Congress would tank the economy (even more than they have) and remain recalcitrant if Obama is still in office.
Unfortunately, it’s an accurate description. Fortunately, it puts one more notch in the “hey, those bastards are really doing it” scorecard in the public’s mind, and eventually (God and the FSM equally willing) it will become fixed in their brains: Republicants are really, really bad people, especially when given even a modicum of power.
Ed
Another Halocene Human
@Knight of Nothing: Knight, check out the book The Authoritarians which is available online. A Canadian researcher looked into these kinds of social attitudes in detail and I believe it sheds some light on why the Teapublicans answered the question in the way that they did.
My takeaway is that it has less to do with ideology and more to do with personal values stemming from something to do with life experience and brain chemistry. Also, other research has shown that most people do not understand the ideology of the tribe they claim membership in. Ask a Catholic about transubstantiation and most lay persons will give you the “wrong” answer.
Another Halocene Human
@bystander:
Haidt seems too close to his subject matter and needs to step back and get some perspective. When you exclude the social dominators who dominate (lol) the GOP, those who are left are the authoritarian followers and the reason their “caring is revealed along a different moral dimension” is that their fear of strangers is being exploited, so they treat whoever they perceive to be in their outgroup in sociopathic ways. The upshot for the social dominators is that people who are thinking tribalistically are more vulnerable to affiliation fraud, trusting someone in their in-group and being ripped off. Works for conmen and politicians.
Think of those grifters who travel from church to church or salespeople who talk Jesus all the time, hoping you’ll respond to that and reveal yourself for a mark. The whole “have a beer with” is code for “he’s in your in-group”.
So, yes, there are conservatives who are very caring to family members and those in their inner circle but vote for policies that are very harmful on a societal or global level. They’ve written everybody else but their inner circle off.
Personally, I do NOT consider this an equally valid moral stance to treating all human beings and brothers and sisters.
Maybe Haidt has a multisyllabic apologium prepared?
Another Halocene Human
@300baud:
Altemeyer’s work explained a lot to me. I am not a social dominator, but I seemed almost conditioned to be an authoritarian follower because of my upbringing. Public school in New England saved me. I ended up well on the progressive side mostly because FACTS and RESULTS did not favor conservative arguments. Knowing something about criminology made me skeptical of the law&order drumbeat. Hey, I’m ultimately self-interested and stupid authoritarian solutions do not enhance my rational self-interest.
Over time I’ve shed a lot of the trappings of my past, I guess in a sort of fear-facing-down experience that Altemeyer talks about, but that wasn’t true a decade ago. I would have easily gone to the authoritarian side had they not been telling porkies, and had I not been educated enough to recognize that fact.
gaz
@300baud: Totally. I was ribbing ya’ =)
gaz
@Another Halocene Human: FWIW, you’re blessed in that your past has lent you that perspective. I’m not similarly blessed in that I’ve always had problem with authority. I still do, and wrestle with it all the time. Sometimes submission to authority is a good thing. Often times, it’s not. It’s probably best to be well equipped for both scenarios, I’d imagine.
Knight of Nothing
@Another Halocene Human: Thanks for the link – it looks promising. Without having read the book, I can’t comment. I will check it out more fully when I get a chance. But it seems like your point is a bit of a tangent to what I was getting at: that the phrasing of the question painted respondents into a corner. After reading some of Altemeyer’s work, I imagine he would agree with me that questions which pose false dichotomies do not yield useful/accurate results.