Keith Olbermann has been fired in an acrimonious fashion, with both sides livid and displaying seething contempt for each other. Again.
It’s Friday, So You Know What That MeansPost + Comments (87)
by John Cole| 87 Comments
This post is in: Manic Progressive
Keith Olbermann has been fired in an acrimonious fashion, with both sides livid and displaying seething contempt for each other. Again.
It’s Friday, So You Know What That MeansPost + Comments (87)
by $8 blue check mistermix| 191 Comments
This post is in: Manic Progressive, The Math Demands It
From yesterday’s posts and comments I see that some of you aren’t happy that Bob Kerrey is going to run for the Nebraska Senate. My take is we’re lucky he’s running and we’ll be lucky if he wins, and I say that as someone who can’t stand the guy, personally.
If Democrats are going to control the Senate, we need Senators from marginal states, like the Plains states. A decade ago, the Dakotas and Nebraska had Conrad, Daschle, Dorgan, Johnson and Nelson. In the next session, we’ll have Johnson, Conrad’s replacement (probably a Republican) and Nelson’s replacement (Kerrey if we’re lucky). That’s a loss of up to 4 seats in a decade.
The theory that demographics will be the Democratic Party’s savior might pan out in the House, if we can get some decent redistricting, but the Senate math is brutal. We’re going to solidify most of the Northeast in the next few cycles, except perhaps for the Kentucky of New England, New Hampshire, but we should have those seats as a buffer against electoral mishap anyway. That leaves us with the purple fringe of the South, the Plains and the Rocky Mountain States. None of these states will elect a “real progressive”, and anyone who thinks they’ve found one in the wild (as Kos did with Tester) will soon be disappointed.
Finally, on the ground, it’s hard to overstate the importance of Democrat holding federal office in red or purple states. Without at least one Democrat driving media coverage, GOTV and party enthusiasm, it’s really hard for Democrats to win other offices or generate much party excitement. For example, take Stephanie Herseth-Sandlin, the Blue Dog everyone here hated. My relatives in South Dakota thought she was great. She was a young, energetic and exciting presence on TV and in the newspaper, representing progressive ideals and demonstrating that Democrats can serve everyone in the state. Her loss to a Palin doppelganger was really disheartening for South Dakota Democrats, even if it was a meh event for the rest of us.
But maybe I’m wrong. Maybe there’s a way to hold the Senate without the likes of Bob Kerrey. Here’s the map, you tell me how we get a decent Senate majority without guys like him.
by Zandar| 180 Comments
This post is in: Blatant Liars and the Lies They Tell, DC Press Corpse, I Smell a Pulitzer!, Manic Progressive, OBAMA IS WORSE THAN BUSH HE SOLD US OUT!!, Our Failed Media Experiment
So I wonder what the deal is behind this story, but that’s not the interesting part.
Late Tuesday evening, a press release went out to numerous political journalists with stunning news. Mega-union SEIU had voted to withdraw its recently bestowed endorsement of Barack Obama. That’s certainly not unimaginable — SEIU often takes its own path and has a conflicted relationship with the Democratic party establishment.
Only it wasn’t true.
It was a pretty real looking hoax press release that managed to snare a number of reporters who posted the news on twitter.
The interesting part is not who is behind it, the interesting part is the fact that whoever did it knew that a professional beltway type like Josh Marshall finds the notion of a massive union withdrawing its endorsement of a Democratic president plausible and almost irresistible, and would miss the irony of how that little piece of conventional wisdom completely fooled a number of “journalists” last night who couldn’t resist the notion that THE LEFT HATES OBAMA ZOMG.
Exactly who else would SEIU endorse, Josh? Newt? Ron Paul? Mittens? Bachmann? People so openly hostile to organized labor they want them eliminated completely, who regularly call them thugs and criminals and blame them for the state of the American middle-class?
Especially after already declaring for the President? Are we that certain inside the beltway of the conventional wisdom that everyone secretly hates President Obama and that SEIU would pick up its ball and go home, knowing that the only real alternative to the President is people who want to see them utterly annihilated? SEIU completely backs the President. Is that more or less plausible?
So very eager for those emoprog stories, aren’t we, liberal media. It’s to Josh’s credit that he didn’t fall for it, but he certainly thought long and hard about running with it, didn’t he. Whoever pulled this little stunt knew exactly how it would fall out, and just how successful it would be. They got Politico’s Ken Vogel, National Journal/Atlantic’s Marc Ambinder, and more than a few other people to bite on it.
But even after debunking the story, the beltway types admit “Yeah, this was still plausible”. And that’s all the proof you should need to know that our brave Village betters need a long, long vacation out in Actual America for some much needed perspective.
[UPDATE] Well, judging from the comments, suggesting that Josh Marshall showed his ass by implying that a major union would abandon the President three weeks after giving their endorsement (itself a completely ludicrous implication) makes me an errant schoolchild that needs to be corrected by his betters for starting food fights on our loveable, traditional blog.So sorry to have ruined anyone’s day with the opinion of mine. Having said that, I believe a break is in order. See you cats down the road.
They Knew Exactly Which Buttons To PushPost + Comments (180)
by Imani Gandy (ABL)| 233 Comments
This post is in: Election 2012, Manic Progressive
Fresh off the heels of The New York Times’ report that Black people still really love them some President Obama, comes the news that Nader’s progressive pony project isn’t going to meet the deadline for qualifying to enter the New Hampshire primary.
::cue tiny violins::
The man makes a good point about standardizing state elections but I’m not going to pretend that I’m not glad that Nader and his Princeton bros, Cornel West and Chris Hedges aren’t going to be lurking about just waiting to screw things up.
Six weeks ago, word got out about a progressive project that could have Ralph Nader playing a familiar role: Electoral scold. He was the best-known member of a coalition to recruit five progressive candidates to run, as Democrats, against Barack Obama. At 4:30 p.m. today, the coalition was going to face its first deadline: qualifying to enter the New Hampshire primary.
Nader’s group won’t make the deadline.
Ralph Nader and Cornel West’s Plans to Primary Obama Hit A WallPost + Comments (233)
This post is in: Democratic Cowardice, Manic Progressive, Our Failed Media Experiment, Our Failed Political Establishment, Teabagger Stupidity
The key to understanding this, I’d suggest, is that movement conservatism has become a closed, inward-looking universe in which you get points not by sounding reasonable to uncommitted outsiders — although there are a few designated pundits who play that role professionally — but by outdoing your fellow movement members in zeal.
It’s sort of reminiscent of Stalinists going after Trotskyites in the old days: the Trotskyites were left deviationists, and also saboteurs working for the Nazis. Didn’t propagandists feel silly saying all that? Not at all: in their universe, extremism in defense of the larger truth was no vice, and you literally couldn’t go too far.
Many members of the commentariat don’t want to face up to the fact that this is what American politics has become; they cling to the notion that there are gentlemanly elder statesmen on the right who would come to the fore if only Obama said the right words. But the fact is that nobody on that side of the political spectrum wants to or can make deals with the Islamic atheist anti-military warmonger in the White House.
Strap yourself in; this is not going to be fun.
Look at what has happened in just the past few weeks- Cain’s idiotic 9-9-9 plan seemed to catch on with the idiot right, so now everyone in the Republican field is tripping over themselves to come up with a flat tax plan that is flatter than everyone elses. And in the process, we get this kind of nonsense:
Rick Perry’s plan to scrap the graduated income tax and replace it with a 20-percent flat rate would call for deep cuts in federal programs and grant a major tax cut for the wealthy by eliminating estate and capital gains taxes while sharply lowering the rate the richest Americans pay on the bulk of their income, which is now set at 35 percent.
Mr. Perry, in a speech in South Carolina, said his proposal offers benefits to middle-class Americans by giving a $12,500 deduction for every member of a household while preserving exemptions for state and local taxes, mortgage interest and charitable contributions for anyone making less than $500,000. He also said anyone could file under the current code, where most middle-class taxpayers pay a 15 percent top rate, but with lower personal exemptions. He also pledged to lower the corporate tax rate to 20 percent.
“Taxes will be cut on all income groups in America,” said Mr. Perry, the governor of Texas, who promised that taxes could be filed on a postcard-sized form under his plan. “We need a tax policy that embraces the world for what it is, and not what some liberal ideologue wishes it could be.”
Where do we go from there? Who knows. Bachmann will probably release a plan so simple it can be filled out in half a postcard. And so on. And what of these mythical elder statesmen on the right? They are about to become extinct:
Remember, less than a year ago, one of the Republican Party’s elder statesmen said his party would be “beyond redemption” if Lugar faced a credible primary challenge. And yet, he we are, 11 months later, facing the very real likelihood that Congress’ last respectable conservative will be rejected by his own party for not being right-wing enough.
This is one of the reasons I get so frustrated with the pissing and moaning and the “Oh, Obama has let me down” bullshit from our progressive betters in the comments here and elsewhere. It’s like they just don’t understand that we all agree the Democrats aren’t perfect, that we realize the Democrats are pretty bad on a lot of issues, and we realize that in many cases they are just as beholden to corporate interests, and that we realize that Democrats do a lot of really stupid shit and are not serving their constituents well. We get all that. I understand that completely and agree with those sentiments. The fail is plainly visible. For every bright spot like Franken or Sanders or Sherrod Brown, there is a Nelson or Landrieu or McCaskill. But that doesn’t change the fact that THE OTHER FUCKING PARTY IS CRAZY. And I’m not saying that just to be hyperbolic. They are nucking futs. Lunatics. Insane.
So until we exist in a system other than a two party system, I’m with the imperfect losers, happily. At least many of them have their hearts and heads in the right place, and when your choice is them of the frothing nutters, it isn’t even a choice.
This post is in: Open Threads, Manic Progressive, OBAMA IS WORSE THAN BUSH HE SOLD US OUT!!
There are a group of people who sell themselves as “progressives” who have proven over the years that they are complete fools. These are folks with a serious strategic thinking problem. Time after time all they do is rack up failure after failure. Worst of all, they provide wingnuts everywhere perfect foils who can be presented as proof that all folks who believe in progressive goals are idiots.
The damage these clowns do day in and day out is substantial. Like Upper Class Twits from a Monty Python sketch, they just keep walking into the same wall over and over again with gusto. All the while, their comic failure works to make any effort at progress all the more difficult. These fools regularly repeat whatever wingnut talking point they are fed and then think they are having an original thought. Even racist framing is OK if they think it will help them hit the same wall with a little more force. These fools would be worthy only of derisive laughter if they hadn’t proven to be such effective tools for destruction.
ABL wrote about the latest gathering of these dopes over the weekend. It seems that Ralph Nader, Cornell West and a group of other easily manipulated egos have decided that President Obama MUST face a primary challenge. They are so serious about this that they have sent out a press release!
Some Emo-bloggers have picked it up, but not many. The effort is so silly that even FDL has yet to jump on the bandwagon (but to be fair, FDL is slow on the uptake, so I guess they’ll get excited about this effort by October). The effort is getting far more attention on wingnut blogs and wingnut media. The Washington Times proclaims:
President Obama’s smooth path to the Democratic nomination may have gotten rockier Monday, after a group of liberal leaders, including former presidential candidate Ralph Nader, announced plans to challenge the incumbent in primaries next year…
And Fox News is all over the story as proof that President Obama is a failure.
This Nader/West effort to marginalize the left is just another example of the progressive death wish. This recent editorial from The Nation is another. I’m 56 years old. I’ve watched the so called leaders of the Left do this dance of self-destruction over and over and over again. The results have never been good.
Humphrey had to pay a price for LBJ. They had to “punish” Carter to teach him a lesson, even if it gave us Reagan. Gore had to be disciplined for the sins of Clinton and these fools claimed there was no difference between Al and Bush. Kerry never “excited” them and also required election year chastisement. Now it is President Obama who is the target of these strategic geniuses.
Nader, West and these other fools always function as the reliable Left flank of wingnutopia. Without these useful idiots the GOP and their ideas would always be defeated. With them to serve as comic foils, vote sponges, and advocates of apathy, the GOP can get close enough to steal any election.
And here they come again, right on cue–ready to compete for the Upper Class Twit 2012 Title. They will talk up anybody as a “progressive” or “populist” alternative to President Obama. Hell, Ralph is already celebrating Palin as a populist diva. I guess they’ll do what damage they can in the Primaries and then support some wingnut assisting 3rd party effort. I’m guessing a Palin/Nader 2012 Third Party ticket would really excite these mental giants.
What a bag of useless dicks.
Cheers
by Imani Gandy (ABL)| 97 Comments
This post is in: Manic Progressive
Matt Osborne provides this follow-up to his original post:
I said yesterday:
“Friday’s progressive freakout over nixed EPA smog rules is not really about fighting smog, but the myopia of issue focus in the blogosphere and the inflated currency of online outrage. Transportation is a wonky subject that often flies below the radar. It is not sexy or cute. Much of its advocacy is local. But federal transportation policy is also crucial in reducing smog levels as well as achieving other progressive ends.”
One of this blog’s foci is transportation; see the masthead and the sidebar. Transportation is a vital progressive issue, and the stakes right now are high. Without at least a renewal of the gas tax, projects stop being funded, and actual jobs start being cut. Without a budget, America’s transportation infrastructure will deteriorate and fewer jobs will be created.
In case you haven’t heard, there is going to be a speech this week. The Republican response is to yawn, because the president gives too many speeches. That’s one major complaint about Obama. The other is that he doesn’t use the bully pulpit enough, i.e. he doesn’t give enough speeches. I hear this a lot, too; the two groups should come together and get their story straight.
It’s hard not to talk about the president when discussing transportation. Many online opinionators are investing in his failure, and it’s hard to attract the interest of major linkers if you don’t offer outrage in his name. But failure this week is not an option for anyone — not unless you think the way forward is collapse, and I don’t.
This weekend was an example of how progressives can explode in daisy-chains over the issue or issues that concern them most. I’m not calling anyone a “freak” for having a freakout, either. Freakouts happen. I’ve had freakouts myself, and in fact was having a kind of freakout this weekend, for it was an important time to write on transportation issues while everyone else was freaking out over smog regulations and a pipeline.
~snip~
What I wrote yesterday drew an outraged response from climate hawks, who sensed that I was being dismissive of their concerns. I’m not. They are great people and I take their criticisms in good spirit. But their grief reaction at Friday’s announcement was hijacked in a matter of seconds by a segment of the online left that is invested in bashing the president. This is a really bad time to let them run the conversation.
Smog is lethal; so are poor roads and bridges and unwalkable streets. To put things in perspective, 12,000 smog deaths are a tad more than one-third of US highway traffic fatalities. Roads can be improved for safety, minimizing crashes and injuries while creating jobs. Sidewalks and bike lanes save lives too: nearly 48,000 American pedestrians were killed in the last decade. Sidewalks and bike lanes create jobs.
As far as smog goes, six of the seven suggestions at this eHow article on “how to reduce smog” involve vehicles and gasoline. So how is this calculus wrong? Or as Zandar put it yesterday: is smog the hill to die on? I don’t think so. Moreover, I think the environmental movement has a basic problem to solve, and transportation shows the way forward.
(read the rest, including internal links)