The Commentariat -- Nov. 19, 2014
Internal links removed.
Coral Davenport & Ashley Parker of the New York Times: "Senate Democrats, by a single vote, stopped legislation that would have approved construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, one of the most fractious and expensive environmental battles of the Obama presidency.... Senator Mary L. Landrieu, Democrat of Louisiana, who is facing a runoff election Dec. 6, had pleaded with her colleagues throughout the day, leading to a rare suspense-filled roll call in the Senate.... The bill was defeated with 59 votes in favor and 41 against, with Ms. Landrieu needing 60 votes to proceed. The vote was also a reflection of how a once-obscure pipeline blew up into an expensive national political battle between environmentalists and the oil industry. Although TransCanada proposed the pipeline in 2005, it generated so little attention that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was poised to approve it in 2011 with little fanfare."
Mitch Is Watching You. Charlie Savage & Jeremy Peters of the New York Times: "Senate Republicans on Tuesday blocked a sweeping overhaul of the once-secret National Security Agency program that collects records of Americans' phone calls in bulk. Democrats and a handful of Republicans who supported the measure fell two votes short of the 60 votes they needed to take up the legislation, which sponsors named the U.S.A. Freedom Act. Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, worked hard to defeat the bill, which had the support of the Obama administration and a coalition of technology companies, including Apple, Google, Microsoft and Yahoo."
Emmarie Heutteman of the New York Times: "Representative Nancy Pelosi of California was chosen [by House Democrats] to serve as minority leader for another two years despite quiet dissent within the party resulting from the net loss of an additional 12 seats in the Republican-controlled House.... But another challenge to Ms. Pelosi's authority remained, as the House Democratic Caucus was expected to vote Wednesday on the next senior Democrat on the House Energy and Commerce Committee. Representative Anna G. Eshoo of California, a friend and the preferred pick of Ms. Pelosi, and Representative Frank Pallone Jr. of New Jersey, a member with more seniority, are vying for the post vacated by retiring Representative Henry A. Waxman."
Court of Public Opinion? Lauren French of Politico: "House Republicans have hired ... noted constitutional lawyer [Jonathan Turley] to oversee a lawsuit against President Barack Obama for alleged executive overreach.... This is Republicans' third lawyer since the suit was initially passed in July. Two previous lawyers dropped the case and the House has yet to file the lawsuit in federal court. 'Even for $500-per-hour in taxpayer dollars, Speaker Boehner has had to scour Washington to find a lawyer willing to file this meritless lawsuit against the president,' said Drew Hammill, a spokesperson for Minority Leader Pelosi. 'Now, he's hired a TV personality for this latest episode of his distraction and dysfunction.'" Thanks to Haley S. for giving us the heads-up on this very early yesterday.
** Jamelle Bouie of Slate: Republicans keep pushing a liberal agenda. You read that right (or left!). Thanks, Mitch. ...
... ** Garrett Epps of the Atlantic: "What's coming will be painful, frustrating, and dangerous -- and it will illustrate a constitutional malfunction unforeseen in 1787. The country will survive, and it's possible it can even make progress -- but at tremendous cost in polarization and missed opportunity.... So we might profitably put a six-month moratorium on paeans to the wisdom of the Framers. The problem of divided government is a bug, not a feature, and the Constitution itself provides no guidance on how to work around it.... I don't think any of [the Framers] anticipated that the two branches would ever clash over which represented the will of the voters.' The voters weren't all that important in their design. The House was the only branch directly elected by voters." ...
... Steve M. notes that "The editorial board of The Washington Post is appalled" that President Obama plans to unilaterally relax the enforcement of immigration laws. So Steve wonders why it is nobody seemed "appalled" when Mitt Romney made central to his campaign a pledge to unilaterally gut ObamaCare "on Day One" and "on Day Two," he planned to totally repeal the ACA with a party-line Congressional "reconciliation" vote. "... no 'mantle of bipartisanship there. And no mainstream chatterer expressed the slightest bit of outrage."
GruberGate, Ctd. CW: If readers would like to know why I seldom link anything Steve Rattner has written, even when he writes something useful, here's a good example. If Gruber is a blowhard who makes up shit to make himself appear more important, Rattner is a BLOWHARD WHO MAKES UP SHIT SO HE CAN KEEP BEING ON THE TEEVEE. ...
...Aaron Sharockman of PolitiFact: "Since Nov. 10, Fox News Channel has referenced Gruber at least 779 times on air, while MSNBC has referred to Gruber 79 times. CNN has mentioned Gruber just 27 times over the same period."
... Let's give Jonathan Cohn the Last Word on Gruber (till we have to add some more words). Cohn provides an honest & accurate portrayal of Gruber's input into the ACA.
Capitalism Is Awesome, Ctd.
(Because There's No Bounty on Dirtbags)
Vikas Bajaj of the New York Times: "Success appears to have bred arrogance and vindictiveness at Uber. That is the only conclusion to draw from the news that a senior executive [Emil Michael] at the company said it planned to uncover and spread personal information about journalists who wrote critical articles.... on Tuesday, the chief executive of Uber, Travis Kalanick, apologized for Mr. Michael's statements but said he would not be fired for them." ...
Sarah Lacy of Pando Daily: Uber "is way worse than anyone on our team could have expected." Lacy reprises some of the stories her site's reporters have written about Uber. Here's a good one: "... CEO Travis Kalanick ... calls the company 'boober' because of all the tail he gets since running it."
Katie Benner of Bloomberg View: "The rideshare company Uber ... is dealing with a public-relations nightmare of cartoonish proportions.... Venture investors, who often double as directors, generally don't care in the slightest about the public perception of startups or bad behavior within their portfolio companies so long as there's a chance that a profitable exit can be secured..... Companies potentially destined for Facebook-like success, including Uber, tend to become impervious to sour press."
Kara Swisher of Vanity Fair profiles Uber CEO Travis Kalanick: "One of Uber's earliest investors explains Kalanick's pugnacious reputation in more matter-of-fact terms: 'It's hard to be a disrupter and not be an asshole.'"
Max Read of Gawker: "If Uber has an 'asshole problem,' so does all of capitalism.... Insofar as it's considered spying on an oppositional journalist, Uber is acting exactly like a major company. Like, say, Hewlett-Packard.... Or Wal-Mart.... Or Fox News."
News Ledes
USA Today: "A 41-year-old Iowa man was arrested near the White House Wednesday after the Secret Service recovered a shotgun, ammunition and a knife from his vehicle, officials said. R.J. Kapheim of Davenport allegedly initiated a conversation with a uniformed Secret Service officer near the White House, saying that 'someone in Iowa' had directed him to drive to D.C., Secret Service spokesman Brian Leary said."
New York Times: "President Obama will speak to the nation in a prime-time address on Thursday, asserting his authority to protect up to five million undocumented immigrants from deportation, the White House said, and setting in motion an immediate confrontation with Republicans about the limits of a president's executive powers."..
.. New York Times: "Millions of undocumented immigrants who are set to be granted a form of legal status by President Obama as early as this week will not receive one key benefit: government subsidies for health care available under the Affordable Care Act. Mr. Obama is preparing to use his executive authority to provide work permits for up to five million people who are in the United States illegally, and to shield them from deportation."
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Some thoughts on the White Guy Problem
(I realize there are a lot of excellent links this morning out here in RC world--like, there are days when there aren't?--that deserve comment, but this is something that's been on my mind for a while.)
There's been a lot of bloviating lately on how Democrats lost the White Guy Vote (white men, across the economic spectrum cast only a third of their votes for Obama in the last election; far less among white working class/blue collar voters) and what they need to do to get them back.
Opinions range from the silly to the historically informed. I noticed an opinion piece last week in the Chicago Tribune about how white men are being pushed to the right. Okay, I thought, I'll bite. Why? (There are plenty of reasons, but I wanted to know this writer's). The answer, in this case, was less than edifying: women are getting EVVVerything these days.
The idea here is that Democrats have lost the white male vote because they're making a lot of the War on Women, which, really, according to this guy, isn't such a big deal. He also claims that white guys are pissed off because they are routinely portrayed in commercials as sad sack losers, stupid, and out of touch, and if some other group were shown thusly, there'd be hell to pay.
Well, if that were the only way white men are portrayed in commercials, I'd have to agree. But then you have to ignore all the many ads that still aim for the macho, guy in charge, flying an airplane with babes all around, or wearing the Right Watch, or driving the Cool Car. And in any event, the Democratic Party is not responsible for these representations. So that's on the silly side.
Newsweek recently weighed in with a slightly more nuanced article that tried to piece together the historical drift of white guys away from the Democratic Party: the Reagan Democrats, the demise of unions, the lack of good jobs, the rise of minority calls for their own rights. What it doesn't really offer, is any solution.
Some might say, well, so what? Fuck those guys anyway. I myself don't think that's really an answer. But it is an issue Democrats could use to help redirect the party towards a set of goals and beliefs that could appeal to all the many niche groups they now seem to represent.
Marie recently termed Democrats the Party of Nothing. It's a telling phrase that encapsulates my feelings pretty well. The Democratic Party of FDR stood for something tangible: jobs, jobs, jobs. A square deal, a new deal.
I think it's an historical irony that the party that has done the most to undercut white working class families, the party that has killed jobs, killed unions, killed opportunity for the middle class, killed hope, has reaped their support in increasingly huge numbers. And they have done this by highlighting division and fanning hatred and mistrust in order to throw a smoke screen up to hide their true goal of fucking the middle and lower classes in the service of the wealthy.
If Democrats were better able to point this out, and offer concrete solutions, not just complain about it, but show some gumption in being able to address some of these issues, and to do it in a way that connects with everyone not in the Romney/Ryan/Republican gold club, I think there might be a chance of luring some of these guys back to the party.
The Newsweek piece recalls Obama asking if anyone had noticed the high price of arugula in Whole Foods stores. This kind of approach probably won't connect with a lot of out of work blue collar white guys. And some, of course, will never come back. Southern religious conservatives will go to their deaths despising all core tenets of any Democratic platform. But Democrats can't simply talk a populist game, they have to find a way to play it too. And win.
As I say, the issue here isn't simply "what to do about the white guys" as it is, how to revamp the Democratic message, and not just as a brand name, but a message that means something and is followed through on by rank and file as well as leaders. Even the Blue Dogs can get on board with a jobs program and a move to take education back from zealots and kooks.
We gotta do something. And it's not really tossing everything out and starting over; it would be closer to a return to the mission of the Democratic Party of 50 or 60 or 80 years ago. And we can't be afraid of standing up for the little guy, white, brown, black, yellow or any combination thereof.
When I was a kid, I asked my dad why we were Democrats. He said Democrats are for us. Republicans are for the rich. For him and my mom, it was that simple, even if it was a simplification then and it would be now as well. Plenty of Dems are just as much for and of the rich as most (okay, all) Republicans. But we need to focus on creating good outcomes and futures for those who are being stomped on by Republicans and their wealthy masters.
In some ways, we need to make it as simple as it was for my parents.
Thoughts?
I see that the Party of Fiscal Responsibility and their media shills are hard at work being fiscally responsible.
A $500/hr lawyer (plus all his little baby lawyers and researchers and trolls), working day and night to sue a sitting president--on our dime--who is prosecuting military action, at least ostensibly in the name of national security, might be easier and less potentially costly (politically, speaking) than an impeachment extravaganza, but just imagine the blown head gaskets around Right Wing World if a Democratically controlled House tried to do this to The Decider when he was hard at work fucking up the world?
The howls of outrage would have been detected by satellites in orbit.
Around Jupiter.
Fox will be offering "Go Jonathan!" t-shirts very shortly.
When the Democrats abdicated their responsibility to keep unions viable, most visibly by not standing up to Reagan when he fired the air traffic controllers, and then pusillanimously but less visibly in the years that followed, they lost the support of so many people who could stomach and even ignore social change as long as they made a good living.
Once the Dems stopped fighting for those working people, though, the working people found that there was a party that also wouldn't fight for them but despised the appropriate people, those who didn't wave the flag on all occasions and vaguely but ardently support troops by sending them to their deaths at every opportunity.
If Dems could bring themselves again to weigh in as a group on the side of workers, those workers might be able to put aside how much they abhor gay people and pointy-headed liberals and others who would limit gun ownership to, say, several per person. They would be less likely to be taken in by Rush and his ilk who convince them that deregulating corporations will make those corporations more user-friendly to workers and customers (and the environment).
I had a conversation yesterday with Sean, a man with whom I'm friendly who manages the local Amato's sandwich shop. He said that he was against raising the minimum wage. "If I have made bad choices in my life, why should I be rewarded with a better wage?" he asked. He really asked that. I told him that in America we had made a choice some years back to devalue restaurant managers and exalt money managers, and that in a demand economy, raising wages for people at the bottom of the economic ladder will result in far more consumption and far more money flowing through businesses like Amato's.
I pointed out that in Australia, workers at McDonalds make more than twice the American minimum wage, yet the Big Mac is priced about the same as it is here. Sean was astounded. He had never seen that information anywhere. I explained to him that a company's revenues (minus expenses) can either be shared with workers or retained as profits. In a healthy economy, full-time workers at places like Walmart would not need to depend upon the government to supplement a living wage. The only reasons that American workers are paid so poorly is that (1) investors demand and receive a higher profit and (2) nobody powerful has got the workers' backs.
I think Sean was convinced. He had seen the battle as between the poor and the middle-class and had not considered how much was essentially skimmed to pay investors.
Now, if the Dems were willing to get out there and educate others in the same way while offering support to get a better deal for (especially) lower-middle-class workers, we might see some of the culture warriors overcome their antipathy for their current outrage and return to the Democratic fold.
"Let them eat nothing." Mike Pence (R-Malice), governor of Indiana.
Yesterday we talked a bit about the abiding love on the part of the Republican Party for kicking those most in need of assistance right in the mouth.
Not to be outdone by Paul Ryan who wants a few million more poor people shoved below the bare subsistence line, Mike Pence, empathetic (or should that just be pathetic?) Guv of the Hoosier state, is yanking state support for food stamps. And just in time for cold weather and the holidays! But don't fret, poor people, I'm sure someone makes turkey flavored cat food.
Governor Mike, who doesn't look like he's suffering from malnutrition, says that hunger is "ennobling". Get that? "Ennobling." Is this guy a Dickens character, or what? Funny how it's only the well off who say such unconditionally retarded bullshit.
But it's all okay. All those families who will now be suffering hunger pangs can eat again. Just as soon as they go through a 250 week jobs training program that they have to pay for with their first born. Oh, and then get a job.
But....er, um....Mike forgot to tell us that that are only one million jobs in the Midwest for the two million people looking for work.
Oops!...Musta been that Obama guy who killed all those high paying jobs we had lyin' around.
Enjoy your nobility, suckers. And remember, continue to vote Republican. Starvation is a great way to lose weight, after all.
"Ennobling"....how it rolllllls off the tongue.
Jack,
Now that's what I'm talkin' about. Democrats have to show people there's another way. And it's not like reinventing the wheel, as you point out, other countries have done this. It's a matter of selling the idea then having the will to put it into action. We have to get people to believe there's another way. Republicans and their masters and their media empires want everyone to believe the world is flat and there's nothing past the horizon. If Democrats have to sail around the world to prove otherwise, so be it.
I keep reading about the demise of the American dream. There has to be a way to allow people the opportunity to dream about a better life.
You don't have dreams, you have nightmares.
Akhilleus,
Most of the jokes about the Democrats' inability to get out of their own way can be explained by the difficulty of communicating any complicated idea on a bumper sticker.
Last night I listened to a local, progressive state senator talk about our state's budget problems and the shellacking the Democrats took nationally in the recent election. The man seems intelligent, passionate (isn't everyone these days?) and definitely on the right side of the issues, but when pressed to offer an inspiring and motivating vision for all the nominal Democrats who did not bother to vote, he stumbled badly. Aside from the familiar social justice issues and a few fitful thoughts on the low-wage economy, he had no coherent, certainly no compelling, argument to offer. It was sad, really. The roomful of loyal Democrats kept asking and got little (or as Marie has said, nothing) in return. No hint of a bumper sticker there.
With all that as context, I have a few thoughts--not to be confused with answers--to offer.
Firs of all, we need to reforge in voters' minds the link between economic and social justice issues. Most of the Democrats' favorite social justice hot-button issues have a definite economic component, some obvious, some not. Lower pay for women and minorities, not to mention the army of fast-food and Walmart workers is only one obvious instance. Less obviously, that our state's tax structure--here, too, just as nationally, one that favors the rich as the expense of the many--has forced our universities to quadruple in the last decade is another. Like wages and tax structure, educational opportunity is also a social and economic justice issue, and Democrats need to make all that clear, even if in doing so they have to suggest that Capitalism is not always that Awesome. The evidence, of course, is that it ain't, and that message needs a bumper sticker: Like "You're broke because they aren't." How's that for class warfare?
(Writing this, it occurs to me that in the early 30's thing were so bad that most could not ignore the economic situation. Roosevelt's Four Freedoms, came later, once the economy was teetering back onto the track. Proof maybe that economic reality is fundamental, and must come first, and that a political party that appeals primarily to social justice abstractions, while ignoring the economic fundamentals, won't get the traction it wants and needs. Maslow's hierarchy came up in last night's discussion for a good reason.)
In fact, the bumper sticker challenge may be Democrats' biggest. My wife is trying to come up with a snappy and memorable slogan that encapsulates and conveys the vision of the county land trust organization of which she is a member. As we all know it's not easy to make complexity snappy and simple and still tell the truth.
So...I think the Democrats' argument going forward (kinda like "passionate") has to be economic. Why do people feel we're on the wrong course? Because we are. At every opportunity Democrats have to explain what that course is (its has been set by the Right since Reagan: more for the rich and less for the rest) and why it is killing our democracy.
There's more to say here, but for now that'll have to do..
Ah yes, those poor white men. They never get anything:
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/house-gop-struggles-diversity
Deja vu all over again.
To Akhilleus and Jack Mahoney regarding the ‘white guy problem’ of white working class workers not voting for Democrats. I am a member of a construction union in NYC. The problem might not be so much the Democrats have abandoned the Unions as much as the Unions have abandoned the Democrats. Sure, Union leadership supports the Democrats, but not so much all the rank and file. Democratic Party leaders know who is voting for them. Why people vote against their own interest is a complicated question with many moving parts. First hand experience tells me, without a doubt, racism is part of the problem. Republicans are devilishly clever at dividing working and middle class voters. Republicans want to cut the payroll tax, for example, sounds good for working people, but it is really a devious way for Republicans to undermine Social Security and Medicare.
Michael,
You've hit it squarely on the head.
There ARE a lot of moving parts within the questions of both the economic and social kinds, and we cannot be too ideologically conscripted to consign the very real components of class and race with which Republicans have become so adept at manipulating voters, to arguments that have already been decided.
Clearly, they have not.
Which means Democrats must make the case for a political and social construct that will benefit everyone, and in which aligning yourself with a group for racial purposes, let's say, will ultimately destroy everyone.
It really is not much different than armed combat. Would you really diss one of your own, who could help you win the battle, because he or she was black, or gay, or Muslim, or Jewish, or an atheist?
But Republicans count on this, they need this, they put all their chips on the fact that citizens of lower and middle class economic levels will stick it to each other if the Right sows enough distrust and hatred.
Democrats have got to find a way to deconstruct the sort of scheming machinations that Republicans use to do two things: keep them at someone else's throat, and not see what it is that they're doing to keep them down.
Unions were such an empowering force, it's no wonder Reagan went after them with a shiv, and no wonder why his progeny have picked up his bloody mantle of economic and social chaos as an expressway to helping the rich at the expense of those less well off. The true tragedy, and the thing that must have Republicans giggling into their Georgetown martinis, is how often those being screwed by right-wing policies not only aid in their own destruction, but cheer on those whose life goal it is to destroy them.
Mitch McConnell must be chuckling into his Cheerios every morning.
Ken,
"...we need to reforge in voters' minds the link between economic and social justice issues."
This is such a seminal problem, I don't think it can be codified in a manner more elemental than you have suggested, and I don't have the time here to proffer a more appropriate quietus to this quandary, but your prescriptive holds within its potential curative properties the key to what ails us, the ability to absolve ourselves of a distrust of abstemiousness.
In other words, to be good and decent people who see value in every human being, and not greedy, inhumane, manipulative assholes.
Like Republicans.