Party Loyalty

This article from National Journal has been making the rounds.  Money quote:

GOP legislators from moderate swing areas, including districts that President Obama carried in 2008, are infuriating environmentalists by joining with their conservative colleagues on votes to obliterate an array of federal regulations. That lockstep loyalty sharply departs from the way swing-district Republicans behaved in 1995, the last time the GOP unseated a Democratic House majority. It also represents a high-stakes bet that anxiety about the economy and disillusionment with Obama have defanged an issue that hurt Republicans previously in such places.
...In February, the House voted to block pending EPA regulations limiting emissions of carbon dioxide and other gases linked to global climate change; even the GOP members from districts that backed Obama in 2008 voted 59-2 for the bill. (Those were the only dissenting Republican votes.) In April, every voting House Republican (including all 61 from Obama districts) opted to overturn EPA’s scientific finding that climate change posed a public-health threat.
...In coalescing behind these measures, House Republicans from Democratic-leaning areas are behaving very differently from their mirror image: As many as 20 House Democrats, mostly from Republican-leaning areas, have usually broken with their party to support the antiregulatory proposals.

This gets me thinking about the bigger issue: Republicans from these swing districts, in spite of the presumed dangers, keep voting lock-step with their party.  Even Scott Brown and the Maine Senatorial Republicans, for all their moderation in comparison to the rest of the party, vote with Republicans on all the big stuff.  Democrats from similar districts seem to be constantly voting with the other side in an attempt to show their moderation and/or independence from the national party.

My take?  Good for Republicans.  Congressmen and Senators should be voting their consciences.  I wish moderate Democrats would stop pandering to the Right and vote what they believe.  If Ben Nelson believes in a balanced budget amendment, he ought to keep voting that way and switch parties. I hope that conservative Republicans in swing districts get wiped out in 2012 of course, but if that happens they still did the right thing- we should have a clear choice when we vote for our politicians.

Vote for Moonbats Because We Don't Trust Democrats? (Updated)

Last night I was talking to a new acquaintance about politics and he said, as many I encounter do, that he's independent but doesn't trust the Democrats to be fiscally responsible.  Here in Massachusetts there are lots of "Bill Weld Republicans" as I call them- socially liberal, fiscally conservative people who cringe at the southern Republicans' fundamentalism but fear the liberals' tax policies.

So many of these people are unhappy with Obama because he's a Big Taxing Liberal.  Now I'm unhappy with Obama too, but he's not a Big Taxing Liberal.

So we start arguing about the budget, and this guy says that he's in favor of tax increases being part of the solution for balancing it.  Yet he still might vote for a Republican. 

So I have to ask: why?  At the debate a few nights ago in Iowa, a moderator asked for a show of hands from all the candidates- would you refuse a budget deal that was balanced 10-1 spending cuts to tax increases?  Every candidate raised a hand to indicate he/she would refuse such a deal.  So you have every candidate from the opposition party insisting on balancing the budget in a way that is completely impossible to accomplish.

Again, I'm not happy with Obama, and if he loses in 2012 he'll richly deserve it.  But at least he's not trying to repeal the laws of Mathematics in his campaign platform.  Anyone who calls himself a fiscal conservative has to vote Democrat.

UPDATE: A correspondent writes:

Keep in mind that the candidates who raised their hands are all trying to win a primary election, and that anyone not raising a hand will have a hard time reaching the general election. They might answer differently if they were trying to win the general election. Or is that too cynical?

Well, nothing is too cynical in Washington, but nevertheless I think we have to consider the promises made by politicians as having some force.  I think Mitt Romney, being a smart guy with an understanding of mathematics, realizes that balancing the budget without any tax hikes at all is impossible.  And as Massachusetts governor he showed himself to be open to different ideas and willing to do things like raise taxes when necessary. 

But if President Romney agrees to raise taxes in 2014, he will be primaried in 2016 by the True Believers in the GOP.  He must know that.  Above all Mitt Romney has shown that he will say and do whatever is necessary in order to be elected (and presumably re-elected) president.  Does he really believe in the Norquistian refusal to increase taxes?  Maybe not.  But will he have the political wiggle room to defy the anti-taxers?  Almost certainly not.

So when every Republican candidate raises his/her hand in the debate, I think we as voters have to take them at their word.  They're all fiscally irresponsible.  The deficit will continue to explode if they're president.  If you care most about lower taxes, by all means you should vote Republican.  If you care more about deficits, you have to vote Democrat.

Obama's Political Errors

My readers know I'm generally a fan of President Obama, as is Paul Krugman.  But this blog post by Krugman strikes me as just right.  I agree with all four specific mistakes noted in the post, but especially like this one:

Second, the administration made what I continue to believe was the awful decision to pretend that the half-measures it was actually able to get were exactly right, not a penny too small. Would it have made a difference in 2010 if Obama had been able to say to the country, “I asked for more aid to the economy, but those guys blocked it, and that’s why we’re not recovering faster”? I don’t know — but it could hardly have been worse than the position he actually found himself in, which was trying to explain why a policy he insisted had been perfect wasn’t doing the job.

There are two possibilities about what's going on here.  One, the administration really believed that the half-measures it enacted in 2009 were just right, or Two they knew it wasn't enough but decided to pretend otherwise in order to demonstrate confidence so the public would stick with the perception that he's a bridge builder or something. 

Either way it doesn't speak well of Obama.  Academic ecnomists crunching numbers all agreed that the stimulus needed to be much bigger than it was.  It was quite predictable that we'd be here now economically, and leads to egg on Obama's face, whereas he could be saying "I told you so" now. 

I think Obama actually might believe the stuff he campaigned on about bringing people together and changing the culture in Washington.  If he still believes that then the man borders on delusional at this point.  I was talking to a work colleague yesterday about this- he was a Clinton supporter, which I wasn't, but we agreed that if nothing else the Clintons know how to fight.  Obama had better figure that out, or his presidency will end up a failure, and short to boot.

Over the Cliff Politics

I was thinking today about our current political climate and trying to think back to 2008 and what I thought then about the Republican party.  After McCain's defeat, it seemed that the GOP was going completely crazy in a hard turn to the Right.  Many of us on the Left were gloating about how the next decade would belong to us because independents couldn't possibly follow the Republican party over the cliff into total Supply Side economics, neocon foreign policy, extremist anti-abortion and anti-gay policies, etc.

Wrong again I guess.  It seems that the Right turn has worked out pretty well for them (I try not to stab myself in the eye while thinking about how the Republicans can create the worst recession in recent history, get voted out of office for it, and then come back only two years later to clean up the mess, but I digress).  So I have to change my position- the Republican party is going to be in full power again some day, perhaps as soon as 2012, even though their policy positions would make Ronald Reagan and Milton Friedman turn over (to the Left) in their graves.

So what next?  I believe that a few years of bringing the Full Crazy to the economy ought to make things bad enough in a hurry and bring the Left back around to victory.  That's a pretty hollow win, though- they get to screw everything up, and we have to clean up the mess, which they somehow get to keep blaming on us.  And around we go.....

Department of Election Pre-Analysis (posted by DT)

I'm coming around to the point of view that the electoral deck is just stacked against the Democrats this year:

-The party in power always loses seats in off-year elections
-The party in power always loses seats when the economy is bad
-2006 and 2008 produced lots of democrats in conservative districts, which are bound to swing back
-The economy was such a wreck in '08 that no realistic fix would have been enough to reverse it enough to matter politically. Even if liberals had gotten their $1.5 trillion stimulus, unemployment would still be 8%, which though better than 9.6% still isn't good enough to satisfy the public.

Just looking for excuses for the coming electoral destruction? Fair enough, maybe so. But when you look historically at the previous times that a single party has controlled both houses and the presidency, you see that it never lasts long. The only exception was 2002, and clearly 9/11 had a lot to do with that.

Not that I saw this coming or anything. I was swept up, and figured the GOP had screwed up the economy so badly that it would be years before they'd be back. Color me wrong about that!

Of course the implications of this are that Democrats only had a short window, and needed to pass as much important stuff as possible while they could. The administration would argue that they've done just that- health care reform and financial reform being the big things. I would have liked to see more. If the Democrats somehow do hold on to the House and Senate, they absolutely have to end the filibuster and keep plugging away at their agenda, because they probably won't hold both houses for long after that- no matter what happens. See, I've learned my lesson.

What has happened to President Obama? (posted by DT)

As I noted last post, it's getting kind of demoralizing over here in LiberalLand.

Now there are of course lots of reasons why, but one that isn't really being noted much is the style of the President.

This is the guy with the oratorical skills to inspire Americans? The one who made such a splash at the 2004 Democratic convention? He's completely unrecognizable now- he could be the Most Boring President in history. It's like he's had a lobotomy.

Now I find this sober style comforting, and it works to make Obama seem like he's going to govern based on careful reasoning, and that's all to the good. But it's not such a hot style when his policies are being hammered, mostly through lies and distortions, by the same unrepentant Right that's responsible for the Iraq War, the deficit, and the destruction of our economy. Basically we have one side throwing everything but the kitchen sink into the fight, while the leader of the Left responds with carefully worded tropes.

I think Obama believed his own hype about "changing the tone" in Washington. The more unreasonable the opposition gets, the more he thinks he can find a way to work with them if he just stays cool. Well, it's not working.

I know Obama will get hammered by the Right and their lapdogs in the media if he starts acting like an angry politician ("What about his promises of a new tone in Washington!?"), but he's getting hammered for it anyway- I keep reading disingenuous rants from the Right about how Obama hasn't followed through on his promise to work with Republicans, when their clear strategy has been to block everything they can.

At some point the stick has to come out; not because it will change the GOP- they've found that obstruction works just fine, thank you- but because it will energize Liberals and get them to the polls. The demoralization I'm feeling must be shared by others, and lots of us need to know that our leader is going to fight for what we believe in.

The Whacked Out Right (posted by DT)

It's a tough time to be a liberal right now- demoralizing. Trying to step back though, we've learned something amazing about radicalism in the 21st century.

After Democrats won the 2008 election, the Republican party moved way to the Right. This was a surprise to some, and many predicted they would have years in the wilderness, as it seemed so clear that they had lost because they had already moved too far right for the electorate.

But a funny thing happened. They've just pulled the whole conversation and the country rightward right along with them! Yes, there's still plenty of great political debate, but now the Right has set its positions so far out there that the center keeps moving in their direction.

So here in 2010 we're debating seriously:

• Is Keynesian economics viable, or did Herbert Hoover have it right after all?
• Should we should hold BP accountable for spilling oil or is that a "government shakedown"?
• Are federal economic policies based on improving lives of the middle class, or should the total focus be on getting easy money to the Rich so we can hope they'll create jobs?
• Why should America take care of its vulnerable people?
• Torture of suspected terrorists (this debate seems over, actually, and I'm on the losing side- Americans are totally fine with a limitless police state when it comes to defending the country from Arabs)

In my email correspondence with my Nut Case Righties, the latest thing is one of them sent around an article from the "Globe" supermarket tabloid about Obama being born in Kenya. Nothing is too far out for these guys, and I'm supposed to have a debate about where the President was born. I'd like to debate about how to eventually balance the budget or what to do about Global Warming, but I can't because we're still stuck on a religious belief in no taxes and a refusal to believe scientists who say Global Warming is real!

If I've learned one thing the last year and a half, it's that nothing lasts long, and I guess liberals will be back. But it's demoralizing right now.

Why is Bipartisanship Dead? (posted by DT)

So the Health Care Reform bill is now behind us, barring an unlikely bit of judicial activism from the Supreme Court. One more post-mortem (maybe not the last- there's a lot rattling around in my brain):

Can serious people please dispense with the "Obama hasn't delivered on his bipartisanship promise" and even the "pox on both your houses" argument about why Democrats and Republicans can't get along in Washington? I get why Republican politicians put out that spin, but it would be nice if the rest of the media would leave Fox News pundits alone and stop repeating their talking points.

What do you mean, DT? The Dems passed a Health Care Reform bill without a single Republican vote? What could be more partisan? True enough, but we have to look with some depth at the facts of the policy before we slice up the Blame Pie for this. The HCR bill is a moderate bill; it's nearly identical to the Massachusetts bill that was passed with the enthusiastic support of Mitt Romney, with the help of Scott Brown's affirmative vote. (When Brown was asked about this in the recent Senatorial campaign he said he opposed Obamacare not because it was different from the MA bill, but because MA already has a good system and he didn't want to subsidize other states doing it). Olympia Snowe voted in favor of almost exactly the same bill in committee. The individual mandate, which Republicans are now calling unconstitutional, has been in numerous past Health Care plans proposed by them. HCR ended up much closer to past Republican plans than liberals wanted- there's no single payor, there's no public option, there's no socialization of anything- if you look at the actual bill, it's just not that radical.

So what happened? The Republican leadership made a decision to refuse any compromise whatsoever. They decided that if the Dems want it, then we'll oppose it. Democrats reportedly offered during the negotiations to put in Malpractice Reform, a provision that conservatives have been agitating for, but when they asked Republicans they were reportedly told that they wanted it, but still would have to vote against the full bill. So there's an idea that liberals have no big problem with, but which results in loss of support of trial lawyers. Democrats were willing to forgo that support to gain some Republicans, but found it wouldn't deliver any votes!

So I know I'm a partisan; I plead guilty there. But let's face it; in this case Republicans have decided to fight instead of compromise. Maybe there will be change on future issues (banking reform? Can't wait for that one), but the blame for partisanship in HCR has to be put on the GOP.

Defense Spending (posted by DT)

Back in the '70s and '80s I remember that liberals wanted to decrease spending on the military; my recollection was that this was one of the issues that the Left agreed about for the most part. Then Reagan increased defense spending even more and the accepted narrative is that this drove the Soviet Union out of existence. And I have to admit that, much as I am a Reagan-hater, it's probably true: the Soviet economy couldn't keep up with us in an arms race, and trying to do so was a factor in their whole enterprise going south.

So I'll accept that high defense spending in the 1980s was good for the US. But how about now? The US spends almost twice as much as the next-highest spender per capita on defense. Why? There's no Soviet Union now.

When we talk about ways to decrease spending, why is the military always off the table?

(chart is from Matt Yglesias- sorry if it's hard to read, I'm just learning this stuff)

Poker Face (posted by DT)

I think this is really interesting:
http://www.tnr.com/blog/jonathan-chait/health-care-reform-poker

It makes the point that Republicans are generally better poker players than Democrats, and I think this is probably true. I hate poker- I'm too risk-averse. (I know my co-blogger feels differently, though since I don't play with him I don't know how good a bluffer he is).

In the Health Care fight, Democrats seem so easily spooked that it's pathetic, while Republicans have taken on this huge all-in gamble to stop health care. Similarly, when Republicans were in charge they immediately initiated their economic agenda of huge tax cuts, with nary a worry about consequences. Democrats, on the other hand, got in charge and immediately started backtracking to half-measures, with a too-small stimulus package that has not done enough to slow unemployment. Dems also wouldn't stand up to Joe Lieberman and his possible bluffs about refusing to support their agenda, and they won't risk upsetting their wavering members and double down on health care reform.

Once again, it seems that Democrats just don't want to lead. Republicans want to lead and know how to get stuff done, but unfortunately they're leading us over the cliff. I'm not excited about the prospects.

Crossroads (Posted by AS)

"I went down to the crossroads, fell down on my knees;
Down to the crossroads, fell down on my knees;
Asked the Lord above for mercy, save me if you please."
(with apologies to Eric Clapton, Ginger Baker, Jack Bruce AND Robert Johnson)

Every boy on Long Island (and lots of other places too) born between, say, 1960 and 1972, probably knows the classic blues song Crossroads as done by Cream. Maybe it was even one of the sources of inspiration for the ever-present inscription "Clapton is God" on numerous high school walls.

However, as I look around today and try to come to grips with the world as it exists here in 2010, this iconic song generates a different, and much more serious, resonance. Our great nation truly is at a crossroads. The path that our country takes in the critical months ahead before the midterm elections, either by design, fate, or a combination of both, will have a profound effect on our collective future and our ability to navigate even more distant crossroads.

Between now and November, I look forward to bringing you my perspective on these pressing issues of national and international politics. I welcome comment and criticism, whether constructive or contrarian. I am deeply concerned with the direction that political discussion sometimes takes. Too often, even people who follow political issues on a regular basis are distracted by style over substance. Too often, the voices that yell the loudest are the ones that prevail. Too often, people are so focused on their own very local or personal concerns that they fail to see the proverbial forest for the trees.

Of course, in this day and age, there are so many sources of information, so many different ways people express themselves on a variety of topics. It has often been said that "opinions are like assholes, everybody's got one." However, I also firmly believe in the truism expressed by another quotation, one from the great Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis: "Sunlight is the best disinfectant." I hope that my opinion, as expressed in this blog, helps shed some sunlight on some ideas for a few of you and gets you thinking and talking.

We are truly at a critical juncture. Those on the far right want us to go take one road. Those on the far left want us to take another. I believe that there is yet another road that our country needs to take. I hope that my upcoming blogposts help convince you that we should take that other road, so that we can continue to make progress and fulfill the promise of our nation.

Otherwise, we'll just keep standin' at the crossroads, and I believe we'll be sinkin' down.