This Man Must Be a Half-Prophet

From a comment I posted to John Caruso's blog A Distant Ocean on February 29, 2008 (yes, before Obama was even the Democratic presidential candidate):

I would expect that if we get a Dem in the White House, and he or she fails to deliver the change he or she has promised, we'll get a Republican Congress in 2010 -- just as we got in 1994, thanks to Clinton/Gore's pushing NAFTA through, and a change like the one we got in 2006, thanks to Bush's callousness and brutality to America. It'll take more than a vote to make real change happen, though. I'd expect people to retreat into apathy once more after new politicians fail to improve things, but what with this very unpopular war and a growing anger, that might not happen. If I have any hope, it's not in any candidate, but in other people. Will there be a movement worth joining? I hope so, but if so it will be probably be despite Obama or Clinton, just as the movements of the 60s were despite Kennedy.

Well, I was half-right, and considering Republican victories at the state and local levels, I think my crystal ball was working well that day. (And I need to remember and use my closing line from this comment a week later.)

This Man Must Be a Half-Prophet

From a comment I posted to John Caruso's blog A Distant Ocean on February 29, 2008 (yes, before Obama was even the Democratic presidential candidate):

I would expect that if we get a Dem in the White House, and he or she fails to deliver the change he or she has promised, we'll get a Republican Congress in 2010 -- just as we got in 1994, thanks to Clinton/Gore's pushing NAFTA through, and a change like the one we got in 2006, thanks to Bush's callousness and brutality to America. It'll take more than a vote to make real change happen, though. I'd expect people to retreat into apathy once more after new politicians fail to improve things, but what with this very unpopular war and a growing anger, that might not happen. If I have any hope, it's not in any candidate, but in other people. Will there be a movement worth joining? I hope so, but if so it will be probably be despite Obama or Clinton, just as the movements of the 60s were despite Kennedy.

Well, I was half-right, and considering Republican victories at the state and local levels, I think my crystal ball was working well that day. (And I need to remember and use my closing line from this comment a week later.)

Inappropriately Touched By Iowa

Nobody deflates a pompous politician like Whatever It Is I'm Against It. He just demonstrated his filleting skills on Obama's post-holocaust press conference. My favorite:

WHAT THERE IS A INHERENT DANGER IN: “There is a inherent danger in being in the White House and being in the bubble. I mean, folks didn’t have any complaints about my leadership style when I was running around Iowa for a year.” So maybe you should be doing that, then. Also, you didn’t have a leadership style per se because you weren’t actually a, you know, leader yet.

WHAT THEY WERE ABLE TO DO: “And they got a pretty good look at me up close and personal, and they were able to lift the hood and kick the tires”. They did what you to you now? Show us on this Tonka truck where the Iowans touched you.

Or show us on the item in the (possibly NSFW) photo in this post.

In other news to complicate the story we're getting on the election, "The conservative Blue Dogs lost half their members, while the Progressive Caucus remains near eighty." Was America trying to send a message to the Democrats?

Inappropriately Touched By Iowa

Nobody deflates a pompous politician like Whatever It Is I'm Against It. He just demonstrated his filleting skills on Obama's post-holocaust press conference. My favorite:

WHAT THERE IS A INHERENT DANGER IN: “There is a inherent danger in being in the White House and being in the bubble. I mean, folks didn’t have any complaints about my leadership style when I was running around Iowa for a year.” So maybe you should be doing that, then. Also, you didn’t have a leadership style per se because you weren’t actually a, you know, leader yet.

WHAT THEY WERE ABLE TO DO: “And they got a pretty good look at me up close and personal, and they were able to lift the hood and kick the tires”. They did what you to you now? Show us on this Tonka truck where the Iowans touched you.

Or show us on the item in the (possibly NSFW) photo in this post.

In other news to complicate the story we're getting on the election, "The conservative Blue Dogs lost half their members, while the Progressive Caucus remains near eighty." Was America trying to send a message to the Democrats?

I Got Plenty of Awful

I paid as little attention as possible to the election returns, and then to avoid going to bed early tuned in to my community radio station at around 11:30. They were hooked up to Pacifica's postmortems, which featured Laura Flanders, Michael Moore, and some other folks I couldn't identify by voice. Looks like the Democrats got what they wanted: we've gone from a Congress controlled by Republicans to a Congress controlled by Republicans.

Moore and some others argued that there's no love lost between the Teabaggers and the Old Republicans, which is certainly true. Moore predicted a civil war in Congress between the two factions, which if true will be fun to watch. Someone else pointed out that the Tea Party hadn't done all that well, with only about 50% of their candidates winning. In Pennsylvania they all lost. On the other side, 50% of the Blue Dog Democrats lost their Congressional seats.

And despite their protestations, the Teabaggers I've dealt with aren't interested in "small government." Republican candidates (not Tea Party as far as I know) took the House and Senate seats where I live, but that's nothing new: it was a real surprise, but only a blip when Obama took Indiana's electoral votes in 2008. This is Klan country, so not much has changed.

I Got Plenty of Awful

I paid as little attention as possible to the election returns, and then to avoid going to bed early tuned in to my community radio station at around 11:30. They were hooked up to Pacifica's postmortems, which featured Laura Flanders, Michael Moore, and some other folks I couldn't identify by voice. Looks like the Democrats got what they wanted: we've gone from a Congress controlled by Republicans to a Congress controlled by Republicans.

Moore and some others argued that there's no love lost between the Teabaggers and the Old Republicans, which is certainly true. Moore predicted a civil war in Congress between the two factions, which if true will be fun to watch. Someone else pointed out that the Tea Party hadn't done all that well, with only about 50% of their candidates winning. In Pennsylvania they all lost. On the other side, 50% of the Blue Dog Democrats lost their Congressional seats.

And despite their protestations, the Teabaggers I've dealt with aren't interested in "small government." Republican candidates (not Tea Party as far as I know) took the House and Senate seats where I live, but that's nothing new: it was a real surprise, but only a blip when Obama took Indiana's electoral votes in 2008. This is Klan country, so not much has changed.

O Waily Waily Waily, The Only Hope of America Has Fallen!

If I had a magic wand, or three wishes from a genie or Faery godmother, I'd quietly arrange for the Democrats to trounce the Republicans in tomorrow's elections. Right now it looks to me as though the Democrats have already given up -- they've been working themselves into a snit for months, and won't it be nice for them to stop even pretending to try? They can blame the Republicans, and the Professional Left, and just wallow in a big puddle of self-pity and Thanksralphery. I think they want out. And while I've written before that since most Democratic pols would rather lose to Republicans than vote against the corporate agenda, they should get what they want -- and I still feel that way -- at my most serious I despise the Democrats too much to let them get off that easily.

Today a co-worker of mine posted a link on Facebook to a CNN poll that showed the "number of Americans who say things are going badly in the country, at 75 percent, is higher than it has been on the eve of any midterm election since the question was first asked in the mid-1970s". That's higher than 1994, higher than 2006.

The top concern remains unemployment, with 58 percent saying it's the most important economic issue facing the country today, followed by the deficit at 20 percent, and taxes and mortgages tied at 8 percent each.

Interestingly, the article also mentioned that the "economy has been the issue most on the mind of Americans in CNN polling since the end of 2007." 2007, of course, is the Bush administration. Republicans have been furious that Obama has accused them of getting us into the current mess. Obama neglects to mention the Democrats' collaboration, of course, but the Republicans shouldn't escape their share of the blame.

So if I could, I'd keep the Democrats in control (hah!) of Congress et cetera for the next two years. Wouldn't it be funny if they woke up on Wednesday with the Republicans in defeat and disarray, their own script of betrayal by the Democratic rank and file belied by events? The corporate media would have to scramble to rewrite their own script of Democratic failure to be centrist enough, the True Pure Centrists would splutter in frustration, and the Democrats would still have to decide what to do about the banks, taxes, Social Security, and Afghanistan. I can't think of a better reason for voting Democratic tomorrow.

O Waily Waily Waily, The Only Hope of America Has Fallen!

If I had a magic wand, or three wishes from a genie or Faery godmother, I'd quietly arrange for the Democrats to trounce the Republicans in tomorrow's elections. Right now it looks to me as though the Democrats have already given up -- they've been working themselves into a snit for months, and won't it be nice for them to stop even pretending to try? They can blame the Republicans, and the Professional Left, and just wallow in a big puddle of self-pity and Thanksralphery. I think they want out. And while I've written before that since most Democratic pols would rather lose to Republicans than vote against the corporate agenda, they should get what they want -- and I still feel that way -- at my most serious I despise the Democrats too much to let them get off that easily.

Today a co-worker of mine posted a link on Facebook to a CNN poll that showed the "number of Americans who say things are going badly in the country, at 75 percent, is higher than it has been on the eve of any midterm election since the question was first asked in the mid-1970s". That's higher than 1994, higher than 2006.

The top concern remains unemployment, with 58 percent saying it's the most important economic issue facing the country today, followed by the deficit at 20 percent, and taxes and mortgages tied at 8 percent each.

Interestingly, the article also mentioned that the "economy has been the issue most on the mind of Americans in CNN polling since the end of 2007." 2007, of course, is the Bush administration. Republicans have been furious that Obama has accused them of getting us into the current mess. Obama neglects to mention the Democrats' collaboration, of course, but the Republicans shouldn't escape their share of the blame.

So if I could, I'd keep the Democrats in control (hah!) of Congress et cetera for the next two years. Wouldn't it be funny if they woke up on Wednesday with the Republicans in defeat and disarray, their own script of betrayal by the Democratic rank and file belied by events? The corporate media would have to scramble to rewrite their own script of Democratic failure to be centrist enough, the True Pure Centrists would splutter in frustration, and the Democrats would still have to decide what to do about the banks, taxes, Social Security, and Afghanistan. I can't think of a better reason for voting Democratic tomorrow.

Buzzword of the Day: "Historic"

I happened to have NPR's news report turned on just now, and it began with the newscaster saying that the Democrats face "historic losses" on Tuesday. Considering how often right-wing pundits and propagandists have been throwing around the word "historic" lately in connection with elections, that little word package grated on my nerves. C'mon, every election can't be historic. (Was the 2006 upset that put Democrats back in control of Congress "historic"? Kerry's defeat in 2004? Bush's theft of the election in 2000?)

And then toward the end of the short broadcast, the newscaster announced the death of longtime Democratic hack Theodore Sorenson, who, she said, helped John Fitzgerald Kennedy craft his "historic" inaugural speech. It was almost a rhyme, and an odd overuse of such a vacuous word in so short a time.

Buzzword of the Day: "Historic"

I happened to have NPR's news report turned on just now, and it began with the newscaster saying that the Democrats face "historic losses" on Tuesday. Considering how often right-wing pundits and propagandists have been throwing around the word "historic" lately in connection with elections, that little word package grated on my nerves. C'mon, every election can't be historic. (Was the 2006 upset that put Democrats back in control of Congress "historic"? Kerry's defeat in 2004? Bush's theft of the election in 2000?)

And then toward the end of the short broadcast, the newscaster announced the death of longtime Democratic hack Theodore Sorenson, who, she said, helped John Fitzgerald Kennedy craft his "historic" inaugural speech. It was almost a rhyme, and an odd overuse of such a vacuous word in so short a time.

I Want to Vote for a Democrat! (Are There Any Around?)

The more Democrats and their shills demand that I vote for the Democrats on November, because the Republicans will do terrible things if they regain power, the more I remember what the Democrats have done.

Heaven forbid [via] that the Republicans win on Nov. 2!

They might escalate in Afghanistan and fake a withdrawal from Iraq.
They might pass a bogus health reform law written by the insurers, thereby entrenching them in the system for many years to come.
They might put EFCA (labor rights reform) on a back burner.
They might step up deportations of undocumented workers.
They might expand the military budget to an all–time high.
They might retain Bush’s apparatus of repression, including torture and assassination of US citizens by White House fiat.
They might keep Guantanamo open and tighten the blockade of Cuba.
They might threaten war with Iran.
They might cave in to Israel and the Israel lobby, and neglect Palestinian rights.
They might throw billions of our tax dollars at mega-bankers, but do little or nothing for ordinary homeowners.
They might tolerate a 10 percent unemployment rate, with jobless rates double or triple that for youth of color.
They might start overthrowing lawful elected governments in Central America.
They might start raiding the homes of leftwing antiwar activists.

I count my lucky stars for leaders who understand that the Republicans are the ultra right, and we must all vote Democrat to isolate the main enemy.

... and the more I consider throwing up my hands and staying at home on election day.

But I'll vote anyway. It's good exercise to go to the polling place, and it will entitle me to give me an extra slap to Democrats who will say darkly, "I'll bet you didn't even vote" when I criticize Obama.

Come to think of it, listening to Democrats warn about the horrible things the Republicans will do reminds me of an old joke from the USSR a friend told me in the 1970s. It's an elementary school classroom in the Soviet Union, and the teacher is telling the children how miserable people are in America: they suffer from racism, poverty, disease, and so on. While in the glorious Soviet Union, everyone has useful work, enough to eat, a comfortable place to live, free medical care, and everyone is equal!

A little girl bursts into tears. "What's the matter?" the teacher asks. "I want to move to the Soviet Union!" the little girl cries.

The application of this joke to the coming elections may be left as an exercise for the reader. But there's something else as well. To an American, the joke is funny, because everyone knows that the American standard of living is second to none! That's why communism failed! That's why people from all over the world want to move to America, where we have freedom and a great medical care system and amber fields of grain to feed the world and the streets are paved with gold! And that's why I don't just want to vote for a Democrat -- I want to move to America!

I Want to Vote for a Democrat! (Are There Any Around?)

The more Democrats and their shills demand that I vote for the Democrats on November, because the Republicans will do terrible things if they regain power, the more I remember what the Democrats have done.

Heaven forbid [via] that the Republicans win on Nov. 2!

They might escalate in Afghanistan and fake a withdrawal from Iraq.
They might pass a bogus health reform law written by the insurers, thereby entrenching them in the system for many years to come.
They might put EFCA (labor rights reform) on a back burner.
They might step up deportations of undocumented workers.
They might expand the military budget to an all–time high.
They might retain Bush’s apparatus of repression, including torture and assassination of US citizens by White House fiat.
They might keep Guantanamo open and tighten the blockade of Cuba.
They might threaten war with Iran.
They might cave in to Israel and the Israel lobby, and neglect Palestinian rights.
They might throw billions of our tax dollars at mega-bankers, but do little or nothing for ordinary homeowners.
They might tolerate a 10 percent unemployment rate, with jobless rates double or triple that for youth of color.
They might start overthrowing lawful elected governments in Central America.
They might start raiding the homes of leftwing antiwar activists.

I count my lucky stars for leaders who understand that the Republicans are the ultra right, and we must all vote Democrat to isolate the main enemy.

... and the more I consider throwing up my hands and staying at home on election day.

But I'll vote anyway. It's good exercise to go to the polling place, and it will entitle me to give me an extra slap to Democrats who will say darkly, "I'll bet you didn't even vote" when I criticize Obama.

Come to think of it, listening to Democrats warn about the horrible things the Republicans will do reminds me of an old joke from the USSR a friend told me in the 1970s. It's an elementary school classroom in the Soviet Union, and the teacher is telling the children how miserable people are in America: they suffer from racism, poverty, disease, and so on. While in the glorious Soviet Union, everyone has useful work, enough to eat, a comfortable place to live, free medical care, and everyone is equal!

A little girl bursts into tears. "What's the matter?" the teacher asks. "I want to move to the Soviet Union!" the little girl cries.

The application of this joke to the coming elections may be left as an exercise for the reader. But there's something else as well. To an American, the joke is funny, because everyone knows that the American standard of living is second to none! That's why communism failed! That's why people from all over the world want to move to America, where we have freedom and a great medical care system and amber fields of grain to feed the world and the streets are paved with gold! And that's why I don't just want to vote for a Democrat -- I want to move to America!

A Lose-Lose Situation

Professional Leftist Paul Krugman quotes himself:

We’ll never know how differently the politics would have played if Obama, instead of systematically echoing and giving credibility to all the arguments of the people who want to destroy him, had actually stood up for a different economic philosophy. But we do know how his actual strategy has worked, and it hasn’t been a success.

I've been harshly critical of Obama on many occasions and I'm not likely to stop any time soon. But it might not be inappropriate to mention that on one level I never wanted him to fail. That's the level where success is measured by (for example) getting the US out of the economic hole it's in, bringing our armed forces home and letting innocent people abroad go on living unscathed by drone missiles. If success is measured instead solely by keeping the Democrats in control of Congress and Obama in the Oval Office while pursuing destructive policies, I could hardly give less of a shit. Of course Obama and the Dems would like us to believe that things can't get better without them in the driver's seat. But as Krugman says, Obama's "actual strategy ... hasn't been a success," either in making things better for most people or, it seems, in maintaining Democratic political hegemony. So I guess the question to ask someone who accuses someone else of 'wanting Obama to fail' is "Fail at what?" If his goal is to give us a third Bush term, then he ought to fail; unfortunately, he seems to be succeeding. But Bush's policies failed for him, and they're failing for Obama -- and for the rest of us.

By the way, Gore Vidal recently lamented that Obama is "incompetent. He will be defeated for re-election. It’s a pity because he’s the first intellectual president we’ve had in many years, but he can’t hack it. He’s not up to it. He’s overwhelmed." So much for intellectuals! Vidal should have read more of Noam Chomsky on intellectuals and the state, but I think he seriously overrated Obama's intellectual prowess.

A Lose-Lose Situation

Professional Leftist Paul Krugman quotes himself:

We’ll never know how differently the politics would have played if Obama, instead of systematically echoing and giving credibility to all the arguments of the people who want to destroy him, had actually stood up for a different economic philosophy. But we do know how his actual strategy has worked, and it hasn’t been a success.

I've been harshly critical of Obama on many occasions and I'm not likely to stop any time soon. But it might not be inappropriate to mention that on one level I never wanted him to fail. That's the level where success is measured by (for example) getting the US out of the economic hole it's in, bringing our armed forces home and letting innocent people abroad go on living unscathed by drone missiles. If success is measured instead solely by keeping the Democrats in control of Congress and Obama in the Oval Office while pursuing destructive policies, I could hardly give less of a shit. Of course Obama and the Dems would like us to believe that things can't get better without them in the driver's seat. But as Krugman says, Obama's "actual strategy ... hasn't been a success," either in making things better for most people or, it seems, in maintaining Democratic political hegemony. So I guess the question to ask someone who accuses someone else of 'wanting Obama to fail' is "Fail at what?" If his goal is to give us a third Bush term, then he ought to fail; unfortunately, he seems to be succeeding. But Bush's policies failed for him, and they're failing for Obama -- and for the rest of us.

By the way, Gore Vidal recently lamented that Obama is "incompetent. He will be defeated for re-election. It’s a pity because he’s the first intellectual president we’ve had in many years, but he can’t hack it. He’s not up to it. He’s overwhelmed." So much for intellectuals! Vidal should have read more of Noam Chomsky on intellectuals and the state, but I think he seriously overrated Obama's intellectual prowess.

Which Side Am I On?

from alicublog:

One of the great things about Kudlow being such a hack is that you can make a decent post just by putting in the relevant facts he leaves out. But in this column the Republican Party's second-most-famous former cokehead goes beyond the usual card tricks to remind us of what the GOP is really about.

Of course, Obama never mentions the unions, including the SEIU and AFL-CIO, and all their foreign money from their big international affiliates. Instead, he extends his own cast of villains, attacking special interests, Wall Street banks, corporations, the oil industry, the insurance industry, credit-card companies, AIG, and ExxonMobil. ExxonMobil? What did they do? Oh, they’re an oil company.

Phew. Kind of anti-business, wouldn’t you say?

I was with him on the "all their foreign money from their big international affiliates" -- oh-yeah-what-about-the-other-guy is a time-honored electioneering gambit. But in this the year of the Tea Party, isn't it a little weird to be defending Wall Street banks, credit-card companies, and big business in general? I thought it was all about the grassroots overthrowing the "ruling class." And then:

Obama then blasts millionaires and billionaires, waging war on capital and investors, too. Next he talks about getting young people, African Americans, and union members to the polls. Even more division. Even more class warfare.

It's divisive for Obama to invite these people to vote? I thought working people were the bedrock of the Tea Party movement, and all the cool kids were wearing tricorner hats. And minorities -- why, Perfesser Glenn Harlan Reynolds has a whole scrapbook of tea-partying black folk photos!

A series of investor-related polls shows how totally detached the president is from the nearly 100 million folks who directly or indirectly own stocks.

A survey conducted by Citigroup Global Markets of 100 mutual-fund, hedge-fund, and pension-fund managers...

Hedge-fund managers!

Well, yeah, hedge-fund managers -- the Real America behind the faux Real America of the Tea Party. Where did you think the Tea Party gets their funding?

Teh O'Bama made a bad blunder in the way he went after the Chamber of Commerce. Not because they shouldn't be gone after, or because his approach was "McCarthyite" -- again, Joe McCarthy is a martyr of the American right. It's because the Democrats are every bit as dependent on big money and foreign money as the Republicans, and everyone knows it. They may even remember a few such scandals involving the Democrats in the recent past.

But that's okay, because as Jane Hamsher reports (via), the Democrats' own pollsters report that the party is pursuing a losing strategy in this campaign:

On Wednesday [Stan] Greenberg and James Carville released a research report summarizing the results of their extensive polling on messaging that is working for Democrats in this election cycle. It won’t surprise most people to learn that protecting Social Security, creating American jobs and opposing NAFTA-like free trade agreements are the messages most likely to persuade people to vote for Democrats.

(Remember, though, that the Obama administration wants to whittle away at Social Security, favors NAFTA-like free trade agreements, and has done a piss-poor job of creating American jobs, though it has done quite well at boosting corporate profits.)

But curiously, they left something out of their summary that set off red flags for a lot of Democratic insiders when they issued it as a Democracy Corps”Alert” on September 20. The Alert said quite emphatically that Democrats needed to change their framework in order to win in November. Greenberg buried the lede, but his polling reached a very clear conclusion: Obama’s “go forward, not backward” message actually moves voters over to the GOP ...

As Avedon Carol at the Sideshow Party puts it, "And the message reminds them [i.e., voters] that things have become worse, not better, since Obama took office."

Hamsher quotes Greenberg's explanation:

Because a “go forward” framework implies that Democrats and Congress have made progress those voters do not feel, the message re-enforces the Republican framework for the election – a referendum on the Democrats’ performance on the economy. In the experiment described above (where voters read the two Republican messages and the two Democratic ‘go forward, not back’ messages), votes shifted to the Republicans not only on which party can best handle the economy but also on the congressional vote. The 5 percent who shifted to the Democrats was exceeded by the 7 percent of voters who moved to the Republicans – a net negative 2-point worsening of the race.

Party loyalists keep telling skeptics that Obama and the party leadership know what they're doing, so the rest of us should shut up, put our shoulders to the wheel, and get the vote out in November. I'm not of the party, so this doesn't move me; I don't need the machine to get me to vote anyway. But the interesting thing is that those wise eleven-dimensional chess players are trying to shoot themselves in the foot. (Again.) Of course they aren't going to listen to Professional Leftists like me, or to silly-billy Democrats who see the glass as 90 percent empty instead of 10 percent full, but they're ignoring insiders, their own people, the very people they assigned to tell them what is going on and direct their tactics.

Hamsher has an earlier post giving the "Top 10 Reasons The Democrats Might Do Better In 2010 Than You Think," and they're good reasons, but that hasn't stopped various party hacks from attacking her. Avedon cites a prog blogger who warns, "At some point people need to consider the possibility that Hamsher doesn't have the administration's best interests at heart." (The entire post is even battier.) Like I said, for the Democrats this is about the Party and the Administration, not the American people, but the evidence is that the administration doesn't even has its own best interests at heart. -- But there I've succumbed to a significant confusion myself: the interests we're talking about here are winning elections, which are vital to a political party, but the best interests of citizens are different. Of course both parties work hard to convince their members and the country that, by an amazing coincidence, their interests and your interests are the same. I think it's fair to doubt it.

Which Side Am I On?

from alicublog:

One of the great things about Kudlow being such a hack is that you can make a decent post just by putting in the relevant facts he leaves out. But in this column the Republican Party's second-most-famous former cokehead goes beyond the usual card tricks to remind us of what the GOP is really about.

Of course, Obama never mentions the unions, including the SEIU and AFL-CIO, and all their foreign money from their big international affiliates. Instead, he extends his own cast of villains, attacking special interests, Wall Street banks, corporations, the oil industry, the insurance industry, credit-card companies, AIG, and ExxonMobil. ExxonMobil? What did they do? Oh, they’re an oil company.

Phew. Kind of anti-business, wouldn’t you say?

I was with him on the "all their foreign money from their big international affiliates" -- oh-yeah-what-about-the-other-guy is a time-honored electioneering gambit. But in this the year of the Tea Party, isn't it a little weird to be defending Wall Street banks, credit-card companies, and big business in general? I thought it was all about the grassroots overthrowing the "ruling class." And then:

Obama then blasts millionaires and billionaires, waging war on capital and investors, too. Next he talks about getting young people, African Americans, and union members to the polls. Even more division. Even more class warfare.

It's divisive for Obama to invite these people to vote? I thought working people were the bedrock of the Tea Party movement, and all the cool kids were wearing tricorner hats. And minorities -- why, Perfesser Glenn Harlan Reynolds has a whole scrapbook of tea-partying black folk photos!

A series of investor-related polls shows how totally detached the president is from the nearly 100 million folks who directly or indirectly own stocks.

A survey conducted by Citigroup Global Markets of 100 mutual-fund, hedge-fund, and pension-fund managers...

Hedge-fund managers!

Well, yeah, hedge-fund managers -- the Real America behind the faux Real America of the Tea Party. Where did you think the Tea Party gets their funding?

Teh O'Bama made a bad blunder in the way he went after the Chamber of Commerce. Not because they shouldn't be gone after, or because his approach was "McCarthyite" -- again, Joe McCarthy is a martyr of the American right. It's because the Democrats are every bit as dependent on big money and foreign money as the Republicans, and everyone knows it. They may even remember a few such scandals involving the Democrats in the recent past.

But that's okay, because as Jane Hamsher reports (via), the Democrats' own pollsters report that the party is pursuing a losing strategy in this campaign:

On Wednesday [Stan] Greenberg and James Carville released a research report summarizing the results of their extensive polling on messaging that is working for Democrats in this election cycle. It won’t surprise most people to learn that protecting Social Security, creating American jobs and opposing NAFTA-like free trade agreements are the messages most likely to persuade people to vote for Democrats.

(Remember, though, that the Obama administration wants to whittle away at Social Security, favors NAFTA-like free trade agreements, and has done a piss-poor job of creating American jobs, though it has done quite well at boosting corporate profits.)

But curiously, they left something out of their summary that set off red flags for a lot of Democratic insiders when they issued it as a Democracy Corps”Alert” on September 20. The Alert said quite emphatically that Democrats needed to change their framework in order to win in November. Greenberg buried the lede, but his polling reached a very clear conclusion: Obama’s “go forward, not backward” message actually moves voters over to the GOP ...

As Avedon Carol at the Sideshow Party puts it, "And the message reminds them [i.e., voters] that things have become worse, not better, since Obama took office."

Hamsher quotes Greenberg's explanation:

Because a “go forward” framework implies that Democrats and Congress have made progress those voters do not feel, the message re-enforces the Republican framework for the election – a referendum on the Democrats’ performance on the economy. In the experiment described above (where voters read the two Republican messages and the two Democratic ‘go forward, not back’ messages), votes shifted to the Republicans not only on which party can best handle the economy but also on the congressional vote. The 5 percent who shifted to the Democrats was exceeded by the 7 percent of voters who moved to the Republicans – a net negative 2-point worsening of the race.

Party loyalists keep telling skeptics that Obama and the party leadership know what they're doing, so the rest of us should shut up, put our shoulders to the wheel, and get the vote out in November. I'm not of the party, so this doesn't move me; I don't need the machine to get me to vote anyway. But the interesting thing is that those wise eleven-dimensional chess players are trying to shoot themselves in the foot. (Again.) Of course they aren't going to listen to Professional Leftists like me, or to silly-billy Democrats who see the glass as 90 percent empty instead of 10 percent full, but they're ignoring insiders, their own people, the very people they assigned to tell them what is going on and direct their tactics.

Hamsher has an earlier post giving the "Top 10 Reasons The Democrats Might Do Better In 2010 Than You Think," and they're good reasons, but that hasn't stopped various party hacks from attacking her. Avedon cites a prog blogger who warns, "At some point people need to consider the possibility that Hamsher doesn't have the administration's best interests at heart." (The entire post is even battier.) Like I said, for the Democrats this is about the Party and the Administration, not the American people, but the evidence is that the administration doesn't even has its own best interests at heart. -- But there I've succumbed to a significant confusion myself: the interests we're talking about here are winning elections, which are vital to a political party, but the best interests of citizens are different. Of course both parties work hard to convince their members and the country that, by an amazing coincidence, their interests and your interests are the same. I think it's fair to doubt it.

You're Either Laughing or Vomiting

After a brief aberration in which he linked to an actual sober conservative, my right-wing Facebook acquaintance reverted to form by offering up the latest effusion of classicist Victor Davis Hanson at National Review Online:

On his latest speaking tour, the president has continued to talk about a traditional midterm election — in which the country assesses the sitting administration’s agenda — as if it were some epic Manichean struggle, something akin to race relations: Jim Crow, civil rights, and now, most recently, the abolition of slavery. At best, Obama is implying that a referendum on his policies is of similar magnitude to an existential battle like the Civil War; at worst, he implies by analogy that he is the crusading abolitionist and his opponents the forces of slaveholding evil. And all of this from someone who campaigned on the notion of unity and national healing.

An embattled President who sees his glorious mandate and majority about to crumble can hardly be blamed if he heats up the rhetoric when he's on the campaign trail. Not that I have any sympathy for Obama and the Democrats, mind you -- they've dug, and continue to dig, their own grave -- but fair is fair.

It's not as if the Right hasn't cast its own struggle for hegemony in Manichean terms; they hardly know any other way to think. Look at the Tea Party Extended Tantrum (I'm not sure it really deserves to be called a movement), which has busily cast Obama, the Democrats, Liberals, and the Left as the Socialist Communist Kenyan anti-colonialist enslavers of America. The National Review itself has always been prone to the Manichean heresy. Hanson's column is basically a modified replay of Jennifer Rubin's, which my acquaintance linked to a couple of weeks ago, in which the Commentary blogger complained that liberals but not conservatives Hate Americans. As for "national healing," that's one of the most enduring and empty campaign tropes. George W. Bush, to name just one, promised to heal the nation.

I’m sorry, but opposing higher deficits or cap-and-trade is not the same as denying someone civil rights, and Obama, the Ivy League graduate, is not a Susan B. Anthony or Martin Luther King Jr.

You don't have to be a right-winger to agree with the second half of that sentence, but the whole premise of the Republican Right is that higher deficits are un-American -- despite their Presidents' consistent creation of vast deficits -- and a plot by liberals to destroy our country. (For that matter, the American Right was perfectly happy to deny civil rights to African-Americans and to demonize Martin Luther King Jr. while he was still alive. Ditto for women's rights and Susan B. Anthony.) Obama has shown that, far from being radical, his policies and aims are mostly consistent with those of the Republican Right. Hanson claims that Obama's policies "seem to millions to be radical and contrary to the notions of limited government, lower taxes, and personal freedom, notions that have long set us apart from our Western constitutional cousins in Europe."

Ahem; in a country the size of the US, you can find "millions" who'll believe almost anything. Bush's policies also seemed "radical" to millions, and millions more rejected them decisively in 2008. But Bush and his political allies never were interested in limited government or personal freedom; lower taxes, maybe, though Reagan raised taxes, and the US had higher income taxes than we have now for most of the twentieth century. The notion that a social safety net -- unemployment insurance, Social Security, public education, Medicare, Medicaid, public health measures, and so on -- is a threat to "personal freedom" is a particular and obsessive hobbyhorse of the American Right, but not one that seems to be shared by most Americans, even those who hate Obama.

Now, me, I don't think that most Americans agree with me, even though I think I'm right. It's not only the right that tends to succumb to the belief that whatever they want, everybody wants; but I, who know that I'm weird, am weird in this respect too.

You're Either Laughing or Vomiting

After a brief aberration in which he linked to an actual sober conservative, my right-wing Facebook acquaintance reverted to form by offering up the latest effusion of classicist Victor Davis Hanson at National Review Online:

On his latest speaking tour, the president has continued to talk about a traditional midterm election — in which the country assesses the sitting administration’s agenda — as if it were some epic Manichean struggle, something akin to race relations: Jim Crow, civil rights, and now, most recently, the abolition of slavery. At best, Obama is implying that a referendum on his policies is of similar magnitude to an existential battle like the Civil War; at worst, he implies by analogy that he is the crusading abolitionist and his opponents the forces of slaveholding evil. And all of this from someone who campaigned on the notion of unity and national healing.

An embattled President who sees his glorious mandate and majority about to crumble can hardly be blamed if he heats up the rhetoric when he's on the campaign trail. Not that I have any sympathy for Obama and the Democrats, mind you -- they've dug, and continue to dig, their own grave -- but fair is fair.

It's not as if the Right hasn't cast its own struggle for hegemony in Manichean terms; they hardly know any other way to think. Look at the Tea Party Extended Tantrum (I'm not sure it really deserves to be called a movement), which has busily cast Obama, the Democrats, Liberals, and the Left as the Socialist Communist Kenyan anti-colonialist enslavers of America. The National Review itself has always been prone to the Manichean heresy. Hanson's column is basically a modified replay of Jennifer Rubin's, which my acquaintance linked to a couple of weeks ago, in which the Commentary blogger complained that liberals but not conservatives Hate Americans. As for "national healing," that's one of the most enduring and empty campaign tropes. George W. Bush, to name just one, promised to heal the nation.

I’m sorry, but opposing higher deficits or cap-and-trade is not the same as denying someone civil rights, and Obama, the Ivy League graduate, is not a Susan B. Anthony or Martin Luther King Jr.

You don't have to be a right-winger to agree with the second half of that sentence, but the whole premise of the Republican Right is that higher deficits are un-American -- despite their Presidents' consistent creation of vast deficits -- and a plot by liberals to destroy our country. (For that matter, the American Right was perfectly happy to deny civil rights to African-Americans and to demonize Martin Luther King Jr. while he was still alive. Ditto for women's rights and Susan B. Anthony.) Obama has shown that, far from being radical, his policies and aims are mostly consistent with those of the Republican Right. Hanson claims that Obama's policies "seem to millions to be radical and contrary to the notions of limited government, lower taxes, and personal freedom, notions that have long set us apart from our Western constitutional cousins in Europe."

Ahem; in a country the size of the US, you can find "millions" who'll believe almost anything. Bush's policies also seemed "radical" to millions, and millions more rejected them decisively in 2008. But Bush and his political allies never were interested in limited government or personal freedom; lower taxes, maybe, though Reagan raised taxes, and the US had higher income taxes than we have now for most of the twentieth century. The notion that a social safety net -- unemployment insurance, Social Security, public education, Medicare, Medicaid, public health measures, and so on -- is a threat to "personal freedom" is a particular and obsessive hobbyhorse of the American Right, but not one that seems to be shared by most Americans, even those who hate Obama.

Now, me, I don't think that most Americans agree with me, even though I think I'm right. It's not only the right that tends to succumb to the belief that whatever they want, everybody wants; but I, who know that I'm weird, am weird in this respect too.

More Like Voter Antipathy Than Apathy

Ian Welsh has a good piece (via) with some useful reminders in it:

In a midterm election where they need the base to come out, they have spent the last six months insulting the base and engaging in policy after policy meant to enrage it. ...

It is, for whatever reason, more important to Democrats to “hippie punch” than it is for them to win elections. It is more important for them to serve Wall Street, even if Wall Street gives more money to Republicans, than it is to win elections. Further, they are very happy to do very non-liberal things, like restrict abortion rights, forbid drug reimportation, gut net neutrality or try and cut social security.

Hm, you know, this sounds familiar. Someone else said something similar not so long ago:

It just occurred to me that many (most?) Democrats would rather lose to a Republican than vote against the corporate agenda. Why should I deny them their druthers?

And since it appears that they will get their druthers in November, we should be prepared for the propaganda blast that will follow. One, the corporate media line, will be that the Democrats failed because they didn't move to the center, that is, to the right. The other, the Democratic line, will be because of all the treasonous whiners who sat on their hands in the face of "a Republican Party that has moved to the right of George Bush and is looking to lock in the same policies that got us into these disasters in the first place ... But if people now want to take their ball and go home, that tells me folks weren't serious in the first place," said the Commander-in-Chief, and I won't bother to quote Biden. Those are pre-emptive strikes to excuse their own incompetence and villainy. And what is Obama saying there, anyway? That because the Republican party moved to the right of George Bush, it's okay for him and the rest of the Democrats to occupy the space where they used to be?

Welsh also addressed this matter.

Look, if the left is so powerful that is is responsible for Democratic fortunes, well, that’s not something we should shrink from. We should say “Yes, we can destroy Democratic prospects. If you don’t do what we want, we WILL do so.”

Powerful groups get what they want, weak groups don’t. If the White House wants to portray us as that powerful, we should embrace that description, because it is a blade which cuts both ways.

And there is an argument for it. While certainly the economy is factor one, the people whom left-wing bloggers reach are the sort of folks who traditionally don’t just vote, they volunteer, they give money and they are themselves influential, who convince others to be enthusiastic, vote, volunteer and give. When, last year, I felt parts of the blogosphere lose their patience with Obama, I knew it would cost him, and it has.

Don’t run from this, embrace it, wrap yourself in it. You are part of the left, and the left is capable of destroying governments which don’t do what it wants. And this is good, because objectively Obama has not fixed the economy, has presided over further destruction of civil rights, has reduced access to abortion, and so on.

Remember too Obama's Catfood Commission, as many libbloggers have called it, which is intended to present a brief for cutting Social Security benefits -- after the 2010 elections, of course. In the first article, Ian Welsh wrote,

Yes, the Republicans will do worse things, but that’s going to happen anyway. And in some cases, as with Social Security, it is better to have Republicans in power, because it is easier to fight Republican efforts to gut SS than it is to fight Democratic efforts to do so.

I know a lot of people don’t like this calculus, but the math is clear. These Democrats cannot or will not deliver. They cannot or will not do what needs to be done. They have to go.

Wasn't there a lot of talk before the 2008 election, about how progressives would be holding Obama's feet to the fire to make sure he didn't sell out to the big money? I believe Obama himself paid lip service to the notion. That's what they've been doing, and now the Democrats are complaining that they're uncomfortable. That's the whole idea, fools.

In conclusion, this nice bit addressed to Joe Biden, also via the Sideshow:

Thank you for your letter asking me to donate to elect Democratic candidates. I've given some money to the Democrats over the last two years. I think you should stop whining and get behind what I've already done.

More Like Voter Antipathy Than Apathy

Ian Welsh has a good piece (via) with some useful reminders in it:

In a midterm election where they need the base to come out, they have spent the last six months insulting the base and engaging in policy after policy meant to enrage it. ...

It is, for whatever reason, more important to Democrats to “hippie punch” than it is for them to win elections. It is more important for them to serve Wall Street, even if Wall Street gives more money to Republicans, than it is to win elections. Further, they are very happy to do very non-liberal things, like restrict abortion rights, forbid drug reimportation, gut net neutrality or try and cut social security.

Hm, you know, this sounds familiar. Someone else said something similar not so long ago:

It just occurred to me that many (most?) Democrats would rather lose to a Republican than vote against the corporate agenda. Why should I deny them their druthers?

And since it appears that they will get their druthers in November, we should be prepared for the propaganda blast that will follow. One, the corporate media line, will be that the Democrats failed because they didn't move to the center, that is, to the right. The other, the Democratic line, will be because of all the treasonous whiners who sat on their hands in the face of "a Republican Party that has moved to the right of George Bush and is looking to lock in the same policies that got us into these disasters in the first place ... But if people now want to take their ball and go home, that tells me folks weren't serious in the first place," said the Commander-in-Chief, and I won't bother to quote Biden. Those are pre-emptive strikes to excuse their own incompetence and villainy. And what is Obama saying there, anyway? That because the Republican party moved to the right of George Bush, it's okay for him and the rest of the Democrats to occupy the space where they used to be?

Welsh also addressed this matter.

Look, if the left is so powerful that is is responsible for Democratic fortunes, well, that’s not something we should shrink from. We should say “Yes, we can destroy Democratic prospects. If you don’t do what we want, we WILL do so.”

Powerful groups get what they want, weak groups don’t. If the White House wants to portray us as that powerful, we should embrace that description, because it is a blade which cuts both ways.

And there is an argument for it. While certainly the economy is factor one, the people whom left-wing bloggers reach are the sort of folks who traditionally don’t just vote, they volunteer, they give money and they are themselves influential, who convince others to be enthusiastic, vote, volunteer and give. When, last year, I felt parts of the blogosphere lose their patience with Obama, I knew it would cost him, and it has.

Don’t run from this, embrace it, wrap yourself in it. You are part of the left, and the left is capable of destroying governments which don’t do what it wants. And this is good, because objectively Obama has not fixed the economy, has presided over further destruction of civil rights, has reduced access to abortion, and so on.

Remember too Obama's Catfood Commission, as many libbloggers have called it, which is intended to present a brief for cutting Social Security benefits -- after the 2010 elections, of course. In the first article, Ian Welsh wrote,

Yes, the Republicans will do worse things, but that’s going to happen anyway. And in some cases, as with Social Security, it is better to have Republicans in power, because it is easier to fight Republican efforts to gut SS than it is to fight Democratic efforts to do so.

I know a lot of people don’t like this calculus, but the math is clear. These Democrats cannot or will not deliver. They cannot or will not do what needs to be done. They have to go.

Wasn't there a lot of talk before the 2008 election, about how progressives would be holding Obama's feet to the fire to make sure he didn't sell out to the big money? I believe Obama himself paid lip service to the notion. That's what they've been doing, and now the Democrats are complaining that they're uncomfortable. That's the whole idea, fools.

In conclusion, this nice bit addressed to Joe Biden, also via the Sideshow:

Thank you for your letter asking me to donate to elect Democratic candidates. I've given some money to the Democrats over the last two years. I think you should stop whining and get behind what I've already done.