No Adult Supervision

This is a great review of books covering Wall Street and the financial collapse. It's long, but worth an entire read. Here's one killer passage towards the end:

What was easy to convey was that something about the past ten years had been unsustainable. But the truth—that an entire ideology had been unsustainable—is one that we have not yet grasped. And that is why so many journalists, economists, intellectuals and financiers now scramble to churn out books that for the most part read like the memoirs of people trying to make themselves feel less stupid. The current financial system was constructed to make us all feel stupid, and in the process of building it the architects allowed themselves to become stupid as well. That ignorance begat infantilization, which bred cowardice and systemic moral decay. The only sustainable way out is to reacquaint ourselves and our fellow citizens with the wisdom of asking stupid questions.

This country is going to be completely dysfunctional so long as these people are not both publicly shamed and legally punished.

Markets Love Big Government

Yglesias makes a simple, but important observation that doesn't get made often enough. There's nothing particularly conservative about banks. They're like any constituency. They don't have any particular faith in the free market if they're the ones who are going down. They're perfectly well-disposed to Big Government, so long as that government's policies benefit them.

The Filibuster-Proof Majority: It ain't the same for them as for us

Taking Progressive's Punch's statistical survey of Senate voting habits, Chris Bowers over at OpenLeft finally puts into words what I've been saying for awhile now: the gridlock that we see now in the Senate is not merely the result of hyper-partisan atmosphere. It is the result of a hyper-partisan atmosphere combined with a Democratic majority.

I tend to have more respect for Ezra Klein than a lot of other progressives, but these kind of arguments are just ridiculous:

The Bush White House was very good at leveraging 9/11 to ensure congressional support for Middle East adventurism, but they didn't crack the code unlocking a compliant Congress for a hard-line conservative agend

a

Maybe not a "hard-line" conservative agenda, ok. But a conservative agenda and not a soft one either. 1.3 trillion in tax cuts isn't 1.6 trillion, but it's still a hell of a lot of tax cuts. The 2003 tax cuts might have been reduced from $700 billion to $300 billion, but these were also top-margin tax cuts, affecting a very small number of rich Americans. No administration gets exactly what they want, including Ronald Reagan's back in 1980, but that didn't prevent the legislation Reagan did get through from fundamentally changing the nature of government for the next 30 years.

The fact of the matter is that Republicans never faced the kind of gridlock that Democrats are now facing and never will because--as Chris points out--Democrats are more likely to vote with Republicans than the other way around. Chris' calculations are depressing. For Democrats to have a "true" super-majority that could really get progressive legislation passed, they would need 72 (!!) Senators. But even more depressing is the number of their own kind that Republicans need for passing a Conservative agenda: just 54 Senators. You will always have 5 or 6 Democrats will to wheel and deal and--essentially--act as moderate Republicans. So remember: when people make the argument about the filibuster causing general "gridlock" they are oversimplifying the issue. Gridlock--as we are seeing it play out now--is exclusively a Democrat problem and a Republican creation. So getting rid of the filibuster, while making it easier for Republicans to pass conservative legislation, is the only way that large-scale progressive legislation seems to have a chance.

One thing that Chris doesn't mention, however, which I think is crucial: Republicans achieve party discipline by threatening their disobedient congressman with the removal of important powerful chairmanships. Democrats do no such thing. But there's no reason for them not to. Joe Lieberman was able to strip the Senate bill of any kind of public option or any kind of medicare buy-in simply because Democrats had no leverage over him they were willing to use. But leverage they had. Lieberman chairs the Department of Homeland Services committee and Reid didn't even mention the possibility of stripping him of it when Lieberman said he'd filibuster with the GOP on the Public Option....and then Medicare Buy-in, and really pretty much any idea that liberals liked that had a chance of making into the final vote. So when people talk about party discipline, there's this assumption--especially among liberals--that the particular ideology of conservatism somehow makes Republicans naturally more tribal than Democrats. But the practices that the GOP uses to maintain rigid party discipline are right there for the Democrats' taking. They just choose not use them. They should. I guarantee you that then support for filibuster reform would be lot more "bipartisan." As it is now, getting rid of the filibuster is far more beneficial to progressives than conservatives and liberals shouldn't pretend otherwise.

The Wannabe Centrist

I don't have much to say about Obama's SOTU. I thought it was a solid speech, a reminder of what a presence this guy still is. But rhetorically I think that Jon Stewart captured the underlying message of the entire speech pretty well.

It was a speech that basically admitted impotence, more or less. Obama chastised Republicans in a way that didn't sound whiny, but I'm not sure a whole lot more than that. That said, I was a lot more interested by what happened two days later at the house GOP retreat. When I first saw this, I got really excited. Obama just simply seemed masterful, taking Republican questions turning them back on the house GOP, and making them look silly and obstructionist. However, following that euphoria, I find myself considerably less hopeful. For one thing, the problem Obama faced never was in the House. (Come mid-term elections this year that might change). But for the last year and a half, Pelosi has consistently passed Obama's legislatively agenda, while the Senate has become the place where good legislation goes to die. But the other thing I noticed during the Q&A was how much faith Obama put in "experts" and establishmentarians like Howard Baker as a way of defining the political Center. He referred to his healthcare bill as a "pretty centrist" piece of legislation--which it is--and was promptly laughed at. He then defended this claim by stating that it was basically the same thing as what Howard Baker, Bob Dole and Tom Daschle put forward at the beginning of the year and what Republicans put on the table during Clinton's first term. The more I think about Obama, both from his SOTU speech, and from this recent Q&A with Republicans, the more I find myself thinking that the guy is a Wannabe Centrist.

Consider the following: Obama's political roots are liberal to the core. He began as a community organizer. His closest political associates--David Axelrod and Valerie Jarrett--both have strong liberal tendencies. Yet coming into the White House, who does he hire as his closest advisor? Rahm Emanuel, a solidly Establishment centrist, a corporate "pragmatist" of the highest order. Or take the economic policies that have come out of his White House. The excise tax wasn't an idea that came out of Obama's administration--he originally proposed paying for healthcare by capping tax exemption limits on itemized deductions (which would mostly be paid by the wealthiest Americans). Furthermore, the president supported the public option and defended it publicly numerous times. The problem was as Rick Perlstein puts it, in this excellent exchange between him and Mark Schmitt, when the time came to draw lines in the sand Obama didn't do that. As Perlstein writes:

what I worry "being like Barack" truly means is that the knockout never comes. That the patience and the building of trust is, in fact, the end in itself. "Our Barack doesn't do mean," means, "Our Barack doesn't make the strategic choice to defeat a reactionary adversary even when that opportunity manifestly presents itself to him."

And that's really the point, watching the Q&A. Obama is most comfortable when he can orient himself in close proximity to the Establishment center. In this particular forum it was successful, it wouldn't have made sense for him to go into the house GOP retreat and tell them that they believed in failed ideas. But, in general, this is exactly what he needed to say, over and over and over, until the public came to see the current Republican platform and its rhetoric as fundamentally toxic. And he didn't. His instincts lead him in a pretty consistently liberal direction. But it's almost as though Obama envisions himself moving to the center before he actually does, that something would be wrong if that wasn't the end result of the legislative process. He's not triangulating, which I'm grateful for. He also, at least according to Richard Wolfe, sees himself as many progressives wish to see him: as a Reagan of the left. But for Obama to be Reagan he needs to draw new lines. And however successfully he might have invoked the Establishment center at the GOP House retreat as a way of painting the GOP as obstructionist, I ultimately see this as a failure of imagination rather than a success. He's not drawing new lines. He's taking the old lines and trying to use them against a reactionary party. The problem is that the old lines have been formed under the past 30 years of conservative political dominance in this country. The center is not the center. And Obama, trying to make that center hold, keeps stumbling out alone into the void where it used to be.

Everything Has to be on the Table....Except National Defense

A direct quote from Judd Gregg yesterday on the PBS News Hour yesterday (speaking about the debt commission) : "Everything has to be on the table: entitlements, taxes..."

Two things:

One, it's amazing how conventional this idea has become. Judy Woodruff just listens to what he says and moves on. Kent Conrad, who is also on the program, doesn't say anything either.

Letting Republicans frame the debt issue this way is--in no uncertain terms--fucking stupid. The public's desire for increased military spending is very low. True, there are very powerful constituencies in Washington who would scream over reducing our deficits with cuts in military spending. But they do not have broad popular support. This is another reason why the President's proposed spending freeze which specifically exempts national defense spending cannot really be taken seriously.

When in Doubt, Go to the Graphs

John Judis makes a convincing argument that the declines of Democratic candidates in recent months is intimately linked to Obama's approval rating in the state that candidate is running in. Except that he doesn't say much. He just lets polling graphs do the talking.

I don't know enough about the history of Senatorial candidates in these states to make an argument as to Obama's declining numbers have, in fact, dragged down democratic candidates in these states. What I think seems clear is that numbers really start getting bad for both Obama and Democrats around November. Missouri seems like a pretty conservative state. Obama is under 50% before August. But Robin Carnahan is very popular in the state and she is leading Blount until right around the middle of November. Colorado has a similar story: Obama's below 50% by September, but Senator Michael Bennett still has a lead until right around Thanksgiving (notice for Bennett how his numbers are flatlined, not declining, but the Republican's are rising). It should be extremely disturbing to Democrats that Obama's numbers are below 50% in Ohio and, particularly, in Philadelphia. Here is where you can really see the national trend emerge. Obama is still above 50% in both states at the beginning of November. The Dem Senate candidate, Fisher, and Ohio's (perhaps formerly) popular governer, Ted Strickland, both have leads all year that they lose right at the end of October. The one outlier to all of this is Arlen Specter, whose numbers have been a on a serious decline since he switched parties (remember how he was going to save his seat that way?).

One other point that should be made, however, is that none of these races--with the exception of Specter's seat (surprisingly)--seem even close to being lost. With the exception of Carnahan's race, which is still very close, all of these races have high numbers of undecided voters and the elections are 10 months off. That's a world of time away. However, what does seem clear is that over this past year Democrats let themselves be defined by Republicans, without Republicans offering any alternative for governing, and it worked. In every poll you can see Republican numbers rising, in some cases faster than Democrats' are falling. As of today, that trend is still going strong.

To Defend or not to Defend

Jonathan has long post arguing, in detail, for what is a fairly standard position among the Netroots:

Democrats can be assured that Republicans will attack them, regardless of what they do. Democrats could eliminate the estate tax permanently, slash the capital gains tax, repeal the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts, invade Iran, and pass a Constitutional Amendment outlawing abortion, and Republicans would still attack them -- with exactly the same vehemence and vigor that Republicans have now. That's politics. It's how partisan politics is played. It is absolutely impossible to avoid attacks from one's opponents; nothing you do gives them license to attack, because they will attack whatever you do.

Bernstein's basic point can be summed up as follows: ignore the attacks because they will attack you no matter what.

Now, if we're referring to the current political situation in Washington today, I can't really find a simple example of Republican attacks that would refute Bernstein's argument. But that's more because Republican attacks have been largely fabricated media operas (death panels, Harry Reid's "negro dialect" comment, and bad-bad stimulus "pork" like creating jobs to clean up historical monuments). There is no excuse for Democrats failing to destroy these attacks right where they stand and I think makes a largely-correct-on-the-merits argument like Bernstein's very tempting.

But in absolute terms I think it's wrong. Republicans larger attack against Democrats--that they are both for Big Government and Big Business--is an argument that has resonance with the American public. And I would argue that it does because 1) it rings true given how the administration chose to handle the banking crisis, and 2) because, as Rauch himself argues, it is bad policy on the merits. If the Republicans had more of a coherent governing platform of their own I think this would be more clear. As it currently stands, Bernstein can simply dismiss every Republican attack as hypocritical because they don't have a real governing platform. But just because they aren't any better, doesn't mean that what they're saying doesn't have some truth. I wouldn't frame it the way Republicans frame it. But over this past year it's become very hard for me, as a Democrat, defend it against the charge that it is not just halfway beholden to corporate interests (which I always knew), but that it is ENTIRELY beholden to them when all is said and done. And, yes, it's bad policy. But it's also terrible politics and the Democrats have not paid nearly enough attention to their image as a party in bed with corporate interests. They assume that since the Republicans aren't any less beholden to corporations that voters will dismiss Republican attacks as hypocritical, or at the very least, view Democrats as the lesser of two evils. Both visions display a fundamental poverty of imagination.

Rick Perlstein put it well back in 2004:

For a party whose major competitive advantage over the opposition is its credibility in protecting ordinary people from economic insecurity, anything that compromises that credibility is disastrous.

If Democrats can't embrace being the party of the little man at the expense of their corporate support I don't really know what reason their party has for existing. All of this is to say that, in terms of Bernstein's argument, I think that some attacks really SHOULD be paid attention to. For example, if Democrats had listened more to criticism from their progressive members about their complicity with Wall Street, it's unlikely any of would ever know who Scott Brown was.