Krugman Is Shrill

Paul Krugman:

Former Senator Alan Simpson is a Very Serious Person. He must be — after all, President Obama appointed him as co-chairman of a special commission on deficit reduction.

So here’s what the very serious Mr. Simpson said on Friday: “I can’t wait for the blood bath in April. … When debt limit time comes, they’re going to look around and say, ‘What in the hell do we do now? We’ve got guys who will not approve the debt limit extension unless we give ’em a piece of meat, real meat,’ ” meaning spending cuts. “And boy, the blood bath will be extraordinary,” he continued.

Think of Mr. Simpson’s blood lust as one more piece of evidence that our nation is in much worse shape, much closer to a political breakdown, than most people realize.
…
The fact is that one of our two great political parties has made it clear that it has no interest in making America governable, unless it’s doing the governing. And that party now controls one house of Congress, which means that the country will not, in fact, be governable without that party’s cooperation — cooperation that won’t be forthcoming.

I think Krugman is really right to highlight the danger in Simpson’s comments, as well as the commitment of Republicans to block any chance of the Obama administration successfully running the government. The Republican Party needs to be made to bear the consequences of whatever obstructionism they deploy for political purposes. But the question is, can that happen? Will anyone notice, especially if it is left to the Krugmans of the world to make this case? After all, Krugman is Very Shrill and having a Nobel prize in economics does not make him Serious at all.

The larger problem is that when you have people like Simpson publicly touting their erections brought on by the thought of inflicting pain on working class American families, you know our country is at a precipice. These are not sane things to long for. This is sociopathic at best and, well, it’s hard to properly capture what it is at its worst, other than to say it’s an unrepentant call to destroy the social structure of America. And this is from an allegedly Reasonable and Serious Republican. Just wait until you get the Glenn Becks and Sarah Palins of the world chiming in with any regularity.

I wish I had a strong sense that the leadership of the Democratic Party grasped how dangerous the GOP is today and how hard they will have to work to defeat these efforts to steal wealth from working American families and give it to billionaires.

Matt Bai Is Nuts

Matt Bai has a piece in the New York Times today, titled “‘Blame the Blue Dogs’ Theory for Democratic Losses Doesn’t Add Up.” It’s just plain nuts. Actually, it’s worse than that. Bai primarily seems to be laundering the Conventional Wisdom that Blue Dogs and the Third Way want to take hold – namely, don’t pay attention to the fact that our preferred policies and tactics were enacted over the last two years when trying to figure out why we were decimated at the polls.

The reality is that the size and cohesion of the Blue Dog caucus made them a key voting bloc during the last two years. As a result, they had major input on the content of legislation passed by the House. Their threat to walk was always hanging over negotiations and often they ended up not voting for legislation that they’d worked hard to get modified to be satisfactory for them (See: the Stupak Amendment). But to suggest that the Blue Dogs didn’t have a major hand in the nature of legislation that the House passed is to be in pure denial of the facts. The problem the Blue Dogs faced is that their efforts prevented Congress from doing more to help people. The stimulus was smaller than necessary because Blue Dogs prevented the “political will” from existing, to use the phrase that was repeated to justify an insignificantly large stimulus. They shrunk jobs creating bills. They limited the scope and efficacy of healthcare reform.  They pursued pork for themselves as bargaining chips. In short, Blue Dogs were critical agents in making sure what efforts the Congress made towards righting the economy and helping voters were too small to be effective.

Policy is not like porridge. The middle point between liberal ideas and conservative ones is not just right. As we saw, when Blue Dogs go their way, America’s porridge stayed too cold to be palatable.

I doubt many voters went into their voting booth last week and said, “Congress was insufficiently liberal, so I will vote my Blue Dog rep out of office.” But they likely did say, “Congress bailed out the Wall Street banks, didn’t create a job for me or my wife with the stimulus, and haven’t punished the people who caused the economic collapse. All of these were things my Blue Dog rep made happen – I’m going to vote him out.”

Clearly Matt Bai, the few remaining Blue Dogs, and the Third Way do not get that Democrats lost because the policies that were enacted were too timid to be effective. They failed to make peoples’ lives better. It’s not about liberal or conservative for voters – it’s about efficacy. But when we political operatives look at last week, we have to ask ourselves, “Why weren’t the laws of the 111th Congress enough to fix the economy, create jobs, and keep voters happy?” Any sober answer to that question would lead one to find the obstructionism by Blue Dogs and conservative Democrats which was removed by watering-down every major piece of economic legislation (at the behest of Blue Dogs). That is, not enough was done because of conservatives in Congress. Voters punished them for this. The lesson is clear to me, but obviously the conservatives who have a vested interest in convincing the rest of the party that their political malfeasance wasn’t the cause of electoral defeat will refuse to learn this lesson, while sending their lackeys like Matt Bai out to talk down to anyone contradicting them.

No Baggage Challenge for Charity

Totally not related to politics, but I’m about to embark on a 10 day trip to Japan and carry with me only what I can fit in the clothes I wear – no bags allowed. I’m partnering with the travel clothing company Scottevest and they will be making a donation to Students for a Free Tibet in support of the trip.

My first post explaining  why I’m taking this trip and how it’s going to work is up at Huffington Post. I just posted another one where I go over what exactly I’m taking with me and how I’m packing it. I’m also posting my updates at my travel and technology blog, Blogger Hamlin.

I’ve also made a couple videos so far. The one explaining the trip itself is a bit…let’s say dry. I had some technical problems with the recording and posting and a few reshoots left me without a lot of passion. But I think the packing video is pretty fun.

The way the charity aspect of this works is that Scottevest will make at least a $1500 donation to Students for a Free Tibet. They will raise that donation to $5000 if the Youtube videos from my trip get a combined 10,000 views. So please, share posts and videos from my trip with your friends!

Hold Fast, The Movie

Totally not political, but via Boing Boing, here’s a documentary about sailing:

Ever dream of taking off for the equator, fixing up an old boat, and then sailing it off into the sunset? Well, a few years ago, a group lead by Moxie Marlinspike did just that. Under the banner of the Anarchist Yacht Club, they migrated to Florida, found and restored a boat that they named the Pestilence, then proceeded to sail it around the Bahamas. It’s the ultimate adventure, and luckily they captured their experience in the documentary Hold Fast.

Pelosi Sticks Around

This is just great news. Speaker Pelosi has announced that she will run for Minority Leader and, per Greg Sargent, “her candidacy is partly about protecting the legacy of Dem accomplishments, and partly about ensuring that Dems show the fortitude and spine that will be required to resist the GOP urge to repeal them.” Sargent has Pelosi’s letter to the caucus announcing her intentions. It includes:

Our work is far from finished. As a result of Tuesday’s election, the role of Democrats in the 112th Congress will change, but our commitment to serving the American people will not. We have no intention of allowing our great achievements to be rolled back. It is my hope that we can work in a bipartisan way to create jobs and strengthen the middle class.

Many of our colleagues have called with their recommendations on how to continue our fight for the middle class, and have encouraged me to run for House Democratic Leader. Based on those discussions, and driven by the urgency of protecting health care reform, Wall Street reform, and Social Security and Medicare, I have decided to run.

Pelosi has been the best advocate progressives have in the leadership of the Democratic Party. I have to imagine that if she’s announcing for Leader, she has the votes in place to win. In a situation where Democrats are in the minority in Congress, I’d hope that Pelosi could be a real agitator and leader in the charge of opposition to the GOP majority in the House. She can take them on more directly than Reid or President Obama.

More to the point, though, Speaker Pelosi has been one of the brightest points in the Democratic Party for years. She is an able public servant and an effective legislator. She deserves to continue to lead the caucus and I hope her colleagues feel the same way.

Speaker Pelosi

Speaker Pelosi says she has no regrets from the last Congress, including the passage of “healthcare reform, student lending reform, financial regulatory reform, credit card reform and the stimulus, even if it meant losing their House majority.” I think we’ll see how all their hard work plays out in the long term. Jonathan Singer is right to note the parallel to the 89th Congress, when Democrats passed “Medicare, Medicaid and the Voting Rights Act,” while subsequently suffering serious electoral losses.

Prior to the election, there was a lot of talk about Steny Hoyer taking over as leader of the House caucus if Democrats lost the House. There is zero reason why there needs to be a leadership change. Speaker Pelosi presided over an unarguably historic Congress, setting out the House as the most progressive part of the government – more so than the Senate and even the White House. She is a phenomenal organizer, keeping a caucus with many conservative Democrats largely in line. I don’t see the virtue in her being moved along because of a change in the calendar, especially as she serves in the highest elected office an American woman has ever held.

Obviously Speaker Pelosi has the right to make the choice for herself. I just hope that no one in the party pressures her out. There have been precedents where a Speaker loses the majority, but remains Minority Leader (the legendary Sam Rayburn comes to mind and, obviously, his Republican counterpart in the intervening years, Joseph Martin).  There’s no reason why Speaker Pelosi can’t join Rayburn as a congressional leader whose tenure as Speaker of the House is broken by a session or two as Minority Leader.

The last part of my concern about Speaker Pelosi stepping aside as leader of the House caucus is that she is unquestionably more progressive than her likely replacement, Steny Hoyer. John Larson of the CT-01 is another candidate whose name is talked about, though he would face an up hill battle against Hoyer. Larson is more progressive than Hoyer, but he’s still a New Democrat and isn’t the same fiery liberal that Pelosi is. Rather than see an internal fight over what sort of person leads the House while Democrats are in the minority, I’d much prefer that her colleagues recognize and honor her incredible work for the Democratic Party and for America, and encourage Speaker Pelosi to stay on as Minority Leader.

Thinking About the Election

Earlier this week, Ryan Grim of Huffington Post wrote:

Over the past decade and a half, the party of FDR, JFK and LBJ drifted away from its foundation and found refuge in a transactional politics that is being forcefully rejected by voters. Presented with the chance to make history, Democrats made deals — with pill makers, with device makers, with hospital executives, with hedge fund managers, with swaps dealers, with auto dealers, with “non-bank financial institutions.” As the tide turned, Democrats found those corporate interests scurrying back to the GOP. When the party turned back to its people, they were nowhere to be found. Compromise in pursuit of a broadly popular, unifying agenda is a forgivable sin. Compromise just to put points on the board leads to a blowout.

Last night, HuffPost Hill included this snippet on the election results:

ARMAGEDDON – This is a very, very, very bad night for the progressive movement — a blow that calls into question whether there is such a thing. The idea that running as a passionate progressive-populist, working hard, raising a ton of money and doing bang-up constituent work is a legitimate path to reelection in a conservative district, even in a wave year, was thoroughly demolished. Tom Perriello is a thoughtful, charming, hard-working freshman whose progressive values are deeply held. He worked as hard as anyone in Congress, passionately articulated and defended his controversial votes, raised a ton of money and held endless townhalls while running a flawless campaign in his rural House district. Yet he lost to an empty-headed, country-club Republican who refused to take a position on anything other than the need to cut taxes and spending. He was swamped with corporate money. Carol Shea-Porter and Mary Jo Kilroy, also tough progressives in swing districts, met similar fates — the former to a guy who was part of a bar fight this year and skipped out before the cops came and somehow came up with hundreds of thousands of dollars to lend his campaign after telling voters he was personally broke and the latter to A BANK LOBBYIST. And Alan Grayson went down. And Pat Toomey won in Pennsylvania. Pat Toomey. The Club for Growth derivatives trader. HuffPost Hill is out of answers.

I think the value of the online progressive community, including reporters like Ryan at HuffPost, is that while the right (of both parties) and the Beltway press will try to explain away losses of Grayson, Carol Shea-Porter, Kilroy and a couple others as the result of them being too liberal, we can rebut that simplistic view while learning from what happened to make sure the next crop of progressive elected officialss don’t suffer the same fate.

At base level, not enough was done by elected officials to make peoples’ lives better. But questions about who their opponents were, what sort of outside spending they face, what sort of Democratic Party support they received, what sort of labor support they received, what sort of other progressive group support they received, what specific votes they took that may or may not have been tough for their district, how they communicated with their constituents about these votes, what their opponents said about these votes, and what vision of change they presented to their constituents to befit their reelection are all very important to answer. We can look at them and provide a more robust answer than “progressives can’t stay in office.”

Today might feel like failure, especially with the loss of folks like Grayson and Perriello. But if the Conventional Wisdom coalesces around the Third Way line, then we’ve really failed, as it brings us back to a pre-2004 attitude within the Democratic Party and almost certainly ensures prolonged pain for the American people.

What Markos Said

Markos has a post up at Daily Kos in which he thoroughly takes down the DLC clone organization, Third Way. The whole post critiquing the Third Way’s efforts to become a major player after Democratic losses is worth a read. But this is a brilliant summary of what the Third Way and their campaign to move Democrats to the right stands for:

Their agenda can be summarized as follows:

(1.) Foreclose on Democratic voters, by opposing principle paydown or a foreclosure moritorium.

(2.) Fire Democratic voters, by slashing public sector jobs

(3.) Make the Democratic voters who still have jobs take a pay cut

(4.) Liquidate the pensions of remaining Democratic voters.

You know, the kind of things that get Wall Street all excited.

He goes on:

So I look forward to them coming out of the shadows, where we can more directly engage. If there’s going to be a battle for the soul of the Democratic Party, let’s have it out in the open. Where people can see that the people trying to buy our democracy post-Citizens United, are also trying to buy our Democratic Party.

I can think of few things more dangerous to the country in a situation where Republicans control one or more chambers of Congress than a concerted effort by corporatists to co-opt the Democratic Party and the Democratic agenda. One thing that I know for sure is that the netroots will fight against this tooth and nail. And that’s a good thing.

Krugman’s Pre-Mortem

Paul Krugman’s Pre-Mortem to today’s election is pretty brutal. The short version is his closing sentence:

So again: it was mainly the economy, with the effects of a bad economy reinforced by Obama’s consistent policy of undercutting both messages and movements that might have helped Democrats weather the economic storm.

We’ll find out tonight, though Krugman is certainly offering some hardcore pessimism early. Except it isn’t pessimism. It’s designed to offer a rebuttal to the inevitable talking points uttered by GOP talking heads and repeated by cable news hosts that Obama and the Democrats suffered losses because they were too liberal and overreached. That’s just not what happened. I do agree with Krugman that the economy was and is the main driving problem and the administration’s failure to aggressively tackle this with strong Democratic policy ideas and clear messaging about them is a major problem. That is, I don’t substantively disagree with Krugman’s assessment, I just shudder to read it on election morning.