Berman: Boot the Blue Dogs

Over the weekend, journalist Ari Berman had an op-ed in the New York Times titled “Boot the Blue Dogs.” Berman writes:

Democrats would be in better shape, and would accomplish more, with a smaller and more ideologically cohesive caucus. It’s a sentiment that even Mr. Dean now echoes. “Having a big, open-tent Democratic Party is great, but not at the cost of getting nothing done,” he said. Since the passage of health care reform, few major bills have passed the Senate. Although the Democrats have a 59-vote majority, party leaders can barely find the votes for something as benign as extending unemployment benefits.

A smaller majority, minus the intraparty feuding, could benefit Democrats in two ways: first, it could enable them to devise cleaner pieces of legislation, without blatantly trading pork for votes as they did with the deals that helped sour the public on the health care bill. (As a corollary, the narrative of “Democratic infighting” would also diminish.)

Second, in the Senate, having a majority of 52 rather than 59 or 60 would force Democrats to confront the Republicans’ incessant misuse of the filibuster to require that any piece of legislation garner a minimum of 60 votes to become law. Since President Obama’s election, more than 420 bills have cleared the House but have sat dormant in the Senate. It’s easy to forget that George W. Bush passed his controversial 2003 tax cut legislation with only 50 votes, plus Vice President Dick Cheney’s. Eternal gridlock is not inevitable unless Democrats allow it to be.

Berman concludes:

Republicans have become obsessed with ideological purity, and as a consequence they will likely squander a few winnable races in places like Delaware. But Democrats aren’t ideological enough. Their conservative contingent has so blurred what it means to be a Democrat that the party itself can barely find its way. Polls show that, despite their best efforts to distance themselves from Speaker Pelosi and President Obama, a number of Blue Dog Democrats are likely to be defeated this November. Their conservative voting records have deflated Democratic activists but have done nothing to win Republican support.

Far from hastening the dawn of a post-partisan utopia, President Obama’s election has led to near-absolute polarization. If Democrats alter their political strategy accordingly, they’ll be more united and more productive.

I think this is really the right task. What’s been clear over the past two years is that the size of the caucus is not as important as its quality. A conservative bloc within the House and Senate has the ability to stop legislation that the overwhelming majority of Democrats wants from moving forward, or if it is allowed to move, it’s only after it has been made markedly worse. Democrats are left to negotiate with themselves while Republicans laugh at our ineffectiveness.

Having a big caucus with representatives from all parts of the country is great. I hope we continue to win elections in traditional Republican districts. But the Democrats who come from these places, a meaningful minority in the caucus, should not have their interests placed ahead of Democrats who actually believe in the Democratic agenda. The offer to Blue Dogs should be this: wear the D after your name and vote for a progressive Speaker or Majority Leader and you’ll get the added power that comes with serving in the majority. But you don’t get to undermine the ability of the party to hold onto the majority by sabotaging legislation. If that arrangement works, Blue Dogs should absolutely stay with the caucus. If not, the party infrastructure should cut them off from all support and seniority and this cohort should slowly wilt at the election booth.

Nightmare Scenario

New York Magazine has a truly horrific thought experiment about the 2012 presidential election and how Michael Bloomberg’s entry as a third party candidate could throw the election to the Republican nominee, presumably Sarah Palin.

The magazine supposes that were Palin to get the Republican nomination, Bloomberg would run as an independent. The problem I have with this supposition is that while it’s clearly likely that Bloomberg would not support the idea of Palin as the Republican alternative, there’s no real basis to suggest he is equally disgusted by the chances of Obama winning reelection. As the article notes, the administration has done a lot to keep Bloomberg in the fold, including lots of face time with the President, Vice President and Treasury Secretary. The administration clearly values his perspective. I find it hard to believe that he’d reward that with a course of action that is likely to throw the White House to Palin. A candidate doesn’t get into a race because he hates one outcome when getting into the race assures that outcome will come true. That is, while I do think gaming out the consequences of Bloomberg entering the 2012 race (throwing it to the GOP candidate) is interesting, it’s hard to believe that Bloomberg would enter the race out of a desire to stop Sarah Palin from being elected.

What’s really remarkable about the thought of Sarah Palin getting the Republican nomination is how important it makes the 2012 election. 2004 was the most important election of my lifetime, until 2008 was. And now, with the prospect of Palin as his opponent, 2012 might become the most important election. The stakes keep getting raised by the Republican Party through the militarism, demagoguery, and fundamentalism of their candidates.  Nothing would close any perceived Democratic enthusiasm gap in 2012 fast than a Palin nomination.

Maddow on AK-SEN

Rachel Maddow had a great segment last night on the Alaska Senate race, particularly the surprising path it’s taken since the primary election. Scott McAdams, Maddow points out, has run a great Alaska-focused campaign. Meanwhile Murkowski is running as a write-in and Joe Miller is a Palin-esq candidate with a new scandal every 24-48 hours.

This race is really close – closer than polls can adequately reflect with the write-in situation. I’m predicting that the winner of this race doesn’t have more than 37% of the vote. It’s totally likely that McAdams can surge forward and win the race, as Murkowski voters realize that they cannot expect her to win as a write-in and Joe Miller shows himself to be a totally non-viable option for any Alaskan who isn’t a dyed in the wool Tea Partier.

On Maddow’s show, Nate Silver says:

I mean, Joe Miller won the primary with an infusion of money from the Tea Party which is worth half a million dollars, right? So, you know, he can get very high levels of turnout among Democrats. There are some liberal-leaning, centrist and independents. There are also people who just don’t like either Murkowski or Joe Miller, you know?

So, the potential for him to reach 35 percent, maybe 36 percent is there. He would need some help though to make sure that the remaining votes are split about evenly between the two Republicans, because otherwise, you know, he might do as well as you can in a state like Alaska and not quite come out ahead.

Well Nate, let’s keep in mind that Mark Begich was elected statewide in 2008 against Alaskan icon Ted Stevens. Begich won 47.8% and Stevens won 46.5%. This cycle is a bit different, which Silver notes, but it’s not really accurate to say that the best a Democrat can do in Alaska is 35-36%. All that said, if McAdams gets 35-36% of the vote, he has a great shot of winning.

Woeser’s Courage in Journalism Award Speech

The International Women’s Media Foundation recently awarded the Tibetan blogger, poet and dissident Woeser their 2010 Courage in Journalism Award. While Woeser was denied a passport by the Chinese government and unable to attend, she sent an acceptance speech, which High Peaks Pure Earth has posted. She tells the story of her rise to prominence, particularly around the 2008 Tibetan national uprising and the violent crackdown by the Chinese government that followed it, including a near-total media blackout. It’s a reminder of her heroic efforts to tell the world what was happening inside Tibet, at great personal risk and facing intense intimidation from authorities.

But her writing on the role she plays more broadly and where things currently stand for Tibet is even more powerful:

I am not really a journalist or media person in the traditional sense. In this Age of the Internet, I have taken my books, my blog, my regular commentaries for radio, Twitter, and Facebook — as well as a camera, a camcorder, and the interviews I give reporters — and
combined them into a new medium: a one-person medium. I began deliberately using this approach in March of 2008. At that time, protests which had spread across Tibet were being violently suppressed, but the Chinese government was using its monopoly on information to make sure people could hear only its distorted account, blasted at high volume. The might of this world was asserting its power over the facts, and I realized that unless I could find some way, working by myself, to record what was happening and get the news out, the anguish of an entire people would vanish forever behind a veil of darkness. History would be rewritten; memories would be buried; our descendants would never know the sacrifices their ancestors had made.
…
Even now, every kind of inhumanity and injustice is still being visited upon Tibet. Many outstanding people, innocent people, have been arrested and sentenced and are suffering unimaginable torment. I will keep my one-person media operation going, for it is the weapon of the powerless. To be sure, this weapon consists of the written word; it rests on principles of nonviolence and noncooperation; it draws its energy from our religion, traditions, and culture, as well as the broken condition to which we have been reduced; these provide the strength with which we resist oppression and are the reason why I will never give up or compromise. The support that comes in from every side, including from you, is a lasting source of my courage.

Definitely give the whole speech a read.

Dangerous Anti-Choice Law Pushed by Wholesalers

Originally posted at A Jigger of Blog

Eric Asimov, the NY Times wine reporter, had a piece earlier this week on HR 5034, the Comprehensive Alcohol Regulatory Effectiveness Act of 2010. The Orwellian-named CARE Act would would “severely restrict direct interstate shipping of wine by retailers.” The bill is being pushed in Congress by beer and wine wholesalers who are threatened by online or direct from winery/brewery/distillery sales that leave them – the middle man – out of the money making process.

Yet as welcome as these lifelines are, they may be threatened by a bill introduced earlier this year before the House of Representatives, the Comprehensive Alcohol Regulatory Effectiveness Act of 2010, or H.R. 5034, which has the potential to severely restrict direct interstate shipping of wine by retailers. Direct sales from wineries could be threatened, too, although the current language of the bill appears to focus more directly on retailers….

Opponents, however, including wine and beer producers, retail shops and importers, assert that states already have ample regulatory authority. They say the bill is meant to protect beer and wine wholesalers, who have been cut out of the loop by the rise of direct sales. Wholesalers have set their well-financed lobby to work for the bill and have liberally doled out campaign contributions to supporters.

The industry is threatened that other businesses are able to use internet commerce to break their hold on what Americans are able to use their money to purchase and drink when it comes to wine. Their lobbying arm, the National Beer Wholesalers Association, prominently features a promotional statement on HR 5034 on their website. According to OpenSecrets.org, the National Beer Wholesalers Association is the fifth largest federal PAC this election cycle. They have spent over $3.1 million dollars just in the last two years. Obviously this is a high priority bill for them and they’re spending to get it through Congress.

The most laughable part of Asimov’s article is this:

Wholesalers argue that they are not acting to protect their own financial position but the rights of states.

“Our main concern is making sure states can continue to effectively regulate alcohol and maintain the system that serves the public well by balancing competition with an orderly market,” said Rebecca Spicer, a spokeswoman for the National Beer Wholesalers Association.

Yeah, right. The wholesalers lobby is using a states’ rights canard to appeal to Republicans and Blue Dogs (who make up most of the bill’s sponsors). The “balancing competition” they support is simply a way of using their influence in government to crush competition and reduce consumer choice. This is about a major business lobby using their influence in Congress to try to quash small businesses who provide a meaningful service to consumers: increasing selection and quality of wines on the market. Asimov notes, “The bill, though, which is unlikely to come up for a vote until next year, would clearly mean a narrowing of choices for consumers.”

Hopefully HR 5034 doesn’t get a vote in Congress any time soon, but with 151 cosponsors, I have to assume that it will at some point next year.

What Digby & Atrios Said

Digby:

The Tea Party is the far right, period. They are not populists, they are opportunists who don the mantle of populism to give cover to the plutocrats. Hopefully, this election cycle has finally put to rest any notion that they are.

Atrios:

It’s quite fascinating pundits still haven’t figured out that the tea partiers are still the same racist authoritarian pro-big-business social conservative desperately afraid that the “wrong” people might be getting some of their tax money lunatics that have always been with us.

Yeah. I don’t get the notion that this is a new sort of crazy, radical Republican Party that we’re seeing. It’s the same it’s been for a long, long time (see any of Rick Perlstein’s books).

Militarizing Politics

Via Digby, I see that Sarah Palin and her own private security force have recently engaged in exactly the same sort of bullying, anti-free speech behavior as Joe Miller and his paramilitary guards. Shannyn Moore reports:

Sarah Palin & company spent several days in Homer filming her “Sarah Palin’s Uh-laska” show. (Eyes rolled).

On the public dock, private security patted down private citizens. The Fourth Amendment protects citizens from unreasonable search and seizure from their government. Private security searching private citizens in a public place, doesn’t fall under that category. It’s a bit more hinky.

Whether it was TLC or the Palins who contracted security, under what authority did they operate in a public location? Were they looking for weapons? Well, now there’s a Second Amendment issue.

This is Alaska, we carry guns. You can open-carry or acquire a concealed weapons permit from the state. If you are a law abiding citizen, you don’t even need a permit. Sarah Palin recently endorsed Alaska Tea Party Candidate Joe Miller for US Senate. His supporters carried assault rifles in last month’s Golden Days Parade in Fairbanks. If weapons are good enough for a public parade, weapons should be fine at a public dock.

Maybe it wasn’t about guns. Maybe it was about cameras. In that case, it’s a First Amendment issue. Whether Palin had a problem with the First Amendment, the Second Amendment or the Fourth Amendment, she contradicted her entourage’s actions at the Homer dock.

Risking accusations of being all “Wee-Wee’d Up”, one Homer woman made a sign in her shed. She then took the 30-foot-by-3-foot banner out to the boat harbor. It said “WORST GOVERNOR EVER”. Kathleen Gustafson is a teacher married to a local commercial fisherman. She felt like Sarah Palin had let the state down by becoming a dollar-chasing celebrity and ignoring the oath of office she’d sworn on a Bible.
[…]

Saturday morning, Billy Sullivan helped Kathleen tape the banner up on his place of business at the top of the boat ramp. Then here she came. Sarah.

She couldn’t just walk by. Only a few fishermen and tourists would have seen the banner, but Sarah had to stop and protest….

Billy Sullivan caught much of the interchange on his cell phone camera. The back of her security guard’s head and Todd Palin attempted to block Billy’s view…

In what has become typical tragic irony, Sarah initially claimed to support Kathleen’s First Amendment Rights. But as soon as Billy Sullivan walked toward the dock, one of Palin’s entourage tore down the sign to great applause from her group.

Todd Palin approached Billy (who owns a business called Dockside Fish and buys halibut on that dock) and asked him to get out of the Discovery crew’s shot. “You just can’t get enough of her, can you?” he asked. An Alaska State Trooper told Billy he should call the Homer Police Department and report the trespassing and destruction of property.

Digby draws this correct conclusion:

This isn’t an Alaskan thing. It’s a teabagger thing. They are authoritarians. They have no respect for others’ individual rights, only their own.

That’s my take too. I lived in Alaska for less than a year, but am consistently saddened by how the authoritarianism and quasi-fascism displayed by Palin and Miller keep giving Alaska a bad name. Palin isn’t just making people militant Tea Partiers in Alaska; she’s actually militarizing politics. Never before had I heard of political supporters openly carrying assault rifles in parades – and I went to plenty of parades when I was working in Alaska politics. This isn’t normal. It isn’t about Alaska being a conservative state (it isn’t), nor is it about being a state were gun ownership is common and open carry is legal. This is about a splinter group who are responding to elections with Second Amendment remedies.

What’s so dangerous about this style of politics put forward by Palin and Miller is that it doesn’t serve the Constitution nor individual freedom. It actually serves pure, tribal Republican politics. Miller and Palin might provide the patina of selfish anger, but at the end of the day, it’s Wall Street banks, outsourcing manufacturers, polluting mining companies, and Social Security privatizer who will reap any benefits won at the ballot box. This doesn’t mitigate the danger of the Palin/Miller sect, but it’s important to remember that their electoral successes won’t lead to some sort of free market paradise, devoid of government intervention. Rather, it will be what it’s always been: a question of how far the GOP can bend the regulatory power of government to create a favorable set of conditions for Wall Street and big corporate executives to reach billions in profits, while driving down the wages and benefits of working Americans. The real consequences for this, beyond the continued militarization of politics on the right, are going to be felt by Americans who desperately need the economy to improve and jobs to be created.

Chinese Govt Is Scared of Liu

AFP:

Official mainland Chinese-language mouthpieces have launched a campaign criticising the Norwegian Nobel Committee for awarding the Peace Prize to prominent dissident Liu Xiaobo on October 8.
Xinhua, the official news agency, attacked the Nobel committee yesterday for ignoring China’s human rights development by honouring “convicted Chinese criminal Liu Xiaobo”.

Previously the campaign was confined to English-language media targeting foreign audiences; most Chinese-language media had been silent about the award, except for short articles quoting statements made by the foreign ministry.

In one of its first commentaries since Liu was honoured, Xinhua, a mouthpiece for Beijing leaders, argued yesterday that the Communist Party had made “unremitting efforts to promote and safeguard human rights”. In an unsigned editorial it asked: “In what ways have Liu’s actions contributed to human rights progress for China’s 1.3 billion people?”

The People’s Daily, published by the party, said yesterday – in one of the first Chinese-language editorials reacting to the prize – that this year’s award strayed from the ideals of the Nobel Peace Prize.

It’s one thing for the Chinese government to attack Liu Xiaobo’s Nobel Peace Prize win in English and to foreign audiences. That’s what they usually do when people bring up human rights. Standard Operating Procedure for the Chinese government is that while they do this internationally, they totally ignore the subject in the Chinese language press, such as it is, and censor references to the controversial subject matter. But in this case, the Chinese government is running an internal, Chinese language campaign against Liu Xiaobo. They are clearly terrified of what support for his Nobel Peace Prize win would do if it was widespread within China. The government is scared of Liu and they’re showing it.

Krugman on China

Paul Krugman is must-read today on China qua rogue economic superpower:

China’s response to the trawler incident is, I’m sorry to say, further evidence that the world’s newest economic superpower isn’t prepared to assume the responsibilities that go with that status.

Major economic powers, realizing that they have an important stake in the international system, are normally very hesitant about resorting to economic warfare, even in the face of severe provocation — witness the way U.S. policy makers have agonized and temporized over what to do about China’s grossly protectionist exchange-rate policy. China, however, showed no hesitation at all about using its trade muscle to get its way in a political dispute, in clear — if denied — violation of international trade law.

Couple the rare earth story with China’s behavior on other fronts — the state subsidies that help firms gain key contracts, the pressure on foreign companies to move production to China and, above all, that exchange-rate policy — and what you have is a portrait of a rogue economic superpower, unwilling to play by the rules. And the question is what the rest of us are going to do about it.

Reid vs Angle

The Harry Reid vs Sharron Angle Nevada Senate debate was the first full debate I’ve watched this cycle. It was a pretty painful affair. Harry Reid is not a charismatic speaker and he frequently falls into Senate-ese (talking about the CBO repeatedly and rushing over complex bill paths in ways that kept them confusing). And Sharron Angle, well, makes you wish for the TV-ready soundbites of Christine O’Donnell. At least O’Donnell’s incoherent was with the content of her ideas alone and didn’t have sentence structure as an added epistemological smoke bomb.

Dave Weigel watched the debate and writes:

Asked whether she still believed, as she did as a state legislator, that health insurance companies should not be obligated to cover certain procedures, Angle responded with a cold answer about free markets. “You don’t have to force anyone to buy a product that no one wants.” This allowed Reid to do what Democrats have not been able to do credibly since the start of the health care debate: Position himself against the insurance companies, as a watchdog on their abuses. Angle’s follow-up was also weirdly cold. Reid had rambled a bit about how the Susan Komen and other anti-breast cancer campaigns proved how worried the public was about treatment, so Angle riffed: “Pink ribbons are not going to help anyone have a better insurance plan.” What does that even mean? Let’s say the government is totally removed from health insurance — wouldn’t third-party fundraising pressure groups play an important role in keeping companies honest?

The Tea Party has largely been Republicanism without the time-tested rhetorical tools that hide what Republicans are actually trying to do in government. It’s not different, it’s just less polished. As a result, Tea Party candidates come across as cruel, crass, and solipsistic. This was particularly true with Sharron Angle, whose notion of compassion seems to be limited to poor multinational corporations who are unfairly prohibited from selling toxic toys or spoiled meats.

Readers of this blog know that I’ve been a pretty harsh critic of Harry Reid over his tenure as Senate Leader. He’s certainly shown himself better of late and I absolutely hope he gets reelected. But beyond whatever affection I have for Reid, my fear of what someone as fundamentally unqualified as Sharron Angle would do in the Senate is truly motivating. Angle is ideologically incompatible with governance – and she’s probably the most qualified of the Tea Party Senate nominees. To that end, here’s Tom Tomorrow’s vision of  some of what we’ll get from this Tea Party crowd, if they’re elected to the Senate.

Tom Tomorrow
Click to read the whole toon.