Category Archives: Democratic Party

Dems: Forget the South

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How much the Democratic Party should even bother with the South has been a favorite topic of progressive conferences going back a few years. Michael Tomasky makes a good point that Dems have more to lose than to gain by trying to appeal to southern voters. “Practically the whole region has rejected nearly everything that’s good about this country and has become just one big nuclear waste site of choleric, and extremely racialized, resentment,” he says.

With Landrieu’s departure, the Democrats will have no more senators from the Deep South, and I say good. Forget about it. Forget about the whole fetid place. Write it off. Let the GOP have it and run it and turn it into Free-Market Jesus Paradise.

For presidential elections the Dems need Florida and Virginia, and maybe North Carolina, but from the congressional level on down Dems shouldn’t waste money on southern races except in extraordinary circumstances, Tomasky says.

Trying to win Southern seats is not worth the ideological cost for Democrats. As Memphis Rep. Steve Cohen recently told my colleague Ben Jacobs, the Democratic Party cannot (and I’d say should not) try to calibrate its positions to placate Southern mores: “It’s come to pass, and really a lot of white Southerners vote on gays and guns and God, and we’re not going to ever be too good on gays and guns and God.” …

… It’s lost. It’s gone. A different country. And maybe someday it really should be. I’ll save that for another column. Until that day comes, the Democratic Party shouldn’t bother trying. If they get no votes from the region, they will in turn owe it nothing, and in time the South, which is the biggest welfare moocher in the world in terms of the largesse it gets from the more advanced and innovative states, will be on its own, which is what Southerners always say they want anyway.

Probably for the best.

Dem Jellyfish Syndrome

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The 2012 Democratic convention, with its ringing calls for economic populism and commitment to civil liberties, had me persuaded that Dems had finally grown spines. But now, reflecting on the midterm loss, it seems they’re reverted to being invertebrates again.

After the midterms a great many people pointed out that the Dem candidates who lost often were the ones who ran furthest and fastest from President Obama’s record. Of course, we’re told over and over again that President Obama is “unpopular.” And why is that? Jeff Schweitzer wrote shortly after the election that public perceptions of the Obama Administration have been painted by Republicans and often bear little resemblance to, you know, what the Administration actually is doing.

But I can’t lay blame just on those lying weasel Republicans, because the Obama Administration itself has failed to connect with people and make the case for its own accomplishments. This is partly because the Dems lack the media infrastructure the Right has built, and partly because the allegedly leftist media still allows right-wing voices to dominate talk shows and opinion pages. But it’s also the case that Dems turn into jellyfish way too easily.

Kevin Baker writes,

Today’s Democratic Party, with its finely calibrated, top-down fixes, does not offer anything so transformative. It seems scared of its own shadow, which is probably why it keeps reassuring itself that its triumph is inevitable. It needs instead to fully acknowledge just how devastating the recession was for working people everywhere in America, and what a generation of largely flat wages did to their aspirations even before that. It needs to take on hard fights, even against powerful forces, like pharmaceutical and insurance companies that presume to tell us the limits of what our health care can be or energy companies that would tell us what the world’s climate can endure. It means carving out a place of respect for working men and women in our globalized, finance-driven world.

Invite us to dream a little. You don’t build an enduring coalition out of who Americans are. You do it out of what we can be.

It may be that the GOP’s only message is to scare people to death, but at least it has a message.

The Clinton Ambivalence

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Those sneaky lefties got caught talking to each other through private secret sneaky leftie emails again, and we learn that a lot of them don’t want Hillary Clinton to be nominated in 2016, which apparently was big news. Not news to me, mind you, but it was a revelation to The Hill. Maybe the Media will adjust the narrative now, though.

At The Atlantic, Molly Ball writes that Hillary Clinton’s unofficial campaign so far is long on pablum, short on substance. Molly Ball has revealed a tendency to be clueless in the past, so a certain degree of skepticism is required here. But Dave Weigel pretty much says the same thing. She’s being covered by media like syrup on pancakes, but she isn’t giving them anything to write about, he says.

Taylor Marsh writes that Hillary Clinton is too making substantive policy statements, but they are statements about women’s empowerment and so they are ignored, because sexism. There’s no doubt something to that. On the other hand, Taylor’s examples are not exactly earth-shattering stuff. Dems have been running on equal pay for decades. And the party generally is no longer running away from reproductive rights as they used to.

Also, too, since when have media covered Dem candidates’ policy positions? Or anybody’s, for that matter? They cover the horse race. They cover personalities. They cover scandals, real and imagined. They cover gaffes. They cover the stuff one candidate claims about the other candidate. Actually reporting on what candidates might do in office, not so much.

I suspect what the reporters tailing HRC are waiting for is a commitment to seek the nomination, at which time they will climb all over each other trying to be the first one to get a report on the Web someplace. They may be so focused on that she could promise to personally fly air strikes over Iraq and no one would notice.

Maybe she knows that, and maybe that’s why she won’t commit.

If she actually is considering not running, she should do the Democratic Party a favor and make up her mind now. If she actually is not running she should get out of the way and let other Dems get the media attention. But she probably is planning to run, and remaining ambivalent as long as possible is part of her campaign strategy.  In the meantime, she’ll get innocuous press coverage about appearing here or there and not saying shit, which may be what she wants for now.

The Job Ahead

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Thomas Frank, who is one of my favorite guys, slammed President Obama hard a couple of days ago in Right-wing obstruction could have been fought: An ineffective and gutless presidency’s legacy is failure. The whole article is pretty much in the title. But here’s a bit more —

….In point of fact, there were plenty of things Obama’s Democrats could have done that might have put the right out of business once and for all—for example, by responding more aggressively to the Great Recession or by pounding relentlessly on the theme of middle-class economic distress. Acknowledging this possibility, however, has always been difficult for consensus-minded Democrats, and I suspect that in the official recounting of the Obama era, this troublesome possibility will disappear entirely. Instead, the terrifying Right-Wing Other will be cast in bronze at twice life-size, and made the excuse for the Administration’s every last failure of nerve, imagination and foresight. Demonizing the right will also allow the Obama legacy team to present his two electoral victories as ends in themselves, since they kept the White House out of the monster’s grasp—heroic triumphs that were truly worthy of the Nobel Peace Prize. (Which will be dusted off and prominently displayed.)

At the other end of the Democratic scale, Kevin Drum writes,

I see this kind of thing all the time on the right. If only we had a candidate who refused to sell out conservative values! A candidate who could truly make the American public understand! Then we’d win in a landslide!

It’s easy to recognize this as delusional. Tea party types are always convinced that America is thirsting for true conservatism, and all that’s needed is a latter-day Ronald Reagan to be its salesman. Needless to say, this misses the point that Americans aren’t all reactionaries. In fact, as the embarrassing clown shows of the past two GOP primaries have shown, even most Republicans aren’t reactionaries. There’s been no shortage of honest-to-God right wingers to choose from, but they can’t even win the nomination, let alone a general election.

(Of course you never know. Maybe 2016 is the year!)

But if it’s so easy to see this conservative delusion for what it is, why isn’t it equally easy to recognize the same brand of liberal delusion? Back in 2009, was Obama really the only thing that stood between bankers and the howling mob? Don’t be silly. Americans were barely even upset, let alone ready for revolution. Those pathetic demonstrations outside the headquarters of AIG were about a hundredth the size that even a half-ass political organization can muster for a routine anti-abortion rally. After a few days the AIG protestors got bored and went home without so much as throwing a few bottles at cops. Even the Greeks managed that much.

I think they both make good points. Yes, President Obama let some opportunities slip by him, especially those first couple of years. He could have done a much better job taking his arguments to the American public and making some leverage for himself.

On the other hand, it’s still the case that right-wing politics dominates our political culture as well as news media, and even for those two years the Dems had a majority in the Senate and House, a big chunk of those Dems were Blue Dogs who voted with Republicans as often as not. He never had a majority of progressives who supported him. So there have always been real and tangible limits to what he could accomplish, no matter what he did.

As for “demonizing the Right” — those people are demons, metaphorically speaking. There is no bottom to their nefariousness.

The public, having been fed a near-pure diet of right-wing propaganda since at least 1980, and I would argue longer than that, is leery of progressive policies. It’s less leery than it was ten years ago, as the financial crisis and subsequent economic hardships softened them up a lot. But progressives still have a lot of work to do to sell their agenda to the public.

I still run into lefties who honestly believe the country was ready to embrace single payer health care in 2009 and it was only President Obama who stood in the way. This is proof that it’s not just righties who live with their heads up their asses.

The truth is that there are big chunks of the country in which progressive voices are never heard except by those who go looking for them on the Internet. Public political news and discourse runs the gamut from Ross Douthat to Ted Cruz to Cliven Bundy. This is not to say that there aren’t folks in those places who might respond well to progressive ideas if they ever heard any. But until that happens, we don’t know.

I’ve been saying all along that it’s going to take a long game, several election cycles, and a lot of work to turn things around. That’s still true.

The priority right now is to be sure Dems keep the Senate, which is do-able. In this we should be following Elizabeth Warren:

Meanwhile Warren, the progressive elected the same time as Cruz, is touring the country campaigning for Democratic Senate candidates, even some who are more centrist than she is, like Kentucky’s Alison Lundergan Grimes and West Virginia’s Natalie Tennant. She’s focused on growing the Democratic Party, not cutting down colleagues who are less progressive.

While packing the Senate with less-progressive Dems in order to hold on to it is not ideal, letting the GOP have it would be much worse.

Three Little Words

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If Hillary Clinton intends to seek the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016, questions about Benghazi!!! may be less likely to trip her up than questions about Iraq. A little candor on her part might go a long way toward putting her support for the invasion to rest, but I’m sorry to say candor isn’t her strong suit.

These days she is saying her vote to authorize the invasion in 2002 was a mistake, but she couldn’t recant the vote because she couldn’t “break her faith” with the troops. See George Zornick, “Hillary Still Doesn’t Get It on Iraq.”

CLINTON: I kept trying to say “Well if we knew then what we know now it would not have ever come for a vote,” all of which was true, but just sort of avoided the fact of my saying “You know I just got it wrong, plain and simple. I made a mistake.” I thought a lot about that, because people said well—“You’re not saying you made a mistake for political reasons.” Well in fact, in the Democratic Party at that time, the smart political decision, as so many of my colleagues did, was to come out and say “Terrible mistake, shouldn’t have done it,” and you know blame the Bush administration. I had this sense that I had voted for it, and we had all these young men and women over there, and it was a terrible battle environment. I knew some of the young people who were there and I was very close to one Marine lieutenant who lead a mixed platoon of Americans and Iraqis in the first battle for Fallujah. So I felt like I couldn’t break faith with them. Maybe that doesn’t make sense to anybody else but me, but that’s how I felt about it. So I kept temporizing and I kept avoiding saying it because I didn’t want there to be any feeling that I was backing off or undercutting my support for this very difficult mission in Iraq.

“I was wrong” would have been a better answer. Instead this comes across as “I avoided admitting my mistake and calling for a change in direction because we were sending all those troops over there to die and I didn’t want to hurt their feelings.”

Combine that with something Robert Kagan said a few days ago —

But Exhibit A for what Robert Kagan describes as his “mainstream” view of American force is his relationship with former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, who remains the vessel into which many interventionists are pouring their hopes. Mr. Kagan pointed out that he had recently attended a dinner of foreign-policy experts at which Mrs. Clinton was the guest of honor, and that he had served on her bipartisan group of foreign-policy heavy hitters at the State Department, where his wife worked as her spokeswoman.

“I feel comfortable with her on foreign policy,” Mr. Kagan said, adding that the next step after Mr. Obama’s more realist approach “could theoretically be whatever Hillary brings to the table” if elected president. “If she pursues a policy which we think she will pursue,” he added, “it’s something that might have been called neocon, but clearly her supporters are not going to call it that; they are going to call it something else.”

That’s exactly what worries me.

A few days ago radio interviewer Terry Gross pressed Clinton to explain the evolution of her thinking on same-sex marriage, and Clinton later criticized Gross for being persistent. All Clinton had to say was “I used to oppose it, but then I realized I was wrong and changed my mind.”

This is not difficult. It might even be true.

Where I see enthusiasm for Hillary Clinton in 2016, it appears to be coming mostly from women who really, really want to see a woman president. But that’s not good enough. After all the bellyaching about how Barack Obama isn’t progressive enough, why are we even thinking about Hillary Clinton, who is arguably even more corporatist and less progressive than Obama? It’s not like the Republicans are going to nominate someone who won’t scare the bejesus out of most folks, and we have to settle for name recognition.

Let the Brawl Commence

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Charles Pierce — The Democrats Are Bringing Guns to a Gunfight —

Senate Democrats are considering leaking emails between Harry Reid and John A. Boehner’s chiefs of staff. . . . I also spoke to a leading Democratic congresscritter over the weekend who told me that, very soon, the Democrats in the Senate will start going through the sequester line-by-line, demanding public votes on funding things like medical research and environmental protections, and sticking Republicans with a choice of being for or against curing, say, Alzheimer’s Disease or cancer. As someone who thought the sequester not merely stupid but Beltway stupid, I applaud this decision as well. Forcing people into uncomfortable votes works both ways. Making John Boehner cry should be a bipartisan affair.

Meanwhile, Fox News is (a) denying there has been a real shutdown; and (b) blaming Dems for rejecting an 11th hour (almost literally) demand to meet for a conference committee. Chris Hayes explains why this is bogus.

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

The thing is, Republicans going back several years have whined to anyone who will listen that the Dems are ruthless and mean to them, even as by all objective measures the Dems resembled a warm Jello mold. If the baggers keep this up, the Dems of their fantasies may actually materialize.

The Dem Underdogs

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Politico (yeah, I know, it’s Politico) has a photo gallery of Dems who might be presidential nomination candidates in 2016 and who are not Hillary Clinton. As I really don’t want Hillary Clinton to run again, I took a look.

Of these 12, the only one who makes me say “hell, yes” is Elizabeth Warren. Of the remainder, I don’t know enough about Martin O’Malley, Amy Klobucher, John Hickenlooper, or Pete Shumlin to have an opinion, except that I would eliminate Klobucher and Hickenlooper on their names alone. Sorry, but let’s get real here.

What say you?

Veep Debate Live Blog

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I refuse to listen to the pre-debate commentary on teevee, but you can begin commenting here if you like. I’ll start the live blog at 9 o’clock.

* Well, it’s 9 o’clock. Wish us luck.

* Joe Biden says the last thing we need is another war.

* There’s a split screen on MSNBC that shows Biden reacting to Ryan.

* I want Biden to call Ryan out for saying anyone is “apologizing for our values.”

* There is no subsidy of abortion in Obamacare.

* Well, Ryan was clear about something. He wants to criminalize abortion.

* Ryan is anti-abortion because of reason and science?

* I think Joe is doing well so far. I like the question to Ryan, how will you change minds in two months.

* 47 PERCENT! Joe got it in!

Sic ’em, Joe. He’s on a roll.

Ryan is saying the economy is getting worse, and I don’t think that’s what people are feeling now.

Is Ryan even making sense now?

*Show me a policy!

WE DIDN’T SPEND MONEY ON ELECTRIC CARS IN FINLAND!

No, Social Security is not going bankrupt.

Sorry I’m not posting; I’m having a good time watching this.

Privatizing social security!

Who do you trust.

Oh, is Ryan leaving himself open.

No, he doesn’t have the specifics. He has a framework, no details.

Push him on the math.

How is American foreign policy “unraveling”? Does it seem that way?

Ryan is smacked down on Afghanistan.

Ryan is not making sense. We’re supposed to work with our allies but he doesn’t want to wait for allies.

If we don’t get to women’s issues there is going to be a of griping, but that would be the moderator’s fault.

Ah ha! abortion!

Joe said “forcible rape.”

47 PERCENT!

Ryan has been neither a convincing wonk nor a convincing salesman. He comes across as a callow little twerp.

Well, Chris Matthews is happy. Should everybody be happy?

* Twitter is alight with calls for Martha Raddatz to take over Meet the Press. And with that I will sign off for the night. See you tomorrow!

Live Blog Tonight

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If you plan to watch the veep debate (beginning 9 pm eastern time), you’re welcome to hang out here for moral support. As before, I make no predictions. However, I do not make the assumptions that Captain Ed assumes we liberals are making.

Democrats are too quick to deride Ryan as a colorless wonk. They know he will bring an encyclopedic knowledge of policy, especially on budgets and entitlement programs, but assume that he will come across as bland and unemotional.

If that meathead has an encyclopedic knowledge of anything more complicated than mayonnaise, I’m Prince Harry.

Lately Zombie Eyes hasn’t even been faking it well, although I assume he is being drilled with misinformation he can use in place of actual facts. And when he’s on his game, he’s good at presenting a right-wing caricature of a policy wonk, so anything can happen tonight. But no, I am not concerned that I will be bored by Paulie’s emotional blandness.

The moderator will be Martha Raddatz, ABC News’s chief foreign correspondent. She has not moderated a debate before, so there is no way to know how she will do. However, after all the criticism leveled at Jim “the Marshmallow” Lehrer, I hope she will provide a bit more of an edge to the evening.

Speaking of debates, there was another Warren-Brown debate in Massachusetts last night, and from the descriptions I read Warren did very well and Brown is a jerk, although it seems he has backed off harping on Warren’s family heritage. Current polls have Warren ahead by 4 points.

Finally, the eternally pathetic Darrell Issa and his witchhunt hearings on Benghazi, eagerly trying to find political ammunition to use against the Obama Administration, accidentally blew the cover of a secret CIA base. Thanks loads, guys.

Dem Convention Night 2

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If you are watching, feel free to comment.

* Anyone catching the salute to veterans? I’m betting Mittens is kicking himself for overlooking the veterans.

* Now they’ve got a nun. This is covering the bases.

* Crowd is getting fired up for Sandra Fluke.

I have to say the Dems have not been shy about voicing support for abortion and reproductive rights.

*Elizabeth Warren onstage now.

*Shout out to Teddy Roosevelt. Yay!

*It’s the Big Dog.

Republicans have been in power for 28 years of the past 52, Democrats 24 years. “So what’s the job score? Republicans 24 million, Democrats 42.”

“Politics does not have to be a blood sport.”

If the righties were hoping that Bill undermined the President in this speech, they’re very disappointed now.

Talk about a love fest. Wow.

President Obama, 4.5 million jobs. Congressional Republicans, zero.

*Arithmetic!

The Big Dog did not disappoint. This was a brilliant speech, and I hope a lot of people watched.