The Opera Democrat

From Telephone to Tweet

2012-01-29T12:54:00.000-08:00

15% - Mitt Romney’s Lead in Florida in a Public Policy Poll taken 1/14-1/16/12

5% - Newt Gingrich’s Lead in Florida in a Public Policy Poll taken 1/22-1/24/12

8% - Mitt Romney’s Lead in Florida in a Public Policy Poll taken on 1/28/12.

(http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2012/president/fl/florida_republican_presidential_primary-1597.html)

A week before the South Carolina primary Mitt Romney (R-Mas), lead Newt Gingrich (R-Ga) by an average of 10%, only to have Gingrich beat him by 12% - a 22% swing in the polls in a week.

On 1/16/12 Public Policy Polling released a poll showing Romney heavily favored to win The Florida Republican primary. Eight days later, on 1/24/12, after Romney lost South Carolina, Public Policy Polling released a poll with Gingrich up by five points in Florida. The race in Florida has tightened over the past two days. Romney now has an average of an 8 point lead over Gingrich.

The fact that the Republican nomination race is so volatile, and the rise of a weak candidate like Gingrich underscores how much the dynamics of elections are changing.

One change is the sheer number of debates, which allowed hothouse flowers like Rep. Michelle Bachmann (R-Min), Herman Cain (R) and Gov. Rick Perry (R-Tex), to survive long past their shelf life. 19 nationally televised debates thus far, allowed these little known candidates to introduce themselves to the nation and stay in the spot light.

In the long run the number of debates hurt Bachmann and Perry, when their continued turn in the limelight only heightened their weaknesses. But, the debates were perfect for Gingrich. With little money and organization, a campaign that once looked more like a book tour transformed itself into a real force through all the free media the debates provided.

Even that wouldn’t have been possible without the Citizens United decision, which opened the door for individuals to give unlimited amounts of money to “independent Super Pacs.”

Gingrich proved all a candidate has to do to stay in the running is convince one rich person of the rightness of his or her cause. Over the past month, casino mogul Sheldon Adelson gave $10 million to the Gingrich Super Pac, Winning Our Future. Without that money it is more likely Gingrich would be in the position of Bachmann than a potential nominee.

Citizens United returned the political finance system to pre-Watergate days, with one significant difference. In 1972 a supporter could give huge amounts of money directly to the candidate and it took a lot of hard and time consuming research for someone else to trace who it came from.

Now a simple search on the internet shows Adelson not only gave $10 Million to a Presidential candidate, but he did it while his casino company is under investigation by both the SEC and the US Justice Department. (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/the-sunlight-foundation/sheldon-adelson-newt_b_1234805.html).

The internet makes it harder to hid money and easier to raise it.

In 2004 Gov. Howard Dean (D-N.H) was the first Presidential candidate to show how the internet could quickly raise money and volunteers. In 2008 President Obama took what Dean learned about the internet to build a massive, efficient fundraising and volunteer machine. He raised so much money on the internet that he was able to opt out of the Federal campaign finance system and spend an unlimited amount of money in the general election. Obama used those volunteers to out organize Hillary Clinton in a string of caucuses, which won him enough delegates to leave Clinton playing catch-up through the entire primary season.

It might be Ron Paul’s legacy to demonstrate how a candidate can run an effective national campaign without party support or infrastructure.

Rep. Ron Paul (R-Tex) is using the free media provided by the debates and the Obama internet fundraising model, to stay in the race. Like Obama he understands the power of many small dollar donations and the volunteer pool that comes with them.

The debates keep him on the national stage, while he uses the internet to organize his volunteers to win delegates in the Republican caucus schedule. As Gingrich and Romney fight it out in expensive bloody primary battles, Paul can take his “Money Bombs” and drop them on one inexpensive caucus after another and acquire a substantial block of delegates with little competition or expense. It is possible that he will arrive at the convention with enough delegates to hold the balance of power.

In 2016 we will be examining how each candidate used Twitter in 2012. In the next cycle a candidate will build on how a candidate successfully used Twitter to gain an edge over a rival.

Now both Republicans and Democrats use Twitter to create spin and push stories. After a debate, a candidate’s spin room surrogate is more likely to push a narrative picked up from tweets sent during the debate rather than spinning a story of their own. Romney’s $10,000 bet with Rick Perry was picked up by twitter and pushed to press before the debates were even over.

Candidates are also using Twitter in their get-out the-vote efforts. In Iowa on caucus day, Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pen) used tweets to remind his supporters to go and participate. (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/29/us/politics/twitter-is-a-critical-tool-in-republican-campaigns.html?scp=4&sq=Twitter&st=cse)

Modern campaign fundraising began 1904 when President Theodore Roosevelt set a staff member up in an office in New York City with a telephone. He told him to call every industrialist he could reach and ask for $50,000 each. This was the first time that anyone used the telephone in an organized way to raise money for a Presidential campaign. The Democrats were outraged and out fundraised - and they lost.

No one yet knows what the long term impact of the combination of Citizens United, Super Pacs, Twitter and the internet will be. But, like we did with the telephone, we are learning.

Clown Car Politics

2012-01-16T10:29:00.000-08:00

The 999 plan isn't a jobs plan, it is a tax plan. ...when you take the 9-9-9 plan and turn it upside down, I think the devil's in the details."

- Michele Bachmann’s response to Herman Cain’s 9-9-9 tax plan in an Oct 11, 2011 Republican Debate

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1011/65704.html#ixzz1ivdGLdQF

Many people took Rep. Michele Bachmann’s (R-Minn) comment about Herman Cain’s tax plan as a joke. However, if you review quotes Bachmann made throughout her career you begin to think she was serious.

But, then again how seriously can you take a tax plan proposed by business mogul Herman Cain, that is the default tax policy in the popular “Sims” computer game?

The big saviour from Republican silliness and craziness was supposed to be Gov. Rick Perry of Texas. The moment he got in the race he was anointed the man who could take out Mitt Romney (R-Mass). That is until the big “OOPS” which lead to the Herman Cain surge.

After Cain “suspended” his campaign, front-runner status briefly fell on former House Speaker Newt Gingrich’s (R-Ga) ample shoulders. Gingrich, running more of a book tour than a campaign, seemed surprised that anyone was taking him seriously, and immediately frittered away his standing with intemperate comments and general blow-hardedness.

Politics and the election became too absurd and as a result, I decided to take a little time off from writing. The only comment one could really make was “How many more clowns can possibly pop out of that little car?” But, now that Iowa and New Hampshire are over, it is time to return.

Going into South Carolina, Mitt Romney, is the one left standing holding the tattered rags of the nomination with Rick Santorum (R-Pen), Ron Paul (R-Tex) and Newt Gingrich all jumping up and snapping at his hands. Romney does have the nomination unless something really surprising happens in South Carolina.

But at what price.

The only qualified candidates, Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R-Minn) and Gov. Jon Huntsman (R-UT), were shoved aside, to be replaced by the ridiculous campaigns of Bachmann, Cain, Perry, Paul and Gingrich. In a normal year they would not have been taken seriously. Like Mike Gravel (D-Alsk) in 2008, they may have gotten a courtesy invite to a debate or two and then been quietly dropped. However, in the Presidential year of 2012 they became the face of an extreme Republican party that can’t be taken seriously.

This will damage the Republican brand like the Democrats were damaged in 1972. Now, when you think Republicans you don’t think Eisenhower, Lodge or Reagan. You think Bachmann, Gingrich or Cain.

But the damage the Republicans are doing to themselves started in 2010.

Since taking over the House, and their steadfast refusal to participate in any meaningful actions in the Senate, people began to see the the Republicans as a party of hard heartedness, with no real solutions, bent on keeping the system rigged to protect the “haves” against the “have-nots.”

Congressional approval for the Republican run congress is down to 12%. For the first time since 2010 the Democrats lead the Republicans in generic congressional polls. Obama consistently out polls any potential Republican opponent even though he has an approval rating of less than 50% - which still makes him the most popular politician on the national stage.

Gov. Jon Huntsman said in a recent debate the most dangerous deficit the country faces is a trust deficit between the people and the government. They do not believe they are in control of their own government or that either party represents their interest.

He is right.

The strongholds of both parties are deserting them. Voters are changing their registrations to Independent in record numbers. Each party is loosing more registrations in their base regions than their rival. Democrats are loosing registrations to Independents at higher a rate than Republicans in the Northeast and the rust belt. Republicans are loosing registrations to Independents at a higher rate than Democrats in the South and Southwest.

When they are not “voting with their feet” by dropping their party membership, voters have been voting with their feet through the Occupy and Tea Party movements.

Both groups like to believe they are not at all related. But, they both spring from the same anger and frustration. Whether it is the Tea Party’s fear of a government they perceive as overzealous and overbearing or the Occupy movement’s rage against a system they feel is corrupt, both groups share an anger and lack of trust for the Government and structures that they feel stack system against them.

The one topic that has not been debated is how to quell that anger and win that trust back. Without that trust all the 999 tax plans and budget cuts won’t solve anything. Unless American voters believe the government is dealing fairly and honestly with them, they will not follow their leaders.

Until then everyone in power will look like so many clowns in big red shoes.

American Spring

2011-09-10T16:32:00.000-07:00

An entire Generation is demanding its future!
- Protest sign in an Israeli mass demonstration
(http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/protest-leaders-present-their-vision-for-social-justice-in-israel-1.377683 )

"If you don't let us dream, we won't let you sleep"
- Protest sign in Spain

( http://www.news.com.au/world/unemployed-youth-protest-over-economic-policy-in-spain/story-e6frfkyi-1226060277267#ixzz1VA9TDjbG)

At the beginning of the year a Tunisian fruit merchant set himself on fire to protest near endless harassment by the Tunisian police. This final act against a regime that robbed its people of its present and future touched off upheavals all across the Arab world. The regimes in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya have fallen. Protests continue in Bahrain. The government in Syria is teetering, the government in Yemen is all but gone. Young Arabs feel robbed of their future by stagnant economies, and governments run for the benefit of the wealthy few who are deaf to their voices and unresponsive to their dreams.

These feelings are not confined to the Arab world. Massive protests are also taking place in Israel. Over the past eight weeks the Social Justice movement has grown from a few student protestors to a nationwide march where 450,000 people, took to the streets across Israel against a system that asks much of them and gives little in return.

In Belorussia, the government’s strong crackdowns have created an imaginative response from dissidents. Social media spreads the word that if you oppose the government, show up in a city park at a particular time to sit on a park bench and read a book, or stand, or simply walk through the park. Flash mobs turned social protests.

In May and June young people camped out in public squares across Spain protesting economic conditions and an economic structure that makes it difficult to impossible for young people to find work.

All of these movements have cited the Arab Spring as an inspiration.

Since Tahrir Square, American reporting on these protests has been sporadic. The sit-ins in Spain were barely reported, the protests in Israel aren’t mentioned at all. Yemen is off the front pages as is Bahrain. The Libyans are getting press but only because the memory of Lockerbie has not faded.

By treating these stories as isolated events they have missed how connected these protests and revolutions are. All of these protest, the Arab Spring, Israel, Spain, or even Greece as well as the 2009 Iranian Green revolution spring from a common force – a generation who feel they have been cheated of their futures.

Will the Arab Spring sweep into the US?

After all some of the same conditions that drive the protestors in the Middle-East and Europe exist here in the US. Wealth continues its race to the top that started in the Clinton-Bush years. Fewer people are employed 2011 than were employed in 2001. Job growth in the US has been in a steady decline since before the 2008 crisis. The Bush tax cut saddled the country with a massive debt burden which will limit opportunity in the country for a generation.

The government votes against help for the unemployed, keeps tax cuts for the rich while moving to end middle class tax cuts for struggling families. Democrats and Republicans both seem more interested in throwing a lifeline to the person in the yacht than the person being pulled under in the economic undertow.

The forces that drove Wisconsinites to protest day after day in Madison are the same frustrations that fueled the Arab uprisings. There a State Government moved to strip bargaining rights for workers to fill a budget hole created a passing a tax cut for the powerful. The chants of “Shame” in the State House gallery in Madison were no different than the chants of protesters in Israel, the Middle-east or Europe.

The Tea Party is also driven by the same forces. Its message is one of frustration with a government that seems to ignore the dreams hopes and voices of its citizens while amassing power for itself. Madison and raucous Tea Party town hall meetings in 2010 are two sides of the same coin.

Standard and Poors cited the government’s inability to reach a solution on the American economic crisis as the main reason for their downgrade of America’s credit rating. 78% of respondents in Gallup’s daily economic survey believe the economy is getting worse. In the same survey, 46% of respondents feel they are struggling. This is no surprise when Gallup shows over 27% of workers are unemployed or underemployed. (http://www.gallup.com/poll/110824/Gallup-Daily-US-Economic-Outlook.aspx).

Just because there aren’t tent cities in the Capitol Mall doesn’t mean that the same frustrations, angers and fears that drive these protests and revolutions across the world are not prevalent and strong here as well. How the Government responds will determine the strength of the Arab Spring in the US.

Wisconsin Warning

2011-08-20T23:57:00.000-07:00

“These two wins means Democrats have officially won a majority of the Wisconsin recall elections!”

- Line from a Democratic Fundraiser email, dated August 16, 2011 hyping the results of the Wisconsin State Senate Recall elections.

“Close doesn’t count in elections — just ask Al Gore or Norm Coleman.

- Nate Silver – August 10, 2011, Fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com

We lost pure and simple.

While the Democrats did win a majority of the recall elections, they only flipped two of the three seats they needed to take the Wisconsin State Senate back from the Republicans. These results are a warning for the President. They show Obama can’t win re-election simply by not being crazy.

Over the years I have worked in all parts of Wisconsin. My experience is Wisconsinites are honest, hard working people, with a strong sense of community and fair play. I wasn’t surprised at their outrage over Republican Gov. Scott Walker’s proposals to strip the public employees union of collective bargaining rights.

After weeks of protests in Madison against the Governor’s proposal, Wisconsin seemed to be at the start of its own “Arab Spring”. The protestors stayed at it for weeks. The media was there in force, and it looked like momentum was finally on the side of the little guys as they stood up to powerful out of state interests bent on breaking the unions.

Initially, I was optimistic the Democrats would succeed in taking back the State Senate, but the first signs of trouble came early.

After the Wisconsin legislature passed Walker’s anti-union plan, the State held an election for a seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court. The Republican candidate, Supreme Court Justice David Prosser a conservative jurist, was being challenged for re-election by Democrat JoAnne Kloppenburg. Justice Prosser would be the deciding vote if Walker’s collective bargaining law came before the Wisconsin Supreme Court. As a result what would normally have been a sleepy low turn-out judicial election became a major event.

Justice Prosser won re-election by 7,000 votes in a close race marred by election officials who misplaced thousands of ballots in the initial count.

However, if Wisconsin voters were as outraged as they seemed, Justice Prosser should have been easily defeated. If you can’t win a judicial election when the whole state is angry and in the streets protesting in favor of your position, how do you expect to win recall elections in six months?

You can’t.

One of the two Republicans who lost, Randy Hooper, (R-Dist. 18), originally won his seat by less than 200 votes. When protestors went to his house in Fond du Lac, he wife said he wasn’t home. Instead she told them they could find him in Madison shacked up with his 20-somethng year old mistress. To make matters worse for Hooper, it came out he had arranged a state job with a hefty raise for his girlfriend. Winning that seat should have been a “gimmie”. But the Democrats won it by only 2 percentage points.

The only strong showing the Democrats had was when they recalled Dan Kapanke (R- Dist. 32), by 10% of the vote. The Democrat, Jennifer Shilling, drew most of her support from the city of La Crosse, which over the past several cycles has been trending Democratic and is the home of a University of Wisconsin Campus.

In the remaining Districts where Republicans won, they won by margins at or near the margins they won with in 2010, and by which Gov. Walker had carried their Districts when he was elected.

Granted the Democrats set themselves a tall order. The targeted Republicans were all from Districts that were solidly Republican. One District hadn’t been represented by a Democrat since Grover Cleveland was President.

The Democrat’s defeat in Wisconsin was also a warning sign for President Obama.

The Democrat’s loss shows Obama can’t assume that people will be so angry at the Republicans or so afraid of Perry, Bachmann or any other crazy in the race that they will flock to him if he simply looks reasonable.

People are too afraid for that work.

They have been terrified since the 2008 economic collapse. They want a leader who will stand up to the forces that got them in this mess, and who has a plan for getting them out. That is why they are attracted to the Tea Party movement. Tea Party candidates appear to have nothing directly to do with creating the current crisis and appear to have a plan for steering the country safely through the storm.

To win in 2012, Obama must convince voters he has clear plans for the country’s future, and he will defend those plans to the end against the Republican Tea Party bullies.

Right now they don’t see that in Obama. He can’t win if all he says is “ I’m not as crazy as the other guy.”

What is a Democrat?

2011-08-03T04:18:00.000-07:00

“If I were a Republican this would be a night to party.”

Rep Emanuel Cleaver (D-Mo,) Chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus - 07/31/11 on MSNBC

“We are tying similar handcuff to the next time we raise the debt ceiling.”

Rep Michael Grimm (R-NY) - 07/31/11 on MSNBC

“It is often poor people, the young and the elderly that get the short end of the stick. Somehow I don’t think the Defense Department is going to suffer as much.”

- Mayor Jean Quan, Oakland CA. - New York Times 08/02/11

I would love to say I am Democrat - but I simply don’t know what that means anymore.

To me a Democrat believes in using the power of the government to help people with problems beyond what their own communities can solve. Democrats understand that the hidden hand of capitalism reaches towards greed and self-interest, and that sometimes the power of government is the only way to block its grasp. Democrats stand up to protect a weaker minority be they women, blacks, gays, the uneducated, the sick, the elderly or the poor from a powerful majority determined to rob them of their rights, their homes, or their health.

Our President doesn’t look like a Democrat. The Senate Majority Leader doesn’t look like a Democrat. The 95 House Members who voted for the debt ceiling deal don’t look like Democrats.

They all look like weaker versions of President George W. Bush.

The Party establishment and the President both are trying to put a good face on the deal. (http://swampland.time.com/2011/08/01/five-things-for-liberals-to-like-in-the-debt-ceiling-deal/). (http://politicalwire.com/archives/2011/08/01/not_as_bad_for_democrats_as_you_think.html). Their arguments revolve around the amount of cuts to the Defense Department, the small size of cuts scheduled for 2012, and most cuts are “back-loaded.”

The issue for Democrats is not the size of the cuts, but that they happened at all.

If the cuts to entitlement programs are the smoke and mirrors that the Tea Party dissidents claim they are, then we gave on core principles too soon, and got nothing in return. If they are as deep as Liberals fear, then we truly gave away our moral high ground for nothing.

At this point in history there is little difference between Republicans and Democrats.

We can no longer say Republicans will cut Social Security and Medicare and we won’t, because we just did. We can’t run against the “Ryan Plan” because we just adopted it.

Both Parties will cut the social safety nets that support the poor, the elderly, and the disabled. Neither Party will ask the people who benefited the most from the pirate years of the Bush presidency to sacrifice a cent for the greater good of the country.

Both parties believe in domestic spying. Both parties support torture. Both parties continue the massive rollback of civil liberties that have occurred in the US since 9/11. Both parties are willing to protect big business from any consequence of the fiscal meltdown of 2008 but leave the average mortgage holder in the cold. Neither party is focused on creating jobs or doing anything meaningful to end the recession.

Obama the candidate and Obama the President are two different people. Think of all the differences Obama drew between himself and John McCain during the 2008 campaign - end the Bush Tax cuts, end the war, support single payer health coverage. Look at what he delivered. Did all those people who cheered in Grant Park on election night vote for this?

Presidents Johnson, Kennedy, Truman and Roosevelt would not believe what they would see in the White House today. Not only that an African-American is President but that a Democrat without strength, without principles, whose main policy seems to be to appease political extremists sits in the Oval office. They would turn their surprise to Congress and see Democrats in both chambers who supported the President as he gave ground on every single core principle of the Party.

The Party that I believed in, volunteered for, voted for without exception for my entire life no longer exists.

The Democratic Party as I knew it is gone. I may as well say I am a Whig.

Learn to Share

2011-07-24T19:17:00.000-07:00

"It's unthinkable that this country will not meet its obligations on time. It's just unthinkable we'd ever do that. It's not going to happen.''

- Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said on CNN's "State of the Union" 07/25/2011

"You know, what I really want right now is to -- to get a debt ceiling deal for my birthday. That's kind of sad, I know."

- President Obama in an NPR interview answering the question of what he wants for his birthday.

"Show me the Money!"

- Jerry McGuire

The American people know that the Republican position in the debt ceiling debate, of all spending cuts and no revenue increases doesn’t make sense.

Congressional Republicans thought that they could bully President Obama into cutting entitlement programs, then blame him for the collapse of any debt ceiling deal when he wouldn’t. They would get the cuts they wanted and not take any heat for their inflexible anti-tax stands.

Much to their surprise Obama called their bluff.

Obama signed on to large cuts in Social Security and Medicare angering his base. But, he also supported a modest increase of revenue that was based almost entirely on closing tax loopholes. This offer turned into a trap for the Republican who now appear they are more interested in protecting their “no tax increase” pledge to Grover Norquist than the world economic system.

When Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) walked away from a deal not once but twice, he missed a huge opportunity to get everything he said Republicans wanted. Now the Senate will step in with a more moderate proposal that will pass the Senate quickly, which the House will be forced to accept.

If Congressional Republicans don’t cooperate, they will suffer a tremendous backlash as average voters pay a high price for their intransigence. Maybe that will jolt the Party back to reality.

Since 2000 Republicans have operated in a political atmosphere where facts mean nothing and spin means everything. The Bush tax cuts didn’t create jobs and under-taxed rich people are not “Job Creators.” The Bush Administration has one of the worst job creation records of any modern Presidency. All the Republican economic policy has done is squander the Clinton Surplus and create an economic catastrophe. Yet the Republicans remain committed to repeatedly driving over the same cliff. Economic reality simply don’t matter as much as keeping their Tea Party base happy.

And they have to.

The Republican establishment looked the other way for years and years as the anti-tax crazies, xenophobic nativists, and the hard core Christian right, took over Republican Party organizations in State after State. Even before these groups formed into the Tea Party movement, the Republican establishment thought they could control them and treated them with the same condescension as the Liberal establishment.

They were wrong.

Those activists have now worked their way up through the ranks to the national stage. Their loyalties are not to the Republican establishment, or even big business. Their loyalties are to each other. They can ignore the establishment and rely on each other for funding and volunteers. Furthermore, Citizens United insulates them from the need for big business or Party money. Outside groups from all over the country can come into any Congressional District and drop lots of money on extremest candidates far to the right of the voters.

As a result Congressional Tea Partiers have no need for, and nothing to fear from the establishment groups that ran the Party for years.

The Senate is a different matter. Senators need the support of big business to run expensive statewide campaigns. They don’t share the hard core self destructive fanaticism of the House and they need a deal that doesn’t hurt their big business donors.

Unfortunately for them, the Republicans have trapped themselves in an anti-revenue philosophy driven by the hard right of their party. (http://thehill.com/opinion/columnists/mark-mellman/168895-gop-gets-it-wrong-on-tax-increases). Their position is not held by the American voter, and is far outside of the main stream. (http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/07/13/house-republicans-no-tax-stance-far-outside-political-mainstream/).

Skepticism of the “cut only” philosophy runs long and deep. A recent compilation of polls show 19 different polls validate the findings that Americans support revenue increases along with spending cuts as a way balance the budget. (http://www.capitalgainsandgames.com/blog/bruce-bartlett/2292/americans-support-higher-taxes-really).

Republicans need only to look to Florida, Wisconsin and Ohio, to see what can happen to them nationally, if they don’t moderate their position. These three states had freshman Republican Governors who took office in January with high approval ratings only to devastate those ratings with hard core, ideologically driven policies that were immensely popular with their hard core base, but far out of line with voters beliefs.

If they don’t cooperate on some sort of deal, the budget debate will be devastating for the Republicans in 2012. Right now the Democrats look like the only adults in the room and the Republicans look like a spoiled, self-centered child in the middle of a tantrum.

For the future of their Party and for the future of the Country it is time they grew up and learned to share.

A Tough Road Ahead

2011-07-17T09:51:00.000-07:00

- 47% of Registered Voters would vote for an un-named Republican Candidate, and only 37% would vote for President Obama - Gallup Poll released July 14, 2011

(http://www.gallup.com/poll/148487/Republican-Candidate-Extends-Lead-Obama.aspx)

Michele Bachmann’s red meat line is how she can make Obama a one term president. It is possible, but it won’t be as easy as she thinks.

President Obama’s approval ratings move within a narrow confine in the high 40’s and are a statistical tie with his disapproval rating.

Obama’s challenge is not his poll numbers but the Electoral College.

In 2008, Obama won the Presidency with 365 Electoral votes - 95 votes more than he needed to win. He broadened the Democratic map winning Colorado, New Mexico, Virginia, North Carolina, Florida, Ohio, Iowa, Nevada and Indiana for a combined 112 Electoral votes. These were all states John Kerry lost. Al Gore won only two of them - New Mexico and Iowa. (http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/04/05/us/politics/key-states-for-obama.html)

To win Republicans, will have to flip many of these states back to the “Red” column.

Republicans are in a strong position to reclaim North Carolina. They control both houses of the State Legislature for the first time since Reconstruction, and the Democratic Governor is unpopular. In 2008, Obama won this state by less than a percentage point. Even with the Democratic convention being held in Charlotte, North Carolina’s 15 electoral votes will likely go back to the Republicans.

In 2008 Virginia voted for the Democratic Presidential candidate for the first time since 1964. It will be a tight Presidential race in 2012. However, Obama continues to out poll Republican candidates in the state, and has had a strong approval rating in the state throughout the year (http://publicpolicypolling.blogspot.com/2011/05/obama-still-strong-in-virginia.html). African Americans in Virginia remain loyal to Obama, as do white voters. With a long history of voting Republican, Virginia could slip back to the Red column, but the Republicans will have to expend resources they may not have to make that happen.

Indiana is a reliably Red state that got pulled into the Blue column by the strong anti Bush undertow. Pull the 39 Electoral votes from North Carolina, Virginia and Indiana out, and Obama still has 326 Electoral Votes. To win, Republicans will have to pick up 56 more votes, which they can do by a combination of Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and flipping one more medium size 2008 Obama State.

Florida has voted for the Democratic candidate twice in the past four cycles, but voted solidly for the Republican only once in that time - 2004. Currently Florida’s Governor is a hard core Tea Party Conservative and is the most unpopular Governor in the nation. With Obama’s outreach to Hispanics, the unpopularity of the Tea Party Governor, and Ryan Plan to restructure Medicare, Florida is definitely in play and Obama has the tools the nail the state down.

John Kerry lost Ohio by 2%. Obama won it by 6%. But the Republicans have taken over the state since them, and have enacted a raft of unpopular legislation. The weak popularity of the Republican governor could help Obama, if he makes the case that with a Republican President, these unpopular state laws will become national policy.

In 2008, Obama won Pennsylvania by 10 points. But today only 47% of Pennsylvania voters support his re-election. Interestingly, his main weakness is with former “Hillary” voters. (http://publicpolicypolling.blogspot.com/2011/07/obama-weak-in-pennsylvania.html). The Republicans are even weaker. Only Mitt Romney is competitive with Obama, who handily beats all other Republican hopefuls in the Keystone State. It is hard to imagine “Hilary” voters staying home or voting Republican in 2012. When they return to Obama, Republicans will have their work cut out for them.

In 2008, an increase in Hispanic and Black voters, turned Georgia from a deep Red state to a light pink. Atlanta has one of the fastest growing populations of African Americans in the county. It also has a growing Hispanic population that could support the President. Georgia will be a state Republicans have previously taken for granted, on which they will now have to concentrate resources.

Obama’s team knows they have a tough map. Unlike the Republicans they can take all their resources and focus them on the general election now.

And those resources are considerable.

Team Obama has already raised close to $86 million ($21 Million were from donations of $200 or less). They are able to build on the 50 state infrastructure they created in 2008 along with Howard Dean. (http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0611/56565.html).

The Republicans lag far behind the President in fundraising. Combined they raised less than the President. (http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-money-2012-20110716,0,6297117.story) Governor Mitt Romney raised the most money of the Republican candidates with $13 Million dollars - over three times the $4 Million raised each by, Rep. Ron Paul, Governor Tim Pawlenty and Rep. Michele Bachmann.

Overall the Republicans have a weak field of candidates to convince the country it wants what they have to offer. Unfortunately for them, they can’t run an “un-named” Republican for President.

A Patriotic Act

2011-07-04T21:40:00.000-07:00

“Our Country was founded on Dissent!”

- The reaction of Ann, a friend of the Operadem, to a yard sign in New York

Ann was reading a homemade yard-sign proclaiming “Dissent is Patriotic,” posted in front of a house in upstate New York. She is right. Our country was built on a solid foundation of dissent.

In a recent survey, 24% of respondents couldn’t identify the country from whom we won our independence. Americans see the founders as bewigged men signing the Declaration of Independence and then going home to idle away the time to the inevitable victory at Yorktown, after which George Washington becomes the first President. Other than Jefferson, best known for his memorial and Sally Hemmings, there were no Presidents until Abraham Lincoln, who saved the Union for Teddy Roosevelt of the Rough Riders.

So it is not surprising the hard, sharp edge of our revolutionary past is hidden under store sales and fireworks.

But, it was the sharp knife of dissent, that carved our nation out of the British Empire. The revolution started because the British Government didn’t listen to dissent. They viewed the dissenting colonialists as a small minority, in a loyal colony.

The heavy handed reaction of Britain to the patriots began to unify the colonies into a country. With large English armies roving the country, carrying out a scorched earth policy, Americans began to unify around the revolution and the concept of a new nation.

What began as dissent from the British government ended in the creation of a new nation.

Throughout the years of the Articles of Confederation, the new American government drifted and after 11 years was non-functioning. Again dissenters took over and drafted a new government to overthrow and replace the old.

But, the Constitution’s ratification was not a foregone conclusion. Dissenters, who opposed its ratification - extracted a price for their support. That price was a package of amendments that became the Bill of Rights, which guarantees dissent can continue and not be seen as treason.

Dissent was enshrined in the constitution.

Since its ratification, most of the changes to the constitution have come about as a result of some national trauma and debate. Whether it was giving women and eighteen year olds the right to vote, the great Civil War amendments, or even something as technical as how the Vice President is elected and appointed, the constitution was changed by open honest dissent.

Dissent is not only patriotic it is vital. It is our right and duty to speak up for what we see needs to be changed in our government.

Dissent is why America has been able to grow, adapt and in some cases drive change in the world. Countries that don’t allow dissent, wither and die under their own weight and encrustations.

As we watch fireworks, wave flags - and yes go shopping - we need to remember the greatest patriotic act we can do to keep this country alive and moving forward is an act of dissent.

Republican Cross-roads

2011-06-24T14:57:00.000-07:00

Obama is the most serious radical threat to traditional America ever to occupy the White House."

- Newt Gingrich, quoted in a new book, Subversion Inc., as reported by the American Spectator. (http://politicalwire.com/)

The 2012 Republican Presidential campaign is swirling across the national political landscape like a dust-storm.

2012 will be the final battle between the “Establishment” and the “Tea Party” for the soul of the Republican Party. Whichever side wins the nomination only to lose the election will be on the outside looking in on 2016 and beyond.

How will the election playout for the Republicans?

What happened to the Democrats in 1984, 2004 and 1912 highlight three likely scenarios.

In 1984 the Democrats were convinced America hated President Ronald Reagan. The 1982 recession left a lot of pain in its wake, and Reagan’s poll numbers were not much better than Obama’s. (President Obama’s current approval rating is 47%. At the same point in June of 1983 President Reagan’s approval rating was - 47%. (http://www.gallup.com/poll/124922/Presidential-Job-Approval-Center.aspx)).

The Democratic field was crowded with eight serious candidates crossing the political spectrum from the more conservative Sen. Fitz Hollings (D-SC), through former Vice President Walter Mondale. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_Party_(United_States)_presidential_primaries,_1984#Candidates)

But the Democratic Party’s liberal wing controlled the nominating process. With the centrists out of power, the nomination was won by the more ideologically pure candidate, Vice President Walter Mondale. President Reagan was able to build on the coalition of centrists and conservative Democrats he began in 1980, to win re-election in an historic landslide. In the process, Reagan turned those voters into “Reagan Democrats” which were the basis for Republican victories in 1988, 2000 and 2004.

In 2011 the Republicans find themselves in a similar situation.

Currently eight candidates are running with two or three more waiting in the wings. All of them are to the right of the American electorate. The conservatives are in control of the Party nominating process. By nominating a candidate on the far right of the spectrum the Republicans are leaving centrist Republicans, and moderate Independents open for Obama to consolidated into a Democratic coalition in the same way Reagan consolidated the Reagan Democrats a generation earlier.

If that happens, the Republicans may suffer a historic landslide much like the Democrats did in 1984.

In 2004, the main qualification Democrats were looking for in a nominee was someone who could beat President Bush. Their assumption was that Bush was so unpopular and incompetent that the voters would naturally support any candidate that was not like Bush, regardless of their positions or qualifications.

The bumper sticker “Kerry/Edwards - bringing complete sentences to the White House” perfectly summed up their view of the election.

The moment Sen. John Kerry (D - Mass) emerged as a front runner the Democrats nominated him. After the convention Kerry spent more time campaigning as the un-Bush, and never addressed the issues that mattered most to the voters until it was too late. Ironically, it was Sen. Obama’s moving convention speech that underscored Kerry’s weakness both as a candidate and a campaigner.

The Republicans could easily coalesce around a weak candidate like Gov. Mitt Romney or Gov. Tim Pawlenty under the delusion that all Americans hate Obama with the same passion they do. Republicans, spend more time deriding Obama, and looking down their nose at him, then they do articulating a coherent program that Americans can believe in.

They, like the Democrats in 2004, are speaking in an echo chamber to a very narrow band of supporters. Meanwhile, the incumbent is raising close to a billion dollars to support his re-election, while actively reaching out to groups, like Hispanics, moderates, and the middle-class, that the Republicans have left behind.

As a result in 2012, the Republicans may be as stunned the Wednesday after election day as the Democrats were in 2004.

In 1912, President Teddy Roosevelt was deeply disappointed in his hand picked successor President William Howard Taft. In Roosevelt’s view, Taft was unwilling to follow through on the progressive policies the former President had left in his care. Angry and disappointed, Roosevelt bolted the party and ran as a “Bull Moose.” The Republicans split, and as result Woodrow Wilson became only the second Democrat to enter the White House since 1856.

The Tea Party wing of the Republican Party, with its substantial amount of money and volunteers, has already shown that they are reluctant to support a moderate like Romney. If Romney is the nominee, the Tea Party may bolt and run Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Min) or Huckabee. At best they will sit on their hands and not provide any meaningful support to the Presidential nominee and turn their focus in ensuring Tea Party control of the House and Senate.

Without Tea Party support, Romney will lose to Obama.

Republican candidates actively ignore the fact that they are less popular than the President, and their policies have little support outside the right wing of their Party. In only one poll out of dozens released in the last month does a Republican candidate (Mitt Romney) beat Obama. In all other polls, Obama soundly beats all Republican candidates - including Romney (http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2012/president/president_obama_vs_republican_candidates.html)

A lot will happen between now and election day. But right now the Republicans are standing at a cross-roads, choosing which path they will follow to defeat.

Are you serious?

2011-06-16T05:28:00.000-07:00

I will not rest until Obamacare is repealed…It’s a promise, take it to the bank, cash the check.
- Michele Bachmann in the New Hampshire Republican Presidential Debate 6/13/2011

On Monday, the 2012 Presidential election shifted gears when the first major debate for Republican Presidential candidates was held in New Hampshire and broadcast on CNN. This field of Republicans is smoother and more articulate than the group that ran in 2008. They expressed their extremism and pessimism in rational, friendly tones.

The person who had the best night was Michele Bachmann (R-Minn), who, more than any other candidate on stage, connected with the crowd. In her introduction, she announced her candidacy for Presidency, thus guaranteeing news coverage. This was the first time she was on a national stage and she did well. She made sure that everyone knew that she is a member of the House Intelligence Committee, a Tax Attorney and a former State Legislator. She come off as rational and telegenic - not the crazy person the press had described.

In short she made sure everyone understood she was everything Sarah Palin was not.

Former Governor Tim Pawlenty (R-Minn) had the worst night. Gov. Pawlenty has been running for President ever since 2008, when John McCain passed him over for the Vice-Presidential slot in favor of Sarah Palin. He had a chance to build on a strong performance on Sunday where he called Health Care reform “Obamney Care”. That could have stuck to Governor Mitt Romney like glue. But when asked about the comment, Pawlenty didn’t back it up. Instead he repeatedly quoted the usual line about Obama using Romney as a model. Romney simply smiled and turned the Obamney care line to his advantage and wiggled away.

Pawlenty had his chance to be the Anti-Romney, by appealing to the centrist Republicans, while using his right to life credentials to reach out to the social conservatives. All he did was leave that slot open for former Gov. Jon Huntsman (R-UT).

Former Senator Rick Santoroum (R-Penn) failed to make the case of why he is more likely than Romney, Pawlenty or Bachmann to defeat Obama. By the end of the evening, Santoroum was the obvious alternative only to Ron Paul and Herman Cain. He never lost that eager-beaver air of “young man on the make” condescension that makes him so annoying on TV.

Newt Gingrich (R-GA) did well. After all the press he has as a motor-mouth idea hamster, he come off as intelligent informed and articulate. But, at times he seemed more interested in saving his reputation than becoming President.

Rep. Ron Paul (R-Tex) descended into gad-fly territory and will be the Republican’s Ralph Nader for several more cycles.

Unless you listened closely, the candidates' answers sounded quite logical.

Tim Pawlenty said we could have 5% a year growth like China if only the government would get out of the way of American businesses - ignoring the fact that China has one of the most government directed economies in the world.

The isolationists have a firm grip on the Party. All the candidates derided France’s leadership in the Libyan air war. Michele Bachmann went so far as to say the US can’t lead from behind. At same time they all said we should pull out of our foreign commitments in Iraq, Afghanistan - and Libya where according to Bachmann, we should be leading.

Now that the Republicans have figured out they may need Hispanics votes to win, this year the only overt race baiting was against Muslims. Herman Cain said he wouldn't appoint killer Muslims to his government. Newt Gingrich compared Muslims to Nazi’s.

The Republicans are all about letting market forces revive the slumping the housing market. But foreclosures are the Achilles heel of the recovery. If people are about to be evicted they won't buy anything. The candidates had no plans for saving people's homes, preferring to let the market's invisible hand throw them out on the street.

Michele Bachmann thinks there is “a lot of noise in the media” about health care exception cases which are an irrelevant, miniscule portion of women who seek abortions. If your wife needs an abortion to live, then she is not a miniscule portion and is highly relevant.

The gaffe no one picked up on, was Rick Santoroum’s comment that he had “taken the bullets” in the right to life fight. The last person who took the “bullet in the right to life battle” was an abortion doctor - executed by an operation rescue volunteer as the Doctor was leaving church.

Sometimes the Republican’s miss-statements were so glaring that you wondered why CNN’s moderator, John King didn’t challenge them. Tim Pawlenty said “birth right” citizenship was the result of a Supreme Court decision that went against the constitution. Interesting considering the 14th Amendment explicitly grants it.

The audience and questioners matched the Republican demographic. They were old and white. The only person of color I saw at the debate was candidate Herman Cain. There were hardly any young people there, and those that were, appeared to be members of the candidates’ family.

At the end of the debate, it was clear that Mitt Romney was the man to beat, and that regardless of who won the nomination; Michele Bachmann was going to be on the ticket. So when Anderson Cooper said “each candidate on the stage has a good chance to be President” you could only scratch your head and ask “Are you serious?”

Only a few candidates could say “Yes.”

Silenced by a Tweet

2011-06-10T19:03:00.000-07:00

“But I know immoral sex when I hear it from other members, and no one has screamed for their resignation. So I don't know why they're selecting Anthony."

- Rep. Charlie Rangel (D-NY) Quoted in the New York Observer

With all respect to Rep. Charlie Rangel, Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY) should resign.

He needs to resign because for the past two weeks he has become “the story” and this is the only way to kill it.

Despite the length of his press conference confession, Weiner didn’t come clean.

He wasn’t open about the number of women he contacted. He wasn’t open about the number or type of pictures that he sent. He couldn’t say if the women he contacted were under age. Throughout the week, interviews with some of the women he contacted have been in the news, other pictures have surfaced, as have reports that he may have contacted at least one underage woman.

Consequently, the story continues to dominate the press.

Before the Weiner scandal broke the Democrat’s win in former NY Republican Rep. Chris Lee’s district was the political news story. The Democrats won that district, when they erased a significant Republican lead by running against the Medicare voucher program contained in the “Ryan Budget.” For once the Republicans headed for the hills and liberal Democrats enjoyed a rare taste of victory while dominating both the message and momentum.

Because of Anthony Weiner that is all gone now

For over two weeks the press coverage has been all Weiner all the time. The Republicans have used the noise created by the scandal to leave the Ryan budget for dead and to change the story back to the unemployment numbers and the overall economy.

The current job numbers makes it harder for the Democrats to change the message back to Medicare - a theme that could help them win elections. Weiner’s Tweets may be a major factor if the House stays Republican.

We are now past the point of activists pouring through campaign finance reports or the Congressional record to surface unsavory activities. There are groups on both sides of the aisle, sitting upstairs at home, with their lap tops, drink in hand monitoring politicians’ websites and social media for patterns to trap them in the next scandal.

In today’s world you don’t need to physically follow candidates like Gary Hart or John Edwards to trap them. You can, like the person how outed Weiner, sit at home, with a group of like minded people and closely monitor your target on line.

So when Weiner posted his now famous photo, Republican activists who had picked up on his tendency to suddenly “friend” women on Facebook were waiting. This is why they were able to get a screen capture of his photo even though the picture was up for less than 10 minutes.

Politicians need to learn that every day, technology makes it easier than ever to monitor and prove their actions. It is now easier to catch politicians out in a lie, an affair, or a suspect business deal than it ever has been before, And it is now harder for politicians to survive by denying their actions to create sufficient doubt about their guilt.

Now more than ever the golden rule of scandal is to admit it and move on. The coverup is worse than the crime. Sen. David Vitter (R-LA) knew that, held his press conference, kept his head down and was reelected. Elliot Spitzer (D-NY) admitted his sins early enough that he was able to put together a post scandal life as a respected commentator. John Edwards broke the golden rule and look where it got him.

I am angry at Representative Weiner.

He became a strong progressive spokesman when many liberals seemed afraid to speak up. His reckless actions cost us a strong a liberal voice at a critical time for both the Party and the country.

And for that alone he should resign.

A Scandalous Posting

2011-06-05T14:24:00.000-07:00

There's no question that I've done wrong, but I did not break the law and I never, ever thought I was breaking the law."

- John Edwards responding to his indictment for violating campaign finance laws

“You know, I can’t say with certitude. We know for sure I didn’t send this photograph”

- Rep. Anthony Weiner - (D-NY) when asked if the photo tweeted on his account is of him

If you enjoy political sex scandals this past week has been a good one.

John Edwards, in the sex scandal that keeps on giving, was indicted for filling false campaign finance reports to conceal the fact that he was using nearly a million dollars of donors’ money to hide and support his mistress and their child.

Arrogance breeds stupidity. It was almost deranged that Edwards, in the 24/7 scandal mongering news environment of modern America, thought he could hide a mistress and a child while running for President.

Even Grover Cleveland couldn’t do that.

It isn’t that Edwards did something dumb. It was that Edwards repeatedly broke the law in ways that were easy to prove, while coldly using and destroying people to protect himself.

Then there is Anthony Weiner (D-NY) and his twitter account.

A picture of a man’s “package” tightly held in a pair of briefs was sent to a young woman in Seattle from Weiner’s twitter account. Weiner says he can’t tell for sure if the picture is of him. He maintains his account was hacked, but he thinks it was a prank and therefore hasn’t asked law enforcement to investigate.

The recipient of the picture states Rep. Weiner may have intended to send it to a porn star with a name similar to hers who follows him on twitter, but she received it by mistake. Darn type-ahead will get you every time.

The Republicans, smell blood.

They were behind breaking the story, and they continue to feed it. How many 20 year old women know a lot about porn stars? How did the woman who received the tweet know that a porn star was following Weiner on Twitter and that the two may have corresponded? Interesting how this came out in an interview with the NY Post.

If he sent it, it was stupid and disrespectful, but it wasn’t illegal. Because of Weiner’s serious mishandling of the press the story has traction. We are now reading more stories about Wiener’s tweet than of Moody’s threat to lower the US Debt rating - an act much more likely to studied in history class in the years ahead.

If John Edwards broke the law he got what he deserves. But is Anthony Weiner, who broke no laws, getting what he deserves? Are we getting what we deserve?

Is the bar for personal behavior now raised so high that good people don’t even try to jump over it?

Indiana’s Republican Governor Mitch Daniels, is sitting out this Presidential cycle. Not because he has done anything wrong, or that he has a poor chance of winning. He is out because he doesn't want to subject his wife and family to an examination of a painful period of their marriage that occurred over 15 years ago. Neither Daniels or his wife broke a law. They hit a rough patch and have since reconciled. What occurred has nothing to do with whether or not Gov. Daniels would make a good President.

But in the venomous world of Presidential politics, it isn’t hard to imagine the Daniels’ marriage becoming a political football.

The hunger for scandal is so strong that it would have consumed the story of the Daniels relationship with the same gusto as John Edwards breaking the law to hide his love child.

Its this lack of perspective, which puts the transgressions of Anthony Weiner and John Edwards on the same level, that does the country a disservice. At a time when we need all the talent we can get, good people like Gov. Mitch Daniels are frightened away from even trying to help.

That is a bigger problem than an errant Tweet.

05/01/11

2011-05-08T11:31:00.000-07:00

Tonight, I can report to the American people and to the world that the United States has conducted an operation that killed Osama bin Laden, the leader of al Qaeda and a terrorist who's responsible for the murder of thousands of innocent men, women and children.

- President Barack Obama, 05/01/11

We've lost something of our soul here in this country...something that separates us from other parts, other countries where we say everybody has their day in court no matter how bad of a person, no matter what piece of scum they are, they have a right to a trial

- Filmmaker Michael Moore on CNN 05/05/11

I feel a quiet satisfaction that Osama Bin Laden is dead.

I am not troubled that he didn’t have a gun in his hand when he was shot by Navy Seals. I am glad he did not cost another human life. He was a man who earned his fate.

When news of his death was announced, crowds spontaneously gathered at the White House and cheered. From the footage shown on CNN and MSNBC, many in the crowd were college students who would have been anywhere between 8 and 12 years old when Mohammed Atta and his crews committed the quadruple atrocities of 9-11. They are too young to really remember what the country was like before then.

At Ground Zero, the celebrations appeared to have less of a frat party feel. People who lost loved ones were there along with Police and Firefighters remembering those who ran in the buildings only to die with the ones they were trying to save.

Now that Osama Bin Laden has died, we no longer appear to be tied down by the terrorist from Lilliput. His freedom can no longer mock the burned wall of the Pentagon, the hole in the ground in Shanksville or the empty space in the New York sky-line.

As an outsider in New York I am struck by how close 9-11 is to the surface here. I can’t presume to share the city’s trauma. I experienced 9-11 as an American, which is different than experiencing it as a New Yorker.

Sometimes New Yorkers will tell you their story, unasked, out of the blue.

In 2006 I was standing with a client on the roof of his office building, looking back over the Brooklyn Bridge towards the New York skyline. Suddenly my companion got very quiet, and told me how he stood on that spot and watched the towers collapse.

People were already coming across the bridge past his building, where a nursing school was located. The students and teachers gathered all the supplies they could, walked out of classes, and set up triage and first aid centers at card tables on the sidewalk. They helped people - many of them white with dust - all day.

Michael Moore said killing Osama Bin Laden cost us a part of our soul.

I disagree.

We lost that part of our soul soon after 9-11.

Before 9-11, Americans prided themselves that we were different from the rest of the world. We stood for individual freedom against the power of the government. We didn’t torture our prisoners, we didn’t spy on our citizens. While not perfect, we strove to push back government’s powerful hand.

That changed the moment the first plane struck.

We willing gave up or freedoms and handed the government, unprecedented, open ended power to abridge our rights. In the past when our government reached into our lives at this level it was for a finite period of time - until the end of the southern rebellion, or the war in the Pacific.

Not this time. The Patriot act gets renewed with few modifications, expanding the power of the government to protect the homeland in an open ended, unending war on terror.

After 9-11, we became a country that openly debated the merits of different techniques of torture. I guess that’s what now sets us apart from the rest of the world. We debate torture as we do it. The rest of the world just does it.

Now we are a country where we spy on our citizens for no reason. Several years ago it was revealed that the US government was eaves dropping on all overseas calls. Despite the outrage there is no clear word that this practice has stopped.

We didn’t loose part of our soul when we killed Osama Bin Laden. We lost a part of our soul when we changed from a country where citizens put limits on their government to a country where government puts limits on its citizens.

When we quietly comply with this change we carry the white dust of the towers on us where ever we go.

Hey rich guy! Where's my job!

2011-04-30T03:45:00.000-07:00

“Hey rich guy, where’s my job?”

"Today, no,"

Mayor Bloomberg’s answer, 04/23/11 on Fox News Sunday, when asked if he backed White House plans to raise $1 trillion from tax hikes on families earning more than $250,000.

The Republicans relentlessly oppose any rational discussion on taxes.

No news there.

The Republicans argue that taxes are a drag on the economy. Taxes, they say, will hinder the recovery by taking money away from “Wealth Creators.” This in turn means less money for the benevolent rich to invest in industries that create jobs.

Wealth’s race to the top over the past 30 years has been well documented. This realignment of wealth did not slow during the recession and continues today. Job growth remains slow. Wages for the “middle class” remain flat.

Yet Republican elected officials continue to stand tall for cutting taxes or keeping taxes low in the top bracket, while cutting big holes in the safety net. Republicans do this to keep the burden light on “wealth generators” so that they can create economic growth. An increase in taxes is “jobs killer.”

To listen to the Republicans you would think that states with lowest taxes would be booming and have the lowest unemployment. After all, those “wealth creators” with such low taxes, those “wealth creators” have plenty of “wealth” to spread around.

It isn’t working out that way.

For example, take Nevada and California.

A report by the Tax Foundation, issued in October of 2010, defines business climate in terms of business tax burden. They state “Taxes matter to business. Business taxes affect business decisions, job creation and retention.” They conclude, “a state with lower tax costs will be more attractive to business investment and more likely to experience economic growth.” (http://www.TaxFoundation.org/files/bp60.pdf). They rank Nevada as having the 4th best business climate in the country and California as 49th.

So according to Republican Tax doctrine, summed up so nicely by the Tax Foundation, Nevada should be doing better economically, than California, with lower unemployment and stronger growth.

In September of 2010, the US unemployment rate was 9.2% California’s unemployment rate was 12.1% and Nevada was at 15.1%. (Source: US Bureau of Labor Statistics). Interestingly, New York, ranked 50th by the Tax Foundation, had an unemployment rate of 8.2% in September of 2010 - a full point below the national average and 6.8% less than Nevada. New York’s unemployment has been at or below the national average since 2006 and consistently below the national average since April of 2008.

Republican doctrine also says with such low taxes, Nevada would be recovering faster than either California or New York. But, according to information released in November of 2010 by the US Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Economic Analysis. (http://www.bea.gov/newsreleases/regional/gdp_state/gsp_newsrelease.htm), it isn’t. Between 2008 and 2009 the GDP of California fell 2.2%, New York’s fell 4.3% and Nevada’s fell 4.6%.

The Republicans would have the country believe that low taxes are the road to prosperity. But this simple comparison between tax rates, unemployment and GDP seems to indicate that there is not a strong co-relation between taxes and strong economic growth. Nevada, should have gotten into the recession later, and gotten out earlier with a shallower trough than either California or New York.

Clearly Nevada’s economic woes stem from the housing bust. But its economy was not diversified enough to withstand the collapse of the state’s construction industry. However, according to the Republicans, it should have. Before the recession industries should have been streaming out of California into Nevada to build a diversified economic base. That didn’t happen. Nevada’s economy is gaming, tourism and homebuilding. All three slowed or imploded.

According to Republican economic theory what happened in Nevada, shouldn’t have happened. But it did, and it is happening all over the world. In the 2008 Presidential campaign Republicans kept using Ireland as a model of a pro-growth corporate tax structure. Ireland has the lowest corporate tax rate in Europe.

It also has one of the weakest economies in Europe. Its bailout, along with Greece and Portugal pose a threat to the economic stability of the Eurozone.

“Wealth creators” are getting a big tax break to create jobs. It isn’t happening. Workers all over world in every language are crying “Hey rich guy! Where’s my job!”

Game On!

2011-04-16T14:26:00.000-07:00

Obama 48% - Huckabee 45%

Obama 47% - Romney 41%

Obama 54% - Palin 36%

Presidential Poll - April 14, 2011, Real Clear Politics - (http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/latest_polls/)

With President Obama and Mitt Romney announcing their Presidential bids, the 2012 election is underway.

The President throws his hat in the ring with a personal approval rating moving between 45% and 50%. When you consider the relentless attacks against him by the Republicans, the growing apathy towards him by the Left, and the fights over major policy initiatives, these are good numbers.

The Republican field thus far is crowded and weak.

Polls of the Republican candidates regularly show Mitt Romney and former Governor Mike Huckabee as the front runners. Only Huckabee polls with any chance of beating Obama.

But both candidates have serious problems.

Romney is well, Romney. As inspiring as John Kerry, Romney is viewed with deep suspicion over his progressive past by the right wing fire-eaters who now control the Republican party - and the nomination. His conversion to the current conservative philosophy leaves the left of his party and independent voters wondering if he really stands for anything.

Mike Huckabee is a smooth campaigner, deftly hiding his far right views behind his warm preacher persona. But, once Huckabee starts campaigning, his hard right views will come under the spotlight, only to scare independent and minority voters back to the Democrats. Right how he really doesn’t look like a man who wants to run. The reality is he doesn’t have to until 2016, when most of the current Republican field will be cleared out.

And then there is Donald Trump.

In a recent poll Trump leads Romney and all other Republicans for the nomination. Right now, polls for the Republicans don’t mean much. Presidential polls for the challenger party this early in the cycle, are driven by name recognition. That is why Donald Trump, can drop out of the sky spouting his birther nonsense and become one of the top three Republican candidates.

While this is good news for Donald Trump it is bad news for Sarah Palin.

She has the best name recognition in the Party but runs no higher than fourth in most polls, putting her at the top of the second tier candidates. With her name recognition and “star power” she should be at the top of the polls, being chased by Romney, not in the middle being chased by Ron Paul.

Obama is defining the Presidential election as a choice between asking the “haves” to sacrifice with increased taxes versus the Republicans asking the “have nots” to sacrifice with further Medicare cuts.

With the “Ryan budget” and its focus on cutting Medicare and Social Security while preserving the Bush tax cuts, Democrats have a strong issue that unifies voters against the Republicans. Congressional Democrats are already planning to run ads against the “Ryan budget” in Republican districts nationwide - with extra focus on those districts the Democrats lost in 2010 but that Obama won in 2008.

To win re-election Obama needs to clearly communicate what his administration has done. At first glance much doesn’t seem to have changed since the Bush years. GITMO is still open, troops continue to die in Iraq and Afghanistan and the Bush tax cuts are still in place.

But, there have been changes. There is Health Care Reform. In addition the economic recovery is underway. “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” has been repealed. Wage discrimination against women has been outlawed. The stimulus and bailout packages are working. Ford Motor company has turned a profit rather than shutting its doors. Banks have repaid their bailout money and the American tax payers turned a profit.

While Obama may not be an inspiring firebrand, he does look rational and reliable compared to the Republican frontrunners.

While extremists like Michelle Bachmann, Donald Trump and Sarah Palin are running around the country becoming the face of the Republican Party, candidates who present the greatest danger to Obama like, John Huntsman, and Tim Pawlenty are flying under the media radar. When the adults do emerge will the Republican brand be too damaged? How will they convince the voters who have watched the "bait and switch” routines of the governors of Wisconsin, Ohio, Florida, and Michigan that they will not run as moderates and govern as hard right radicals?

Republicans are at the cross roads. Do they go the Bachman route or the Romney route? 2012 could turn out for the Republicans, like 1984 did for the Democrats. The Democrats were in the tight grip of an extreme wing of their party, that chose a philosophical purist to take on a President they had convinced themselves the country hated. Consequently, Walter Mondale was buried in an epic landslide.

The Republicans look like they may make that same mistake. If they do, Obama will enjoy four more years in the White House.

Answering The Phone

2011-02-11T10:19:00.000-08:00

“Its 3 am and a phone is ringing in the White House. Who do you want answering that phone?”

- Campaign ad released by candidate Hillary Clinton in May, 2008.

We know President Obama’s answer to that question. The phone is ringing off the hook at the White House and it’s Hilary Clinton picking up the receiver.

Clinton has grown into the job of Secretary of State. She is no longer seen as an appointee chosen to quiet a restive wing of the President’s party, but instead is viewed as a strong Secretary of State and a trusted steward of American Policy.

Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice never really grew into the job the way Clinton has. Rice came across more as a security blanket for President Bush than someone trusted to guide American interests. She was a better fit as National Security Advisor than she was as Secretary of State. Former Secretary of Sate, Gen. Colin Powell failed to stand up to the Bush crowd when he knew they were wrong about Iraq. He left office with no credibility and his reputation in tatters.

As Egyptians march through Cairo to the Presidential Palace demanding that Mubarak step down, it is essential that American diplomacy take the long view. It is not enough to get Mubarak out without a civil war, we have to get him to go in a way that will stabilize the region, and leave a spot for the US at the table, when the revolutions that are “politely waiting in line” start coming though the door.

We need the courage to allow a Turkey or Indonesian style Muslim democracy to take root in Egypt. To do that, the current administration understands that subtly and patience is required.

Rather than trying to pick a winner from the opposition groups while making tub-thumping statements about the spread of Democracy, Clinton is wisely using American influence to nudge Mubarak out of power and letting the Egyptians play a strong role in choosing their own destiny. (http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2011/02/10/statement-president-barack-obama-egypt).

There will be “regime change” in Egypt that will embolden people all across the Middle-East and North Africa to challenge and change their governments. The new foundations for this region will be laid over the next decade. So as the 2012 Presidential election approaches it is important to ask: “Which Republican Presidential hopeful can answer the 3 am call?”

None.

The main Republican candidates are more interested in scooping up free media on Fox News and denouncing Obama, then they are in engaging in a reasoned discussion on how to handle the Middle-East and other complex global issues.

At C-PAC Rick Santorum (R-PA) made more headlines trying to make peace with Sara Palin than trying to make peace in the Middle-East.

On 1/31/11 Rep. Ron Paul (R-Tex) said the real problem with Egypt was the US policy of propping up dictators. (http://trailblazersblog.dallasnews.com/archives/2011/01/rep-ron-paul-calls-egypt-a-mes.html). In an interview on Fox news Paul said, "I wouldn't just cut off Egyptian aid. I'd cut off all aid to the Middle-East and maybe that whole area would be better off for it.”

Sarah Palin (R-ALK) is not “enthused” by President Obama’s handling of Egypt. However, after two years as a national political figure she seems to have little information on the region. Earlier this month, in her most extensive comments on the Egyptian uprising, former Governor Palin said on the Christian Broadcast Network, "How do we verify what it is that we are being told, what it is that the American public are being fed via media, via the protestors, via the government there in Egypt in order for us to really have some sound information to make wise decisions on what our position is." (http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2011/02/07/palin-not-enthused-by-obamas-handling-of-the-crisis-in-egypt).

Mitt Romney (R-Mass) didn’t even try to express any ideas on Egypt. He simply said he supported President Obama’s policy and then started in on health care reform. (http://www.politicsdaily.com/2011/02/01/mitt-romney-backs-obama-on-handling-of-egypt-crisis/). This approach won’t burnish his foreign policy credentials or his credibility with the isolationists in charge of his Party.

Twenty days ago it didn’t seem possible that the revolution in Tunisia would be the beginning of the end for Mubarak in Egypt. Twenty days from now which tent city, in which Middle-East capitol will we be watching on the news?

As change sweeps through the Middle-East, the answer to the question “Who is the best person to answer the 3 am call to the White House?” becomes increasingly important. The Republicans have shown they have no answer.

The Democrats have shown they do.

Question in the Middle-East

2011-02-04T16:53:00.000-08:00

“Who are our enemies? Who are our friends?”

- Richard Nixon, Act 1, Scene 1 of Nixon in China, by Alice Goodman and Richard Adams.

As fires of revolution swirl through Egypt and sparks land in the dry grass of Yemen and Jordan, this is a question that urgently needs an answer. Americans are deep in an isolationist period, locked in bitter, obsessive domestic political battles. So the country was caught by surprise by the events in North Africa and the Middle-East.

News from the Middle-East for most people is something like a soap opera, they check in from time to time to follow the story, but see how little has changed. The news from that region appears to be a dreary, predictable succession of car bombings and failed peace talks.

Progress in the region was glacial. But, few people heard the cracking of the ice as the glacier began to fall apart. Progress is now a flash flood, with policy makers splashing around trying to figure out how to swim safely to shore.

In less than two weeks, American policy went from supporting President Hosni Mubarak as an ally who was stable and in control, to scrambling to ensure he transfers power to another ‘friend” we “we can work with” as he leaves. We have embraced the newly minted Egyptian Vice-President Omar Suleiman, Mubarak’s best friend and a politician viewed by most Egyptians as Mubarak-lite.

With this policy we make one friend, but millions of enemies.

American policy is paralyzed by the fear of the Muslim Brotherhood, and a repeat of the 1979 Iranian revolution. The media has played into this fear. Nobel Prize winner Mohamed El-Baradei is no longer the first mention as the Egyptian opposition leader, and the Muslim Brotherhood is. The Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt is described as a widespread, well organized opposition group, which it is not.

They were caught as flat footed as the Americans by the events in Egypt. They are not in the position Ayatollah Kohmeini was when the Shah fell. They are a small segment of the opposition and do not have the broad based support needed to take over a revolution and lead the country.

While American policy makers and the media exaggerate the similarities between Iran in 1979, they seem to go out of their way to down play the possibility that this is “1989 in the Middle-east,” They cite the lack of a Superpower imposing a monolithic political system on a unified culture, as the Soviet Union did in the Eastern Europe, as the reason.

But Eastern Europe was not, and is not, a unified culture. There were significant cultural differences between the countries who slipped the Soviet leash between 1989 and 1992. But those revolutions were rooted in the same impulse.

They were not revolutions against the Soviet Union but revolutions against a hopeless present and a worthless future. They overthrew governments that had plundered the economy to benefit an elite while ignoring the needs of the common citizen. That is an important similarity between the European revolutions of 1989-1992 and the revolutions in the Middle-east of 2011.

Young people all across the Middle-east feel they have no future. In Egypt per capita daily income averages $2. This is the income of average educated people trying to earn a living. Such a low income level is the rule across the region and not the exception. Whereas there may not be a common system like Communism in each of these countries to push against, we need to beware of the common foundation of despair that underlies the region.

An article posted on Al Jazeera describes the current situation the Middle-east as “revolutions politely waiting in line.” (http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opinion/2011/02/20112282246404549.html). According to the post’s author, grassroots opposition groups are organized in each country, waiting for Egypt to finish its revolution before going full throttle with their own.

This seems to be true.

As the American media keeps a tight focus on Cairo, it missed the protests in Jordan that brought down the government there. In addition to Jordan, protests have taken place in Bahrain, Algeria, Yemen and Palestine. These governments all have some dependency on America whether politically, economically or simply foreign aid.

The current revolutionary impulse also threatens countries that are not tightly aligned with US interests. If the Government in Egypt falls it is possible for the Iranian opposition to reignite the Green Revolution. Even though they didn’t materialize, the Syrian government should be worried that 12,000 people risked government internet monitoring and “liked” the Facebook page calling for massive demonstrations in Damascus after prayers this Friday.

Regardless of how it all ends, the Middle-east and North Africa, will never be the same. Over the next couple of years Americans will have to ask over and over again “Who are our enemies? Who are our friends?”

And we will have to get the answer right.

The State of the Union

2011-01-31T04:34:00.000-08:00

"We do big things ...the idea of America endures."

- President Obama in his 2011 State of the Union Speech

“No economy can sustain such high levels of debt and taxation. The next generation will inherit a stagnant economy and a diminished country,”

- Rep Paul Ryan (R) in the Republican response to President Obama’s State of the Union Speech.

Generally the State of the Union speech is a non-event. There is lot’s of pre-speech media hype about “the-President- being-at-a-turning-point-in-his-presidency,” afterwards there is lots of discussion on “did-the-President-do-what-he-had-to-do.” Then Super Bowl coverage starts, and everyone forgets about the President’s crisis point, and Congress moves forward to ignore or diminish whatever the President proposed.

This speech was different from last year. After the Tucson shootings, both sides made an effort to tone things down. No one was shouting “You Lie” from the balcony. Senators and Representatives from each party sat together, which made it easier for the President to get members from both parties to stand for his applause lines. As a result we saw Republicans stand and applaud an end to corporate tax loop holes, and Democrats stand and applaud for Tort reform.

But while Obama sold an almost “Morning in America” version of the future and the Republicans were falling all over themselves to compare the United States to Greece, neither side spoke to a larger budget crisis facing the country - that of the States themselves.

States are broke and have been for years. States from Delaware to Idaho are struggling to make ends meet.

Washington and the press have ignored that fact. What coverage there has been, was about a particular problem an individual State was having. For example reporting on California’s budget crisis focussed on grid-lock in the legislature, and not on the wider ramifications of the fact the Government of the eighth largest economy in the world may be broke.

California, New York and Illinois are all facing massive budget deficits. Illinois just implemented a significant hike in its state income taxes - and yet it will not be enough to close their budget gap. Analyst do not see any combination of tax hikes that will close either the California or New York budget gaps.

California Governor Jerry Brown (D) is right.

It is now a zero sum game and there is no money left. When California’s Mayors were lining up outside his office this week to plead with him not to cut their Sate Economic Redevelopment funds, his response was “If I don’t cut you, who do I cut instead?” Gov. Brown has shown that he believes the State can no longer afford to allow sacred cows to graze through the budget undisturbed. He has cut everything from cell phones to State employes (a savings of $20 million a year) to billions from California’s higher education systems.

At the same time, Arizona is implementing drastic cuts in Medicaid. Generally the press has been harsh on this topic, roasting Gov. Jan Brewer (R) as being another heartless Republican shredding the social safety net to protect the rich.

But no one has really dug into to the economics of her decisions.

The reality is Arizona is broke, and the State has no money to support these programs. It isn’t a matter that this is a Republican’s view of “wasteful” spending, it is a matter of the money is simply not there to meet generous State constitutional obligations Arizona imposed on itself earlier in the decade when times were flush.

California is making cuts equally as drastic in its health care budget. Arizona and California are not trend setters, they are becoming the typical story. The housing crisis and high unemployment have crushed State budget after State budget.

In his State of the Union speech, President Obama did speak up for meaningful bi-partisan reform for Social Security. After all in a little over 20 years the Social Security system could be out of money.

Good job.

But what about the State pension funds that are nearly broke today?

Moody’s Investor Services calculated individual States’ pension and debt obligations as a percentage of personal income and State GDP. The top five per capita debt and pension burdens are Connecticut followed by Hawaii, Massachusetts, Mississippi and Illinois. (http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-biz-0128-illinois-debt-20110128,0,4119557.story). This is per capita debt burden is in addition to the debt burden from the Federal government.

The fact that these States are from every region of the country shows how widespread the issue is. Even if the States were able to get their short term economies together, they will not have the funds to repay all the money taken from their employees’ pension or to meet their long term obligations as baby boomers retire.

The economic effect of States not meeting their pension obligations will be huge - not just in the cost of funds for the States to keep operating, but in real human terms.

We are not talking sweetheart deals. The low level employee at the DMV who has had her wages frozen for years with the promise of a good pension may not get enough from her retirement plan to keep her out of poverty and off the streets. If you had to give teenagers driving tests day in and day out while worrying if you will have any money to live on after you retire, you’d be surly too.

Federal policy makers continue to treat the States as solvent, economically viable entities. But many aren’t. If they were corporations and not government entities, some States would be in Chapter 11 right about now.

In his State of the Unison speech, President Obama signaled that direct stimulative spending by the Federal Government is over. Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va) was even more blunt saying “There will be no bail-out for the States.”

That leaves the States in the cold.

Some politicians believe that economically “A rising tide lifts all boats.” But as any sailor can tell you, you won’t get far if you are dragging 50 anchors behind you.

Fearful Legislation

2011-01-12T05:13:00.000-08:00

My condolences to the 25 families who are suffering as a result of the shootings in Arizona on Saturday. I wish all comfort to the families of those who died, and all strength and healing to those who were wounded.

- The OperaDem

It's not a wake-up call, it's a four-alarmer,"

-- Rep. Robert Brady (D-PA), quoted by the Washington Post, saying he'll introduce legislation "that would make it a Federal crime to use language or images that could be interpreted as inciting violence toward members of Congress or Federal officials."

One word to Representative Robert Brady.

Don’t.

Crisis seem to always lead to another curtailment of freedom. In a moment of true threat or panic, government often overreacts, and passes laws that extend its power at the expense of its citizens. Whether it is the Alien and Sedition Act signed by President John Adams, or FDR’s internment of Japanese Americans, our history is littered with such overreactions. Government’s reflex is to legislate.

Government’s best reaction is often no reaction.

For the government to go about its business and let its citizens go about theirs when something like Saturday’s shooting happens, is the best show of strength. We can show that we are strong enough not to be shaken by the act of one unstable young man with a gun.

After Saturday’s shooting, the discussion has in some cases gotten silly. For example, one article asked “Were the cross-hairs used on Sarah Palin’s website more incendiary than the target icons used by the DCCC on their site?” The author’s answer was “yes” because the target is a passive object, and cross-hairs are the result of actively aiming at something. This distinction is academic - especially if you are the one wearing the target and are in the cross-hairs.

Representative Brady want’s to make it a crime to use images or language that could be interpreted [emphasis mine] to incite violence against members of congress or a Federal official.

It is already a crime to directly threaten a Federal official. But now Rep. Brady wants to bring interpretation into the law. I am sure in his zeal to protect the Republic, he is thinking of clear cut images, such as targets imposed on the pictures of officials with “Live Fee or Die” as a caption.

But what about one the Tea Party’s favorite Jefferson quotes where the tree of liberty needs to be watered by the blood of patriots? Would that not be seen as a call towards violence against Federal officials? How about President Obama’s comment “if they bring a knife we bring a gun,” or Sarah Palin’s admonition to ‘reload’?

In the post Lee Atwater political age we live in, who is to say?

Legislation (which I hope will not get past the press conference stage), that outlaws speech that can be interpreted as a threat to the government is a short step from legislation that defines criticism of the government as a threat.

The political discourse in this country has always been rough and tumble. From the days when Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson hired people to work in the State Department to write editorials against President Adams, politics in this country has been deeply personal and personalized. The current climate is direct descendent of the Jefferson/Adams conflict. Every age brought its personal insult and attack, from attacks on Andrew Jackson’s wife, (which he believed drove her to an early grave) through calling the second President Bush a war criminal, slash and burn personal political attacks are nothing new.

But since 2008 the dialog has gotten darker.

Astroturf right wing groups use the same threatening mob tactics at town hall meetings as they used to shut down the Florida recounts. With the “Death Panel” lie the right turned a legitimate disagreement on the reach of Federal government into a personalized sound bite that made people feel the government was out to kill them or a loved one. At the same time, Rep. Alan Grayson’s speech that the Republican’s health care plan was for you to “get sick and die,” while satisfying to the left, was in many ways no better.

Currently Liberals in their zeal to lay blame for Saturday’s shooting at Sarah Palin’s feet have all but accused her of murder. It is hard to make the logical leap from her gun and hunting analogies to a pistol in the hand of schizophrenic young man.

It is impossible to see how legislating speech can change the atmosphere.

What is possible is that each person take responsibility for their part of the political discourse. Both sides need to take a step back, and argue their positions by truly justifying their own stance and not by demonizing the other side.

We can’t legislate that. We simply have to demand our leaders act like adults.

Caveman Justice

2011-01-08T20:44:00.000-08:00

If the current society wants to outlaw discrimination by sex, hey we have things called legislatures, and they enact things called laws. You don't need a constitution to keep things up-to-date.

- Supreme Court Justice Anthony Scalia

As the Tea Party crowd steps into the House chamber, and the press obsess about their impact, Justice Scalia’s comments, shows an even stronger reactionary force is at work in the US Supreme Court.

Justice Scalia’s comments regarding the 14th Amendment were made in an interview in the recent edition of the California Lawyer magazine. http://www.callawyer.com/story.cfm?eid=913358&evid=1.

The question Justice Scalia was asked was a loaded one: “In ... proposing the 14th Amendment, I don't think anybody would have thought that equal protection applied to sex discrimination, or certainly not to sexual orientation. So does that mean that we've gone off in error by applying the 14th Amendment to both?”

As an “originalist” Justice Scalia believes the Constitution is not an evolving document. It means what it says and says what it means. If the Constitution does not specifically enumerate a power or right, that power or right does not exist.

So Justice Scalia’s answer was not a surprise. He said in part “...Nobody ever thought that that's what it meant. Nobody ever voted for that. If the current society wants to outlaw discrimination by sex, hey we have things called legislatures, and they enact things called laws. You don't need a constitution to keep things up-to-date.”

I hate to disagree with Justice Scalia. After all he has a law degree and I don’t. I thought the 14th amendment was clear:

"No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."

This section of the 14th Amendment is in two parts. The first part makes it clear that if you are a citizen the government cannot make laws that abridge your rights. Then in the second part of this section, when it changes from using the word “citizen” to the word “person,” the 14th Amendment extends constitutional protection to non-citizens as well.

When it was enacted the original intent of the 14th Amendment was to extend citizenship to the newly freed slaves by overturning the 1857 Dred Scott decision that held negroes, free or slave, were not citizens. But, in one sentence by moving from “citizens” to “person” the amendment’s framers, broaden the rights and protections of the Constitution to everyone, regardless of who the are or their citizenship status.

In this interview the Justice doesn’t address whether a legislature can curtail those rights. He simply patches over this omission with a blithe comment that legislatures can extend rights if the people chose, after all “that is what democracy is about.”

The framers of the 14th Amendment well understood the potential for state legislatures to tyrannize an unpopular minority. They were watching the Southern States, with the support if the President, implement “back codes” curtailing the rights of freed slaves.

By the 1890’s protected by the Supreme Court in “Plessy v. Feguson” state legislatures supported by the majority of voters curtailed and revoked the rights of their African-American citizens. This was exactly the “democracy in action,” the Amendment’s framers feared.

Today of course we have progressed beyond that point.

We no longer worry about African-American, but are alive to the danger of “anchor babies” and “illegal aliens.” The Arizona legislature has, with the support of the state’s voters, enacted a law that clearly abridges the rights of Latinos or people who appear to be Latino. Other state legislatures are preparing to follow in their footsteps.

The framers of the 14th knew they couldn’t list all the people the government could discriminate against in the future. So they elected to restrain the government’s powers against all persons.

The original framers of the Constitution also understood how fragile a person’s rights are in a Democracy. That is why they created the 9th Amendment, which specifically states: The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

Just because a particular right is not specified in the Constitution doesn’t mean that right doesn’t exist.

So taken together, these two Constitutional Amendments protect all rights, whether or not they are specified, of all persons in the country, regardless of their citizenship status.

I wonder if Justice Scalia would be so supportive of the wisdom of Democracy if State and Federal laws abridged the right of Italian Catholic lawyers as easily as the abridge the rights of women, Latinos and African-Americans.

Would Justice Scalia be this casual about a legislature of fundamentalist Protestant Christians, with the support of the voters, enacting laws against Catholics as he is when a majority of fundamentalist Protestant Christians write laws limiting what treatments or advice Doctors can give women?

I think not.

Justice Scalia, we do have these things called rights and a Constitution to project them. And “hey” just for the record, women are persons too.

Promises, Promises

2011-01-04T04:33:00.000-08:00

“Read my lips. No new taxes!”

- President George H.W. Bush at the 1988 Republican National Convention

This is are probably one best known political quotes in recent American political history.

In cutting a deal with the Republicans to extend everyone’s “tax cut” from the Bush era for two years, Obama got only a one year extension of jobless benefits in return. Obama, the born-again supply-sider is now suddenly saying raising taxes in a recession is bad economics. No matter how he positions it, he will be seen as having broken one of his key campaign promises, and betraying a core position in his campaign.

Just as President George H.W. Bush was when he raised taxes in the middle of his Presidency.

Bush had economics on his side. He needed to raise taxes to address the deficit created by Ronald Reagan. But he did not prepare the political landscape for the switch. He did not make the Democrats pay a political cost for raising taxes. He did it as part of a negotiated deal with congress.

Sound familiar?

In 2008 President Obama made letting the Bush tax cuts for the “wealthy” expire a center piece of his campaign. It was one of the main differences he drew between himself and John McCain. Two years later he gave on this point almost from the beginning of negotiations over a tax deal. He claims that he did so to preserve tax cuts for everyone and to extend unemployment benefits for a year.

There were some hard, interesting political reality behind Obama’s actions.

Almost as popular a stance as letting the tax cuts for the “wealthy” expire, was preserving the tax cuts for everyone. Looking at the polls these two positions are almost identical in popularity, and had broad support through nearly all demographics.

An interesting point in the tax cut discussion was why the definition of “wealthy” kept changing. The percentage of people earning $250,000 or more has dramatically increased since 2000. From a political viewpoint, 2008 was the first time that Democrats had as much support among voters earning $250,000 to one million dollars as Republicans.

This fact helps explain why he simply did not have the votes in the Senate for a middle-class only tax cut. The Democrats were reluctant to alienate a new and growing Democratic voter group over a position that was only slightly more popular than the alternative.

All of this may have figured into the White House’s calculations.

But if Obama had played his hand differently, he could have easily had the strength to let the tax cuts for the “wealthy” expire while getting everything he got out negotiations he got from the Republicans.

Had the Democrats forced a tax cut vote before the election - say in the beginning of September. Hard on the heels of the that vote the next vote should have been on unemployment benefits. Again the Republicans would line up against it. As the Democrats controlled both houses of Congress they only needed to bring these up for a vote one time, make the Republicans vote against both proposals and never bring it back to the floor after their defeat.

This strategy would have forced the Republicans into a position of explaining to the voters in the weeks before the election why they were voting against tax cuts for the middle class to keep tax cuts for the rich.

If that had happened the Democrats would have had strong message to run on (since they were too afraid to run on health care). Obama could have pounded the Republicans every day of September and October on how they were sticking it to the little guy while helping their rich supporters.

If things had gone well, the Democrats could have brought the tax vote up again in October, along with unemployment benefits. The Republican position would have been even harder for them to defend, and the Bush cuts could have been rolled back then, and the Democrats could have also gotten unemployment benefits through.

Instead the House Democrats took symbolic votes on topics like cap and trade, that pleased the base but angered everyone else. The Senate, with Harry Reid occupied with his re-election, took a pass, and most Democrats cowered in the corner afraid to run on the party’s accomplishments over the last two years.

As it stands now, Obama is in the position of saying, “No next time I will really mean it, when I say roll back the tax cuts!” Democrats will have no reason to believe him. Republicans now think they can simply whisper their opposition and Obama may leave the field without a fight. Obama’s electoral base feels let down, congressional Democrats feel betrayed. All of which left Obama weakened.

Time has passed and the tax cut fiasco has been buried under START and “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” It has gone from being seen as collapse of Obama’s political will to a great bipartisan accomplishment. But, the political landscape is littered with political careers ended by such accomplishments. As Obama looks towards the new Congress, he should remember that. Otherwise, he may wind up like the first President Bush, remembered mainly not for his accomplishments, but for breaking a key promise and becoming a one term President.

White Knuckle Time

2010-10-31T07:16:00.000-07:00

“This country is going down.”

- Nevada voter quoted in the New York Times -10/30/10.

Democrats are headed for what, President George W. Bush called in 2006 a “thumpin.”

But people are not voting for Republicans so much as they are voting against Democrats. Most polls show Republican Congressional leaders are the least popular politicians in America.

Polls do show people are dissatisfied with the overall state of the country and see both parties as part of a larger problem. The anger with how the country is run that began to show in the 2006 election and so permeated 2008, is even stronger in 2010.

Struggling Americans knew that Bush and the Republicans threw them overboard. They thought Obama and the Democrats would pull them out of the water. Now they feel Obama has flown over them much like Bush flew over New Orleans after Katrina.

Average voters believe their situation gets worse no matter who is in power. When they look at the ruling parties they see a Republican Party that has abandoned fiscal responsibility and run up the deficit and a Democratic Party that has failed to protect the little guy.

What they see makes them angry.

In the past, when a government has not addressed its people’s anger it is swept aside. Often the political center takes control and tries and fails to bring a sense of order. When they fail, they are replaced by radicals.

The Tea Party is the result of a similar anger.

The message of the Tea Party is the country is broken and neither party can fix it - but we can. Their success occurred because it directly addresses people’s anger at the inability of Government to protect them and the perceived collapse of normalcy. The Tea Party has not stirred up anger, it simply has harnessed what has been building since in this country since 2005.

It doesn’t matter to voters if the Tea Party candidates have their facts straight.

That’s not important.

What is important is that government economic policy - be it the Democrat’s Keynsian economics or the Republican’s Laffer curve - have failed. That is why they are being evicted and laid off. “Celebrating Diversity” has only led to a socially divided society that that is falling apart. They think the experts were wrong on education which is now why Johnny still can’t read and their technical assistance is in India.

In the Tea Party mind, all of this is the result of failed policies, which were imposed by a growing and paternalistic government. Tea Partiers came of age when belief the government was lying and corrupt was the norm. Whether watching LBJ on Viet-Nam, Nixon on Watergate, Reagan on Iran-Contra or Clinton with Monica, the assumption has always been the government is not telling the truth.

On top of it all that they feel laughed at.

It stings when the pundocracy laughs at Sarah Palin’s short reading list, or Christine O’Donnell’s economic history. They feel the condescension when both women’s education is laughed at. Who has time to read when you are holding down to two jobs to keep the house? So what if it took both women a long time and a lot of schools to get a degree? Only 40% of American’s have a degree. Who can afford it with the cost of education rising faster than inflation?

To the Tea Party voter it feels like they have just been told by the elites “Let them eat cake,” and this stokes their anger even more.

The Tea Party has taken this anger and moved into the political space vacated by disenchanted centrists. Many voters supported the Democrats in 2006 and 2008 with the goal to change the system. The Democrats were going to end the harsh policies of Bush and protect the little guy.

Now in 2010, those voters don’t think that happened.

Obama brought in an economic team that seems more intent on protecting the banks than the homeowners they are evicting. Finance and Health reform seem tilted towards the industry they are supposed to regulate not to the consumer they are supposed to protect. Afghanistan grinds on, GITMO is open, Bush policies on government spying and surveillance remain in place. Bush’s frat house of insiders has been replaced by insiders from the chess club. Demoralized and disappointed centrists are staying home.

When the centrists stay home and the radicals are enraged, revolutions occur.

But in our political system being told to eat cake does not lead to the Bastille, it leads to the ballot. Rather than taking their anger to the barricades Americans sweep their governments away by voting.

In 1932, angry voters swept away the ruling classes of the day and brought Franklin Roosevelt to power. Roosevelt re-formed government’s function and role in society to what we see today. That was a revolution from the left.

In 2010, voters who are equally angry and afraid are poised to sweep away the current ruling class and again change the government’s function and role in society. What we could be witnessing this November is an equally strong revolution from the right.

The pundits could be wrong. This elections isn’t a repeat of 1994. It could be a repeat of 1932.

After The Fall

2010-09-23T04:32:00.000-07:00

“I’m for the Republicans. But we were looking at eight to nine seats in the Senate. We are now looking at seven to eight in my opinion.”

Karl Rove – Fox News, After Christine O’Donnell Defeated Rep. Mike Castle (R-Del) for the Delaware Republican Nomination for the US Senate.(http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0910/42205.html#ixzz10LeNYmLn)

Even if the Republicans don’t win a majority of the seats, will the Democrats really retain control?

Doubtful.

Let’s look at the best case scenario for the Democrats.

The Tea Party will have a Senator from Utah (Mike Lee), likely a Senator from Kentucky (Rand Paul), and a Senator from Alaska (Joe Miller). Add Scott Brown from Massachusetts, and you have four Senators (10% of the Republican delegation) who are Tea Party Senators. Now include Jim DeMint from South Carolina, who has funded many of these Tea Party candidates, you now have five Senators who have a strong Tea Party connection.

Worse yet for the Democrats, these five Senators owe nothing to the Republican Party establishment. Only Scott Brown of Massachusetts has shown any inclination to play along with leadership. But with the backing of four other votes, he is more likely to break away and work with this five person Tea Party Caucus.

These five Senators would all have their seats because they ran against both the Democratic and the Republican establishments. These five have no reason to listen to Mitch McConnell. Anything their leadership would want to do would have to go through them.

In the small clubby world of the Senate, power attracts power. Oklahoma Republican Senators James Inhofe and Tom Coburn are extreme - even by Republican establishment standards. They now have a strong group of allies in the Tea Party caucus, who can provide votes and political cover.

Now there are seven Tea Party votes, which potentially will not be under Mitch McConnell's control.

These seven Republicans who have no allegiance to the either the agenda, agreements or philosophy that have guided the Senate since 1980. This group will wrench the Republicans even further to the right into an even more uncompromising stance.

It gets more interesting.

Nate Silver at Fivethiryteight (http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/) projects roughly an 85% chance that the Democrats will retain 50 Senate seats. He rates seven seats as having a greater than 50% chance of flipping from Democrat to Republican. Of those seven (North Dakota, Arkansas, Indiana, Pennsylvania, Colorado, Illinois and Nevada), three of those likely takeovers would be with Tea Party candidates – Pennsylvania (Pat Toomey), Colorado (Ken Buck), and Nevada (Sharron Angle).

They bring the number of avowed Tea Party Senators to 6, add Inhofe and Coburn and you have 8. Include Jim DeMint who helped finance them, in some cases over McConnell's opposition, and you have 9 Tea Party Senators. This represents nearly 25% of the Republican delegation who owe allegiance only to their ideological purity and Jim DeMint, and not to the Republican Party leadership.

Up for election are six ideological sympathetic establishment Republicans who are not Tea Party candidates: Roy Blunt (R-Mo); Richard Burr (R-NC); John McCain (R-AZ); David Vitter (R-LA); Johnny Isakson (R-GA); Chuck Grassley (R-IA). After the election they will throw their lot in with the Tea Party Senators. This brings the number of Tea Party Senators to fifteen – an even more formidable voting block.

Add to the Tea Party Caucus, those Republican Senators up in 2012 who will cave to the Tea Party caucus to improve their re-election chances, and even if Mitch McConnell retains his leadership post, he won’t be calling the shots anymore.

Now think about what happens if Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) looses.

Reid is in the fight of his political life, and stands a good chance to lose his Senate seat. Aside from the fact that a Sharron Angle victory would really embolden the far right Tea Party crowd, there is the impact on Senate leadership.

If Reid is out, it is likely Charles Schumer (D-NY) would take his place. Reid has been an effective Majority Leader. His ability to steer big legislation by Republican roadblocks testifies to that.

But one advantage the Republicans have had for years is Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has one of the safest seats in the Senate. He does not have to look over his shoulder with every move worrying about his election like Reid has had to. McConnell can be as partisan as he wants without fear of being thrown out. Schumer would be in the same position.

He has also helped a number of his colleagues get elected or retain their seats. So they owe him. The Senate would be run by two hyper partisans from safe seats not known for compromise. Everyone would posture for 2012 and for two years nothing will get done. The public’s anger will build. 2012 could make 2010 look like a walk in the park.

So regardless of whether or not the Democrats retain the control of the Senate it is hard to see how they can retain control of the Senate’s agenda.

No matter what happens they have lost the Senate.

After Labor Day

2010-09-14T18:16:00.000-07:00

However, the headlines for this election have not yet been written, and there is considerable uncertainty in the outcome.

- Nate Silver predicting a 40 seat gain for Republican in the House

You don’t wear white after Labor Day, and voters don’t begin to focus on elections until then either. The current conventional wisdom is that Democrats will loose control of the House and maybe the Senate.

Two weeks ago the Gallup poll that put the Republicans 10 points ahead of Democrats in the “Generic Ballot”, created a lot of headlines and a lot of panic for the Democrats. Minority Leader Rep. John Boehner (R-O) was picking out drapes for the Speakers office.

Not so fast.

Looking at the Generic Ballot poll over the summer shows how volatile this measure is. Nate Silver wrote on 08/31/10 (The Democrat’s New Normal http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/page/2/) that this lead could be statistical noise, in the same way the Democrats lead had been several weeks before.

Sure enough on 09/07/10 Gallup released the next “Generic Ballot” poll, and the Democrats and Republicans were tied at 46% each. On 09/13/10 Gallup “Generic Ballot” poll has the Republican ahead by five points. (http://www.gallup.com/poll/142982/Generic-Ballot-Splits-GOP-Dems.aspx). There is plenty of movement in these numbers.

There is a correlation between the generic ballot polling results and the number of seats won or lost. Looking at these numbers the Republicans are in for a strong showing this election cycle. There is still room for growth in support for the Democrats. 98% of Republicans support their Party while only 90% of the Democrats support theirs. If Democrats come home the election will tighten.

What really matters is a district by district look at the House races. But, this view has its own problems.

Nate Silver of Fivethirtyeight.com created a stir when he released his model of the House races and predicted a 2 in 3 chance that the Republicans will take the House. (http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/).

Silver is a respected statistician with an excellent track record. He did have some caveats for his results. One was the lack of objective non-partisan data. In most districts, there were either no polls to use, or polls that were released by the campaigns themselves and were not reliable. Even then there are 90 districts where either party has a 10% chance or better of prevailing. There is, as Silver himself says a lot of uncertainty out there.

On the same week that Fivethirtyeight.Com released their prediction, Electoral-Vote.com released its prediction on the House races. They predicted the Democrats will retain a slim margin in the House with a Republican pickup of 30 seats. (Post on September 11, 2010, http://www.electoral-vote.com/)

Electoral-Vote.com has been up since 2004 has been fairly accurate in its predictions. It uses a different statistical method than Nate Silver to make its predictions.

Silver runs thousands of simulations to account for random events in the election. Electoral-Vote.com tests races against a set of algorithms and predicts the outcome based on whether the condition passes the test or not. For example they start with the view that historically, 85% of incumbents have been reelected. As a result they rates seats where the incumbent won the last election with more than 55% of the vote as safe and not a toss-up.

This difference in models leads to different results. For example Silver suggest the Democrats have only a 51% chance of flipping LA-2 from Republicans and rates this as a toss-up. Electoral-Vote.com sees this as a solid Democratic seat. It has a PVI of +25% for the Democrats, it is a “Minority Majority” District being nearly all black. A Republican had not won the seat between 1891 and 2007. They only did so when former Rep. Jefferson was caught with $90,000 in his refrigerator.

At this point in the cycle the only people really focusing on they election are hard core activists and political junkies. Many average voters don’t even know an election is taking place.

The activists most motived are the Tea Party and they are a major reason for the “enthusiasm gap,” which favors the Republicans. This number is good indication of which party is most likely to turn out to vote. But, the Democrats have a better field operation and the funds on hand to finance a strong get-out-the-vote effort. This could counteract the Republican “enthusiasm.”

But even with the huge “enthusiasm gap” in favor of Republicans, many key races are very close. Carly Fiorina trails Barbara Boxer by 2 points. Sharon Angle trails Harry Reid by two points. Meg Whitman, after spending a 100 million dollars of her own money, is only 2 points ahead of Jerry Brown for CA Governors race even though he has only just now begun to campaign. Races are close in Illinois, New York State, Kentucky.

The Democrats are still competitive.

Speaker Pelosi has made a wise choice that will pa off to let the election play out district by district, each candidate sating their case to their own constituents.

So It is left to President Obama to make the case nationally, and remind everyone what is at stake if the Republicans gain power. Now is the time. It’s after Labor day - when elections are won or lost.

An Alaskan Warning?

2010-09-01T20:55:00.000-07:00

There's not much doubt things are getting worse for Democrats -- and they were already pretty bad. Somehow the party base needs to get reinvigorated over the next two months or there's going to be a very, very steep price to pay.

- Tom Jensen Public Policy Polling

Lisa Murkowski (R-ALK) was in trouble. Throughout the primary in Alaska it was a given that Murkowski would beat Tea Party Express candidate Joe Miller for the Republican nomination for Senate. With only a deficit of 1,688 votes and close to 7,600 absentee ballots which can be counted as late as two weeks after the primary, Lisa Murkowski needed to get over 56% of the outstanding absentee votes to have done so. But by Tuesday morning it was obvious she wasn’t going to pull ahead of Joe Miller.

On 8/31/10 Murkowski conceded defeat. She had not ruled out a third party or write-in run for the seat. But the Libertarian Party said they would not put her on their ticket. She could still run as a write-in. But for now she says she will go back to Washington, finish her term and come home.

In a post released on 08/289/10 Public Policy Polling (http://publicpolicypolling.blogspot.com/2010/08/alaska-senate-race.html) the Democratic nominee Scott McAdams, is in a strong position. He is running even with the Republicans with the support of 42% of Independent voters. He has a unified Democratic party behind him with the support of 81% of his party’s voters. But with an 18% deficit in party Registration any Democrat has an uphill battle in Alaska.

McAdams may benefit from the fact that Joe Miller, like Sharon Angle has some very extreme positions. These positions may send independent voters as well as disappointed Murkowski voters his way. But currently the Republicans are favored to retain the seat.

Looking back to the one poll taken in the primary, Nate Silver of Fivethirtyeight.com pointed out that Miller had surprising hidden strength in voters. (http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/26/a-closer-look-at-alaska/) A large plurality of voters who knew both Murkowski and Miller supported Miller. In July when the poll was taken 65% of voters didn’t even know who Miller was. With Miller’s name recognition being so low, this was a warning to Murkowski that as voters got to know Miller they would abandon her and vote for him.

Is there a similar warning to the Republicans nationwide?

For most of this cycle In the Congressional generic ballot question tracked by Gallop, the Republicans have held a lead of anywhere between 3-7 points. When the question gallop asks changes from a Generic ballot question to “Do you think your Rep should be reelected?” a majority of respondents say yes. With Democrats in a solid majority this should translate into some seat stability.

The other interesting number shows in a CNN poll. The more Republican voters cite animosity for Obama rather than a support for the Republican party platform as their reasons for voting for Republicans.

How will this play out?

If Obama begins to engage the 2008 voters (likely) and if he increases his popularity (possible), voters whose allegience to the Republican cause is more through anti Obamaism may drift away, just as Murkowski supporters went to Miller.

This is possible. One thing polls have shown consistently is that Republican congressional leadership ranks last in support behind both Obama and the Democratic leader. Republican Congressional leadership does not even have a majority support among likely Republican voters, (for example : http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/pdf/PPP_Release_National_813.pdf).

A chart published by Gallup also shows that looking across the entire cycle Republicans had a lead outside of the margin error only once - throughout the month of August. The August 31 poll that puts the Republicans ahead at 10% while not good news for the Democrats, may not be the final word. The lead in this poll has changed several times since May. Which indicates soft support for both Parties. There was nothing in the news this week that would drive a seven point spike in the poll for the Republicans. So this lead could be the start of a trend, or just as likely statistical noise.

Right now the two main groups focussed on the election are pundits and Tea Party members. At this point only the hard core and the activist know an election is underway. The average Democratic voter simply isn’t engaged yet. The closer a race gets to election day the tighter it becomes. This one should be no different.

The Democratic party also has a significant edge in cash to use to get out the vote and engage their voters. They have the financial resources to buy $48 Million of advertisements to run two weeks before the election. This, with a stronger get out the vote infrastructure could make the difference in close races.

The nuts and bolts of getting voters to the polls can carry a weaker candidate past a stronger candidate with a poor get out the vote operation. That is what made the difference for Blanche Lincoln in her primary win.

So don’t count the Obama machine out. On 8/25/10 President Obama sent an email message to members of Organizing For America, the PAC he formed after the 2008 campaign, based on his list of volunteers and contributors. In the email Obama asked PAC members to support Jerry Brown’s (D-CA) campaign for Governor of California.

So many people responded that the Brown website crashed.

The enthusiasm for Democrats is there, it is simply waiting to be tapped. It is not too late for Democrats to tap in. Voters may simply waiting to be asked.

And that could make the difference.