Niall Stanage, in the Guardian:
Tea is the Republican party’s cocaine: thrilling for a moment, but ruinous over time.
But, it’s really not just the Tea Party. For me, it’s the Party of No strategy. The Republicans did not heed the president’s advice. Back in January the president paid a visit to the House Republicans’ retreat in Baltimore. In responding to a question from Rep. Martha Blackburn of Tennessee, the president made the following observations:
“So all I’m saying is, we’ve got to close the gap a little bit between the rhetoric and the reality. I’m not suggesting that we’re going to agree on everything, whether it’s on health care or energy or what have you, but if the way these issues are being presented by the Republicans is that this is some wild-eyed plot to impose huge government in every aspect of our lives, what happens is you guys then don’t have a lot of room to negotiate with me.
“I mean, the fact of the matter is, is that many of you, if you voted with the administration on something, are politically vulnerable in your own base, in your own party. You’ve given yourselves very little room to work in a bipartisan fashion because what you’ve been telling your constituents is, this guy is doing all kinds of crazy stuff that’s going to destroy America.
“And I would just say that we have to think about tone. It’s not just on your side, by the way — it’s on our side, as well. This is part of what’s happened in our politics, where we demonize the other side so much that when it comes to actually getting things done, it becomes tough to do.”
The key is that the Republicans did in fact become vulnerable in their own base. Republicans who showed any degree of reasonableness starting losing primaries. And the people winning those primaries, and the voters who fueled those victories, show every sign of believing the rhetoric rather than the reality. What started off as a stunt, turned into a monster that the Republicans could no longer control. So far, the damage has been electoral. While overall the juice from the Tea Party has ramped up enthusiasm in the base, there’s no question that the Republicans have damaged their prospects of winning a half dozen Senate seats. But really radical candidates are going to win a lot of House seats and at least a couple of Senate seats, and then they are going to expect the Republican Party to continue with their Party of No strategy. Anyone who stands in the way of total-obstruction-all-the-time is going to face a challenge from the loony right. They created a caricature of the president and they can’t very well compromise with the devil without infuriating their supporters.
This is why we can’t afford any losses on Tuesday. Let me focus your mind on the consequences of increased Republican power. Yesterday, the president sat down with a bunch of bloggers in the Roosevelt Room of the White House. He was asked if he supported filibuster reform, and this is part of what he said in response:
THE PRESIDENT: Well, I’ve got to be careful about not looking like I’m big-footing Congress. We’ve got separate branches of government. The House and the Senate have their own rules. And they are very protective of those prerogatives.
I will say that as just an observer of our political process that if we do not fix how the filibuster is used in the Senate, then it is going to be very difficult for us over the long term to compete in a very fast moving global environment.
What keeps me up at night is China, Germany, India, Brazil — they’re moving. They make decisions, we’re going to pursue clean energy, and the next thing you know they’ve cornered half the clean energy market; we’re going to develop high-speed rail in the span of five years — suddenly they’ve got high-speed rail lines going; we’re going to promote exports, here’s what we’re going to do — boom, they get going.
And if we can’t sort of execute on key issues that will determine our competitiveness over the long term, we’re going to fall behind — we are going to fall behind.
How can this country execute anything if there are a bunch of crazy Republican senators filibustering everything? A Republican House will just add to the pain.
Our country is effectively screwed if these elections go off as predicted. And, if you need any more proof, just look at this.
The opportunity here is so profound. If we were to vote as the party of grit, if the Hispanics and blacks, the Muslims, Native Americans & Asians were to respond to the inclusiveness rather than piecemal negativity we could actually win this election!
And winning this election is the only way.
I really don’t know how this all plays out.
Here’s my “best case” scenario: we narrowly keep the house by 5 seats or so and we keep 52 seats in the Senate. Reid wins and rewrites the Senate rules so that 60 isn’t the requirement anymore to do anything. Collins, Brown, Snowe join Lieberman, Nelson and Mary Landreau to create a gang of 6 that votes as a block. Obama negotiates taxes, immigration reform, climate change and some sort of infrastructure bank-fund with these 6. Hillary and Biden switch jobs, Obama makes a secret deal with Bloomberg to give him Treasury if he’s re-elected (thus averting a disastrous third party bid by the billionaire mayor), Palin wins the republican nomination, and Obama gets re-elected in 2012 with enough coat-tails to put the majority in the house back up to something more than razor thin.
Is this complete delusional fantasy?
It’s actually a total disaster. Just less of one than is currently being predicted. I am optimistic that we will not lose seven senate seats. I will extremely pissed off if we do.
Is this complete delusional fantasy?
Yes!! For one reason at the least. Bloomberg isn’t running!! Can people stop with that crap!! For everyone bringing that crap up, please tell me how Bloomberg can win. He can’t, okay!! And why would Bloomberg blow 2 to 3 billion dollars on a losing bid? What votes is Bloomberg going to get in red states? None!! Where is this clamor for Bloomberg coming from? One place. Versailles. That’s all you need to know.
The bloomberg thing isn’t delusional if Palin wins the nomination and the Party of No strategy turns Obama into Carter (approval ratings in the high 30’s). He’ll run if he thinks he can win, and in that scenario, its not completely crazy that he could win.
Interesting take, but it won’t be Ms. Mooseburger as the GOP POTUS primary winner next time around. read the Oct. 18-24 issue of Bloomberg BusinessWeek. Palin is seen as an extremist by the GOP powers that be; many of them are not amused by the teabagger insurrection.
much more likely to be the current NJ Governor Chris Christie.
The GOP powers that be don’t really matter much in primaries. Ask Mike Castle or Lisa Murkowski how awesome it was to have establishment support.
I don’t think Castle had all that much “establishment support”, and it appears he didn’t run much of a primary campaign– kind of like the dem candidate in MA who lost to Nakey Scotty.
in other words, people like Castle and Murkowski, both political lifers, arrogantly thought they were a lock and got surprised by the teabaggers.
however, winning a primary and winning the general election aren’t the same thing.
Nutty Christine O’Donnell is going nowhere, and we’ll see if Joe Miller can pull enough Murkowski write-in voters to push him over the top.
if the repugs lose both of these races, thus losing the opportunity to take control of the Senate, I think it’s fair to assume they will pay more attention to the primaries next time around.
That last link is the one that should be scaring the crap out of people:
* Exclusive interview: Keven Trenberth, head of NCAR’s Climate Analysis Section on the link between global warming and extreme deluges:
“I find it systematically tends to get underplayed and it often gets underplayed by my fellow scientists. Because one of the opening statements, which I’m sure you’ve probably heard is “Well you can’t attribute a single event to climate change.” But there is a systematic influence on all of these weather events now-a-days because of the fact that there is this extra water vapor lurking around in the atmosphere than there used to be say 30 years ago. It’s about a 4% extra amount, it invigorates the storms, it provides plenty of moisture for these storms and it’s unfortunate that the public is not associating these with the fact that this is one manifestation of climate change. And the prospects are that these kinds of things will only get bigger and worse in the future.”
and:
This is all one big coincidence for the anti-science disinformers. But for the rest of us, the really scary part is that we’ve only warmed about a degree Fahrenheit in the past half-century. We are on track to warm nearly 10 times that this century (see M.I.T. doubles its 2095 warming projection to 10°F — with 866 ppm and Arctic warming of 20°F ).
In short, we ain’t seen nothing yet!
The storm got my attention
I live in Chicago and the early parts of the storm reminded me eerily of the early phase of a hurricane I experienced once in Orlando. There were long bands of clouds interspersed with some blue sky.
This is absolutely correct, and probably the main reason I am finding it impossible to be even slightly optimistic about our future. If Congress was unable to do anything about climate change in the past two years, then they won’t be able to do anything until it is far too late.
We really can’t do anything about it. Oh, I’ll be first on my block to get a Nissan Leaf (replacing the hybrid) and will take all the individual actions I can to combat global warming, but this means nothing against the force we are up against.
Probably the most rational thing to do in 2011 would be to start the process of founding a sustainable community in northern Canada. It’s still too early to actually found one now, but around 2025 or so such a community will start to make a lot of sense.
we are screwed no matter who wins Booman. there are enough conserva-dems to make sure there’s no climate change legislation even if the democrats win.
the fact is we’ve been collapsing as a civil society for years. the corrupt appointment of Bush accelerated it, and as you have pointed out the stupid was weaponized under GWB and deployed by McCain.
another 10-50 years, and we’ll look a lot like the remains of the USSR.
Absolutely right.
Like every other earthly thing, world powers arise, they’re sustained, then they fall.
This is what it’s like when they fall.
Let’s leave the dead-enders to their ‘USA Number One’ illusions & see to our survival under this developing situation. Illusions always dissipate eventually. Those of us who can see what’s occurring now will be best prepared for the future.
Just maybe Obama’s talk about tone and the need for bipartisanship (at least in public appearance) wasn’t just the Kumbaya talk some of his critics claimed it was.
I’m not optimistic about these elections but I’m in this for the long haul. The narrative that has to get pushed now is the disparity of income and wealth. Whether one draws analysis from Reich’s new book or other sources, the people living under poverty and the middle class have had real incomes flat or declining during the last 30 years as US productivity has doubled.
But the Dems need to get real about this and more cohesive. Democrats are the big tent but they also have to have something in common other than a label, or they have nothing tangible to sell to the voters.
Anecdotes aren’t science of course, but my experience of the weather has me increasingly worried. I follow the weather pretty closely, and the last year or so has been really weird. In general, low pressure systems moving across northeastern America seem larger, more powerful, better defined. Generally, this time of year, the weather pattern is for increasingly large and cold air masses to move down from the north. There is a kind of wave action to seasonal change that I wish I had the expert vocabulary for. Northern air masses in turn bring up warm moist air from the south. This year, however, the flow of air from the south is really moist and powerful. Watching this last low develop over the midwest was like watching a bomb of gulf moisture explode across America. Here in new england we’ve had temperatures in the 70’s and unusual humidity the last week. Not exactly typical in late October with most of the leaves on the ground.
It might be as simple as La Nina.
We’ve had La Nina’s for a long time. 1000 year floods and droughts and super storms? Heat waves in central Russia? Arctic warming off the scale? Artic ice thinner than its been in recorded history? I don’t think we can say this is just the occasional La Nina/La Nino pattern anymore.
It’s t-shirt, shorts, and sandals weather here in southern Pennsylvania. The leaves are all falling. In the 1970’s the coldest I can ever remember being was trick or treating. Halloween was ALWAYS frigid. Not anymore.
we’re still waiting for the first frost, so we can plant garlic. I have a feeling it ain’t coming anytime soon.
Anecdotes are worthless because we’re talking climate not weather.
Gary England, one of the grand old men of Oklahoma weather forecasting, described the pressure drop at the center of the storm that moved over Chicago as being equivalent to a category 3 hurricane. A Cat 3. Over Chicago. Let your mind bend around that for a minute.
agreed regarding the “screwed” part.
right. the problem is every time the Dems have the repugs on the ropes, they ease up and allow then to come charging back in one form or another.
the democratic party is either totally incompetent/wreckless as a credible political party, or they just don’t care all that much.
their strategy regarding making sure their message is out there and understood? more or less ZERO.
Obama should be on the tube 3-4 times per month, laying out the high points– what they are doing, going to do, and why it’s good for America. he should spend some of that time vigorously debunking at least some of the bullcrap broadcast daily by the corporate-funded hacks.
If Obama was doing this, the hacks and the repugs would have to respond to him.. they would be on the defense. instead they’re constantly on the offensive with their misinformation campaign.
The media environment is not the same as it was even when Reagan was President. A President cannot command wall-to-wall media coverage so the every household with a television that is on is forced to hear the President and has no alternative programming.
Obama cannot command time on the tube; he can only persuade the major networks (CBS, ABC, NBC) to grant time for significant speeches — State of the Union, crisis events, short statements of accomplishment. He also doesn’t decide when he appears on talk shows; it is negotiated between the talk show and the White House communications office.
He is on the YouTube every week, but distribution of these only occasionally goes viral.
The second issue is that in a recession, there are folks exhausted by looking for work or working one, two, or more jobs to make ends meet. They either do not watch television regularly or would not appreciate the President pre-empting more “relaxing” shows.
As long as corporations own the media, the hacks do not have to respond to him. That’s the fundamental problem–the change in journalistic style and ethics since the time of Walter Cronkite.
All he can do is reward various media outlets with access or punish them with denial of access.
The worst problem is a White House press corps that gets to dictate who is in the press briefing room and who sits in what seat. It is they, not the White House, that put FoxNews in Helen Thomas’s previously designated seat. And it is they, not the White House, who decided to put Helen Thomas on the front row after the Bush administration had rigged it so she was forced to the back row.
And if the White House did have control over access to briefings, media that were excluded would have a hissy fit that the hacks would turn into a shitstorm.
I get what you’re saying.
However, I’m not implying MSM should simply give Obama air time pro bono.
the democratic party is spending multi-millions on TV ads– most of it negative attack ads which numerous people hate.
this is the best dems can do? ape the other party? where’s the much vaunted change?
instead of wasting Millions on ads that people hate, buy air time to talk to the American people. and go on the Daily Show, Letterman, MSNBC, etc..
as far as people being “burned out”, I disagree with that as well. I don’t see the listeners/fans of Drug Limbaugh, Bill O’Lie-lly, etc., getting burned out on them and changing the channel.
I didn’t say burned out, but exhausted by working.
A majority of Limbaugh’s and O’Reilly’s (and etc) audience are retired or otherwise have the leisure to watch them, even at work. And a large segment of Limbaugh’s audience listen to him while driving. And Limbaugh has the advantage of being broadcast in every single county of the US and locations in Canada. On local stations that are wall-to-wall conservative talk in areas where they are often the only station that folks have traditionally listened to.
I would rather that money be used for other forms of communication than through the national media companies and their local outlets. Paying them is financing the opposition.
The Republican Party has become like the Communist and Fascist Parties: politics – i.e. winning – is everything. They do not care what the state of the nation is that they take over – as long as they take over.
I hear people saying that demographic trends show that Democrats will become unbeatable at the polls in a few years, owing to Republicans’ alienating basically every group except older, wealthier white men and their dupes. So, what is the Republican response to this looming long-term disaster? One possibility is not to hold elections anymore, owing to some “emergency.”
Sound dire? The behavior of the Tea Partiers tells me that many of them are ready to participate in such a movement. It would really help if our responsible, mainstream media weren’t so damned tired of boring, contentious democracy.
This is not accidental. And it comes from the movement conservative takeover of the Republican Party. In the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s, conservatives were terrified of Communist subversion of American government through election, employment in the civil service, employment in the media. That’s what Nixon’s use of the House Un-American Activities Committee to spook Harry Truman and Joseph McCarthy’s attacks on the State Department and even the Army were about. It is what drove J. Edgar Hoover from the days he worked for A. Mitchell Palmer in the Wilson administration up through the date of his death in 1972.
At the beginning of the 1960s with the fear induced by Sputnik and the Pentagon’s hyping of a missile gap, organizations began forming to study the “communist methods of subversion”, inspired in part by J. Edgar Hoover’s ghost-written book Masters of Deceit. They learned about operating in small cells, propaganda, having a political bureaucracy parallel with the civil service and enforcing loyalty, about converting friends and neighbors, about the importance of having an ideological military, and on and on.
In short, the movement conservatives consciously adopted strategies and tactic copied from the establishment of totalitarian states under the rubric of “fighting fire with fire”. Or “to kill a dragon, you must become a dragon”. And they have become the subversive force that does things that they were most afraid of happening to their freedom. Goon squads, threats, front groups, politicized religion (to counterbalance “communist atheism”). That is why I often referred to the previous administration as Busheviks.
But that was then and this is now. The dragon they have become is the Taliban. Strict morality, religious piety, no compromise, persecution of enemies, armed cells, subversion of the military, and so on.
And we can only fight back through the strength of honest persuasion and democratic processes, beating them at the ballot box and through honest and straightfoward expression of our views to our personal networks. Otherwise we risk becoming the dragon too.
I can’t help but thinking that if we keep bringing reason and logic to a knife fight we should expect to get stabbed repeatedly. Winning and being right aren’t necessarily the same things. I’ll take sinners and dummies’ votes too.
Democrats have to be as focused on winning as Republicans are. This ain’t church. Last I heard, demagogy fell well within millenia-old ‘democratic processes,’ if a little outside ‘honest persuasion.’
We need to do more demagogic attacks on the Republicans all of the time, with a nice mix of truth-telling. We aren’t doing enough of either right now, and there is no point in hamstringing ourselves trying to preserve a manner of civic dialogue that died several decades ago, owing to the failure of our press corps to be effective umpires on behalf of the interests of the citizenry. The easiest and best time to stop this slide into fascism is now, with words – however emotionally-charged – and the criminal justice system. The alternatives become increasingly worse.
Oh, man. Was this even necessary?
Just a little pre-election catharsis.
Now let’s GOTV.
Oops, I didn’t see the link.
Round two: It’s Gawker, hardly a fount of political commentary.
And it was as predictable as similar stories about Nikki Haley.
It’s just glomming onto a national celebrity; that’s all.
And no it was not necessary. Nor will it affect the outcome unless the writer/accuser is proved to be a Democrat. O’Donnell has been open about her wild past to the point of providing TMI.
As glad as I am that O’Donnell has almost no chance of winning, thanks in part to all of these nutty stories about her, another part of me worries that at this point progressives and the media have focused TOO MUCH attention on her. To the benefit of people like Marco Rubio and Pat Toomey, who she makes seem reasonable or at least slicker and more media-savvy by comparison. She eats up a lot of oxygen and it’s allowing the antics of a lot of the other crazies to slip by unnoticed by the larger public.
Good that we’ve heard a lot about Joe Miller in these past couple weeks though, as it seems to be tanking him.
National media is not decisive in midterms. State and local media are.
Here there’s been a lot about Burr. I expect that the Miami papers have covered Rubio’s candidacy. Hopefully, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh papers have covered Toomey.
Sometimes we bloggers get hung up on the Village media and its obsessions. And on the torrent of campaign and third party advertising.
In midterms, local media and GOTV are more important.
I think you are probably right, as usual. That said, I’m not sure how much “local media” still exists in a functional form in a lot of places. I have no read on that as I live in a major metropolitan area.
The reasons why media deregulation has been so destructive just keep coming up.
The Momcat thinks O’Donnell was never meant to be anything more than a distraction, a shiny thing to keep our attention away from more important races like Nevada and Alaska. It’s a case of be careful what you wish for, because now the Repugs are stuck with her when they might have had a viable candidate and a real shot at another senate seat.
“When her underwear came off, I immediately noticed that the waxing trend had completely passed her by.”
Thanks for pointing me toward reading the article that this this stain on my beautiful mind. Yikes.
Sorry, man. Sometimes I can’t see the trees for the forest, I guess.
No, and the douche who did it is a sexist asshole as far as I’m concerned.
Hard hitting ad against Rand Paul, a must see