Month: February 2015

Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK), the chairman of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, brought a snowball in a plastic bag onto the Senate floor Thursday, carefully removed it from the bag, and lobbed it at a congressional page. This was the kind of spectacle I never want my preschool child to see.

Why did it happen?

As heavyweight boxer Larry Holmes once told Larry Merchant when asked why he let a lighter Michael Spinks push him around the ring, “I dunno Law-ry, why do anybody do what they do? Why do Gaddafi do what he do? I dunno Law-ry.”

It had something to do with there being snow on the ground outside the Capitol Building, and he might have remarked about it being unseasonably cold for a February day, which it really wasn’t. As far as the Senate historian knew, however, this was the first time a senator had used a snowball while speaking from the lectern.

Technically, the Oklahoman violated the rules of the Senate, not by lobbing an icy projectile at an unsuspecting aide, but by using a prop without asking for and obtaining the unanimous consent of the other 99 senators.

Confident in his own sanity, he proceeded to question the president’s mental acuity.

“It’s just another illustration that the president and his administration are detached from the realities that we are facing today and into the future,” he said. “His repeated failure to understand the real threat to our national security and his inability to establish a coherent national security strategy has put this nation at a level of risk that has been unknown for decades.”

A sparse crowd of touristy onlookers in the gallery muttered among themselves, wondering what exactly was going on and how it might affect the future of the country.

I don’t know what I thought. I guess I thought that Joke Line had slinked off to some tropical retirement hideaway. Out of sight, out of mind, mainly. But, apparently, he’s back and this time he’s got a man-crush on Jeb Bush.

It’s not that he agrees with Jeb Bush on major substantive things that actually matter, like what kind of policy we should have toward Iran or Cuba. But Jeb’s got a good temperament.

…Bush’s speech wasn’t exactly a barn burner. His delivery was rushed and unconvincing, though he was more at ease during the question period. He was criticized for a lack of specificity. But Bush offered something far more important than specificity. He offered a sense of his political style and temperament, which in itself presents a grownup and civil alternative to the Giuliani-style pestilence that has plagued the Republic for the past 25 years…

…And after giving his speeches a close read, I find Bush’s disposition far more important than his position on any given issue. In fact, it’s a breath of fresh air. I disagree with his hard line toward Cuba and the Iran nuclear negotiations, and I look forward to hearing what he has to say about reforming Obamacare. His arguments so far merit consideration, even when one disagrees with them.

The important thing isn’t that he substantively disagrees with neo-conservatives like John McCain. The important thing is that he doesn’t get “chesty.”

There is none of John McCain’s chesty bellicosity. Bush makes no false, egregious claims, on issues foreign or domestic. He resists the partisan hyperbole that has coarsened our politics. He even, at one point in his foreign policy speech, praised Obama for the position he has taken on–get a map!–the Baltic states.

We may have to create a website just to mock Joe Klein every time Jeb says something false or egregious of issues foreign or domestic. “Read My Lips, No False Claims.”

This next part will make you want to use a claw hammer on your cerebellum.

Bush’s economic vision is traditionally Republican. He believes the economy is more likely to grow with lower taxes than with government stimulus. He doesn’t bash the rich, but he doesn’t offer supply-side voodoo, either. The American “promise is not broken when someone is wealthy,” he told the Detroit Economic Club. “It is broken when achieving success is far beyond our imagination.” He is worried about middle-class economic stagnation, about the inability of the working poor to rise–his PAC is called Right to Rise. His solution is providing more opportunity rather than income redistribution. We’ll see, over time, what he means by that.

We’ll see, over time, whether it occurs to Klein that Jeb’s brother already showed us what it means to govern as if lower taxes will grow the economy, or what an aversion to government stimulus is worth when the real world intervenes and the global economy collapses. We’ll find out if Klein can remember Dubya’s Ownership Society and all his blathering about opportunity.

Does Jeb mean anything different from his brother when he says these things? Do they have a better chance of working just because Jeb says them without a smirk on his face?

Are we really so grateful to have one Republican who knows how to comport himself in polite society that we’ll put that over his positions on issues?

In a recent poll, while 70% of African-Americans believe blacks are treated less fairly by the police, only 37% of whites feel the same way. Obviously, the rash of media coverage of police killings of African-Americans has had little if any effect in how the majority of white Americans view police mistreatment of minority populations. This mirrors results in other areas in which whites do perceive discrimination against blacks: For example, 73% of whites do not believe blacks are treated unequally by the courts; 84% think they are treated equally in the workplace; and 87% of whites do not think African-Americans are discriminated against when it comes to voting.

Obviously, most whites, a large majority whites in every case, do not subjectively believe that any bias against African-Americans exists in our society. A large majority of people of color just as obviously subjectively perceive that our society does treat people differently based on the color of their skin, rather than the content of their character, to paraphrase Martin Luther King, Jr. And this perception holds consistently across different regions of the country:

Perhaps most notably, on the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington, we found few differences in perceptions based on geography. Among all respondents—regardless of race—whether he or she lives in the South or Northeast, Midwest or West did not make a difference in one’s perception about fair treatment of blacks. Among whites alone, there is only one significant difference: those in the South are more likely than those in the Northeast to say that none of their community institutions treat blacks less fairly than whites (53% vs. 43%).

So, this isn’t just a purely red state vs. blue state issue. But perception is one thing. What does the data show us about how people do act?

We’ve long known of studies that show people with “white” names are more likely to be picked for job interviews than those with “black” names. The same sorts of studies have found similar results when it comes to the effect of the racial composition of juries on the outcome trial verdicts.

[We found] evidence that (i) juries formed from all-white jury pools convict black defendants significantly (16 percentage points) more often than white defendants, and (ii) this gap in conviction rates is entirely eliminated when the jury pool includes at least one black member. The impact of jury race is much greater than what a simple correlation of the race of the seated jury and conviction rates would suggest. These findings imply that the application of justice is highly uneven and raise obvious concerns about the fairness of trials in jurisdictions with a small proportion of blacks in the jury pool.

This plays out in the business world, as well, as JP Morgan Chase recently was forced to reveal in its annual statement that it is under investigation by the Department of Justice for “statistical disparities in markups charged to different races and ethnicities by automobile dealers on loans originated by those dealers and purchased by the [the bank].” Of course, this is not a new phenomenon by any means:

A statistical study of more than 300,000 car loans arranged through Nissan dealers from March 1993 to last September — believed by experts to be the largest pool of car loan data ever analyzed for racial patterns — shows that black customers in 33 states consistently paid more than white customers, regardless of their credit histories.

But white privilege, and its corollary, a pervasive bias against people of color, is not just a phenomenon isolated to the United States. A recent paper by two Australian researchers found that the race played a large role in how individuals were treated when it came to public transportation. In a “field” experiment (i.e., not something studied in a controlled academic setting), individuals of various races attempted to board a public bus claiming they didn’t have the money to pay the fare. In effect, they asked for a free ride. How do you think that played out? Well, much better if you were white.

In their experiment, Mujcic and Frijters enlisted 29 volunteers from different racial and ethnic backgrounds to board public buses, tell the drivers that they lacked the roughly $3.50 needed to ride, and say that they needed to get to a stop about a mile away. They were then asked to record whether the driver let them stay onboard. (They were also told to note the time of day and the weather conditions, which the researchers figured could engender compassion among the bus drivers.)

In all, the experiment yielded data on more than 1,500 encounters between volunteers and drivers. Nearly two-thirds of the volunteers’ pleas were successful, but the rate at which they were granted differed greatly across ethnicities. White participants were given a lot more leeway than black ones: 72 percent of white subjects were allowed to stay onboard, while only 36 percent of black ones were. The rate for South Asian subjects was around 50 percent, and for East Asians it was 73 percent.

Here’s a graph from their paper that shows the disparities in treatment among the various groups:

Clearly, race matters. It matters in how juries make their decisions. It matters in whether lenders overcharge minority vs. white customers. It effects how easily a person can find employment. And, on a very basic level, it matters with respect to how we treat one another. It’s a lot easier to be generous and kind to white people, apparently, than it is to those with skin of a darker hue. The perception of the majority of African-Americans that they are unfairly treated by our society and its institutions is correct. The perception of the majority of whites that racism is a think of the past, or that how we treat African-Americans is “getting better all the time” is essentially a lie. The perceptions of most white people does not match the reality that black people face on a daily basis.

Who cares about the state budget and the economy, much less the unemployment rate? At least, the Kansas Republican-controlled legislature has its priorities straight (no pun intended) on what truly is important for governance:

The Republican-dominated Kansas Senate voiced its approval Tuesday of a bill that would make it easier to prosecute teachers and school administrators who present lesson materials deemed to be “harmful.” […]

Senate Bill 56 would allow misdemeanor charges to be filed against teachers who present materials depicting “nudity, sexual conduct, sexual excitement, or sadomasochistic abuse” that the “average adult person” believes “lacks serious literary, scientific, educational, artistic or political value.” […]

“My first thought: Oh no! This again?” said Liesl Wright, an art teacher in Wichita, in an email. “I’d be in trouble. I was showing my high school art students charcoal drawings of nude people just today. I do it all the time. You know when the religious laws regarding art are more restrictive than the European Renaissance, you’ve gone too damn far!”

I think this would make it a crime to show the video on human reproduction I saw as a 7th grader in 1969. And thank goodness for that. Because I (and my fellow classmates) never would have learned about the evilness of sex outside of that one class. No way. Not a chance in H-E-Double-Toothpicks.

In a recent Public Policy Polling poll, 62% of Republicans either outright rejected the theory of evolution or expressed doubt about it. The number isn’t stable; it is growing. So, as with the rather sudden turn against the theory of climate change, what is the actual mechanism that drives this kind of change? And can it be used for good?

In digesting Lee Drutman and Steven Teles’s article in the new issue of the Washington Monthly, I came across the same old familiar difficulty. It’s pretty easy to identify problems, but it’s hard to convince the Republicans to be partners in solving any of them. We’re lucky if they aren’t hell-bent on making them worse. And, as Drutman and Teles recognize, this is pretty much the case when it comes to addressing the self-lobotomization Congress has given itself, causing an over-reliance on outside experts and lobbyists.

There’s a reason why Boehner, like Gingrich before him, would want to cut the staff of the very institution he controls. Doing so sends an empty but attention-grabbing signal to conservative base voters that the GOP leadership is serious about cutting government. Moreover, the decades-long diminishment of nonpartisan expertise in Congress has gone hand in hand with the rise of conservative power. Ideologically or lobbyist-driven legislation moves faster through the process when there are fewer knowledgeable, nonpartisan staffers asking inconvenient questions.

Convincing Republicans to reverse Congress’s institutional brain drain, then, will be an uphill fight. And doing it in a way that reduces the political-machine-like control over staff that lawmakers enjoy will meet resistance from both parties. That said, it is not impossible to imagine scenarios in which Congress would make moves in the direction we suggest.

As Ed said yesterday, Congress doesn’t have to be this stupid, but the problem is that powerful conservative interests want us this stupid. Look at our public discourse. Have you ever seen anything so dumb?

Drutman and Teles provide us with two thin threads of hope. First, that like Dr. No himself (former Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma), the Tea Party brigade might mature a little bit after a couple of terms in office and realize that they need bigger staffs in order to effectively attack waste and abuse. Second, that the Congressional Republicans might take a selfish interest in bolstering the power of their institution, especially if time goes by with them in control of the two chambers but perpetually shut out of the White House.

Personally, I’m not optimistic, but I definitely would put more money on the latter scenario playing out than the former.

At least in theory, a smarter better-staffed Congress would be one way to counter the influence of corporate money in politics, but if Republicans continue to control Congress we may never get to test that theory. And, in any case, what makes anyone think that the GOP has a problem with corporate money in politics?

Here’s a bulk-mail excerpt from my old boss, Jim Dean.

In the weeks ahead, Democracy for America — alongside our friends at United Working Families, MoveOn, and the Chicago Teachers Union — will go all in to defeat Rahm Emanuel in the runoff on April 7 and elect Jesus “Chuy” Garcia as Chicago’s new mayor.

We will also fight to re-elect Aldermen John Arena and Toni Foulkes, who are going to a runoff against two of Rahm’s cronies. DFA members will harness that grassroots energy to build a lasting, broad-based progressive movement that will bring Elizabeth Warren-style, populist progressive reform to Chicago in the years to come.

Rahm and Jim’s brother Howard are famous enemies. It’ll be interesting to see who wins this battle here.

I know who I’m rooting for.

I have two very different takes on Hillary Clinton’s prospects of winning the 2016 presidential election. One side sees her as potentially vulnerable but most likely to win decisively, possibly realigning the Latino vote (more or less) permanently in the Democratic camp.

Matt Barreto, co-founder of the polling firm Latino Decisions, also named Bush as a possible candidate to bridge the gap with Latino voters.

“There’s very good reason to believe Jeb Bush has an opportunity to rebuild the GOP image if he can stay true to his message and get through the Republican primary,” Barreto said at the panel Tuesday.

On the flip side, Barreto said, Hillary Clinton has an opportunity to pick up a record number of Latino votes and solidify Latinos as a Democratic voting bloc for years to come.

“If Hillary Clinton becomes the Democratic nominee, she has this serious opportunity to hit and eclipse the 80 percent mark with Latino voters,” Barreto said. “Now, if that happens — which I think between these two scenarios there’s a better likelihood of — I think you are now starting to talk about a more permanent realignment in the Latino vote.”

The other take sees her as formidable, but not much better than a 50-50 bet to become the next president.

“Viewing her as a prohibitive favorite at this point is misplaced, definitely,” says Alan Abramowitz.

Abramowitz isn’t a Republican pollster or a professional Clinton-hater. He’s a political science professor at Emory University in Atlanta. And he and his ilk—the wonky academics who research in anonymity while pundits predict races on TV—offer the most compelling case for reconsidering Clinton as the likely winner.

“I would feel comfortable saying that it’s a 50-50 race right now,” says Drew Linzer, a political scientist who is an independent analyst in Berkeley, California. “But I don’t think anyone would be wise going far past 60-40 in either direction.”

The first analysis is based on demographic changes in the electorate and looks at what percentage of the minority vote a Republican would need to win in order to overcome their Electoral College problem.

The second analysis looks at a different set of metrics.

The best-known forecasting tool of the bunch—and one that plainly spells out Clinton’s looming trouble—is Abramowitz’s “Time for Change” model. He first built it before George H.W. Bush’s 1988 election, and he has used it to predict the winner of the popular vote in the seven White House races since. (The model predicted that Al Gore would win the presidency in 2000, when he became the first person since Grover Cleveland to earn the majority of the popular vote nationally but lose the Electoral College.)

The model uses just three variables to determine the winner: the incumbent’s approval rating, economic growth in the second quarter of the election year, and the number of terms the candidate’s party has held the White House. Official forecasts aren’t made until the summer before the presidential election. But reasonable estimates rooted in current political and economic conditions demonstrate Clinton’s vulnerability.

Consider this scenario: President Obama retains equal levels of approval and disapproval, better than he has had most of his second term; and gross domestic product growth in the second quarter of 2016 holds at 2.4 percent, the same as last year’s rate of growth. Under this scenario, the “Time for Change” model projects that Clinton will secure just 48.7 percent of the popular vote.

In other words, she loses.

Neither of these analyses considers the strengths and weaknesses of particular candidates outside of their potential to have a natural appeal to minority constituencies. Jeb Bush, for example, is married to a Mexican woman, has mixed-race children, and speaks fluent Spanish. The Bush family also has a record of performing better than average with the Latino vote.

But, what isn’t considered are the policy positions of the candidates, their debating skills, their ability to unify their respective parties, their fundraising ability, their gender, their voting or governing records, their ages, their physical attractiveness, their regional strengths and weaknesses or, obviously, their running mates.

Another potentially decisive factor is their differing roads to the nomination. Jeb Bush might be well-positioned to do well with Latino voters right now, but for that very reason might not be able to win the nomination. Or, he might have to do things to win the nomination that will destroy his positioning with Latino voters. No similar hazards are apparent for Hillary Clinton or any other possible Democratic nominee.

In my opinion, the biggest metrical hazard for Clinton is that she’d be trying to win a third consecutive term for the Democrats. Since Harry Truman declined to run for reelection in 1952, only George H.W. Bush has been able to pull this off. Arguably, Al Gore pulled it off, too, but he didn’t get to become president.

Poppy and Gore were sitting vice-presidents, which was also the case for Truman and LBJ before they assumed the presidency and won reelection. We have to go back to Herbert Hoover to find someone who won a third straight presidential race for his party who had not been vice-president. Like Clinton, Hoover had served in his predecessor’s cabinet.

In other words, we don’t have data on a presidential election that aligns closely with the one coming up, and need I mention the anomaly of potentially having the brother of a failed president running as the smarter, more competent alternative? What would have happened if Herbert Hoover had a brother who ran against Truman?

I think we can take a look at these models but we ought to put them aside. It’s safe to say that Jeb is the strongest candidate that the Republicans can field, and that’s really saying something.

Yet, I am not exactly brimming with confidence or enthusiasm about Clinton’s prospects.

I think the country, mainly, feels the same.

Despite endorsing him, the editorial board of the Chicago Tribune is positively giddy that Rahm Emanuel failed to win an outright majority in his reelection effort and is now forced to defend his mayoralty in an April runoff.

Precinct tallies came early, as if the numbers couldn’t wait to be heard. They spoke for an electorate that delivered a megadose of humility — of embarrassment, really — to a once-confident incumbent. More than half of Tuesday’s voters tried to fire Mayor Rahm Emanuel. They exposed him as beatable. Toe-to-toe with Anybody But Rahm, Emanuel lost.

Even the power of incumbency, even a huge money advantage, even a splashy endorsement from the president of the United States couldn’t lift Emanuel. He finished first, yes, but against poorly funded candidates. Who knows what the suddenly unified forces opposing Emanuel now can do with six weeks, a head of steam and, in Cook County Commissioner Jesus “Chuy” Garcia, a likable survivor whom Emanuel could not demolish.

I’ve never been a Rahm hater, but I think he’s been an obnoxious mayor and I’m glad the people of Chicago sent him a message. His opponent, Chuy García, was born in Mexico so he has that in common with George Romney. You might want to familiarize yourself with García’s résumé because he definitely comes from a different wing of the Democratic Party than Rahm. Preliminary results show that García (34%) only trailed Emanuel (45%) by 11% points despite being vastly outspent. I wouldn’t assume that Rahm has this wrapped up. It might even become a galvanizing cause for progressives around the country who have been angry with Emanuel for years.

Here’s some local analysis:

The school closures fueled a tumultuous relationship with the Chicago’s Teachers Union, which went on strike in 2012. The union, which also clashed with Emanuel over other changes to the city’s education system, endorsed Garcia after a brain cancer diagnosis sidelined its own president, Karen Lewis.

Political expert John P. Frendreis said while Garcia is “funny, he’s got a good speaking presence, he’s been around long enough, he’s got this colorful nickname so people kind of know him,” it was the support of the teachers that made the race competitive.

“It’s really the school controversy, the closure of schools, the continued opening of charter schools and then the … battle with the CTU and Rahm that has generated any kind of heat in this and has made him even remotely vulnerable,” the political science professor at Loyola University in Chicago, said ahead of Tuesday’s race.

Maybe some Chicagoans can chime in and give their opinion on how much of Rahm’s weakness came from substance and how much came from style.

Is it just me, or was The Stupid exceedingly strong today?