America's Political Nightmare in One Paragraph

My god this may be the finest paragraph Paul Rosenberg has ever written:

In truth, the Republican party only has three problems: its policies are unpopular, its policies do not work, and they hate everybody who does not agree with them. In contrast, the Democratic party has only one problem: it wants to be more like the Republicans. 

Don't look to me for the bog standard two party "duopoly" rant because I think adding more parties to a corrupted system is like asking the staff for a new set of dice at a crooked casino - the new dice will be loaded too.  Whatever forces are corrupting the two parties would almost certainly corrupt any new party that emerged absent some kind of deeper understanding of those forces of corruption and real means to defeat them.

Rosenberg's apt synopsis of the Republican party's problems is actually the less important part of his thesis, which is: What the hell is wrong with the Democratic party?  To wit:

But the Democrats have it even worse. They have won the popular vote in every presidential election since 1992 except for 2004, and yet they have been playing defence - rather badly - throughout most of this period. They do not have the means to even consider what it might look like to go on offence, except as a kabuki theatre to rev up their base come election time. 

Examples of this really are legion, from the failure to enact Hillarycare in 1993, triangulating through the rest of the Clinton presidency, failing to end the Iraq War in 2007 with control of Congress, failing to kill the filibuster in 2009, 2011 and now in 2013, the too-small stimulus, voluntarily killing ACORN under a nonsense trumped up non-scandal, falling over themselves to condemn Move On for actually opposing right wing warmongers like Bush, Cheney and Petraeus, failing to get prosecute corrupt bankers and financiers, and we can add stripping the Public Option from Obamacare.  Yes, there were a variety of villains to blame for each of these failures from Liberman to Nelson to the Blue Dogs to Obama himself but the core of it a party unwilling to really grasp the rusty levers of power and effect significant change when it counts.  Keeping the stupid filibuster in place was probably the most obvious sign that at some level, they're happy to have the excuse not act.  Not necessarily because they're "corrupt" in the sense of consciously being bought out to not do what voters sent them to do (though some no doubt are) but in not really wanting to, or being afraid to.

The Republicans are the party that won't take "no" for an answer from the voters, returning with the same bad enrich-the-rich policies over and over, year after year, but the Democrats are the party that won't take "yes" for an answer and give the voters what they want: sound liberal economic policy.  Jobs,  economic security, schools that work, a clean environment.  The Democrats had two chances in 1992 and 2008 where they controlled the trifecta of both houses of Congress and the Presidency and in both cases failed to deliver bold liberal policy that would measurably improve people's lives quickly and noticeably.  That's the big secret of what FDR did to achieve the amazing political success of the 1932-1994 Democratic coalition.  He/They (Democrats) enacted policies that made their lives better.  Not some arcane neoliberal tax credit to employers that only economists can detect any impact from, the government started mailing seniors actual cheques.  They hired people who needed work.  They built stuff that needed building and would be useful anyway - bridges, libraries, schools.  It wasn't complicated, and it worked. People felt things improving, and in 1934 and 1936 gave FDR historic supermajorities to do more of the same.

These insights don't take political genius to understand, in fact it takes a special kind of political genius for the Democrats to avoid these lessons and try to handwave away these obvious truths.  Right wing ideologues and hacks have obvious motives to ply sophistry and revisionism to deride FDR as they simply don't want to win by implementing liberal policy.  They, ultimately, must trick voters into voting against their own interests.  That's much tougher and it's why they lose the popular vote so often, even with their generally better electoral messaging machinery and rampant voter suppression.

Yes, I know the causes are in some sense obvious, lobbyists and corporate money and so forth.  But all that stuff existed in 1932, but Rosenberg suggests a deeper problem, that the leadership of the Democratic party simply don't really want to implement bold liberal policy because they don't believe in it:

Regardless of your own ideology - conscious or unconscious - you just have to wonder why Obama clings so doggedly to both substantive policies and political strategies that repeatedly fail so profoundly. No doubt there are multiple factors involved, but the most compelling answer, I have come to believe, comes down to a lack of vision: Obama quite simply cannot see any alternative. His politics are drastically confined by the crabbed nature of his neoliberal imagination, formed in the shadows of Reagan and Thatcher.  

I tend to agree.  Despite its rampant failure in the past few years, neoliberalism still has the world's elites in thrall.  They evidently cannot turn from it.  Even the ones who know it is failing can't imagine what could take its place.  I hope democratic politics can find some way to dethrone the lot of them and let some new blood take the reins for a spell, because the alternative ways this ends are not good.

Do read Rosenberg's whole piece.

Torture: Another Liberal Cassandra Moment

Cassandra, the Greek figure tragically doomed to be right about everything and have no one heed her warnings:

It seems likely that a President Mitt Romney would rescind the executive order issued by President Barack Obama outlawing torture. His own policy advisers have told him to do so, according to a memo obtained by the New York Times. (Mitt Romney’s advisers are doing everything they can to encourage the liberal debate over the morality of supporting Obama in the face of his miserable civil liberties record.)

The memo was drafted last year by the Romney campaign’s “national security law subcommittee,” which is made up of 18 lawyers, 15 of whom are George W. Bush administration veterans. The lawyers call on Romney to “rescind and replace” the executive order banning torture and once again allow “enhanced interrogation techniques.” The lawyers also recommend that Romney first make a show of ordering a “review” of torture policy to help make the candidate look “open-minded and empirically driven.” (Jesus Christ.)

Pareene (who is really excellent and under-appreciated) goes on to speculate that Romney may try to spring torture on Obama in the debates.  May all liberals take a "we told you so" stage call.  Torture is now completely just another partisan issue.  Vote Team R if you like tax cuts and making the bad guys suffer like they deserve!  Vote Team D if you like to "coddle" terrorists.  It will even be something Republican candidates feel proud in raising in debates with Democratic opponents.  It gets worse:

In an October 2007 Rasmussen poll, 27 percent of Americans surveyed said the United States should torture prisoners captured in the fight against terrorism, while 53 percent said it should not. In my YouGov poll, 41 percent said they would be willing to use torture — a gain of 14 points — while 34 percent would not, a decline of 19 points.

Obama and Holder's refusal to prosecute the Bush administration war criminals should rightly haunt him.    Romney's likely going down in flames, so the people in Gitmo and Bagram are relatively safe from waterboarding, freezing rooms and prolonged stress position agony for another 4 years at least (not safe from being held without rights for absolutely no cause for those four years of course) but after that, President Christie can proudly announce the "adults" are back in charge as he cuts loose the CIA's best sadists to do what they love.  It's just one Executive Order away...

"We Built It"

The RNC convention is decorated by banners that say "We Built It."  It.  Not "that."  Obama said "that."  Even when attempting to deliberately misinterpret his sentiment, they can't help but tacitly admitting that "you didn't build your business" isn't what Obama was saying by correcting the grammar for their jeering slogans.  Had Obama meant "you didn't build your business" he would have said "You didn't build it."

"That" can only refer to something else.  Grammatically, it can't refer to the business mentioned in the first part of the sentence.  If the banners said "We Built That"  everyone would look at it and say "Built what?"  When changed to "We Built It" one knows they mean "we built the businesses that we're mendaciously claiming Obama said you didn't build."  To wit, It and That are not synonyms. 

I know it's ridiculous to have to provide basic lessons in the English language to a political movement that to a person almost exclusively speaks English as a first language, but that's a great example of just how monumentally stupid they think that their own supporters are, and voters in general.  (Did that last sentence just read weird?  I should have said "but it's a great example of just how..." See?  Not synonymous).  The disingenuous outrage over Kerry's botched joke in 2006 was somehow more plausible than this.

News for conservatives: Obama has been President for Four Years

I see via Twitter that conservatives are freaking out over these comments from Obama:

When some people question why I would challenge his Bain record, the point I’ve made there in the past is, if you’re a head of a large private equity firm or hedge fund, your job is to make money. It’s not to create jobs. It’s not even to create a successful business – it’s to make sure that you’re maximizing returns for your investor. Now that’s appropriate. That’s part of the American way. That’s part of the system. But that doesn’t necessarily make you qualified to think about the economy as a whole, because as president, my job is to think about the workers. My job is to think about communities, where jobs have been outsourced.

The common theme appears to be that Obama is resting his case for re-election on his past as a Community Organizer and Romney's experience as a CEO and Governor clearly outstrip that.  Sure.  Ok.  Except it's not 2008 and Obama now has four years of actual experience as President, which really has to count for something in the whole "does his past prepare him for the job" question. 

It's a small bit of stupid in the grand universe of right wing stupidity around Obama, but really, these complaints that he's never had executive experience, never run anything "bigger than a lemonade stand" really fall flat after spending four years actually in the job you're saying he's unqualified to hold.  Fine, argue he's done a shitty job, that's totally fair game, but he clearly has the stronger "job experience" resume for the job, like any incumbent running for re-election would. 

QOTD: HTML Mencken

The thing about the great internet satirists/comedians like Roy Edroso, Tbogg, and the Sadlynaughts is that to be a funny satirist you must first and foremost be an insightful and perceptive analyst in addition to whatever je ne sais quois makes one additionally hilarious.  So I was quite pleased to see HTML Mencken reappear at Sadly, No! a few days ago after a long absence, and it is no surprise to me that the author of one of the all-time great political posts (seriously, read and bookmark that thing if you've never seen it) is back with another great observation worth more notice (bold text added):

But it is Obama’s fault that he’s functioned as a de facto wingnut Trojan horse, and it’s his fanatic supporters’ fault that there is not a consensus on the left accepting of the reality that Barack Obama, a Democrat, has won victories for wingnuttery that Republican Presidents could never win — or dare to even try. One hears “Only Nixon could go to China” a lot these days in reference to Obama’s behavior, the point, I think, being that Obama is performing a superficially self-reversing maneuver in order to substantively further his and his party’s goals, for the good of all — which is what Nixon more or less did. Nixon’s tilt toward the Chicoms did not sabotage what he thought was the most important goal in his party’s foreign policy, which was the containment of the Soviet Union; in the context of conservatism, Nixon was unorthodox but “meant well.” In contrast, in making it safe to destroy social security and medicare, Obama does not “mean well” by liberalism; he does mean to sabotage the most important plank in his party’s philosophy, which is equality through a social safety net. Nixon was using liberal means to further conservative aims; Obama is putting a liberal face on conservative means to achieve conservative ends.

 That is a fantastic insight.  Nixon saved a major conservative goal from conservative short term stupidity in being unwilling to even talk to China when it would be clearly advantageous to the larger goal of containing the Soviet Union to do so.  Obama is not serving some larger liberal aim by cutting Medicare or Social Security.  The most generous interpretation is that he believes the neoliberalism triumphant TINA ("There is no alternative") hypothesis that says the demise of these programs is inevitable and at best he can only delay their demise (this is what I've read explains Tony Blair).   He is not even plausibly aiding his party's long term prospects.  Nixon going to China did not hurt average Americans at all.  He pissed off the extreme anti-communists but otherwise nothing bad happened to America as a result.  Obama is removing the floor that keeps the poorest Americans from falling into the basement when they get sick or old.  Lots of real people will be hurt by this, and they know it (or will be told of it by cynical Republicans happy to exploit a Democrat stepping on the third rail voluntarily).  They will vote accordingly.

The rest of the post is excellent and worth a look.  He makes reference to other events that are perhaps more comparable to what Obama is doing - Andrew Johnson siding against the reconstruction Republicans after Lincoln's death and John Tyler governing as a 19th century Democrat even though he was elected as a Whig under the deceased Harrison.