The Left Is To Blame?

Usually I think Glenn Greenwald is dead on, but I just don't get this:

The New Republic's John Judis today has an excellent analysis of the politics behind the stimulus package -- one which applies equally to most other political controversies. Judis argues that the stimulus package ended up being far inferior to what it could have been and points to this reason why that happened:

But I think the main reason that Obama is having trouble is that there is not a popular left movement that is agitating for him to go well beyond where he would even ideally like to go. Sure, there are leftwing intellectuals like Paul Krugman who are beating the drums for nationalizing the banks and for a $1 trillion-plus stimulus. But I am not referring to intellectuals, but to movements that stir up trouble among voters and get people really angry. Instead, what exists of a popular left is either incapable of action or in Obama's pocket. . . .

A member of one liberal group, Campaign for America's Future, pronounced the stimulus bill "a darn good first step." MoveOn -- as far as I can tell -- has attacked conservative Republicans for opposing the bill, while lamely urging Democrats to back it. Of course, all these groups may have thought the stimulus bill and the bailout were ideal, but I doubt it. I bet they had the same criticisms of these measures that Krugman or The American Prospect's Ezra Klein or my own colleagues had, but they made the mistake that political groups often make: subordinating their concern about issues to their support for the party and its leading politician.

During the 2008 election, Obama co-opted huge portions of the Left and its infrastructure so that their allegiance became devoted to him and not to any ideas. Many online political and "news" outlets -- including some liberal political blogs -- discovered that the most reliable way to massively increase traffic was to capitalize on the pro-Obama fervor by turning themselves into pro-Obama cheerleading squads. Grass-roots activist groups watched their dues-paying membership rolls explode the more they tapped into that same sentiment and turned themselves into Obama-supporting appendages. Even labor unions and long-standing Beltway advocacy groups reaped substantial benefits by identifying themselves as loyal foot soldiers in the Obama movement.

The major problem now is that these entities -- the ones that ought to be applying pressure on Obama from the Left and opposing him when he moves too far Right -- are now completely boxed in. They've lost -- or, more accurately, voluntarily relinquished -- their independence. They know that criticizing -- let alone opposing -- Obama will mean that all those new readers they won last year will leave; that all those new dues-paying members will go join some other, more Obama-supportive organization; that they will prompt intense backlash and anger among the very people -- their members, supporters and readers -- on whom they have come to rely as the source of their support, strength, and numbers.

Okay, I'm not as politically savvy or focused as either Glenn Greenwald or John Judis, but I have several problems with this. Here's Judis again: "Of course, all these groups may have thought the stimulus bill and the bailout were ideal, but I doubt it." Let's examine that. First of all, why does it have to be ideal to be supportable? Any halfway politically savvy group will realize that getting an "ideal" bill past Senate Republicans was impossible. What's wrong with it being good enough for now? Second, I think it is highly presumptuous and insupportable to assume that liberal advocacy groups know what an ideal bill would look like. Even leaving out economists of the right (who I assume, perhaps wrongly but I don't think so, aren't being widely read by people on the left) reading the various op-eds and blog posts by economists of the center and the left doesn't really give you a clue about what size the stimulus package should be (trust me on this.) Reading them, you could arrive at a range of anywhere from $800 billion to $1.5 trillion, and most economists-understandably-can't be pinned down on an exact number because they can't in good faith provide one. So what's so wrong about being in favor of the size of this bill?

And what's so wrong about mobilizing public opinion in support of this particular bill? If you think this bill is the best that you think your side can get, why wouldn't you go on the offensive against Republicans for opposing it? Or target fiscally conservative Democrats who are waffling on it? How is that selling out to the Obama administration?

Greenwald takes it even further. Apparently acquiescence on the political realities that surround the stimulus package are evidence that liberal groups have "voluntarily relinquished -- their independence." And yet nowhere-and I mean literally nowhere-have I seen anything like support for the Obama administration's decision to maintain the Bush administration's position on the state secrets privilege. Not on blogs, and not by liberal advocacy groups. Greenwald is not exactly afraid to take people on so I'm not sure why he goes with the much reviled "some say/some do this" approach. I read a lot of blogs, and I just don't see that much evidence for the point he's trying to make. Maybe I'm reading just the non-sellouts, but I don't think so. 

People like (presumably) Judis and (certainly) Greenwald, have routinely and harsly criticized Republicans for their willingness to toe the line for whatever the Bush administration wanted, demonstrating aptly the right's lack of principle at times. But Greenwald himself has focused on completely untenable positions that the right-wing has taken that failed to have any impact on the Bush administration, and the lesson we're supposed to take from that is that left-wing groups should do the same? So far no left-wing group has approached the hero-worship of the right, nor have they been willing to participate in frustrating and fruitless demands for action the Obama administration won't take. And this is a bad thing?

I simply don't understand. Or I should say, I don't think these arguments make much sense. Judis' argument is a turnaround of the usual attacks on the "hysterical left"; only this time, they were apparently not hysterical enough. Greenwald has gotten up in arms about liberals giving Obama too much credit and leeway before, so he's just expanding on an already-running thesis. But I just don't see it here. Liberal advocacy groups and bloggers, faced with a difficult-to-understand issue and a stonewalling Republican party, decided to get behind the best package they thought they could get. This is wrong, how? 

Texas No Longer Solidly Republican

Though I suppose you can still count on our state to supply Republican scofflaws, a new Gallup poll indicates that Texas is no longer a solidly Republican state. In fact, only four states are: Utah, Idaho, Wyoming and Alaska. Nebraska leans Republican, and all other states are either competitive (Texas), lean Democratic or are solidly Democratic.

Dead

The NY Times, on the aformentioned death of the "southern strategy":

“I think that’s absolutely over,” said Thomas Schaller, a political scientist who argued prophetically that the Democrats could win national elections without the South.

The Republicans, meanwhile, have “become a Southernized party,” said Mr. Schaller, who teaches at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. “They have completely marginalized themselves to a mostly regional party,” he said, pointing out that nearly half of the current Republican House delegation is now Southern.

Merle Black, an expert on the region’s politics at Emory University in Atlanta, said the Republican Party went too far in appealing to the South, alienating voters elsewhere.

“They’ve maxed out on the South,” he said, which has “limited their appeal in the rest of the country.”

Of course one could argue that this election was a unique event, that disgust with the Republican party and the popularity of Barack Obama in general combined to dramatically reduce the impact of southern whites. But as the article mentions, demographic changes split North Carolina and Virginia away from the South, reducing the electoral value of the South as a whole, and whites in other parts of the country voted for Obama in greater numbers. I do think the race factor is over-played to some extent. It's present (there's really no arguing that it's a factor when Kerry-a less popular figure generally-won more votes than Obama among southern whites) but we should recall that Republicans went beyond race to a relying generally on class, painting Democratic candidates as out-of-touch and effete elitists. Of course this stereotyping was used to appeal to poorer and less educated whites throughout the country; we focus on the South mostly because the appeals to race and class have been most effective there, and because the South has provided a safe and reliable base of electoral votes for Republican candidates. What this election has demonstrated is that appeals to race and class are no longer effective among enough whites outside of the South to make up for the voters that they either turn off or have no effect on, even accounting for the uniqueness of this election. 

This is a welcome development for Democrats, who will no longer feel the need to nominate southern candidates in an effort to manage losses in the South. This is a troubling development for the Republican party, which now must either face moderating its message to appeal to more voters outside of the south. Overall this a supremely positive for our nation, whose national politics will not be dominated by a disproportionate focus on the poorest, most under-educated, provincial and unsophisticated white people in the country. With the death of the effectiveness of either overt or covert appeals to race, our nation can finally move beyond the racial politics that has characterized national elections from the sixties on. 

What then is the future of the South in national politics? If at one time the value of southern whites was over-valued, it may now be that they are under-valued. If Democrats don't even need to consider the deep south in mapping their electoral strategies, their concerns won't be addressed. Even if they elect reliably conservative Republicans and Democrats to Congress in the future, that influence can be outweighed by greater numbers of members from states in New England, the Midwest and the West (as is the case now thanks to this election.) What then is the future of the South? I'm not at all prepared to answer that question, but I'm sure I'm not the only one pondering it.

UPDATE: Naturally, other bloggers are responding to this article with their opinions. I don't quite understand the reaction of Clay Risen at TNR, who says the south isn't waning so much as it's "fissuring":

Across the “Deep South”—South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and northern Louisiana, what the rest of the country talks about when it talks about the South—the map is almost entirely blue. Pretty much all of Texas is blue, too. That means that Obama, even if he didn’t win these states, still did better than Kerry. Instead, the red splotches center in eastern Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Oklahoma, and southern Louisiana; northern Alabama is pretty red as well. (Interestingly, these are places where Democrats tend to do well, historically, on the local and state level.)

What this all points to is not a waning South, but a fissured and rapidly changing one.

To which I respond with a "yeah, but you're missing the point." No, the "South" has never been a unified bloc of white racists. It's just that appeals to the racism and class consciousness of whites was an integral party of the Republican strategy to secure the electoral votes of the deep South, which served as reliable backbone for Republican candidates and left them needing to concentrate solely on states in the midwest and the West (and Florida, which doesn't really count as the South.) But yes, we can acknowledge that the South itself is changing; for example, Dallas County in North Texas (generally an area that historically has more in common with the deep south than say, southern Texas) is now blue, safely and securely. Yes, that undermines to some extent the "unity" of Texas as a safe Republican state, but not by that much; the rest of East Texas voted for McCain in a greater percentage than they did Bush. So Texas was secure for McCain, just as was the rest of the deep South minus areas where there have been shifts in demographics like Virginia, or North Carolina. It simply doesn't matter that more urbanites, more African-Americans and more Hispanics voted for Obama in these states this year than in years past, because the tilt of the state was decided by the white voters that Republicans make overt appeals to. What matters is that other parts of the country are changing (like Virginia, North Carolina, Colorado, New Mexico, etc.) so much so that appeals to the whites in these states no longer work; when you can "only" win states outside of the deep South and still easily win the presidency then yes, the South is marginalized. I don't see how this isn't a fair conclusion. It's true there is some over-simplication in the article; "deep South" is really code for "white voters in the South." And I hardly think that we should conclude that the South on longer has any role in presidential races. Rather, the South's prominence in deciding who Democratic candidates will be and what strategy they will run on, is now much diminished. I think that's a fair conclusion. 

UPDATE: Stuart Rothenberg, discussing whether this election was a "realignment", touches on the issue of the white voter:

If demographics are indeed destiny, then the 2008 national exit poll at the very least raises questions about where the GOP goes from here.

For the first time ever, whites constituted less than 75 percent of the electorate, a considerable problem for the Republican Party given its historical problems attracting minorities. Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) drew just 55 percent of the Hispanic vote in 2004, but Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) drew 67 percent of it four years later — a remarkable showing considering that many of those voters preferred Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) in the Democratic contest and supposedly were resistant to voting for a black candidate.

It's fair to say that changing demographics both in and outside of the deep South have operated to reduce the influence of white voters in the South.

Whither the GOP?

As you can imagine, Republicans are busy licking their wounds and trying to figure out what is in their future after further losses in Congress and Obama's victory. There is much talk of a return to "first principles", such as this by Jeff Flake:

I suggest that we return to first principles. At the top of that list has to be a recommitment to limited government. After eight years of profligate spending and soaring deficits, voters can be forgiven for not knowing that limited government has long been the first article of faith for Republicans.

Of course, it's not the level of spending that gets the most attention; it's the manner in which the spending is allocated. The proliferation of earmarks is largely a product of the Gingrich-DeLay years, and it's no surprise that some of the most ardent practitioners were earmarked by the voters for retirement yesterday. Few Americans will take seriously Republican speeches on limited government if we Republicans can't wean ourselves from this insidious practice. But if we can go clean, it will offer a stark contrast to the Democrats, who, after two years in training, already have their own earmark favor factory running at full tilt.

Second, we need to recommit to our belief in economic freedom. Adam Smith's "The Wealth of Nations" may be on the discount rack this year, but the free market is still the most efficient means to allocate capital and human resources in an economy, and Americans know it. Now that we've inserted government deeply into the private sector by bailing out banks and businesses, the temptation will be for government to overstay its welcome and force the distribution of resources to serve political ends. Substituting political for economic incentives is not the recipe for economic recovery.

This sort of talk is popular now, understandably so. Republicans accurately perceive that their approach to governing-tar Democrats, spend like crazy, cut taxes, start wars, and let the economy tank-has been rejected by a majority of voters. The solution naturally appears to be a return to principles that many Americans can admire and respect that are nonetheless opposed to Democratic principles. What's lacking in these retrospectives of course is any explanation for how the Republicans got to where they are in the first place; what led them to abandon the principles that their party supposedly embodies? An explanation lies in this column by John W. Dean, former counsel to Richard Nixon and author of Conservatives Without Conscience, on why Republican rule is dangerous:

Republicans rule, rather than govern, when they are in power by imposing their authoritarian conservative philosophy on everyone, as their answer for everything. This works for them because their interest is in power, and in what it can do for those who think as they do. Ruling, of course, must be distinguished from governing, which is a more nuanced process that entails give-and-take and the kind of compromises that are often necessary to find a consensus and solutions that will best serve the interests of all Americans.

Republicans' authoritarian rule can also be characterized by its striking incivility and intolerance toward those who do not view the world as Republicans do. Their insufferable attitude is not dangerous in itself, but it is employed to accomplish what they want, which it to take care of themselves and those who work to keep them in power.

Authoritarian conservatives are primarily anti-government, except where they believe the government can be useful to impose moral or social order (for example, with respect to matters like abortion, prayer in schools, or prohibiting sexually-explicit information from public view). Similarly, Republicans' limited-government attitude does not apply regarding national security, where they feel there can never be too much government activity - nor are the rights and liberties of individuals respected when national security is involved. Authoritarian Republicans do oppose the government interfering with markets and the economy, however -- and generally oppose the government's doing anything to help anyone they feel should be able to help themselves.

What is wrong with being an authoritarian conservative? Well, if you want to take the country where they do, nothing. "They would march America into a dictatorship and probably feel that things had improved as a result," Altemeyer told me. "The problem is that these authoritarian followers are much more active than the rest of the country. They have the mentality of 'old-time religion' on a crusade, and they generously give money, time and effort to the cause. They proselytize; they lick stamps; they put pressure on loved ones; and they revel in being loyal to a cohesive group of like thinkers. And they are so submissive to their leaders that they will believe and do virtually anything they are told. They are not going to let up and they are not going to go away."

No they are not. In fact, the right-wing base of the party is now whole-heartedly rejecting the idea that there is any need for change, lashing out viciously at Party moderates who don't agree, and busy promoting Sarah Palin as their prime pick for President in 2012. They have no tolerance for dissent and their poor showing only causes them to further entrench themselves in the notion that what they really need is even more conservative (read, authoritarian) candidates and policies. And as we've learned from Bob Altemeyer (mentioned in Dean's article) authoritarians are not ones to accept evidence that is contrary to their peculiar notions, even evidence that the vast majority of Americans (including conservatives) reject their ideas and basic math which indicates that a party of 28%ers can't hope to win national elections.

Republican leadership can afford no such illusions, at least not if they wish to be elected. But still one must ask, how did things get to this point? And how is this turn of events to be avoided in the future, lest the GOP overplay it's hand again ten or twenty so years from now and find itself the victim of dramatic shifts of public opinion that leave it looking in from the outside? Quite simply 9/11, the event that served as the greatest boon the party, also produced the party's downfall. 

9/11 produced a political climate in the country where many Americans were willing to defer to the leadership of Bush and the GOP. 9/11 led to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the climate of war and the fear of further terrorist attacks gave the Bush administration and a mostly servile Republican leadership the ability to operate absent restraint (a mostly irrelevant Democratic leadership also helped.) Without the check of a legitimate minority party (or where their opposition could be turned back by attacks on patriotism or appeals to the fears of voters) there was nothing to prevent the Bush administration from engaging in the worst aspects of authoritarian rule; ideology pervaded every element of the administration, policy decisions were made based on how it would benefit Republicans at the polls, foreign policy became strident and overtly nationalistic, and dissentors on all sides  had their patriotism (or at least their loyalty to Bush) questioned. 

That era is now at an end, but Republicans cannot hope to return to power without abandoning to some extent the party's authoritarian leanings. Conservatism attracts authoritarians to a far greater degree than does liberalism, but that doesn't mean that the Republican party must be in thrall to authoritarian followers and a leadership that would take advantage of them. Necessarily, this means a rejection of the desires of the right-wing base to simply re-engage in authoritarian politics with more vigor, by nominating someone like Sarah Palin in 2012. Conservatives should look to far more moderate politicians that are personally attracted to the ideals of limited government and traditional morals, not hypocrites and strident moralists. Coming back to power means winning back the voters that were turned off by excessive Republican vitriol and hypocrisy, and only by looking to personable and likeable candidates who are genuine representatives of conservative policies can they hope to provide attractive faces to voters. Absent dramatic events that tar the Democratic party in some manner, Republicans can hope to return to power only by engaging in the long slog of campaigning moderate, likeable candidates. 

Of course, I wouldn't expect a Republican to trust this analysis anymore than I was willing to listen to the "advice" of Republicans to Democrats over the last eight years. Of course, unlike your typical authoritarian Republican, I actually believe that a legitimate two-party system and a contest of ideas is good for the nation as a whole, and I'm willing to accept that the Republican must exist not only as a usefeul check on Democrats (who are also inclined to excesses, if not the most authoritarian of ones) but also as an alternative to voter who find Democratic policies wanting. As a result I'm actually not in favor of a decades of unrivalled Democratic governance, nor am I in favor of the Republican being reduced to a rump of itself former self that represents only the most conservative regions of our country. But whether or not the Republican party can serve as a viable alternative to the Democratic party, depends entirely upon the conservatives who are busy battling over the future of the party and the course that they elect to take. 

"An Aggressive Agenda"

Democrats in Congress are looking to get important problems solved quickly:

Flush with victory built on incursions in the South and West, Congressional Democratic leaders promised to use their new power to join President-elect Barack Obama in pursuing an aggressive agenda that puts top priority on the economy, health care, energy and ending the Iraq war.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who spoke with Mr. Obama by phone on Wednesday morning, said that they had made plans to discuss coordinated efforts for the transition and the new Congress, but that a more ambitious agenda would unfold next year.

“Our priorities have tracked the Obama campaign priorities for a very long time,” Ms. Pelosi said at a news conference where she cited the economy, health care, energy and the Iraq war as topping the agenda.

She said Democrats were talking with the Bush White House about a potential $61 billion economic stimulus that could be approved in a lame-duck session.

But Ms. Pelosi said Democrats could open the 111th Congress in January with efforts to adopt measures blocked by President Bush, including ones to expand the State Children’s Health Insurance Program and embryonic stem cell research. She said Democrats had no choice but to chart a centrist course. “The country must be governed from the middle,” she said. But Democrats on both sides of the Capitol were just beginning to digest the new faces in their expanded caucuses.

As Nat-Wu bluntly asked in an email "What's the bullshit talk about governing from the center?" I happen to think Pelosi is trying to game expectations more than anything (which are very, very high after the Obama win) but without a doubt there's still a class of pundits on both the left and the right who think that Democrats can only get done and maintain their political power by emulating Republicans to a large degree and governing as if America were still in it's heart of hearts a nation that leans to the right despite a wholesale rejection of the GOP.  And yet strangely, polls support Democrats on any number of issues, including the war, health care, labor policies, the environment, and so on. Without a doubt, Democrats are hampered in tackling some of these issues by the sheer scale of the economic downturn, but no Democrat in his or her right mind should think that they should be beholden to outdated notions held by some pundits about what Americans do and do not want. As Paul Waldman notes in the Think Progress post I like to above, "success builds upon success." Democrats will not advance their own interests or win further elections by governing in fearful anticipation of a phantom negative reaction by the public. They will win by demonstrating they can solve the most pressing problems faced by our nation, and by showing initiative, bold thinking and political courage. 

Obama's Keys to Victory

What were the keys to Obama's victory last night? I have my ideas. Here they are (though not in order of importance because honestly, I couldn't say which had more impact than others, at least not enough to rank them):

• The economy: Obama experienced some "luck" in this regard. What was horrendous for us was great for his campaign, as the rapid acceleration of the global financial meltdown absolutely swamped the McCain campaign. McCain, already percieved as weaker on the economy than matters of national security and foreign policy, was at a loss for what to do when the crisis broke. In what is probably his second greatest gambit after picking Palin for VP, McCain rushed back to D.C., only to appear mostly irrelevant to the bailout process. Instead of undoing Obama's natural advantage as a Democrat on the economy, McCain only damaged his own standing. 

• George Bush and the GOP: Republicans are quick to spin this election as a referendum on eight years of George Bush. The election wasn't entirely about Republican ineptitude, but any Republican candidate was going to start out behind thanks to the massive shift in the public mood against the GOP. It only hurt McCain that he was forced to play to the right-wing base in order to shore up support for his candidacy; in doing so, he only confirmed to many voters that he wouldn't be substantially different from what they'd already seen for eight years.

• The Death of the "Southern Strategy": It's hard to say with any confidence what this election means to the electorate as a whole, except in one sense; it's safe to say that the "southern strategy", the practice of pandering to racist voters in the South that has been carried out by every Republican Presidential campaign since Nixon, is dying if not already dead. The Republican party played this strategy to the hilt. Not only did Republican campaigns wink and nod to the racists in their party, they came to identify the white, working-class voter (who just so happens to be racist, or at least deeply suspicious of minorities) as the "ultimate American" voter and perpetuated a culture war that attempted to define their supporters as "real" Americans and Democrats as latte-sipping "elitists." But the Republican party was trapped by its own game, forced to nominate an unqualified governor for Vice President because the base of the party, now comprised of these white voters, could only relate to someone like themselves; anti-intellectual, under-educated, confidently ignorant, overtly religious, and white. Unfortunately, time and demographics have caught up to the Republican party. Voters comfortable with these tactics now tend to reside largely in the south and the plains states; what only two years ago was a region that was ceded in advance by Democrats, is now overnight the only safe region that Republicans can count on. If the Republican party continues to identify itself as primarily the party of these voters and continues to value the votes of it's poorer whites above other groups of voters, it will become at best a regional party incapable of fashioning a coalition sufficient to win national election.

• Sarah Palin: Speaking of playing to the base...McCain's greatest gambit was his selection of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his running mate. The move was a blatant pandering to the right-wing base of the Republican party and although it energized the party faithful, it turned off swing voters and right-leaning Dems in droves. The McCain campaign sensed-probably rightly-that a safe, conservative campaign wouldn't be enough against Obama, and they had a serious enthusiasm gap to deal with. Unfortunately for them, the enthusiasm Sarah Palin generated could not hope to make up for the negative effect it had on the McCain campaign as a whole.

• The McCain campaign: Often, it appears that McCain's worst enemy was himself, or at least, his campaign advisors. McCain's advisors could never quite decide what they wanted to sell to the public. Part of the problem was they could never quite settle on what issue would damage Obama the most, largely because no attacks that they mounted gained any traction (for example Iraq, which was largely negated as an issue in the campaign.) At the same time, those attacks failed to gain traction in part because the campaign never gave them time to work. The Bush campaign in '04 settled on one strategy; identify Kerry's weaknesses and attack them relentlessly from beginning to end. But the McCain campaign could never quite figure out what they wanted people to like least about Obama; his associations, his ideology, his lack of experience, his anti-American leanings, etc., etc. Indeed it was a laundry list of things voters were supposed to reject, but the only thing McCain apparently asked them to embrace was his "experience." It wasn't enough. The McCain campaign was also extremely undisciplined. In the weeks leading up to the election we heard McCain's advisors make pronouncements about how they couldn't win if the election was about the economy as well as throw each other and Palin under the bus in anonymous quotes in major news articles. None of this gave Americans the impression that the McCain campaign had any idea what if was doing, and I think in large part Americans attributed this failing to McCain himself; his inability to pick quality advisors reflected on his judgment. That contrasts with....

• The Obama Campaign: It is generally agreed that Obama and his advisors ran a nearly flawless campaign. There were no serious gaffes, crises were dispatched hastily, advisors who appeared in the media were disciplined and on message, the grassroots organization was light-years beyond anything we've seen to this point, the 50-state strategy was bold and effective, and the message to the public was short, memorable and convincing. Obama credited his two most senior advisors in his speech last night, David Axelrod and David Plouffe, and he was right to do so; the two men engineered the kind of campaign that Joe Trippi could only dream about. The Obama campaign was essentially the anti-Rove campaign; instead of the 50+1 approach, Obama's campaign fought for votes in every state of the union. The landslide victory, and the political implications thereof (a mandate far beyond anything Rove ever hoped for) are the direct result. Of course, it would be criminal to overlook the literally millions of people who contributed or volunteered on Obama's behalf. The Obama campaign may have known exactly how to harness that power and enthusiasm, but it was these volunteers, many young, some old, all fired up for Obama, that delivered the votes to make this victory a landslide. 

• Barack Obama: Of coure, Americans did not turn out to vote for Obama's campaign; they turned out to vote for Obama. They are not likely to regret their choice. Obama demonstrated through the two-year long campaign that he was cool, level-headed, possessed of great equanimity, poised, well-spoken, intelligent and thoughtful. The reason many of the McCain campaigns attacks failed to work against Obama is because each time Obama appeared in the public eye, he demonstrated attributes in opposition to the ones McCain tried to paint him with. At no time was this more evident than in the flap over Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Obama proved to America that he was a different kind of politician when he turned the crisis, which threatened to derail his campaign, into an opportunity to confront the issue of race head-on in one of the most masterful political speeches of the modern era. In his speech Obama was direct, considered, and sincere. He treated the public as adults who could handle a frank discussion about race from a national figure, and he was not wrong. America has rewarded him in turn.

And so those are my thoughts. But I'm sure there are many things I'm leaving out. Your comments are welcome.

Registrations in Texas Up

The polls look good for Obama and Democrats in general, but the real under-reported story is new voter registrations and how that may influence the November election. Burnt Orange Report highlights some very good numbers for Texas counties and Rick Noreiga in general. This continues the trend, evident since the highly exciting primary race, of a jump in voter registrations for Democrats and this fact is almost certainly going to be the key factor in both expected and unexpected successes on Nov. 4th. 

Registrations Up

Numbers that can only help Democrats:

Democrats have gotten more new registrants in all states for which Scott could find data except for Alaska. In some cases, they have outregistered Republicans by considerable margins. Highlights (numbers are voters added between the first and second dates):

Colorado, Jan-July 2008: 13,352 Republicans, 66,516 Democrats, 23,437 other.

Florida, Jan.-June 2008: 77,196 Republicans, 209,422 Democrats, 26,100 other.

Iowa: Jan. - Aug. 2008: 7,515 Republicans, 69,301 Democrats, -62,922 other.

Nevada: Jan. - Aug. 2008: 1,230 Republicans, 51,547 Democrats, 7,550 other.

North Carolina: Jan. - Aug. 2008: 20,363 Republicans, 171,955 Democrats, 123,605 other.

Oregon: Jan. - July 2008: -13,349 Republicans, 122,518 Democrats.

Pennsylvania: April - Aug. 2008: 289 Republicans, 98,137 Democrats.

And in Texas?

Gary Scharrer reports on some very encouraging news on the Texas Politics blog. Texas voter registration is near record levels.

By late Friday afternoon, election officials had already tallied more than 13 million registered voters. The voter registration record of 13.1 million was set for the 2004 presidential election.

Mail delivery of voter registration cards over the past few days have come in boxes weighing 20 to 30 pounds.

How many cards?

"Quite a few," according to elections officials, who don't stop to count them.

They have hired temporary workers to process the voter registration cards.

Of course the presidential race is affecting this but it is also being enabled by massive efforts by the coordinated campaigns in the major counties. And I don't doubt that increased voter registration helps Democrats as voters who typically vote our way are unregistered in greater numbers (minorities, students, etc).

Good news.

It's On!

The Democratic National Convention in Denver Colorado kicks off tonight. Right now I'm watching Michelle Obama speak and although she's not the exciting of speakers, she seems very sincere and earnest and likeable. As near as I can tell it's on all networks and cable channels right now, but if you want some really in-depth coverage be sure to check out C-SPAN as well as some of our Texas Progressive Alliance bloggers, fellow Dallas-site Shawn Williams at Dallas South Blog and the fellas at Burnt Orange Report.

This is the Internet!

Via John Cole, take a pass on your dinner at Chili's for one night and donate that money instead to this guy. Help him make history. Seriously.

Bipartisanship, Schmipartisanship

It's good to see that in the spirit of "bipartisanship", the kumbaya-ish unity of opposing political forces that is so highly touted among political pundits and supposedly craved by the public, both Democrats and Republicans can come together to pander to voters by sending them money. Here's a sample of the cringe-worthy (but bipartisan!) quotes from the article:

President Bush hailed "the kind of cooperation that some predicted was not possible here in Washington." House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) used the words "bipartisan" and "bipartisanship" 10 times in a brief appearance. "Many Americans believe that Washington is broken," said House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio). "But I think this agreement, and I hope that this agreement, will show the American people that we can fix it."

They're sick and tired of the bickering, and they want to see us get some things done," said Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.).

See, everyone wins! Only not really, because members of Congress have come together to enact a stimulus package that won't really stimulate the economy but does have the political side-effect of bribing taxpayers into thinking that the government is doing something about the looming recession. And that's what counts for a win in D.C. these days.

The truth is, nobody really wants bipartisanship. What they really want is for the other side to give in to what they want, and each side excoriates the other for "partisanship" when they don't. But the American people want partisanship. They want their side to win, and they want their policies enacted. Only the legendary independent/moderate voter wants "bipartisanship" because supposedly that's the measure of progress in this country; not what policies get enacted, but that any get enacted at all.

Not me though. And not partisans for the other side either. I want the Democrats to stomp down legislation in Congress when the legislation getting passed is atrocious (unlike this example, where in the spirit of bipartisanship they will give President Bush exactly what he wants.) Bipartisanship? Count me out. I want to win.

No Action on Contempt

Time for new Democratic leadership?

Right On

I'm with Fish; "independent" voters are way overrated. The only voters who are independent are those who are too contrary or stubborn or ignorant to admit that they actually line up well with one party or another. People who generally vote one party but are leaning towards another this time are one thing, but the fact that someone doesn't ever know if they're going to vote Democratic or Republican until the last minute is just beyond ridiculous to me. Given the vast difference between the leading candidates of the two major parties, such foolishness is an indication to me of incredible political ignorance or naiveté. Why we should prize such ignoramuses is beyond me.

Moving On?

Are Democrats over their national security hang-up? I think the answer is probably yes.

The Shame of the Democratic Party

John Cole et al reveal that some key Democrats have neither shame, nor principle. Despite being briefed in 2002 on some of the "enhanced interrogation techniques" being used on terrorist detainees, none of them had any objections to make at the time...but have gleefully used the torture issue as a bludgeon against the Bush administration. One of those briefed includes Nancy Pelosi, who in the run-up to the mid-terms last year said this regarding the torture bill then winding its way through Congress:

Even if you want to forget about a sense of decency and just say in terms of reciprocity: We don’t want this to happen to our people so were not doing it to anybody else. Separate and apart from the fact that there are international standards for this, and we have a constitution that we want to honor.

And on top of this, and this is the most important part, in terms of having justice be done for 9/11. It’s five years later they have no convictions. They won’t have any convictions that will be upheld by the Supreme Court unless they follow certain principles. And so not one person directly responsible for 9/11 has been convicted and/or punished. Because they have this sense that they can operate outside the law outside of any regime or convention that relates to human dignity.

Where did they get this sense from? Oh...members of Congress who gave them every impression that they either wouldn't make a big fuss about it, or they'd pass bills to legalize it. While at the same time using the torture issue for political grand-standing, of course.

There's one thing you have to hand the Republicans, and that's that they at least have the balls to stand by their exceedingly unpopular positions. Democrats, on the other hand, seem incapable of taking a firm stance on issues even when they're supported by a majority of the American people. So we get the worst of both worlds: we have Democrats who firmly believe in torture but are too weasily to say so, or we have Democrats who are firmly against torture but are too weasily to say so.

Remind me again what we voted for in 2006?

By the way, right-wing bloggers are now busy roasting Pelosi for her duplicity. I say let them, as finally the right and the left have something in common...loathing of the Democratic leadership.

Another Day...

...another failure by the Democratic Congress. If the Democrats standing in the way of this think we're not keeping track, they are likely to have another thing coming in the primaries leading up to November 2008.

Moving On

One may be inclined to wonder why we liberals/Democrats are constantly afraid that Democrats are going to manage to lose elections despite vast public opinion advantages over Republicans. This is not an irrational fear, as articles like this one about the flap over the MoveOn "Betray Us" ad makes clear. Here's the relevant excerpt:

Many Democratic strategists were privately furious at the group for launching an attack on a member of the military rather than Bush, arguing that it gave Republicans a point on which to attack the Democrats and to rally around the administration's war policy.

Adam already wrote about the horrendously stupid Senate resolution "condemning" MoveOn for the ad, a resolution that many Democrats voted for. Why is this a problem? Well, the three of us had a short email exchange about this morning. Nat-Wu asked if anybody was going to write about the article, so I thought I'd simply repost the thoughts I shared in email with them regarding the excerpt above (warning, indelicate language is used):

You know what? I worried about that at first too, and I was pretty pissy about that ad. Guess what I realized? That no average American GIVES A RATS ASS ABOUT AN AD. Polls say the same damn thing they said BEFORE Patraeus got up there before Congress, and the Republicans are just digging themselves a deeper an deeper hole by ignoring the fact that Americans were not swayed by Patraeus and attacking MoveOn. So what do these genius Democratic "strategists" do? They advise Democratic politicians to turn on MoveOn, making sure that they story STAYS IN THE NEWS and is a distraction from putting fire on the Republicans, and they hand the Republicans a victory by turning on their own group. So to that I say, congrats "strategists" for once again not understanding the mind of the average voter.

As you can see, I'm not too happy about this. Neither are Adam and Nat-Wu, for exactly the reasons above. I don't doubt for a moment that some Democratic politicians are sincerely upset about the ad because they think it crosses a line. I thought so too. But Democrats, incapable or unwilling to display the strategic discipline that Republicans exercise, rushed to condemn an ad put out by an organization that represents their most fervent supporters, ensuring as I said both that the story wouldn't die and also that some Republicans would be chuckling in private over how easily they can get the Democrats to turn on their own base. As Adam already said, Republicans didn't fall all over themselves to condemn the Swift Boat ads, which were considerably more egregious. Why? Because they knew the ads helped more than they hurt.

It's quite clear the public sentiment on the war remains unchanged, and Republicans are wrong to think that whining about an ad is going to distract voters from the war; if anything, it makes them look more out of touch and clueless. This is plainly evident and yet what to Democratic politicians do? They condemn the ads, rushing to stave off Republican attacks that aren't sticking anyway while pissing off their supporters in the process and looking like political cowards to their supporters and to more independent voters. They were not forced to do this. They chose to do it, because they are playing a game instead of standing on principle. Many Democrats, most especially Beltway strategists and analysts, have yet to figure out that Democrats stand to gain more by taking a hard stand that may be slightly unpopular, as opposed to waffling and flip-flopping to avoid an unpopular stand, only to come off looking like cowards.

This is why we worry.

UPDATE: Here's Kevin Drum, channeling Matthew Yglesias and offering his own thoughts. First Yglesias:

I completely agree with the dread DC Establishment that calling General Petraeus "General Betrayus" was dumb. That said, I'm staggered by the amount of emphasis that people inside this town are placing on this. One virtue of having moved to the Beltway is that I can tell you, the reader, a thing or two about the mood here and that while you might think the reverse is true, the truth of the matter is that the left-of-center establishment is being restrained in terms of expressing its absolutely fury at MoveOn over this. People seem to really think that this was not merely a misstep, but a huge blunder of world-historical proportions.

And Kevin:

Matt thinks this view is nuts, but I guess I'd point out something else. (Aside from the fact that I'm glad I don't live in the Beltway and can therefore ignore stuff like this if I want.) If there's anything interesting to be drawn from the reaction to MoveOn's ad, it's the Republican reaction. I mean, they've practically been slathering over this ad for two straight weeks now. Am I the only one who thinks this shows a desire to change the subject so palpable as to be almost desperate? You can practically feel the flop sweat rolling down their cheeks. These guys want to talk about anything other than the underlying reality of what's going on in Iraq. Anything. It would be kind of creepy if it weren't, you know, actually important.

So, Matt confirms that the Beltway insiders have no clue what the average American think of this ad (that being, not much.) And Kevin points out how desperate Republicans are to change the subject from the war to this stupid ad. Which makes the Democratic capitulation on this issue all that more stupid, short-sighted and ridiculous.

New Poll on the President

Unsurprisingly, his numbers are worse than ever:

Since December, the percentage seeing Bush as too rigid has increased 12 points, with the most significant change among Republicans. Just after the 2006 midterm elections and the release of the 79-point plan from the bipartisan Iraq Study Group, 55 percent of Republicans thought Bush was willing enough to change course in Iraq; in this poll, 55 percent of Republicans said he is not.

Bush's overall approval rating equals its all-time low in Post-ABC News polls at 33 percent, with 65 percent disapproving. Fifty-two percent said they "strongly" disapprove of his job performance, the highest figure of his presidency and more than three times the 16 percent who strongly approve.

Three-quarters of Republicans approve of the way he is handling his job, but just one in 10 Democrats and three in 10 independents give him positive marks.

The war has been the single biggest drag on the president's approval ratings.

Thirty-one percent give him positive marks on handling the situation in Iraq, which is near his career low on the issue. The last time a majority approved of the president's handling of the war was in January 2004.

The poll also highlights the negative numbers that Congress is getting. But before any pundits go about decrying the downturn in the public mood as a result of "partisan polarization" they should take note of this:

Congress's approval rating has declined over the past three months because self-identified Democrats have soured in their assessment.

Many would like Congress to assert itself on Iraq, and about half of poll respondents said congressional Democrats have done "too little" to get Bush to change his war policy. Democrats are especially eager for more action from their party's lawmakers: 61 percent of Democrats and 69 percent of liberal Democrats said not enough has been done to prod Bush on the issue.

This means that Congress' numbers will inevitably come up if Congressional Democrats take a harder stance on President Bush, especially on the war. This is not good news for Republicans, but it is good news for the rest of us, provided Democrats pay attention to the polls and not Beltway pundits living in the 90's.

UPDATE: Kevin Drum puts it more succinctly than I:

78% think George Bush is too unwilling to change policies in Iraq.

55% support legislation to withdraw from Iraq by next spring.

55% trust congressional Democrats on the war (only 32% trust Bush).

62% think Congress should have the final say about when to withdraw troops.

49% think Democrats have done too little to get Bush to change his Iraq policy (only 17% think they've done too much).

Note to columnists: this is the mainstream of U.S. opinion. People don't like the war, don't trust Bush to prosecute it, and don't think Democrats have gone overboard in opposing it. Got that?

I doubt they do, as sensible as such a conclusion is.

Democrats and the Troops

I meant to write about this back in May when I first read it, but I think Spencer Ackerman's article in the Washington Monthly on why the troops won't thank Democrats for ending the war should be read by just about everybody who has anything to say about "the troops" and the war:

On the merits of withdrawal, the Democrats have it right. The politics of it, however, remain complicated. It’s become common among Democrats to argue for withdrawing from Iraq in the name of the troops.

Haunted by Vietnam, Democrats are determined to express support for the troops. This is admirable. The truth of the matter, however, is this: many troops in Iraq, perhaps even most of them, want to stay and fight. That doesn’t mean that we should stay in Iraq any longer. It does mean, however, that if Democrats want to bridge the divide between themselves and the military—an effort further complicated by their opposition to the war—they’re going to have to recognize that arguing in the name of the troops isn’t going to work.

Why is this so? Because as Ackerman explains, most of our soldiers don't want to be pulled out. As difficult as things have gotten in Iraq, as little progress as has been experienced, many of them still feel that they can turn things around in Iraq. And there's nothing wrong with that. Like all disciplined, well-trained and highly motivated soldiers, they have no desire to admit defeat, and are unlikely to concede it the need for withdrawal anytime in the near future. In fact, as Ackerman points out, the morale of the troops has improved since the beginning of the surge. And why wouldn't it? More troops and arms are being brought to bear against the enemy, and I think most of the soldiers know that this is the best possible effort we can put forth against the insurgents, al Qaeda, and the militias. And they want to see it through.

The problem of course is that although our troops are highly trained, they also generally share one view of the war: that of the soldier on the frontlines (so to speak.) They view the conflict from a military perspective. This is not the only legitimate view of the war, as Ackerman explains:

Front-line experience, however, can’t definitively speak to the broader question of how a war is going overall. This is especially true in a counterinsurgency, where conditions vary across the country. “For attacks to be down [in Baghdad] may not mean anything,” explains Andrew Bacevich, a retired Army colonel and international relations professor at Boston University. “It’s indicative of the enemy adjusting, probably, and shifting attacks elsewhere. There’s been an increase of violence in Diyala, with all that implies. It doesn’t necessarily mean the surge is failing, but we shouldn’t be so quick to assume that positive indicators in Baghdad mean the surge is succeeding.”

Soldiers may see that their unit is accomplishing its objectives and feel a boost in morale. They may search a house and find a weapons cache, for instance, or they may track down a crucial member of a terrorist cell and take him into custody. Frustratingly, as obvious and long as the list of tactical successes may be, absent dramatic political improvements they rarely coalesce on their own into a change in a counterinsurgency’s overall fortunes. And these aren’t questions soldiers can afford to concern themselves with. “Once you’re engaged, eyeball to eyeball, you tend not to think about those strategic issues at all. You’re trying to shoot and shoot back,” says retired General Merrill McPeak, a former Air Force chief of staff and Vietnam veteran. “Your entire focus becomes tactical.”

That of course doesn't mean that soldiers don't understand the strategic implications of the war. Rather, their personal experience offers some sort of counter-balance to the dire news that you and I see everyday. Unfortunately, repeated successes on the local level cannot translate into a defeated insurgency. Why? Because there aren't enough soldiers to go around; every group of insurgents driven off, every cache of weapons seized, every captured terrorist leader, will only be replaced by one, or two, or five or ten more of the same. Were we to persist in the war in Iraq for another five years, our soldiers would probably score success after success, and we'd only be further away from peace and stability.

Unfortunately, thanks to the Republican Party's complete abrogation of its duty to execute a responsible national security policy while in power, Democrats are now in the position of having to end a war that most troops are not ready to concede is over. And so there are a couple of things that bear remembering:

All of this leads to a simple point: while the perspective of those fighting the war needs to inform any debate, it can’t determine that debate. “We don’t hire front-line soldiers to make strategic judgments,” says Jeffrey Record of the Air War College. “The larger political issues here are well beyond the visibility and responsibility of individual soldiers and even battalion commanders.”

...Democrats have made the decision—rightly, I think—that withdrawing from Iraq is the least bad of many bad options. But they shouldn’t kid themselves into thinking that a majority of the troops doing the fighting agree with them. For soldiers like Lieutenant Wellman, this will be hard to accept. As he told me of war doubters back home, “I don’t want them to just support the troops. I want them to support the mission.” This matters, because pretending that in ending the war they’re doing the troops a favor hurts Democrats politically. They risk looking condescending, and, worse, oblivious—which has the broader effect of undermining public trust in the Democrats to handle national security. More basically, it does a disservice to those who serve. For soldiers who are optimistic, being told that the war can’t be won is bad enough. But to be told that politicians are doing them a favor by extricating them from a mission they believe in is downright insulting.

Democrats would do much better to speak honestly: to acknowledge that many fighting men and women want to stay in the battle and would be willing to do so for years longer. There’s nothing wrong with saying that, nor in emphasizing that this is part of what makes us so proud of our military. We wouldn’t want soldiers who were unwilling to fight to the bitter end. Elected officials, however, have to judge what they believe to be in the national interest, and that means calling an end to the occupation of Iraq.

And so Democrats should. Talking about "supporting the troops" by ending the war isn't going to work, because most of the troops don't want that kind of support, and it's just a silly reversal of a silly statement without substance. Many Democratic politicians feel genuine anguish over the soldiers who have died or been grievously wounded by this war, and there's nothing wrong with talking about that anguish. But at the same time, Democrats should not try to pass themselves off as the "real" party of "the troops" because it's not true. Democrats should applaud the willingness of the troops to continue to fight at great cost to themselves, but they should also be forthright in saying that despite the heroics of our troops, there's nothing left that they can do in Iraq to defeat the insurgency or tamp down the ever-growing civil war. Democrats cannot hope to be taken seriously on the issue of national security again by either the public or the troops if the only policy they become known for is full withdrawal for the sake of the troops...nor would they deserve to be taken seriously if that's all they had to say. Principled arguments are being made everday by Democrats for why the current mission needs to change, and what alternatives to that mission we should engage in. That's the right approach to take, so long as Democrats avoid condescending to our soldiers in the field.

Democrats Can Fight Islamofascists Too!

In a poll designed by Fox News to set off the triggers in the little authoritarian minds of their followers, Democrats still come out ahead (via Oliver Willis.)