Newshoggers.com

15 Spines Found

By Cernig

The 15 vertebrates of the Senate:

Biden (D-DE), Boxer (D-CA), Brown (D-OH), Cantwell (D-WA), Dodd (D-CT), Durbin (D-IL), Feingold (D-WI), Harkin (D-IA), Kerry (D-MA), Lautenberg (D-NJ), Leahy (D-VT), Menendez (D-NJ), Sanders (I-VT), Schumer (D-NY), Wyden (D-OR).

The rest are either too scared of being called softies or too enamoured of the chance to wield the power of the new FISA bill themselves. Ian Welsh, writing at FDL, has the rest of what you need to know.

Anyone for Sanders in 2012?

Value of Safe Seat Primaries?

By Fester:

Two years ago, in April 2006, I projected a Democratic House caucus in which I that it would be an effective governing majority.  This week's losses on FISA capitulation and the ineffectiveness of following up on Scott McClellan testimony concerning the highly probable systemic obstruction of justice in the Plame case reinforce that basic point.  I had laid out a decision checklist on backing aggressive primary challengers for 2008 in order to seek better Democrats or at the very least more pliable from a progressive angle Democrats.  I think the three major primary challengers to Democratic incumbents that netroots activists funded met my criteria.  However these challengers have not appreciably changed the incentive structure for Democratic Congresscritters and I am curious if one element of my decision matrix is wrong:

Does the incumbent come from a safe district with a high Democratic PVI advantage?

I am questioning the value of restricting the challenge list to safe seat Democrats.  Chris Bowers has the revised and expanded Bush Dog list of Democrats who voted for FISA immunity, amnesia and repeal of significant elements of the Church reforms as well as voting to fund Iraq with no strings attached.  These Democrats come from districts that range from R+18 to D+17.  The traditional techniques would be focused on the highly Democratic districts on the theory that  losing any seat would be unacceptable and areas such as Prince George County, Maryland will not elect a Republican no matter what.  This system gives a pass to swing and tough seat Democrats.   Unfortunately that is enough seats to allow for very bad laws to go through while our intelligence is insulted.  It has not worked in changing the incentive structure of tough votes. 

In 2006 we did not know if the Democratic House leadership would run the House under the majority of the majority system or the majority of the whole system.  Majority of the whole greatly favors conservative Democrats as they can credibly threaten to defect on any deal and create a second option with the Republican caucus.  We have seen this conservative governing coalition dominate the Iraq war debate.  Giving conservative Democrats from tough seats a pass enables Republican favored policies to pass the House.  We need to rethink this.

High Republican PVI districts that are represented by Democrats, especially newer Democrats who do not have long standing relationships to the area require a Democratic incumbent to line all of their ducks in a row and hope the GOP is locally screwed if they are to be re-elected.  This means the liberals within the representative's winning coalition must be willing to work their tails off for a candidate who will routinely screw them over at the local and national level.   

If we assume that all office holders base their votes on some calculus of personal principal/policy preferences and political calculation, liberal/progressive netroots activists can change the formulation of the political calculation so that soft principal votes become more calculation votes in order to maintain the liberal wing of the electoral coalition. 

Assuming Democrats pick up double digit House seats this fall to improve the cushion, the threat of losing one to five R+10 or worse seats because of liberal opposition may be a worthwhile trade-off.  As a defensive action, electing and enabling conservative Democrats was a necessary first step but it is an insufficient step to changing the political calculus and trends within American politics.  It is time to find better leaders either through new candidates supported by new nodes of power, or by changing the existing political power matrix.  And challenging conservative Democrats in conservative seats from the left will force change even at, or more truthfully, because of the highly probable net loss of seats that this type of action would force. 

Zombie Bush will live forever

By Fester:

Paul Krugman in his column today notes that the Bush administration tax cuts and squanderous fiscal policy has produced a political poison pill that greatly reduces future option space:

I realized that the tax cuts enacted by the Bush administration are, in effect, a fiscal poison pill aimed at future administrations. True, the tax cuts won’t prevent a change in management — the Constitution sees to that. But they will make it hard for the next president to change the country’s direction.... Anyway, back to my main theme: looking at the tax proposals of the two presidential candidates, it’s remarkable and disheartening to see how effective President Bush’s fiscal poison pill has been in restricting the terms of debate.

And why be shocked at this realization. It is the same pattern of behavior that is driving the negoatiations for the Status of Forces agreement in Iraq --- lock the next admininstration into Bush's prefered course of action by creating institutional inertia behind a horrendous policy set.

And why be shocked at the SOFA --- it is the same pattern of behavior that we have seen with the changing criteria of Republican judges since the Reagan Era --- find reaonably pliant and pliable young judges without a whole lot of paper trail but the right right wing credentials and seat them on the court for thirty to forty years.

All of these steps are attempts to create gatekeepers and to charge economic, political and military rents even after the policy's support has collapsed. And it is a pattern of behavior that is to be expected.

The relevant question is how to deal with these rent seeking opportunities? I have little faith in the Democratic Congress to stand for its prerogatives by insisting that the SOFA as a full fledged security guarantee is and should be voted upon as a treaty in the Senate. I have little faith in the Congress in standing for the Constitution as Glenn Greenwald so ably demonstrates today.

I have little faith that these poison pills will be spat out and crushed in time's dust.

Character and the Courts

By Fester:

Character is what you do when no one is watching, or what you do when there are multiple potential paths.  It is the moments of urgency, of confusion, of chaos and crisis when rational decisions are not able to be formed or full decision processes and loops run that character becomes critical as that informs the option space and choice space of individuals and groups.  It is at that point where the default assumptions become nakedly clear.

After 9/11, we as a country despite the best efforts of some, revealed an ugly character as we panicked and forgot about the differentiating factors that we like to believe makes the US as a whole exceptional.  We tortured, we profiled, we hired out mercenaries, and we launched a war of choice of neo-colonial conquest.  We failed ourselves in order to give a slight salve of liberty.  Our political and press process failed miserably in tolerating and encouraging these behaviors.  The oh so serious pundits and politicians who one would usually suspect of knowing better caved in and said that we had to torture, we had to invade, we had to suspend the Constitution as this was an unimaginable and deadly threat, while forgetting about the Soviet's 20,000 nuclear weapons.  Some of this was from fear, and some of this was from cold political calculus that fear inspired lashing out was what the median voter wanted.  We failed. 

Now that times have cooled down, this hysteria is receding.  The politicians who should have known better has been defeated for the Democratic nomination while someone who did what they could is being nominated and favored to win the White House.  The courts have been fighting a valiant action to protect their prerogatives by defending the Constitution against hysteria. And today's decision to grant Habeas Corpus by overturning portions of the fear inspired MCA has several great lines that assert what we should be and what we need to be (stealing these excerpts from TalkLeft:)

Security subsists, too, in fidelity to freedom’s first principles. Chief among these are freedom from arbitrary and unlawful restraint.....

Their access to the writ is a necessity to determine the lawfulness of their status, even if, in the end, they do not obtain the relief they seek. ...

The laws and Constitution are designed to survive, and remain in force, in extraordinary times. Liberty and security can be reconciled; and in our system they are reconciled within the framework of the law. The Framers decided that habeas corpus, a right of first importance, must be a part of that framework, a part of that law....

These are assertions of first principals of American exceptionalism. We should be strong enough and tough enough to believe in our principals even when those principals look to be difficult and expensive to follow.  And by following those principals we advance our meta-narrative that we respect people, we respect the law, and that we play fairly.  And by advancing this narrative through real and expensive signaling actions, we would have undermined the central Bin-Laden narrative of a clash of civilizations where the Muslim world is defended by a band of strategically aggressive but scrappy fighters against a ruthless, imperialistic hypocritical United States.  It is this battle of narratives that we need to win in order to make us more secure.  Our principals are strong when we act upon them in times of crisis and danger, and we need to remember that. 

Headlines, politics and self-inflicted wounds

By Fester:

Here are some of the headlines and ledesI have seen in the past few days:

Unemployment rate jumps to 5.5% in May

Forex - Dollar slides as more Americans lose jobs

US Jobs Fall For Fifth Consecutive Month

New claims for unemployment benefits have risen steadily,

Continuing claims fell by 16,000 in the week ended May 24, dropping to 3.09 million.

But the four-week average of continuing claims rose to 3.08 million, up 15,250.

The four-week average is at its highest level since March 2004.

A year ago, continuing claims numbered 2.52 million.

"A majority of Americans say they are worse off financially than a year ago, marking the first time in Gallup's 32-year history of asking the question that more than half of Americans give this pessimistic assessment."

I could go on for a while and pull up headlines and quotes concerning home equity destruction, tightening credit, low to no savings rates, higher gas, food and medical prices, but at some point this is overkill.  The story is simple --- most people are feeling pinched and economically insecure.  Costs are increasing at the same time uncertainty (which is expensive) also increases while the safety nets are very thin and not too reliable.  This would be a great time for Democrats to do something that has a high short term multiplier effect, is cost effective, and targets people who need temporary assistance while assuring others that the safety net is there for them.  This action would be to extend unemployment benefits for up to 13 weeks in most states, and potentially 26 weeks in the worst off states.  Simple, straightforward, and it should be a non-controversial policy to anyone in the party.

And what is the last headline I saw on:

Extension of Benefits For Jobless Is at Risk

House Democrats are likely to drop a 13-week extension of unemployment insurance benefits from a major spending package that includes continued funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan...

The bill would provide $165 billion to fund the two wars into the next presidency, along with billions of dollars more for domestic programs.

The unemployment insurance provision is one of several measures likely to be cut in an effort to win the support of the Blue Dogs and to increase the opposition to a veto that President Bush has threatened over several aspects of the bill

Let Bush veto the bill.  The politics and optics play out great for Democrats --- appease the get out of Iraq in a reasonable timeframe DFHs who make up 60%+ of the American electorate and most of the Democratic core electorate, point of the veto of the GI Bill expansion, and note that John McCain supports Bush.  This is a three-fer.  And then resubmit the same damn bill next week.  Hardball is not a bad thing when it can create a clear and distinct contrast. 

But no... the Blue Dogs are willing to fund an unpopular war but not take care of their constiuents... sometimes we deserve to fail miserably because of ourselves.... 

 

Lucy Went home

By Fester

One of the things that I appreciate about the Petreaus testimony is Lucy went home and took the football with her.  There were no promises to draw-down due to recent successes in the next couple of months; instead fairly vocal and clear opposition to any drawdown past the baseline force of fifteen brigades and a failure to define what winning or losing would look like.  That is a massive concern because if you don't know where you are going, it is damn tough to get there.  But the F-U punt that has been a standard in the Bush-Iraq playbook has not been called this week.  Operation Kick the Can has been successful --- when leaving=losing, Bush will not recognize himself as a loser (despite 80% of the country thinking that he is one). 

I'm just going back to this because as I was writing the previous post, I saw this post from June, 2007 from Cernig and it reminded me of how often Charlie Brown got ready to kick the ball only to break his coccyx.

Look, Mom, they're promising that elusive pony again!

It could be next spring before U.S. troops in Iraq can hand over areas gained in their latest offensive to Iraqi forces and start to draw down, a top American commander said on Friday.

It's just weeks since U.S. commanders were telling everyone that September would tell us whether the surge was working and if it wasn't then it was time to think about withdrawal. Then September wasn't going to be soon enough to tell. Now, it seems, next Spring will be when we can tell. But only if something that has never happened before and doesn't look any more likely to happen now actually, miraculously, occurs.

"The key piece will be the follow-on operation of Iraqi police, Iraqi army and coalition forces," Odierno told reporters at the Pentagon by video link from Iraq.

He said the Iraqis' ability to hold areas cleared by U.S. soldiers would determine when the United States could reduce troop levels, which have increased this year by some 28,000 to more than 155,000.

"I think if everything goes the way it's going now, there's a potential that by the spring we would be able to reduce forces and Iraqi security forces could take over," Odierno said.

Operation Kick the Can has worked so the surge has been successful on its political goals despite being a massive failure on its strategic-geopolitical goal of creating a bubble of temporary security gains in order to facilitate massive political reconciliation and dealmaking.  Instead we get delegitimizing of the Westphalian state concept Sunni Arab militias, Kurds getting ready for war with Turkey, and a massive itnra-Shia scrum where the populist nationalist beat our man and his heavily advised/trained/supported Army/militia with fancy uniforms. 

Ahh progress..... I wonder what backsliding would look like....