The politics of (foolish?) optimism

Joe Biden today:

While Biden made several references to the protesters as he criticized McCain, President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, he told the crowd of about 1,000 that they need to unite with Republicans.

"We can't moan about the politics of division unless after this election's over, God willing we win, we reach out to the very people out in the outer parking. I mean literally, not a joke," Biden said. "I know you find some of that obnoxious, but ... we've got to end this. Somebody's got to be big enough to stand up and end it."

We'll see if being grownup can "end it." Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Fox News, tens of millions of dollars of wingnut welfare, calling Obama a socialist Muslim -- and having many people in your party believing it, calling a progressive income tax rate socialism, the most obstructionist Senate in the history of the United States, the popularity of the radically divisive radical Sarah Palin among the Republicans -- how can you put an "end" to all this and still have enough focus left to run the country? Many of those people think they are at war -- not just with "islamofasicts," but with liberals and any other Americans who don't agree with them. How, exactly, does Biden propose to put an "end" to that?

I'm hoping Biden isn't that naive. I'm hoping he and Obama are laying the groundwork to be able to say, "We've tried hard to work with these folks but they aren't interested in anything besides namecalling and obstructionism." And I'm hoping they are able to pull this off without looking weak and foolishly optimistic in the process.

A dose of Sunday evening pessimism

The view from under a bus:

Take a look back at the two presidential victories engineered by "the Architect." In 2000, Bush lost the popular vote after leading in the polls for months, ultimately winning the electoral vote because of a contested 537-vote margin in Florida. In 2004, he won reelection with 51.3 percent of the popular vote — the lowest percent of any victorious Republican incumbent in American history. The narrow margins of these victories are signs of strategic weakness, not strength.

Rove is a smart man and a student of history. He knows that a Republican president in wartime should be able to win reelection almost without campaigning. Richard Nixon won 49 states in a similar circumstance, and he did not have Bush's engaging personality, a massive domestic attack that briefly united the nation or a stiff patrician opposition candidate like John Kerry.

Or reach for a more immediate parallel: Bill Clinton closed out his administration with a job approval rating in the mid-60s, even after being impeached — nearly three times as high as President Bush's recent record low of 22 percent. That was not a measure of Americans' approval for Clinton's personal behavior, but it was a clear endorsement of his centrist policies.

They aren't being very subtle, are they? They're even willing to throw their beloved oracle M.C. Karl under the bus in the name of centrism and bipartisanship. These very same people were heralding Rove as a genius who was thisclose to establishing a "permanent Republican majority" in 2004; now they are all but saying he blew that election, and should have won big -- which is true. It's just that saying it now doesn't mean much. The time to have pointed this out was back then, when Rove was actually doing all this polarizing. Back then, all we heard was how Democrats needed to be "bipartisan."

At any rate, I actually agree with some of this -- Obama will have to govern more or less from the center during his first term. He isn't going to have 60 Dems in the Senate, and even if he did, you've got Lieberman and Landrieu and Nelson et al to Quisling things up. And there are serious problems out there he has to address now, problems that don't easily fit into a partisan agenda. But the media people demanding Centrism Now creates a playing field where one side is forced to start at the center and the other side is allowed to start at the far right. You don't end up with true centrism that way -- instead, you end up with a situation where a 3% raise in the marginal tax rate on people earning >250k/year is "socialism." Obama brought some of this on himself with his absurdly cautious platform, but the real problem is the endless stream of articles and talking head bloviations we are going to see like the one above, and the mindset behind them.

Because of this I don't have high hopes for an Obama administration in the policy arena -- certainly not the first term, when he's going to try to be as inoffensive as possible. Maybe after he's "rescued" the economy and safely won re-election in 2012, he'll take a gamble and go for something big like universal healthcare, but not before then. In the meantime, he's going to be what W. said he would be during the 2000 campaign: Bill Clinton without the blowjobs. For the Villagers, that will be just fine, just as it was in 2000. That nothing substantive will have been achieved, well, life for them is pretty good. They have their health insurance. They have their six figure incomes. As long as problems are for other people, there are no problems.

A Dose of Sunday Morning Optimism

Optimism, not that Obama will win, because that's a forgone conclusion in my mind, but that he'll actually get something done once he does win. Winning is just the beginning, to go all Jesse Jackson.

Dumbassery

The brilliant right wing psychologist "Dr. Helen":

I've been thinking. If Obama is elected, maybe in lieu of a tip I should leave a note like the following:

HOPE AND CHANGE FOR AMERICA: Spreading the Wealth Around.

In lieu of a tip, $_____ has been donated to the Re-Elect Obama for President Campaign. Thank you for supporting the man and the movement that are bringing America together!

If enough people leave notes like this, I'm sure it will galvanize waitpeople everywhere in support of The One!

The overt nastiness and passive-aggressiveness of it are par for the crazy conservative course, and it's commonly accepted wisdom that many people who intensively study psychology do so because of their own ... issues. But the amusing thing here is that as policy this is simply absurd.

"Dr. Helen" believes in some kind of "Galtian" power that allows the superior people -- like her -- to beat sense into the little people -- anyone who believes in radical concepts like social services or a progressive tax schedule -- by withholding their capital and services, letting the economy collapse, and then waiting until everyone comes crawling to her and the rest of the superior people begging them to set things right. In fact what would happen is that the country would turn violently left if the economy collapsed, and the fantastic boogeyman she has created of Barack Obama in her mind would become a reality. By the time society came to its senses and begged her and her elite friends to fix it, she, and they, would be dead. Her bitter, petulant plot would bring about the very thing -- a leftist society -- she nominally abhors. And such psychologically twisted, intellectually mediocre people, like "Dr. Helen" and her husband, are considered serious intellectuals by many on the right wing internets, and their influence is feared by the dreaded "liberal media."


I should point out here that ordinarily my first thought would be that something so stupid had to be a joke. Except she goes on about this Galt stuff on a regular basis -- far too regularly for this to be some kind of joke. And as a psychologist, even a half-assed one, she would know that many of the people who read her stuff are even less bright than she is, wouldn't get "the joke," and go out and do what it is she's been "thinking."

Silly seasons and idiot winds

Rashid Khalidi puts a name to what has become electoral politics in America.

"I will stick to my policy of letting this idiot wind blow over."

The thing about wind is that it's seasonal, and always comes back.

Take Off Your Indian Braids

Watching McCain struggle in his home state of Arizona should be a warning to John Kyl, reliably one of the most conservative members of the Senate, that times are changing in the state. Kyl won re-election in 2006 by a relatively narrow margin of 54-46. The state has elected and re-elected a Democrat to the governorship, and kicked conservative gasbag congressman J.D. Hayworth to the curb in 2006. Barry Goldwater's home state isn't what it used to be, which means people like Kyl had better watch the extremism and partisanship. His lifetime rating from the American Conservative Union is a heady 97%, which puts him "up" there with sober and moderate men like Jim DeMint and Tom Coburn. Neither one of those men could get elected to office in anything but a deep red state; I don't see why Kyl should be able to in rapidly purpling AZ. Kyl is 66 now, will be 70 in 2012 when he's next up for re-election. Maybe he'll decide it isn't worth the effort to change, and walk away from whatever it is that keeps people coming back to Congress for more. It'll be interesting to watch his voting record in a new Congress, with a new president and, judging by recent history, in what amounts to a new state. And if I were a President Obama looking for someone on the other side of the aisle to pressure now and then, I'd see if Kyl, despite that 97% rating, was willing to play ball. He might just want to do a Strom Thurmond or Robert Byrd and keep at it until they have to wheel him away.

John Hood's "fist"

This almost defies description:

Only, in this passage Obama revealed precisely why he is vulnerable to such charges: he can't seem to tell the difference between a gift and a theft. There is nothing remotely socialistic or communistic about sharing. If you have a toy that someone else wants, you have three choices in a free society. You can offer to trade it for something you value that is owned by the other. You can give the toy freely, as a sign of friendship or compassion. Or you can choose to do neither.

Collectivism in all its forms is about taking away your choice. Whether you wish to or not, the government compels you to surrender the toy, which it then redistributes to someone that government officials deem to be a more worthy owner. It won't even be someone you could ever know, in most cases. That's what makes the political philosophy unjust (by stripping you of control over yourself and the fruits of your labor) as well as counterproductive (by failing to give the recipient sufficient incentive to learn and work hard so he can earn his own toys in the future).

Government is not charity. It is not persuasion, or cooperation, or sharing. Government is a fist, a shove, a gun. Obama either doesn't understand this, or doesn't want voters to understand it.

But the bolded part tells you all you need to know about the conservative view of government. It's a "fist." That "fist" can be used to beat the hell out of hapless third world countries, or it can be used to steal money from deserving citizens, and give it to the undeserving. Government can play no other role for the aptly named John Hoods of the world. Is it any wonder that a political party run on a world view like this is utterly inept at governing?