The US political merry-go-round

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/updates/breaking-2014-republican-wave/

I haven't really been following the midterms, but just wanted to share some general concerns. It just seems like Groundhog Day to me. The incumbents screw up (real or perceived, but the more interesting question is: how was their performance vs. the hypothetical alternative?), supporters are demoralized and fail to mobilize compared to the fired up opposition, and the other party sweeps into power.

If it's a divided gov't, nothing gets done (and it's so unlikely for one party to control 60 Senate seats). If one party has a monopoly on the Executive and Legislative, then they invariably overstep their "mandate", attempt to reverse the recent progress of their rivals, and make their fair share of screw ups too. Then the whole cycle repeats in 2-4 years, and the American people (and the world) are stuck in this futile cycle. For example, the GOP has tried to repeal Obamacare dozens of times, even when they didn't have the Senate. Now that they do, I am sure they will try again, even though it won't get past the Obama veto. And all the while infrastructure, education, climate change, immigration, etc. initiatives just languish while the problems get worse.

The only exceptions to this pattern seem to be (hopefully) rare, unifying security events like Pearl Harbor or 9/11 (Bush's GOP gained seats in 2002), or an especially bullish sustained bubble economy combined with terrible behavior by the opposition legislators (Clinton's Dems gained seats in 1998).

I'm not sure what can be done about this in the short term. Obviously the usual ideas surface: a more active and educated electorate, voting rules reform, a truly popular vote, longer terms and/or term limits, less unlimited dark money in politics, more time on politics and less on campaigning/fundraising, more competitive districts, and frankly better parties and candidates who can behave like gentlepeople and put country first. Clearly our representative gov't is dysfunctional when a majority of the public want tougher gun control, but our leaders are much less amenable. Same goes for bipartisanship, climate change, pot, gay rights, taxes on the rich, even Obamacare (when you peel away the misinformation).

http://billmoyers.com/2014/08/14/a-study-in-plutocracy-rich-americans-wield-political-influence-the-rest-of-us-dont/

Election comments

First of all, weed in WA and CO!!! http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-na-pn-marijuana-votes-20121106,0,3992024.story?track=rss

I'll just comment on the election and politics here, not necessarily on the merits of each party's philosophies and policy agendas.

I can't remember the last time I felt so proud of the American people. Personally, I think this is bigger than 2008 considering the current political environment. Voters rejected the GOP's schizophrenic candidate, as well as their policies of exclusion, obstruction, wealth/power inequality, obsolete beliefs, and scapegoating the wrong people for America's problems.

And ironically, the electoral college is now working in the Dem's favor! Romney almost won the popular vote but got wiped out in electoral votes. But now there are "structural" advantages for the Dems in terms of electoral vote distributions, similar to what the GOP enjoyed from Nixon to Bush Sr.

We worried that Cit. Utd. would change politics forever, and I do believe it had a noticeable effect. But Obama's campaign is the most sophisticated and effective grassroots, micro-donation, new media machine we've ever seen (and it's a platform that they can hopefully transfer to future candidates and continue to have an advantage vs. the GOP on). In the end, that beat out the Adelson, Koch, Trump, and Rove led money and misinformation blitz. Outside groups have to pay a higher fee for TV ads than campaigns, so $1 of money raised by Obama2012 equaled about $1.50-2.00 of Super PAC money. So once again, the GOP miscalculated. Everyone (but Nate Silver) predicted that the young people, poor, and minorities (who turned out in record numbers for Obama in 2008) are now disillusioned and unlikely to show up for Obama like that again. Well they did, and even more so for Latinos. 

But still, about as many people voted for Romney as Obama. A lot of white males, older folks, and the wealthy. Maybe the GOP will realize that America is not like "Leave it to Beaver" anymore and those groups are not enough to guarantee a win each time, but I doubt it. They chose Ryan over Rubio or a woman (and he didn't even deliver WI). Well, the Ryan pick was kind of forced by the nomination of Romney - clearly not the GOP's first choice. I guess Christie wanted to wait until Obama was termed out to give it a shot, probably a smart move. 

So did the "core strengths" of the GOP actually cause them to lose here? It gained them money but cost them votes, and fortunately votes still determine our leaders. The Tea Party, ties to big business, and pro-Israel lobby became liabilities. Most Americans do not feel directly threatened by Iran, do not believe that Israel will be attacked any time soon, and care more about domestic issues. Our foreign policy is far from comfortable, but Osama is dead, America is tired of war, and the focus on these narrow issues to placate their big donors and the hawks didn't persuade many voters who weren't already sure votes for Romney.

How about big business? A private equity mega-millionaire who outsourced jobs to China and didn't support the auto bailout may not be the most convincing messenger for the conservative solution to economic growth. Despite the latent displeasure with Obama over the economy, the "supply side" argument didn't gain traction among non-core GOP voters. And it's not really a great strategy to persuade disillusioned independents and liberals to vote for you when you accuse half the country of being lazy bozos with their hands out (the veterans, elderly, marginalized?), and when you accuse a key growth demographic (Latinos) of stealing jobs and undermining our recovery. 

And then there's the Tea Party. They energized the GOP and thumped the Dems in 2010, but became a liability now. The are too regressive, intolerant, exclusive, and hateful - just not very pleasant people you want to associate with. A lot of presidential elections is about getting casual or infrequent voters out for you. These folks have more centrist, timid views - which is of course anathema to the TP. They aren't winning friends and turning off a lot of key voters with stuff like:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/07/opinion/friedman-hope-and-change-part-two.html?ref=opinion&_r=0

Koch money behind union-busting in Wisconsin

Guess who are behind Gov. Walker and his legislation to kill collective bargaining for public workers in Wisconsin (not all workers of course, cops and firefighters are exempt because screwing them is bad PR, even for GOP standards)?

Yep, the Koch brothers again (scroll down to end for a refresher if you like).

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/22/us/22koch.html
http://www.kqed.org/a/forum/R201102210900

The author below has an interesting take on why the Democratic Party no longer represents working people. After the '60s, there was a cultural split between the "new left" of Baby Boomer anti-war, feminist, pro-environment, civil rights folks, and the FDR-type traditional unions and org's that donated to Dems and expected pro-labor legislation in return. Due to the George McGovern debacle, gradual dismantling of union power, and decline of US manufacturing, Dems candidates turned to business as their new lifeline, and they were all too happy to fill the void. Now it didn't matter which party was in power for them. So now is it any wonder why Clinton and Carter have done more for the rich than Bush Sr. and Ford? And what do we have as a result? Real wages for the non-rich have stagnated while costs for college/health care have soared, states and pensions are bankrupt, infrastructure and schools are falling apart, and progressive taxes, worker protections, and various regulations are being rolled back.

Despite its many faults, postwar America was a great nation and a "shining city on the hill" as Reagan put it. But the rich killed the dream, shook us down, gave little back in return (except for oil spills and oil wars), and now we are on a path to "banana republic, third world" wealth gap status (Kristof, Huffington). If the working classes actually had a voice in Washington (and like it or not, labor unions were the best available medium), instead of a virtual monopoly by rich corporatists, then maybe the shining city wouldn't have lost so much luster. Surely collective bargaining causes some corruption and inefficiency. People suffer because of that, but not nearly as much as the suffering due to the rich's excesses (wars, speculation bubbles, eco-disasters, layoffs, etc.). And let's not forget that the concessions won by self-serving labor unions actually improved life for all middle class workers and families. Those people are the real America, not the "corporate citizens" like Goldman and BP that Washington serves.

Koch, Walker, and others claim that unions are bankrupting states and companies, so they must be eliminated in order to restore fiscal responsibility. Well those org's would have more money to cover their negotiated OBLIGATIONS to workers if they didn't give it all away as tax breaks, dividends, and bonuses. Look what our leaders are trying to cut to control the deficit now; it disproportionately hurts the poor and working classes. Sure they killed that GE engine project (Boehner is serious about budget cuts except for pork in his own state), but it should have never existed in the first place. Of course tax hikes are absolutely third-rail, but there's no talk about ending subsidies to big oil and corn, or closing foreign bases either. Budget cuts may be necessary and painful, but we should spread the pain to everyone, not leave the most privileged exempt.

http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/02/income-inequality-labor-union-decline

Big unions have plenty of pathologies of their own, after all, so maybe it's just as well that we're rid of them. Maybe. But in the real world, political parties need an institutional base. Parties need money. And parties need organizational muscle. The Republican Party gets the former from corporate sponsors and the latter from highly organized church-based groups. The Democratic Party, conversely, relied heavily on organized labor for both in the postwar era. So as unions increasingly withered beginning in the '70s, the Democratic Party turned to the only other source of money and influence available in large-enough quantities to replace big labor: the business community. The rise of neoliberalism in the '80s, given concrete form by the Democratic Leadership Council, was fundamentally an effort to make the party more friendly to business. After all, what choice did Democrats have? Without substantial support from labor or business, no modern party can thrive.

Here's why this is a big deal. Progressive change in the United States has always come in short, intense spurts: The Progressive Era lasted barely a decade at the national level, the New Deal saw virtually all of its legislative activity enacted within the space of six years between 1933 and 1938, and the frenzy of federal action associated with the '60s nearly all unfolded between 1964 and 1970. There have been exceptions, of course... And the courts have followed a schedule all their own. Still, one striking fact remains: Liberal reform is not a continuous movement powered by mere enthusiasm. Reform eras last only a short time and require extraordinarily intense levels of cultural and political energy to get started. And they require two other things to get started: a Democratic president and a Democratic Congress.

In 2008, fully four decades after our last burst of liberal change, we got that again. But instead of five or six tumultuous years, the surge of liberalism that started in 2008 lasted scarcely 18 months and produced only two legislative changes really worthy of note: health care reform and the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell. By the summer of 2010 liberals were dispirited, political energy had been co-opted almost entirely by the tea party movement, and in November, Republicans won a crushing victory.

Why? The answer, I think, is that there simply wasn't an institutional base big enough to insist on the kinds of political choices that would have kept the momentum of 2008 alive. In the past, blue-collar workers largely took their cues on economic policy from meetings in union halls, and in turn, labor leaders gave them a voice in Washington.

This matters, as Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson argue in one of last year's most important books, Winner-Take-All Politics, because politicians don't respond to the concerns of voters, they respond to the organized muscle of institutions that represent them. With labor in decline, both parties now respond strongly to the interests of the rich—whose institutional representation is deep and energetic—and barely at all to the interests of the working and middle classes.

This has produced three decades of commercial and financial deregulation that started during the administration of a Democrat, Jimmy Carter, gained steam throughout the Reagan era, and continued under Bill Clinton... At nearly every turn, corporations and the financial industry used their institutional muscle to get what they wanted, while the working class sat by and watched, mostly unaware that any of this was even happening... Organized labor has become a shell of its former self, and the working class doesn't have any institutional muscle in Washington. As a result, the Democratic Party no longer has much real connection to moderate-income voters. And that's hurt nearly everyone.

"The White House has squandered the greatest opportunity to change the country and political landscape since Reagan."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/drew-westen/obama-finally-gets-his-vi_b_429232.html

A very powerful piece of writing that I wish wasn't so accurate. I don't know which meltdown was worse: the Clinton campaign in 2008 or the Obama administration now. As an ABC journalist said, how can a community organizer lose the people's support to the irresponsible, lying, rich-serving GOP?

Obama has been too reactionary and un-aggressive. If he approached other issues like he approached the bailout, then maybe we would get somewhere. It's not like he's not giving full effort, but obviously it's not working. His campaign was innovative, focused, forward-thinking, and agile - everything his administration isn't. But that shows that campaigning and realpolitik are totally different worlds, and just because he is good at the former doesn't mean squat. Bush was a great campaigner too. Obama was supposed to be The One. Health care will probably be his Waterloo. He deferred to Reid and Pelosi too much, pushed imaginary bipartisanship too much, and squandered the summer that was fairly crisis-free (his biggest non-economic worry at the time was what, the Somali pirates?). "Health care" can't be the mission of his presidency (it's big but not enough), especially when he already anointed his campaign as a "movement". He needs a vision for a better America, like FDR and Reagan had. He needs leadership. Really this stuff should be obvious to anyone who got a B in Intro to Poli Sci.

He didn't get his own house in order. How can these few Blue Dogs destroy a super-majority? You didn't see centrists like Snowe and Specter railroading the extremist Bush agenda. As a friend said some months back, corporate interests run antithetical to democracy and progress. Their servants in both parties will see to that. Dems capitulated during the first Bush term and lost Congress anyway. The country suffered for it. I think the GOP took note of that and maybe labeled Obama as "too big to succeed". But the country is in a different place now, and the Congressional impasse is hurting us worse than our belly-flop in Iraq maybe. If this government was back in the 1930s, they would have extended the Great Depression another decade (if WWII never occurred). I feel really down actually, worse than when Kerry lost. At least Kerry was always the underdog, and didn't squander a huge advantage. Do you think it's too late for the Dems? Not that the GOP can field any compelling leaders for 2012, but where do you see the rest of his presidency going?

Other comentators are saying to liberals that this is our fault for pinning our progressive aspirations on a centrist who is further to the right of Hillary. We wanted him to be the liberal crusader he just isn't. Maybe it was just GOP nonsense, but didn't they say that Obama had one of the most leftist voting records in his brief time in the IL legislature and Senate? Well the source below shows that Obama's Senate voting record made him #16 in 2005, #10 in 2006, and #1 most liberal in 2007. So is he a centrist or a liberal or what? He might as well be centrist (or GOP) because he hasn't done much for his liberal base. He's already told the Latinos that he's delaying immigration reform until health care is passed. He didn't fight to get abortion restrictions out of the health bill. He hasn't done much for the poor (Pelosi mostly spearheaded the S-CHIP expansion), though he tried to get 30M more of them insured by 2014. He has really disappointed the anti-war Dems (and just imagine how more belligerent he would need to be if Abdulmutallab succeeded). Many gays feel like he took their vote for granted, and he's too scared to touch "don't ask don't tell" this early and repeat the Clinton mistake. Well, Obama probably figured these folks wouldn't vote for a GOP no matter what he did. But on the other hand, if he didn't treat Wall Street and the Pentagon right, that would cost him in 2012. He's also losing idependents' support like it's going out of style.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/news/2008/01/obama_ranked_most_liberal_sena_1.html

I don't think real change comes from a centrist who is risk-averse. Obama did promise to bring America together too, and it's only gotten more polarized (not all his fault obviously). Much of that is GOP backlash against him (some of it racist-inspired I think) from his many opponents. Maybe Obama doesn't know who he wants to be either. Clearly he is a different politician than 2 years ago, but of course the pressures of the office change a man. But if politics were a baseball game, clearly the Dems just blew a 5-run lead in the 8th inning.

http://www.kqed.org/epArchive/R201001200900