Primaries 101

First caught by Sullivan. Good stuff.

Sen. Lautenberg and Rep. McCarthy write a really dumb-ass column together...

Here is the actual headline in the piece o' crap Huffington Post today. Mind you, not the headline that makes you click on the story, but the actual headline:

Tell President Obama: Stop the NRA From Making Our Laws.

And the gist of the piece is?

The National Right-to-Carry Reciprocity Act (H.R. 822) would allow gun owners to carry a concealed firearm across state lines even if they weren't issued a permit by that state. That means Texas Governor Rick Perry could decide who can carry a concealed weapon in your state -- even if they have a criminal record that your state would consider a barrier to owning a gun.

This gun industry bill recently passed the Republican-controlled House of Representatives, with a little bit of Democratic help as well.

Americans of conscience who believe in protecting public safety should join us in asking President Obama to issue a veto threat to this ridiculous bill now, before it goes even further in Congress.

We have a petition, at www.StopHR822.com, to send President Obama a strong message from regular Americans across the nation that we will not let the gun manufacturers make laws that benefit them at the risk of public safety.

Click here immediately to call on President Obama to veto H.R. 822 -- we can't let this bill go any further.

Uhhh, excuse me Senator Lautenberg, Democrat of New Jersey...and Congresswoman McCarthy, Democrat of New York.

It strikes me you really should be going after to the people who would actually helped pass (and thus stop) said legislation.

Oh yeah...THEY WOULD BE CALLED SENATORS AND REPRESENTATIVES!!!

Look, these are two of the good guys when it comes to Gun Control. But it strikes me that people who are in a position to actually do something about bad legislation in its tracks have real nerve demanding President Obama do their damn job for them.


McCarthy is outnumbered.  She's got an excuse.  But in case you've forgotten, Senator...this hasn't passed the Senate yet, and there are things you yourself can do to stop this thing from happening.  You work within the single most dysfunctional branch of Government.  A Single Senator has the ability to grind any piece of legislation to a halt.  So how about putting a hold on the legislation?  How about organizing a filibuster?


How about you do your damn job before you go bitching to President Obama.

The American Jobs Act...this ain't over yet! (VIDEO)

Memo to Liberals: Being taken seriously involves actual work

From Ta-Neishi Coates' piece: Liberal Sorcery:

The other day Tavis Smiley made the point that president's job plan didn't go far enough. I'd bet a lot of progressives concur and I think pushing the point is healthy, legitimate, essential and fair. But it's also healthy, legitimate, essential and fair to then ask, "What would make more progressive legislation possible?" That line of thinking has to confront the kind of statements and action by Democratic Senators who evidently feel little or no pressure from their progressive base.

One of the reasons why I've harped on the "flying while brownish" series is because I think liberals are much more comfortable attacking whoever seems to hold the most power, and much less comfortable examining the power of the "weak," as well as the power that they, themselves, wield. Power confers responsibility. In evading the notion that citizenship in a democracy confers power, you also evade the notion that it confers responsibility. It's comforting to believe in a narrative of liberal "betrayal," to argue that the game is rigged in such a way that the Hippie-punchers always win.

It's also pretty cynical.

Tom Carper [mouthing off that the best Jobs bill is a bill that reduces the Long-term deficit] from the comfortable environs of blue Delaware is a failure of Team Commie to be regarded as serious political force. People who talk of primarying Obama need to pick smaller targets--and thus elicit bigger results.

But being taken seriously involves actual work. It means a poverty tour that doesn't just bark (Obama the black mascot) but bites (voter registration in swing districts.) If you don't like the current iteration of America, you need to remember that you are America. The failure to build a more progressive America isn't merely a testimony to dastardly evil, it's a testimony to the failure of progressives.

Matt again:

If you're a progressive and you feel that the political system isn't doing what you want, it's misguided to look at this as a personal failure of elected officials. It's, if anything, a personal failure of you and people like you. Justice and equality doesn't just happen because it's nice, people need to make it happen. If it's not happening, then its advocates are failing.

Somehow we got in our head that the Civil Rights movement happened because Martin Luther King was a really nice guy. We don't really talk about the movement as an actual force, as applying force. We don't think about what SNCC was really trying to do when they were risking their lives to register voters in the delta. When we think about people trying to kill them we think about evil, but we should think about power and fear.

Let me make my stance clear, in case it isn't already. I love Liberalism. I love its ideals.

Liberals, on the other hand...

"What is it about this president that has stripped away the veneer of respect that normally accompanies the Office of the President?" (VIDEO)

First Richard Wolffe asks "the" question (video below):

The interesting question is: What is it about this president that has stripped away the veneer of respect that normally accompanies the Office of the President? Why do Republicans think this president is unpresidential and should dare to request this kind of thing? It strikes me that it could be the economic times, it could be that he won so big in 2008 or it could be, let’s face it, the color of his skin. This is an extraordinary reaction to a normal sequence of events.

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The complete minute by minute tick-tock can be found here at TPM:

Roger Simon, Politico, putting said the tick-tock to prose:

The White House was well aware the president’s speech would conflict with a planned Republican debate sponsored by POLITICO and NBC to be held at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, Calif. The debate would be broadcast live by MSNBC, CNBC, Telemundo and live-streamed by POLITICO.

Yet the White House did not see this as an obstacle. “With all due respect, the POLITICO-MSNBC debate was one that was going on a cable station,” the White House source said. “It was not sacrosanct. We knew they would push it back and then there would be a GOP debate totally trashing the president. So it wasn’t all an upside for us.”

And, at first, things seemed to fall into place.

At about 10 or 10:30 a.m. on Wednesday, White House chief of staff Bill Daley called House Speaker John Boehner and asked that a joint session of Congress be assembled the following Wednesday night. The White House viewed Boehner as a political opponent, but not an enemy and the call was cordial, even pro forma considering such a request had never before been refused.

And, according to the White House source, Boehner said “okay” to Daley’s request for the Wednesday evening date. (Asked for comment, Boehner’s press secretary, Brendan Buck, said he had nothing to add to his statement of Wednesday that read in part: “No one in the speaker’s office - not the speaker, not any staff - signed off on the date the White House announced today.”)

Then things quickly unraveled. It turned out not everyone was as sanguine as Boehner with the notion that a Democratic president was going to step on a Republican debate.

At 11:55 a.m. Wednesday, the White House tweeted the news about the joint session. “And then Rush Limbaugh beat Boehner up,” the source said.

The conservative talk show personality was in his familiar state of high dudgeon. “This is a pure campaign speech and to give it the imprimatur of a speech before a joint session of Congress, there’s no way, he doesn’t deserve that,” Limbaugh said. “Boehner’s got to say no. Now, whether he will, I have no clue.”

A number of Republicans in the House and a few in the Senate did have a clue and they told Boehner that while they would allow the joint session – it was hard not to for both historic and political reasons – the timing had to be on their terms, which meant it could not conflict with the Republican debate.

At which point Boehner’s office announced that Boehner had never agreed to the Wednesday date, that Congress did not get back into session until 6:30 p.m. on that day, that various votes had to be taken, that security had to be arranged and Obama should push his speech back a day to Thursday.

Which just happened to be the evening the Green Bay Packers were meeting the New Orleans Saints in the NFL season opener. Which meant Obama would have to move his speech up an hour or so before the kick-off at 8:30 p.m.

The White House was not pleased. In reality, it believed, Congress really had never gone out of session, a parliamentary move that blocked Obama from making recess appointments. “And they had to arrange security?” the White House source scoffed. “As if they couldn’t do that! This was a political thing, a tea party thing, a Rush Limbaugh thing. They were all giving Boehner gas.”

The White House did not want to give in and look weak, but what was the alternative?

An Oval office speech instead?

“You can’t speak for 40 minutes from the Oval Office,” the source said.

How about the East Room?

“He’s going to speak to an empty East Room with just the Teleprompters and staff there? No,” said the source

So it had to be in the House of Representatives, which the Republicans control. “But we couldn’t go if they didn’t let us come,” the source said. “You can’t hold the speech in the lobby or in the parking lot. And you’re not going to get network coverage if you hold it at George Mason University.

“After a month of world chaos, the setting had to match the topic. And you don’t get any better setting than a joint session of Congress.”

In the end, the White House felt it had no choice but to give in on the date, and Obama sent an email to his supporters with the subject line: “Frustrated.”

“It’s been a long time since Congress was focused on what the American people need them to be focused on,” Obama said in the email. “I know that you’re frustrated by that. I am, too.”

Obama said he was going to put forward “a set of bipartisan proposals to help grow the economy and create jobs” and he was “asking lawmakers to look past short-term politics and take action on that plan.”

It was, perhaps, not the friendliest message, but the White House was not in a friendly mood. Some Democrats were attacking Obama for once again “caving in” to Republicans, though others thought that it was an inconsequential matter.

The White House is viewing it as very consequential, however. “It is a big deal,” the source said. “It shows the House Republicans will do no outreach, nothing.”

And who does the White House believe was really behind treating the president so shabbily?

“At first, I didn’t think it was Boehner, but his caucus,” the source said. “But maybe not. Maybe it is him.”

Steve Benen:

By agreeing to Boehner’s preferred day, the White House at least prevents a prolonged argument about process. Because Washington rules dictate that there must be a “winner” in every dispute, the Speaker gets to gloat this morning, but the fact remains Boehner still looks small and petty, picking an unnecessary fight. That he claimed to be speaking “on behalf of the bipartisan leadership and membership of both the House and the Senate,” when he clearly was not, only makes him look slightly worse. If President Obama values being seen as “the adult in the room,” this little mess reinforced the perception.

But that doesn’t make yesterday’s developments any less ridiculous. If Americans wanted a responsible Congress, ready and willing to act in the nation’s interest, and able to work constructively in response to critical challenges, they made a tragic mistake in November 2010. Yesterday’s largely inconsequential fiasco will fade away soon enough, but it’s symbolic of a larger problem: voters elected far-right children to run the legislative branch of government.

Ezra Klein:

Obama’s speech will achieve nothing. It will go nowhere because it has nowhere to go. A speech can rally the base, and maybe even temporarily change the topic in the news. But it can’t change the fundamental fact of politics right now, which is that the two parties disagree on the most profound question in Washington. It’s not: How do we fix the economy? It is: Who should win the next election?


So long as Republicans and Democrats disagree on that, there will be no significant cooperation on substantive issues. Boehner simply will not cut off his party’s candidates at the knees, especially its presidential contenders, by handing Obama a major economic accomplishment. Because he controls the House of Representatives, that means Obama -- and, by extension, the U.S. -- is not going to get a major economic accomplishment.

Almost everyone in Washington understands this. The interest in the president’s speech is just a function of the fact that people who discuss politics and policy for a living need to seem like we’re doing something through the long summer months. The administration needs to look like it’s acting to create jobs, the media need to appear to be reporting news, the pundits need to generate opinions about it all.

This is the part of the column where, as a pundit, I lay out my three-point, politically implausible plan to turn the situation around. This is where I tell the president to fight harder, or take his message directly to the people, or fire up the lethargic Obama for America organization. This is where I remind the Republicans that they supported tax cuts as stimulus all through the last decade and even into 2009; where I beg them to put country before party; where I warn them that everything they are doing unto the Democrats today will be done unto them tomorrow. This is where I summon history to show how FDR or Reagan or Truman broke a similar logjam.

But such exhortations -- and I am guilty of writing variations on these many times over -- are pointless today. The facts are what they are. And what they are is depressing and unlikely to change.

Boehner didn't have the votes...so Nancy Pelosi stepped up and saved his @#$#....

From David Corn:

When the voting began on the controversial—and ugly [1]—debt ceiling bill in the House of Representatives on Monday, Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), the Democratic leader, did not know how many votes House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) had for the measure that had been crafted by President Barack Obama and the Republicans. Boehner had not reached out to her to make certain that the crucial legislation designed to prevent a potentially disastrous US default would be approved. When Boehner "went to the table"—brought the bill to a vote—he "had no idea" how many votes he had, Pelosi says.

The speaker, as it turned out, did not have enough Republican votes to pass the bill—only 174—and he had made no arrangement to guarantee its success. When there were minutes left for the vote, and it became apparent that Boehner would fall far short of the 216 votes necessary for passage, Pelosi's Democrats began voting in favor of the measure. "We were not going to let it go down," she told a small group of journalists on Wednesday morning.

In past years, a House speaker and the leader of the opposition would probably confer before such a crucial vote and figure out how to move the legislation through the chamber. (Boehner and Pelosi both were supporting this bill, albeit Pelosi quite reluctantly.) And many outside observers assumed that Boehner and Pelosi had indeed convened prior to this vote, that a conversation such as this had occurred: Nancy, I can get up to 170 or so votes, but not all those tea party guys. John, I can tell you that at least 50 Democrats are going to hold their noses and vote for this stinker. Yet when the final dramatic vote arrived, Pelosi was surprised that Boehner was so short of the magic 216. "When they didn't come to us for votes," Pelosi recalls, "we thought they had the votes on their own."

But Boehner didn't. So the Democrats, having waited to see how many Republicans would back the measure, started filling in the gap. Pelosi didn't have to send any signal. Her Democrats, she says, are a "sophisticated" group, and they could see that without Democratic support the bill would fail.

In a routine situation, if the House speaker were to bring a bill to the floor and only obtain 174 votes of his or her own party, he or she would pull the legislation and then talk to the other side, which would expect concessions or sweeteners in return for the votes necessary to assemble a majority. In this case, Pelosi maintains, there was no time for further bargaining. The measure had to be approved and kicked over to the Senate, for the possibility of default loomed. "I don't know nobody [in the Democratic caucus] who wanted to vote for it," Pelosi notes. But Democrats were committed to forestalling default. In the end, half of her caucus supported the measure, far more than necessary to put it over the top.

Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) was one Democrat who voted against the measure, which mandates deep cuts in discretionary spending and sets up a commission to propose further cuts (and possibly revenue hikes). He argued that the legislation was a lousy deal and could lead to significant cuts in programs crucial to low- and middle-income Americans, without imposing any burdens on the well-to-do. If the Democrats were to balk and vote against it, he contended at the time, Congress would be forced to pass quickly a measure that would raise the debt ceiling (and prevent default) for at least a short period of time. Why didn't Pelosi, who hardly fancied this debt measure, adopt such a course? Frank, she says, was "probably conveying" his own sense of decency upon others—meaning he was granting GOPers the benefit of the doubt, and Pelosi didn't trust the Republicans to forestall default by agreeing to a temporary measure. Default, she notes, "would have been terrible," and blame for it would have landed at the doorsteps of Obama and the Republicans.

So to prevent default, Pelosi held her nose and halfheartedly encouraged fellow Democrats to vote for legislation that she insists will "deter economic growth [5]." This fight, she adds, was not propelled by Republican concern for deficit reduction; it was "about destroying the public space"—that is, the tea party's desire to weaken government. And this battle, she concedes, has reinforced the Republicans' economic message: "Debt is everything." It has demonstrated that the tea party has succeeded, as she puts it, in changing the "arena."

Lawrence O'Donnell: Rejecting proposals serving a larger strategic purpose (VIDEO)

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"If you're only talking to people who agree with you, then Politics is always going to disappoint you..." (VIDEO)

This was a great, great catch by the fine folks at The Only Adult In The Room, but given the headlines of the last couple of days, it bears repeating...



Of course, any time the President takes the time to kick the crap out of the Huffington Post...

Jim Messina: Believe it or not, the 86 Million bucks we raised, ain't the story here. (VIDEO)

John of Orange just guaranteed there's going to be a Government Shutdown.

From Jay Newton-Small:

House Speaker John Boehner today ruled out a short term extension of current levels of government funding, raising the prospect of a government shutdown.

The House tonight or tomorrow is expected to pass funding for the government through the rest of the year. But both chambers of Congress are out next week for President's Day recess. The current funding expires March 4th. Which means that in the five days Congress is back the week after next, the Senate must pass it's version the continuing resolution (CR) -- they're unlikely to accept the House bill as it's written with more than $100 billion in cuts -- and kick it back to the House. Then, if the House doesn't accept the Senate version, a compromise must be wrought and passed by both chambers. In the world of budgets, achieving this in five days is a lightening speed unlikely to be achieved. Democrats had been counting on a temporary extension of current funding while a deal is negotiated for the rest of the year, but Boehner's refusal today to give the process any more time forces Dems, and some Senate Republicans, to either accept deeper cuts than they'd like or face a government shutdown.

In other words (and paraphrasing Harry Reid) John Boenher doesn't have control of his conference.

"Wonks have a preference for the bold plan, the single solution, the sweeping stroke. [Problem is, wonks] don't tend to get much done."

Mentioned ever so briefly in a post from yesterday, this is the most frequent complaint amongst my ideological colleagues (and folks like Sullivan). The President isn't doing enough. He needs to fight. He needs to lead more.  Blah-blah-the @#$%-blah...

Change the record already...

Here, Ezra goes into far more detail about the White House's thinking than I ever could:

The Obama administration's theory of policymaking amid divided government is a frustrating one. What most people want from the president is to lead. And leading, in this case, means giving a speech, getting behind some unpopular ideas, trying to change public opinion. It means acting like Jed Bartlet in the final five minutes of an episode of "The West Wing." "What are the next 10 words in your budget?" Obama is supposed to ask the Republicans after delivering his bout of tough fiscal medicine. "Your taxes are too high? So are mine. Give me the next 10 words. How are we going to do it? Give me 10 after that, I'll drop out of the race right now."

But the White House has come to the conclusion that that type of leadership doesn't work. It believes that the quickest way to kill a controversial proposal in a polarized political system is to have the president endorse it. Once a high-profile proposal is associated with the White House, Republicans (correctly) view its passage as a threat to their political fortunes. That's why the Obama administration didn't endorse a payroll tax holiday until after the election, when it emerged as part of the tax deal. Endorsing it before the election would've "poisoned the well," one administration official told me after. Republicans would have had to attack it, and that would have made it impossible for them to endorse it later.

Greenstein sees a similar theory at work in the budget. "I don't think Obama could’ve been clearer that he wants a bipartisan commission on Social Security like they had in the early '80s," he says. "But if you look at what came out of that commission, if those items had been in Reagan's budget the previous February, they would've been dead in 30 days."

Obama echoed this argument at his news conference Tuesday. "If you look at the history of how these deals get done," he said, "typically it’s not because there’s an Obama plan out there; it’s because Democrats and Republicans are both committed to tackling this issue in a serious way."

And are Democrats and Republicans committed to tackling this issues in a serious way? I guess we'll find out. "We're going to be in discussions over the next several months," Obama continued. "This is going to be a negotiation process."

The most serious work being done is in the Senate, where Mark Warner (D-Va.), Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.), Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), Mike Crapo (R-Idaho), Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) and Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) are meeting regularly to create legislation based off the Fiscal Commission's final report. In theory, that's the sort of project Obama is looking for: a negotiation between sitting senators of both parties. I asked Warner about this today. Should the White House have put its shoulder behind his process? "We're not at the point where the president should get involved yet," he replied.

Wonks -- myself included -- have a preference for the bold plan, the single solution, the sweeping stroke. Slow and incremental just isn't how people who care about policy tend to think. They want to solve problems, not make a bit of progress on them. And from that perspective, the budget was a huge disappointment. That's particularly true when compared to the Fiscal Commission's report, which took on the military, entitlements and tax expenditures. Love it or hate it, it was, at the least, ambitious. And policy types like ambitious.

But policy types don't tend to get much done. And although this administration has been enormously frustrating, what with its preference to let Congress take the lead, to draw few lines in the sand and to let the process play itself out, it's gotten a lot done. Much more than its critics would've expected at the beginning of any particular policy campaign the White House has kicked off. "Let’s face it," Obama said at his news conference Tuesday, "you guys are pretty impatient. If something doesn’t happen today, then the assumption is it’s just not going to happen. Right? I’ve had this conversation for that last two years about every single issue that we worked on, whether it was health care or 'don't ask, don't tell.' "

Ezra. Ever more pessimistic.

I couldn't find a place to snip and cut "Did the Senate just lose the future?" without losing its meaning (a testament to the writer). the last sentence was the killer for me:

The pity of the deal that Harry Reid and Mitch McConnell struck on rules reform is that this was a really good moment for Senate reform. The usual danger with this kind of project is that it'll end up being a power grab directed at passing some discrete pieces of legislation, as when Bill Frist tried to free judicial nominees from the filibuster, rather than an overhaul dedicated to making the institution work better. But with one party controlling the House and another controlling the Senate, there was no way that a more majoritarian Senate could start ramming all sorts of legislation into law. For the next two years -- and probably some time after that -- Barack Obama will not sign anything that John Boehner hasn't already approved. Both Republicans and Democrats had the luxury of contemplating the Senate's workings without giving either party a major advantage in passing new legislation.

Instead, the Senate decided that its current procedures are good enough. There's something slightly terrifying about that. Accepting a dysfunctional legislature is, as James Fallows and others have argued, one way to lose the future. Our problems -- debt, health-care costs, infrastructure, education, etc. -- are on autopilot. Our solutions are not. Obama can give as many speeches as he wants. If we don't have a political system capable of acting on our challenges, we don't have a political system capable of overcoming them.

I've never been a huge fan of 'the constitutional option. My oft-expressed preference was for both parties to recognize that the Senate is broken and requires fairly fundamental reforms. One way to do that would be to phase in the reforms over six years, ensuring that no one knew who would benefit from the more majoritarian institution first. Another would've been to do it now, when divided government would undermine any advantage that Democrats might gain from the new rules, and thus might have given both parties space to participate in the process with more of a long-range perspective.

Instead, both parties decided to back off. There were hard decisions to be made, and they agreed not to make them. They chose the parochial comforts of what they were used to, and what would advantage each of them personally, to the discomfort and sacrifice that creating a more workable legislative process would require.

When I speak publicly, I always get variants of the same question: We've got so many problems to solve. Can we solve them? And the answer I always give is the same: Yes. in most cases, we already know what to do. The question is simply whether we'll do it. And I'm a lot less confident about that.

As much as I personally at "the Club" (aka the Senate) I understand the Founder's intentions. The House is and remains the House of the people, where their passions are recognized, and Legislation passed in accordance with those passions.

Problem is the people are flakes. They tent to jerk the Country too hard one way or the other, and the consequences of such flakiness can be rather dramatic.  WE WANT HEALTH CARE!!!  JUST NOT FOR THOSE PEOPLE!!  WE WANT GOVERNMENT SERVICES!!  JUST DON'T TAX US FOR IT!!!  And of course KEEP YOUR GOVERNMENT HANDS OFF MY MEDICARE!!!

 Thus, we have the Senate, the saucer that cools (or kills) the drink. It's function is to prevent the leftward-rightward shifts the people want to put the country through are milder, less severe.

Get me a better quality person...and I'll get you a better Senate.

In the end, Ezra notes that we're more worried about what we'll lose rather than what we'll gain, and the Senate is no different.

So why did Senate Democrats agree, in principle, that simple majorities can't change the Senate's rules, and even exceedingly modest changes to the filibuster are out-of-bounds? Easy: They're a simple majority now, but someday soon, they'll be a simple minority. When that happens, they want to be able to mount constant filibusters as well.

To borrow David Brooks's schtick for a minute, there's an easy behavioral explanation for this preference: Loss aversion. Study after study shows that human beings fear the consequences of loss much more than they value the benefits of gains. And so too in the Senate, where the two parties think about the rules in terms of "what happens when I lose" rather than "what happens when I win?"

But if you really think you've got a great agenda and that the voters would agree, that would imply a fantastic upside to rules that allow you to make good on your campaign promises: Either the American people would get to judge you on all the great stuff you want to do, as opposed to all the great stuff you got stopped from doing, or they'd get to judge the other party on all the awful stuff they did, and which you could then reverse with a simple majority vote. That's a coherent theory of the way accountability encourages good ideas and wise governance in American politics. A world in which you can't enact your ideas or govern effectively and so the voters end up thinking you as feckless as the folks across the aisle isn't. That's a world in which the rules of the Senate, and not the policies of the parties, drive outcomes, and thus drive elections. That's a world where voters never know whose ideas are best because neither side can ever enact their agendas. But that's the world the Senate apparently prefers to inhabit.

The point about the Democrats soon (possibly) being in the minority is a point I made yesterday. The only problem I have with this analysis is one of simple human psychology and mathematics.

We're human beings living in the world, living with other human beings. Most of the time, we as individuals we want things (events, items, etc.) and most times, we don't get them (i.e., we don't "win"). And the same time, we tend to forget that other individuals want things as well, and they're not getting them either. You put the two of them in collision and you get a great big stew of people not getting what they want colliding into other people not getting what they want...

...yet somehow we all muddle through.

Sometimes you win. Sometimes you lose. Sometimes it rains. Think about that. (--Nuke LaLoosh)

Ezra made it sound like these results are not normal, when they're anything but.

It's also called Democracy.

In the end, Senate Reform for me, isn't about making better rules. The rules are fine. It's the Senators willingness to game them that has broken the system down. It doesn't take a genius to filibuster something, but it does take a particular corruption of the soul to abuse the filibuster the way it has been abused, to use it more times than at any point in History.

One type of person says: Hey, we lost the election. There are more of them than there are of us. These guys what Health Care Reform. Let's see which of our ideas we can get in there to make it more palatable for our side.

The other type of person says: So what if we lost the election. I don't care if there are more of them than there are of us. They don't get their way, period. Let's burn Health Care Reform down, even if we have to take the whole country with us!

Who do you think we've had to deal with in the Senate these last two years?

Get me a better quality of person in the Senate (and I'm not just talking replacing only Conservatives or Republicans believe it or not), get me people more interested in the country than in ideology (...or the club), and I'll get you a better Senate.

I'm sure Professor Dad has a better, more elegant, and mathematical explanation for all this.

Where a Liberal (that'd be me) argues that losing the Filibuster would have been bad, bad, bad...

Ezra banged out this little 'graph, with a twinge of disappointment in his writer's voice:

A few moments ago, Harry Reid and Mitch McConnell took to the floor of the Senate to announce a five-point agreement on rules reform. But the five-points weren't, well, the point. The real agreement was on the process by which rules can be reformed.

"As part of this compromise," Reid said, "we've agreed that I won't force a majority vote to fundamentally change the Senate -- that is the so-called ‘constitutional option’ -- and he [McConnell] won't in the future." In other words, Reid and McConnell have agreed that the Senate's rules cannot -- or at least should not -- be decided by a simple majority. That was what the constitutional option was about, and that's what Reid explicitly rejected in his speech. Why? "Both McConnell and Reid feared what would happen if they were in the minority," explains a Reid aide.

Okay, the big, big thing is the fact that Give 'Em Hell Harry got McConnell to agree to not hold a similar filibuster vote in the future. Why?  Because given the number of Democratic Senate Seats up for grabs in the 2012 election, its quite possible that we're going to lose the Senate as we're re-electing Barack Obama (yes, I'm still way confident that's going to happen). Should we lose the Senate (the number of Democratic Seats up outweighs Teabaggers by 2 to 1) you, me and every other Liberal out there is going to fall so in love with the Filibuster, it's gonna make your head spin like Linda Blair.

Now, if you want to question whether or not Reid can trust McConnell to keep his word, have at it. (Ultimately, to because Senate decorum is more important to these guys than anything else, I actually believe McConnell will keep his word). But as far as the long game, Harry Reid surrendered our ability to get some stuff done in 2011 to keep our ability to hold back a Teabagger Apocalypse in 2013.

Good job, Harry.  Though, I'm betting the Professional Left doesn't see it that way for two more years.

Who needs to get their swagger back again?

Josh today in a somewhat accurate statement:

Even knowing all this and with all the policy particulars having their importance, some things are critical to leadership that are more personal and intangible. Look at President Obama today and the guy just doesn't have his swagger. The confidence is gone. And so is the smile. That's human, I guess. It's been a rough year. And like other presidents you can see the age on this president after only a couple years.

But people want to know they're on board with a political leader who's got a plan, who's got something up his sleeve, who's got some extra angle, some well of charisma or luck to draw on that makes the math in his team's favor more than just 2 + 2 = 4.

Now, as I tried to hint over the weekend, people tend to forget that it took President Clinton the better part of a year to get his head screwed back on right after the 1994 congressional midterms. And even beyond the psychological dynamics it's just hard to look too on top of your game when you've got all these jaunty Republicans milling around.

But it's still important, perhaps the critical factor. No one wants to follow someone who looks like a loser or feels beat. Yes, I know all the different arguments about the tax cut deal and where he's going to pick his fights and where he's not or where he's refused to so far. But the president needs his swagger back. Right now it may be his most critical deficit.

What Josh says is not totally wrong, but I think he's way overstating the impact of one statement to the press. At the same time...The President wasn't the one who went on 60 Minutes, and cried...twice...like John Boehner .

If anyone needs to get their swagger back, it's the crying man of Orange.  Or did he ever have it in the first place?

Republicans against Federal Spending...who don't want to acutally do anything about it (VIDEO)

From last night's Keith. Great stuff:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Richard Trumka's trying to get the White House, Nancy and Harry to hold a Middle Class Tax Cut vote solo...

According to the headline writers at the Huffington Post, it may even be working. (As of 3:35pm Pacific, the banner headline on their homepage is: DEMS MAY VOTE ON MIDDLE CLASS TAX CUTS ONLY)

Still, there's nothing in the article that says it may be working.

The largest union federation in the country has been in talks with both Democrats in Congress and members of the administration to push them to hold a vote that would only extend the Bush tax cuts for the middle class and not those for the rich.

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said on Tuesday that his group has been "working diligently with lawmakers and the White House" about its legislative preference for the expiring tax rates. Though he wouldn't elaborate on the substance of those discussions, Turmka explained that "to date, no one that I'm aware of said that's not a good strategy, that's not good policy, and that's not good for the country."

Listen, fingers crossed. I think this is the right move. I just there was some evidence for Huffpo's clickable optimism.

President Obama's complete 60 Minutes Interview for November 7, 2010 (VIDEO)

The opening part from the edited version of this interview pissed me off quite a bit. I think Steve Kroft was slinging a significant amount of bull@#$%. Polls consistently showed that jobs and the economy were the number one concern of voters on Tuesday, not the President's "Liberal Governing Philosophy."



It made me think of the line from "The Insider" where Mike Wallace is blasting Eric Kluster of CBS News:

Who told you your incompetent little fingers had the requisite skills to edit me!

It's clear that they don't have the requisite skills to even edit the President.

Watch at least the first couple minutes of this interview, and compare it to the unedited version below. As always, the differences are stark.

My problem with the opening batch of the edited version was that it approached the "Liberalism meme" not as a possible point of view on the election, but as accepted fact. He all but said "Voters rejected your Liberalism out of hand, why can't you accept that fact?"

"Well, gee Steve. Why can you accept that like most reporters, you're a lazy bastard."

Of course, that answer is probably why I'm not the President.

And what's this nonsense?

KROFT: The political landscape has changed. I mean, how do you plan to govern? President Clinton found himself in a very, very similar circumstance. And he reacted by pivoting to the middle, turning to the middle. And was successful at it. Is that what you're gonna do?

PRESIDENT OBAMA: Well, I when I . . . .

KROFT: You have to, don't you?

Have to? No, he doesn't "have to". He's probably going to, but since the Voters did not send him that message, he doesn't "have to".

Again, if Unemployment had fallen to 7 or 8%, do you really think the GOP would have had a leg to stand on? Do you think the House would have ever been in danger of flipping?

Here is the whole 70 minute interview. The Transcript is available here.



CBS News' embedding has a history of being unreliable. If the video doesn't work, click here.

What's with the super high early voter turnout in Democratic Strongholds in Ohio?

Uhhh, is this something I need to keep an eye on???

Something special is going on in two Ohio Democratic strongholds: Cuyahoga and Franklin counties.I track on this handy web page that other places around the country - including other Ohio counties - are so far reporting low single digit early voting rates. In stark contrast, over 112,000 votes have already been cast in these two Ohio counties. As a comparison, this represents over ten percent of all ballots cast in the 2006 election in these counties, with still some time to go.

I spoke with local election officials in both counties to understand what is fueling their early voting. They attribute this phenomenon to two factors. First, Ohio recently adopted no-fault absentee voting, which increased the pool of eligible early voters. Second, local election officials in these counties decided to mail an absentee ballot request form to every registered voter. The response has clearly been enthusiastic.

But Vote by Mail can't possibly be a good idea, right Andrew Sullivan?

Tim Lee has tweeted that "voting by mail is a huge privacy and security risk, and states should be discouraging it a lot more." He elaborates on his blog:

Imagine if an employer, who everyone knew to be a Republican, required his employees to request absentee ballots and show them to him before they were submitted. Think of an abusive husband who insists that he and his wife fill out their ballots together. Or imagine a political operative going around a low-income neighborhood paying people $50 if they let him fill out their ballots for them. This kind of corruption is very hard for voting officials to detect. And more insidious, voters themselves may not even realize that it’s unethical.

Now, there are some circumstances, such as soldiers stationed overseas, where absentee voting is unavoidable. But traditionally, to get an absentee ballot you had to give a specific reason that you would be unable to make it to your regular polling place on election day. But in the last couple of decades a growing number of states are dropping these restrictions, allowing anyone to vote by mail without giving a reason. And the states of Washington and Oregon are moving towards mail-in voting as the default option. Although this is moderately more convenient for voters (and election officials!), the effective abandonment of the secret ballot is too high a price to pay.

I worry about this too. There's also the issue of losing a collective decision at the same time on the same day. Things change, events occur, the world moves. It makes sense to me that an electoral decision is more coherent when it is made simultaneously over a single day, than stretched out over weeks or even more than a month.

Andrew's concerns...frankly, are a little ridiculous.  It's nice to live as a blogger, with a staff of three, where despite the fact that you have a job and a live, your time is pretty much your own.

A lot of Americans don't or can't live like that, and so the chore of voting is usually crammed either early in the morning or late at night where you run the risk of getting cut off.  In either case, the slightest headwind, rain storm, missed alarm clock can cause a person not to vote.  We're supposed to be making voting easier, not more difficult.

We have two absolutely stupid requirements we put on our elections.  One, is to vote on the same day.  Two, is to have the results (the vote count) ready by that same night.

If Andrew really wants to live like that, may I suggest turning Election Day into a damn National Holiday.  Everyone has the day off.  Stores are mostly closed, and people can have the time to go vote and have their votes counted.  When the polls close, the bars can open.  And what do you expect the Chamber of Commerce's reaction will be to that idea?

Open this thing up.  Give people more choices of where and how to vote.  Allow them to cast ballots in more places, like Grocery Stores and Shopping Malls.  Give them a full week to vote, and allow voting on Weekends.

We have the technology.  Why aren't we using it?

Andrew Sullivan: "If I were buying stock right now, I'd say [President Obama] is under-priced."

In response to something David Corn penned, Andrew Sullivan winds up writing a virtual response to Keith Olbermann's brain fart yesterday that is far more elegant and artful than what I wrote:

David Corn complains that this is the kind of self-criticism that does not help before an election, and that in arguing that his biggest error was under-estimating Republican obstructionism, the president cannot also argue that he can work with the GOP, if necessary, in the next two years.

I don't agree. This kind of quote is why I still believe, despite my frustrations in some areas, that Obama is the best option we've got and we're lucky to have him. I want a president who can acknowledge error, is not cocooned, can speak publicly about this, and is unafraid of self-criticism. Isn't that why so many of us supported him in the first place?

And, look, another reason we supported him is that after eight years of Rove, we actually wanted a president who got the policy right. I think his success in this is quite remarkable, in fact.

Preventing a second Great Depression, which was a real possibility (and not just the jobless recovery we're in, but a full-scale collapse), rescuing the banks without nationalizing them, saving the auto-companies with precision and technocratic skill (I didn't think it would work at all, and it did), re-setting relations with the rest of the world, bringing a new sanity and balance to Middle East policy, taking out 400 al Qaeda operatives, using the myth of the surge to get the hell out of Iraq (for the most part), upping the ante to get a deal with the Taliban and enacting a centrist, moderate law that for the first time in history ensures that anyone can get health insurance in this country ... really, in perspective, pretty damn remarkable.

Politically, he had to deal with a GOP gone insane, and a propaganda machine of such virulence and relentlessness that you can see he is where he is. But although he is right that he lost the connection to us, his supporters, I don't think he could have kept up the hope and change inspiration indefinitely.

He would rightly have been ridiculed for not being serious at governing, of being all words and no action, of all hat and no battle.

And where he is politically is really not that bad anyway - doing better than Clinton or Carter at this point, and better than Reagan, whose polling trajectory he still follows the most closely of recent presidents. The man's favorables are still 47 percent in a recession - way ahead of his competitors on the right; his approval rate is not far behind with unemployment at record highs; if and when the GOP take back the Congress, their talk radio schtick will have to face the reality of governing's hard choices. And in that battle for the center, I'd bet on Obama's reason and calm over Gingrich's flame wars, Palin's delusions and Boehner's corporate tan.

If I were buying stock right now, I'd say the president is under-priced.