On the other hand, there’s the argument that the message was sent anyway; that incumbents better not cross labor less they make your life miserable. Perhaps, but I think the people pushing this line the hardest are looking at the situation through rose-colored glasses. The bottom line is that incumbent re-election rates are very high in the U.S., and they’re downright astronomical for sitting Senators in primaries. And, of course, Blanche Lincoln is now a mark in favor of re-election. So even if we assume that labor or other factions of the party can give an incumbent a headache in the primary, the simple fact remains that the incumbent is overwhelmingly likely to win the primary, and much more likely to get beaten in a general election (especially if they’re in a conservative state) than in a primary. For someone who’s only concerned about getting re-elected, this isn’t really a tough call to make at all.

On the other hand, there’s the notion of the White House’s ability to pressure Senators, which Greenwald raises again in typically dense fashion. Yglesias and Bernstein dispose of the nonsense in good fashion, but I’d simply add that, again, there’s a very simple balance of power here; while troubled incumbents may want White House backing in elections, it’s at least technically possible for them to win without it. On the other hand, the White House can’t get its agenda through Congress without sufficient votes from members. With 40 Repuplicans lined up to oppose his agenda no matter what, Obama had to keep every Democrat on board for healthcare reform. If Blanche Lincoln refused to support the bill, that was it. There was no clever way out of things; it was get Blanche Lincoln to support the effort or give up on comprehensive reform. Period. The leverage between individual Senators at the tipping point of votes and the White House is always going to tilt in favor of the Senators (at least in domestic policy) because they have votes in the Senate, and you have to get votes in the Senate to pass bills. The question is how do you get those votes. Greenwald wants to imagine a world where you get them by beating marginal Senators with sticks until they’re cowed like powerless children into doing what you want them to, but that world quite simply doesn’t exist. Senators just aren’t powerless, and thanks to the filibuster, they’re holding the trump card more often than not. The national party or various factions of the party might be able to make life difficult for them, hell they may even be able to slay the dragon, but that vote in the Senate means that the Senator is going to be able to return the favor and then some as long as they have it.

And losing primary challenges does nothing to alter that balance.

Technorati Tags: Bill Halter, Blanche Lincoln, Glenn Greenwald, Labor

Party of no? When it comes to Supreme Court nominations, the GOP is a flock of baby lambs compared with their opposites on the Democratic side.The past two Democratic presidents have named three justices between them: Sonia Sotomayor, Stephen Breyer and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. All glided painlessly to confirmation.

It’s certainly true that Breyer and Ginsburg were easily confirmed, what with their unanimous votes and all, but with Sotomayor your mileage may vary. Sotomayor was confirmed by a vote of 68-31, which is a wide enough margin, but with only 40 Republicans in the Senate at the time, that means 75% of the Senate Republican Caucus voted against her nomination. And this was after a relentless campaign of racial resentment against her nomination. So I suppose “painlessly” is a bit subjective there. Moving on:

Compare that with the mayhem inflicted on Republican choices. Two of President Nixon’s nominees were rejected by the Senate. Ditto for one of Ronald Reagan’s choices (another withdrew shortly after he was nominated). One of President George H.W. Bush’s choices, Clarence Thomas, was confirmed after a fight that still ranks as perhaps the most vicious in confirmation history.

This is all obviously true, but what’s interesting is that Frum doesn’t really expound on these nominees, and why they ran into trouble. Let’s examine this record of failure, shall we? Nixon’s first nominee to replace Abe Fortas on the court was Clement Haynsworth, who was immediately dogged with a record that was favorably disposed towards segregation and white supremacism. Many have argued that this was unfair, and that Haynsworth was rejected as payback for Republicans forcing Fortas off the Court, but the accusation was there nonetheless, and 55 Senators voted against confirming Haynsworth. Nixon’s next nominee was Harold Carswell, who was also dogged by accusations of racism, although these accusations were backed up by a speech Carswell had given years earlier in which he extolled his committment to…white supremacism. Carswell repudiated the speeches once he was nominated, but was still rejected by the Senate. That Nixon’s first two nominees were dogged by credible accusations of racism seems pretty relevant to this discussion. Moving on to Reagan we get Robert Bork, who was defeated with 58 Senators voting against him, including 6 Republicans, and Douglas Ginsburg, who withdrew his nomination after it was discovered he had lacked to indulge in some pot smoking in his Harvard offices with students. Again, something the seems worth mentioning for contextual purposes. Finally we get Thomas, who faced serious allegations of sexual harrassment, and yet was still confirmed by the Democratic Senate. When you actually look at these rejected nominees, their rejection seems much less remarkable than what Frum lets on. If anything, the remarkable thing to note is that Thomas was confirmed, and that Republicans are still so convinced the allegations against him were nothing but a vicious smear campaign.

But wait, there’s more:

It’s hard to argue that the difference is due to the superior quality of the Democratic choices. Ginsburg’s views were and are at least as controversial as Robert Bork’s. Not only Bork, but two other Republican nominees (Clement Haynsworth and Douglas Ginsburg) could show legal credentials that brightly outshone Sotomayor‘s.

I suppose Frum is technically sufficiently hedged with subjective language here but, pardon me, this is complete bullshit. I suppose it’s in the eye of the beholder and all that, but frankly I’d love to see Frum try to justify his claim that Ginsburg is “at least as controversial” as Bork in her views. It’s just preposterous on the face of it, especially considering that Ginsburg was nominated at a time when the legacies of bona fide liberal justices like Marshall and Blackmun were still fresh. Douglas Ginsburg certainly had impeccable qualifications, but again, he withdrew amidst revelations of drug related impropriety. And that’s to say nothing of Bork’s role in the infamous Saturday Night Massacre. As for a Haynsworth and Sotomayor, I suppose this is subjective, again, but unless Frum has a compelling argument to back this up, I’m afraid I’m going to have to call bullshit again. Haynsworth went to Harvard Law, was first appointed to the federal bench in 1957, when President Eisenhower appointed him to the 4th Circuit, and then nominated for the Supreme Court in 1970. Sotomayor graduated summa cum laude from Princeton, was appointed to the District Court in 1992 and then the 1st Circuit in 1998, before being nominated for the Supreme Court in 2009. So Sotomayor has an academic profile that stacks up against pretty much everyone, and had a longer tenure on the federal bench before being nominated to the Supreme Court. So while I suppose it’s possible Frum has some metric by which Haynsworth is more impressive than Sotomayor, the idea that Sotomayor’s formal credentials are “brightly outshone” by Haynsworth’s is just laughable.

The rest of the column is mostly boilerplate stuff that I just don’t agree with in general, and even if it were less objectionable, the highly misleading, inappropriately vague, and laughable-in-parts opening would still damn the entire column. Thus, while it doesn’t really amount to much in the grand scheme of things, it’s worth keeping in mind that Frum is still a Bushie at heart, and still perfectly dishonest when it suits his ends, no matter how many times he criticizes Rush Limbaugh.

Technorati Tags: David Frum

Of course, it’s not really possible to know why 58% of independents, and 19% of Democrats, think passage of healthcare was an “abuse of power,” but there you go. To be clear, healthcare reform went through the normal committee process in both chambers of Congress, taking months to get through the whole process. Max Baucus, the chairman of the most powerful committee in all of Congress, spent at least a month trying to reach out to Republicans on the Senate Finance Committee. The Senate passed its bill through normal order, as did the House, and then a longstanding procedure was used to make minor changes to the law after it was signed. There’s nothing remotely untoward about any aspect of the process of passing healthcare reform.

What you’re seeing here is the wages of Republican attacks on the legislative process. At basically every point of the process, Republicans alledged that Democrats were abusing this or that parliamentary rule. Reconcilliation, a decades old law that both parties have used for major pieces of legislation, became “the nuclear option.” Parochial deals cut to win support from on-the-fence Senators, a central aspect of the US system of representative government since 1787, became the hallmark of corrupt governing. Private negotiations, a basic cornerstone of decision making in pretty much any venture, became a no-no. And to compound it, the poltical media, especially cable news, gladly played along, happy to pretend this was a legitimate scandal so they could milk some ratings out of it. And as a result, more than half of respondents to this Gallup poll think that routine use of Congressional rules is an abuse of power. This is bad news for Democrats, obviouly, but it’s bad news for the country too. The clear lesson from this “debate” is that constant demonization of not just your opponent, but of the basic workings of the American government itself, is a huge political winner because the American public doesn’t know enough about the way Congress works to know that the minority is full of crap.

Does this special burden explain Barack Obama’s embrace of scale as vision (if I don’t know what to do, I’ll do big things)? I think it does to a degree. It means, for example, that a caretaker presidency is not an option for him. His historical significance almost demands a kind of political narcissism. For him the great appeal of massive health-care reform—when jobs are a far more pressing problem—may have been its history-making potential.

Here was a chance for Mr. Obama not just to be a part of history but to make history. Here he could have an achievement commensurate with his own historical significance. To have left off health care and taken up jobs would have left him a caretaker rather than a history-maker. So he hung in with health care and today it can be said: Barack Obama has signed the most significant piece of social legislation in 45 years—achieving something that has eluded every president since FDR.

A historic figure making history, this is emerging as an over-arching theme—if not obsession—in the Obama presidency. In Iowa, a day after signing health care into law, he put himself into competition with history. If history shapes men, “We still have the power to shape history.” But this adds up to one thing: He is likely to be the most liberal president in American history.

Much like Robert Samuelson, Steele just isn’t a good enough writer to carry the ridiculous arguments he sets out to make, and the absurdity of his claims causes his writing to fall apart under their weight? Obama likes to talk about making history? That makes him different than basically every modern political leader how, exactly? Obama the most liberal President ever? I think the ACA is a monumental victory in social policy advancement, but to call Obama more liberal than FDR or LBJ or it is comical. The ridiculousness of the claims barely even require refutation, especially given that Obama is proposing more oil drilling on the same day this runs.

But the truly astonishing claim is that reform amounts to little more than a vanity project for Obama, a claim that requires you to believe Obama and other Democrats don’t actually believe healthcare reform is that important. This is of course belied by the fact that, far from being a new novelty, some form of healthcare reform has been attempted by every Democratic President since Truman. Obama isn’t the first President to tackle the issue, he’s just the first one to actually see a universal healthcare bill passed. And that does make him an historical figure, but that’s because healthcare reform is a very important issue.

It’s really not worth expecting much more out of Steele. His entire professional persona is built around the fact that he’s a black man willing to say offensive things about black people in general and insist that white people are uniquely awesome, and this appeals to a segment of the conservative movement because they get to live vicariously through him, or preface their own statements with “Shelby Steele said…” As I’ve said before, it’s good work if you can get it, and are willing to sell your soul (to say nothing of your personal integrity) for the money/stature. But it also requires the occassional ridiculous argument not at all tethered to reality. It just seems like that’s about all Steele is churning out these days.

Technorati Tags: Shelby Steele

To criticisms, Obama supporters make two arguments. First, the CBO says the plan reduces the deficit by $143 billion over a decade. Second, the legislation contains measures (an expert panel to curb Medicare spending, emphasis on “comparative effectiveness research”) to control health spending. These rejoinders are self-serving and unconvincing.

Suppose the CBO estimate is correct. So? The $143 billion saving is about 1 percent of the projected $12.7 trillion deficit from 2009 to 2020. If the administration has $1 trillion or so of spending cuts and tax increases over a decade, all these monies should first cover existing deficits — not finance new spending. Obama’s behavior resembles a highly indebted family’s taking an expensive round-the-world trip because it claims to have found ways to pay for it. It’s self-indulgent and reckless.

As  brief aside, there was a point not that long ago when Samuelson couched his morally outrageous positions in much more clever arguments. But whether time is catching up with him or his position has gotten so cozy he can’t avoid the temptation to phone it in, these days Samuelson’s columns don’t even stand up to an initial skimming. In the next paragraph, for example, Samuelson argues that the CBO’s report is “misleading,” and bases this claim on a New York Times Op-Ed by Douglas Holtz-Eakin that Krugman absolutely shredded on the Times’ own website, and by invoking the “doc fix” that was going to pass regardless of the fate of healthcare reform. It’s the work of a complete hack, and not even original hack work at that.

But even leaving that aside, Samuelson’s argument, such as it is, falls apart under the weight of Samuelson’s own analogy. Samuelson would have you believe that expanding access to health insurance is akin to a family that finds some extra money in its budget opts to take a lavish vacation rather than pay down existing debt. I have a better idea, how about we compare it to a family who, rather than pay off some of their credit card debt, takes the newfound funds and…buys health insurance! Of course, that wouldn’t work for Samuelson’s point, because while people can generally agree that vacations should be sacrificed in the name of controlling your personal debt, they’d look at you like you had 3 eyes if you even remotely suggested that paying more than the minimum credit card payment should take precedence over getting your family health insurance.

It’s entirely possible that it didn’t occur to Samuelson that it would be better to compare expanding health insurance coverage to buying insurance rather than taking an extravagant vacation, but I doubt it. The omission is so egregious, and the example Samuelson chose so over the top (I mean really, how many people go on a globe-trotting vacation anyway?), that I can’t really imagine that Samuelson wasn’t deliberately trying to obscure how basic a necessity health insurance is in the modern world. Because, while a hostility to the social saftey net and social welfare spending is the animating factor of Samuelson’s existence, he’s aware enough of the larger political debate to know that most people would be appalled by his beliefs. And so, he’s left coming up with wild analogies to make giving people access to a basic necessity seem like a frivolous expenditure. Thankfully, he’s just not smart enough, nor his writing strong enough, to carry that sort of argument these days.

Technorati Tags: Robert Samuelson, Washington Post

Technorati Tags: AEI, David Frum

Several articles since September about the troubles of the community organizing group Acorn referred incorrectly or imprecisely to one aspect of videotaped encounters between Acorn workers and two conservative activists that contributed to the group’s problems.

In the encounters, the activists posed as a prostitute and a pimp and discussed prostitution with the workers. But while footage shot away from the offices shows one activist, James O’Keefe, in a flamboyant pimp costume, there is no indication that he was wearing the costume while talking to the Acorn workers.

The errors occurred in articles on Sept. 16 and Sept. 19, 2009, and on Jan. 31 of this year. Because of an editing error, the mistake was repeated in an article in some copies on Saturday

Of course, that’s not really right either, and it’s incredibly galling that the Times continues to underplay how atrocious their “journalistic” work was on this story. While it is true that James O’Keefe didn’t wear his ridiculous “pimp suit” when he was in an ACORN office, is also true that in the most inflammatory videos, O’Keefe did not present himself as a pimp at all, but rather as someone trying to help a prostitute escape an abusive pimp. This fact compeltely alters the nature of the interaction ACORN had with O’Keefe and Giles, as everyone who has investigated the unedited film O’Keefe refused to release to news organizations has concluded (and one would think that the fact that O’Keefe and Andrew Breitbart refused to release the raw video would have sent up red flags with professional journalists). Unfortunately, the damage has been done, and ACORN is beng forced to shut down their operation due to an inability to raise funds.

Freedom of the press is obviously a very important thing, and as a general rule a large degree of latitude should be given to media outlets to report information. That said, there needs to be some consequence for media outlets/reporters who traffic inaccurate information and cause real damage to organizations or individuals. In this case, the “reproting” the Times did was so unbelievably credulous it basically constitutes professional malpractice. I’m not sure whether ACORN could demonstrate damages or not, but it seems hard to believe that the inaccurate reporting of the Times didn’t damage ACORN, or that accurate reporting wouldn’t have helped them. Either way, ACORN ought to have to ability to attempt to prove their case, and if they can show that the Times caused them damages, and that their reporting was especially sloppy, the Times ought to be required to pay damages to ACORN.

Technorati Tags: New York Times