Motley Moose – Archive

Well, August has been a long and frustrating month of ‘made-for-media’ controversies and equally irrelevant prognostications on the likely outcomes of the upcoming midterm elections.  It would seem, from all the headline-mongering and talk show bloviating, that Democrats are in for a whuppin’ along the lines of 1994 but the polls don’t lie, very often, and things may not be what they seem at first glance.

Are Democrats going to lose seats?  Pretty bloody likely.  Are they going to lose control of the House and the Senate or both?  Hard to say but probably not.  Sound counter-intuitive given the current conventional wisdom, such as it is?  Lets take a closer look, it’s pretty clear that things have been headed the Republicans’ way recently, no argument.  But how much?:

We could obsess further over the consistent differences among pollsters, but what is far more important, is that the averages show a GOP lead that has been trending in the Republican direction all summer. That trend is consistent with the historical pattern identified here on Friday by political scientists Joe Bafumi, Bob Erikson and Chris Wlezien, the “electorate’s tendency in past midterm cycles to gravitate further toward the “out” party over the election year.”

Moreover, you see the same trend even if we drop all Newsweek and Gallup polls, plus all of the Internet-based surveys and automated surveys (including Rasmussen), and focus only on the remaining live-interviewer telephone surveys, as in the chart [shown here]. The margin for the Republicans is virtually identical (46.6% to 41.4%).

So while the “unprecedented 10-point lead” reported by Gallup probably exaggerates the Republican lead, any result showing a net Republican advantage on the so-called generic ballot is bad news for Democrats. Bafumi and his colleagues estimated their 50-seat gain for the Republicans assuming a two-point advantage for Republicans on the generic ballot, which they project will widen to a six-point lead by November.

Mark Blumenthal – Gallup vs. Newsweek on the Generic Pollster 30 Aug 10

Fifty seats is a shocker, to be sure, but trends away from the incumbent majority seem to also be unexceptional, historically, in American politics.  And since the cited post was written the generic ballot gap has apparently narrowed again slightly to 3%.  How determinate is the generic ballot polling to a large number of specific races?  And what are the issues affecting polling at this stage for a midterm election in both houses?

For years progressives have assumed that the ideological trajectories of both the Republican Party, certainly, and to a lesser but substantive degree the Democrats themselves, have been aligned variously with the aspirations of corporations to wriggle free from government regulation and taxation.  This is arguably intended to benefit their profits at the expense, contrary to the ideological framework within which it is usually promoted, of the welfare and best interests of the citizenry.

Since the watershed election of President Obama ‘populist’ opposition to his policies has emerged, largely facilitated, if not actually inspired, by sponsorship from the Right-wing media, not to mention other less visible patrons.

Predictably the source of this ‘movement’ has been identified as disaffection with government spending and intrusion into the civil liberties of our citizens, but the truth may be more daunting to accept for those concerned with such issues, and seriously casts doubt on the ‘grassroots’ credentials of organisations like the Americans for Prosperity Foundation, a significant Tea Party promoter:

Over the July 4th weekend, [an Americans for Prosperity Foundation] summit called Texas Defending the American Dream took place in a chilly hotel ballroom in Austin. Though [founder billionare David Koch] freely promotes his philanthropic ventures, he did not attend the summit, and his name was not in evidence. And on this occasion the audience was roused … by a series of speakers denouncing President Barack Obama. Peggy Venable, the organizer of the summit, warned that Administration officials “have a socialist vision for this country.”

Five hundred people attended the summit, which served, in part, as a training session for Tea Party activists in Texas. An advertisement cast the event as a populist uprising against vested corporate power. “Today, the voices of average Americans are being drowned out by lobbyists and special interests,” it said. “But you can do something about it.” The pitch made no mention of its corporate funders. The White House has expressed frustration that such sponsors have largely eluded public notice. David Axelrod, Obama’s senior adviser, said, “What they don’t say is that, in part, this is a grassroots citizens’ movement brought to you by a bunch of oil billionaires.”

Jane Mayer – Covert Operations: The billionaire brothers who are waging a war against Obama The New Yorker 30 Aug 10

The Koch brothers, Charles and David, are both executives of Koch Industries, a major US petrochemical industrial giant, and have a long history of what might be termed ‘fringe’ Right-wing political beliefs and questionable spending of large sums of their considerable fortunes on politically oriented projects in the grey areas of electoral legality and scientific integrity.  Their influence, however, on our current political discourse is increasingly disproportionate.

A startling development in the recent Senate reconciliation process:

Senate Republicans succeeded early Thursday morning in finding two flaws in the House-passed health care reconciliation package. Neither is of any substance, but the Senate parliamentarian informed Democratic leaders that both are in violation of the Byrd Rule.

J Taylor Rushing – Healthcare bill headed back to the House after marathon Senate push The Hill Post 25 Mar 10

So back to the House it must go, but here’s the thing:

Democratic leadership no longer has to worry that additional amendments would send it back to the House, since it must return to the lower chamber regardless. The Senate is now free to put to the test that much-debated question of whether 50 votes exist for a public option. Democrats could also elect to expand Medicare or Medicaid, now that they only need 50 votes in the Senate and the approval of the House.

Ryan Grim – Byrd Rule To Send Health Care Back To House, Rules Parliamentarian Huffington Post 25 Mar 10

The expectation is that if the Senate dared the will is there in the House:

The Huffington Post interviewed House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-S.C.) on Wednesday evening and asked if he thought he could have gotten the public option back through a second time, when the House voted on Sunday, even without those members who had left. “Yes, sir,” he said emphatically.

Ryan Grim – Byrd Rule To Send Health Care Back To House, Rules Parliamentarian Huffington Post 25 Mar 10

Hmmm…

New England Journal of Medicine, Sep. 2009

The initial reaction of the Republican Congressional delegation to the historic passage of the health care reform bill seemed predictable and unequivocal.  They are going to run on repealing it in the 2010 midterm elections.

Even before the bill was passed Republicans were publicly insisting that repeal was their strategy:

While the GOP still awaits the outcome of competitive primaries in many states to pick its candidates, all of the major Senate hopefuls in Kentucky, Nevada, Kansas and Missouri have pledged “sponsor and support legislation to repeal any federal health care-takeover passed in 2010, and replace it with real reforms that lower health care costs without growing government.”

[…]

“Democrats think by passing the bill they’ll be able to get it behind them and change the subject to something else, like jobs,” said Senator John Cornyn (R-Tex.), head of the National Republican Senatorial Committee. “But this will do the opposite. This will make sure health care is the number one issue that the election is won or lost on in November.”

Perry Bacon Jr – Health-care bill not yet a law, but Republicans already organizing to repeal it Washington Post 17 Mar 10

Only one problem.  It is not going to happen.  Unless some major game-changer appears from over the horizon, they’re pretty much screwed.

Well, the verdict is in on the investigation of the Lehman Brothers collapse in 2008 and in the words of Judge James M Peck, who unsealed the report today, it reads “like a best-seller.”  Yeah, by Stephen King.

Anyone who assumed that the collapse of Lehman Brothers was a consequence of high-risk, predatory, competitive practices by management and collegial institutions engaged in unrestrained profit-taking need look no further than the recently released full 2,200 page report.  It tends to confirm a culture of business activity barely skimming criminal malpractice and perhaps failing to insulate participants, at least in the case of the firm’s management and auditors, from civil liability.

The prime consideration in the minds of the other associated parties, primarily Citibank and JPMorgan Chase, is whether there is a case to answer in their involvement.  The report’s release was met with almost instantaneous denials of wrongdoing or culpability by both participants and it does seem they have dodged the bullet, though not by much:

The examiner in charge of investigating the bankruptcy of venerable Wall Street investment house Lehman Brothers, the most expensive bankruptcy in U.S. history, said in a report publicly released Thursday that senior officials failed to disclose key practices, opening them up to legal claims, and that JPMorgan Chase and Citigroup contributed to the firm’s collapse. In addition, the report concludes that the firm’s auditor, Ernst & Young, failed to meet “professional standards.”

Shahien Nasiripour – Lehman Bankruptcy Report: Top Officials Manipulated Balance Sheets … Contributed To Collapse Huffington Post 11 Mar 10

That these few institutions and individuals, through questionable business practices and apparently willful manipulation of their statuatory reporting reponsibilites, could have precipitated an economic meltdown which has adversely affected most wage-earners and every taxpayer in the United States, not to mention partner economies worldwide, is a situation which must be remedied.  One wonders what precautions are in place to prevent a repeat performance in future.

Since the arguably tepid advocacy for health care reform in Obama’s State of the Union address the President’s resolve to stake his political fortunes, and by implication those of his majority legislators, on the passage of a health care reform bill has become clearly evident.  And even in that speech his message to his Congressional party was unequivocal, “To Democrats, I would remind you that we still have the largest majority in decades, and the people expect us to solve some problems, not run for the hills.”

After the tortuous ebb and flow of national debate and painful legislative horse-trading of the past nine months we have reached a point of no return for Obama’s administration, our Congressional majorities and our political prospects in the upcoming 2010 midterm elections.  Either the bill passes or fails.  Obama gets it:

GLENSIDE, Pa. – President Obama challenged wavering members of his own party on Monday not to give in to their political fears about supporting health care legislation, asserting that the urgency of getting a bill through Congress should trump any concern about the consequences for Democrats in November.

President Barack Obama told a crowd of students at Arcadia University, in Glenside, Pa. on Monday that there should be an “up or down vote on health care.”

In a high-octane appearance that harked back to his “Yes we Can” campaign days, Mr. Obama jettisoned the professorial demeanor that has cloaked many of his public pronouncements on the issue, instead making an emotional pitch for public support as he tries to push the legislation through a final series of votes in Congress in the next several weeks.

Helene Cooper – Obama Warns Democrats of Urgency of Health Bill NYT 8 Mar 10

President Obama’s willingness to make an all or nothing bet on this legislative reform has leveraged Congressional Democrats into a position where they soon must consider Benjamin Franklin’s sage advice, “We must all hang together or, most assuredly, we shall all hang seperately.”

After their resounding defeat in the 2008 general election there was a fairly common consensus that the Republican Party would, of necessity, remake themselves.  A new party would emerge disassociated from the opprobium of the Bush administration and its policies with a recalibrated ideological compass; with upgraded doctrine and technology for the upcoming political battles of the new millenium.

And this internal discussion commenced among Right intellectuals and pundits, including a fair bit of intramural finger-pointing over perceived failures of the Republican party apparatus in general and the McCain campaign in particular.  This debate quickly focussed on the controversial nomination of Sarah Palin as candidate for the vice-presidency, an issue which sharply polarised the respective factions.

Little did they realise that this process would be derailed and abandoned in a scramble by incumbents and aspirants alike to align themselves with a minority, populist movement which has, already, damaged the prospects of the party beyond measure.  The angry, heckling supporters evident in the later stages of the national campaign, the same ones whose shouted epithets the candidates themselves were sometimes obliged to publically disown, have somehow become the Promised Land constituency to which an increasingly broad spectrum of Republican candidates are pitching their policies and oratory.

The debate over the future of the Republican Party has hardly progressed beyond the desperate and defamatory sloganeering of the McCain campaign in its closing weeks.  Apart from the ongoing divide over the perils of Palinism the ideological battle for the ‘soul’ of the Republican party is apparently over and it was aptly summarised recently by Jonathan Rauch of the National Journal:

The history of the modern Republican Party in one sentence: Barry Goldwater and Nelson Rockefeller got into an argument and George Wallace won.

Jonathan Rauch – It’s George Wallace’s GOP Now National Journal 27 Feb 10

Instead of resetting the Republican platform to core conservative values they have allowed themselves to be co-opted into settling for a national agenda which appeals to an increasingly incoherent, marginalised and aggrieved minority.

When a genuine democracy acts in the world it does so in the name of its citizens, especially when the preamble to its Constitution begins “We the people…,”  basically meaning all of us.  This is the foundation of our rights and also our responsibilities, not only as citizens of our own fair republic but as a people among the nations of the world.  And our values are fairly judged, domestically and abroad, by the intentions and outcomes of those actions.

The heavily redacted report of the Office of Professional Responsibility of the Department of Justice, Investigation into the Office of Legal Counsel’s Memoranda Concerning Issues Relating to the Central Intelligence Agency’s Use of “Enhanced Interrogation Techniques” on Suspected Terrorists, published in July of 2009, weighs heavily on the scales of judgement of American moral ‘values’ in the modern world.  This report originally recommended that Jay Bybee, a federal judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, and John Yoo, formerly with the Office of Legal Counsel, should face ‘disciplinary action’ for professional misconduct regarding flawed legal opinions they provided in support of the Bush administration’s extrajudicial authorisation of torture in their prosecution of the “war on terror.”  But it isn’t going to happen.

What is at stake for us as a nation?  From the perspective of history, perhaps quite a bit:

Seriously, this is a document that informed Americans should be familiar with, as a basis for any future discussion about the costs and consequences of a “global war on terror” and about the maintenance of American “values” in the world.

Through American history, there have been episodes of brutality and abuse that, in hindsight, span a very wide range of moral acceptability. There is no way to “understand” lynchings that makes them other than abominations. But – to use the extreme case – America’s use of the atomic bomb in Hiroshima and Nagasaki will always be the subject of first-order moral debate, about whether any “larger good” could justify the immediate suffering, the decades-long aftereffects, and the crossing of the “first use” frontier that this decision represented.

My point now is not to go through the A-bomb debate. It is to say that anyone who is serious in endorsing the A-bomb decision has to have fully faced the consequences. This is why John Hersey’s Hiroshima was requisite basic knowledge for anyone arguing for or against the use of the bomb. The OPR report is essentially this era’s Hiroshima. As Hersey’s book does, it makes us confront what was done in our name – “our” meaning the citizens of the United States.

If you want to argue that “whatever” happened in the “war on terror” was necessary because of the magnitude and novelty of the threat, then you had better be willing to face what the “whatever” entailed. Which is what this report brings out. And if you believe – as I do, and have argued through the years – that what happened included excessive, abusive, lawless, immoral, and self-defeating acts done wrongly in the name of American “security,” then this is a basic text as well.

James Fallows – The OPR Report: This Era’s ‘Hiroshima’ The Atlantic 21 Feb 10

So what have we done about this?  We seem determined to sweep the crumbs of our moral dilemma under the carpet.

There seems to be a niggling doubt creeping into Republican public comments on the narrative of themselves as the obstructionist party of ‘no.’  While it was pointed out recently that the Republican base is quite happy with this tactic it appears that some incumbents are having second thoughts as to how this increasingly widespread perception is playing out in their own constituencies, though it is still pretty thin on the ground:

Congressional Republicans are divided on how to change the public’s perception that they are not working with President Barack Obama.

According to a Washington Post/ABC News poll conducted earlier this month, 58 percent of the 1,004 respondents said Republicans have not reached out enough to Obama.

Molly K Hooper – Republicans divided on how to counter ‘party of no’ reputation in poll The Hill 14 Feb 10

Divided is good.  And though it seems to be taking a while to sink in, it appears that the fallout from Obama’s performance in Maryland is proving slightly radioactive to public opinion and Republican strategy.  At least in the House.  There even seems to be some traction elsewhere:

In a blow to Republican insistence that they have played a non-obstructionist role in slowing down the Democratic legislative agenda, one of the GOP’s senior senators acknowledged on Sunday that his party had gone too far in holding up presidential nominees.

Appearing on “Fox News Sunday,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) called the blanket hold that his colleague, Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.), placed last week on all of President Obama’s nominees “wrong.”

Sam Stein – Richard Shelby Was ‘Wrong’ To Place Blanket Hold On Obama Nominees Huffington Post 14 Feb

It’s very encouraging to see increasingly conflicted messages emerging from the usually lockstep Republicans.

A little bit of political history was made today when President Obama addressed Republicans at their conference in Baltimore:

President Obama traveled to a House Republican retreat in Baltimore on Friday and delivered a performance that was at once defiant, substantive and engaging. For roughly an hour and a half, Obama lectured GOP leaders and, in a protracted, nationally-televised question-and-answer session, deflected their policy critiques, corrected their misstatements and scolded them for playing petty politics.

Sam Stein – Obama Goes To GOP Lions’ Den – And Mauls The Lions Huffington Post 29 Jan 10

In a live television broadcast the president delivered a prepared address and then participated in a question-and-answer session with Republicans which is unlike anything in recent domestic political history.  Coming at a time when Obama’s presidency is under increasing criticism for messaging and policy it was a masterful performance which demonstrated his keen grasp of policy and the process of politics as currently practiced in Congress.