Conservatives Never Met A Criminal They Didn't Like

The Bush Administration sure had a knack for letting criminals get away with it, didn't they? They failed to stop 9/11, never caught bin Laden, and now we're learning about the total incompetence of the SEC in responding to Bernie Madoff's Ponzi scheme.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission repeatedly missed chances to catch Bernard Madoff’s $65 billion fraud over 16 years by assigning inexperienced investigators and accepting “implausible” explanations after catching him in lies, the agency’s internal watchdog said.

At least six warnings from sources including a money manager, a “respected hedge-fund manager” and a firm that studied Madoff’s business failed to spur a “thorough and competent” probe, Inspector General H. David Kotz wrote in a summary of a report released today. Madoff, in an interview with Kotz, said even he “was astonished” when investigators failed to check trading records that would have exposed his scam.

“Despite numerous credible and detailed complaints, the SEC never properly examined or investigated Madoff’s trading and never took the necessary, but basic, steps to determine if Madoff was operating a Ponzi scheme,” Kotz wrote.

This is not only an incredible report, it plays into a larger truth about the conservative conception of regulation as a needless bother rather than a diligent effort to protect the consumer. One incredible moment, referenced above but covered in detail by Zachary Roth, shows that Madoff basically thought he was caught and the scheme had been discovered by federal regulators, only to find himself safe once again.

The agency's biggest screw up, says the summary, was the fact that examiners never verified Madoff's trading through an independent third party.

The details of that failure are more astonishing still. Madoff at one point told examiners that all his trades were cleared through his account at the Depository Trust Company (DTC), a clearing agency -- and he gave the examiners his DTC account number. At that point, Madoff told Kotz in an interview, "I thought it was the end game, over. Monday morning they'll call DTC and this will be over." Amazingly, the SEC never followed up with DTC. Madoff said he was "astonished."

The summary almost makes clear that the SEC's right hand didn't know what the left was doing. It notes with astonishment that at one point, two Madoff examinations were going on at the same time within the agency, without either being aware of the other. It was Madoff himself who informed one team of the other's existence [...]

The final, failed Madoff investigation of 2006 -- triggered by a detailed Markopolos complaint -- was perhaps the most egregious. According to the summary, most of the investigative work was done by a staff attorney "who recently graduated from law school and only joined the SEC nineteen months before she was given the Madoff investigation. She had never previously been the lead staff attorney on any investigation, and had been involved in very few investigations overall. The Madoff assignment was also her first real exposure to broker-dealer issues."

According to the summary, that inexperience helps explain why, when Madoff told the examiners that he got such unprecedentedly good return simply because he had a good "feel" for the market, they took that nonsensical explanation at face value.

Bush's SEC didn't bother to check up on Madoff's dealings, and they took his explanations as good enough for them, because their attitude toward regulation was "don't mess with a good thing." Indeed, the entire stock market during the Bush years was kind of operating under a false reality in its own right. Madoff was a crook, but at least an honest crook. And even he couldn't get caught.

This is not just the story of one agency's embarrassing failure. The failure lied in the theory of government, existing to make profits for cronies and lay off the connected and the powerful. The failure to catch Madoff and the failure of conservatism are essentially the same stories.

The Ultimate Stealth Conservative

The public rhetoric on John Roberts during his confirmation, even among his critics, was that he was well-qualified and brilliant, and that the President should be commended for the choice. Some commentators even twisted themselves into knots trying to allege that Roberts was some sort of moderate. But Jeffrey Toobin, who would know, delivers the reality:

Roberts’s hard-edged performance at oral argument offers more than just a rhetorical contrast to the rendering of himself that he presented at his confirmation hearing. “Judges are like umpires,” Roberts said at the time. “Umpires don’t make the rules. They apply them. The role of an umpire and a judge is critical. They make sure everybody plays by the rules. But it is a limited role. Nobody ever went to a ballgame to see the umpire.” His jurisprudence as Chief Justice, Roberts said, would be characterized by “modesty and humility.” After four years on the Court, however, Roberts’s record is not that of a humble moderate but, rather, that of a doctrinaire conservative. The kind of humility that Roberts favors reflects a view that the Court should almost always defer to the existing power relationships in society. In every major case since he became the nation’s seventeenth Chief Justice, Roberts has sided with the prosecution over the defendant, the state over the condemned, the executive branch over the legislative, and the corporate defendant over the individual plaintiff. Even more than Scalia, who has embodied judicial conservatism during a generation of service on the Supreme Court, Roberts has served the interests, and reflected the values, of the contemporary Republican Party.

And honestly, this was preordained. Parties can filibuster on lower-profile issues, but succeeding in a filibuster against a Supreme Court Justice is a difficult scenario absent some major controversy. Roberts is a slave to corporate interests and a movement conservative, but George Bush won the election and those were the consequences. Now Barack Obama has a chance to remake the Court, and his critics are pre-screening the pick by warning him not to choose a doctrinaire liberal. Once again, IOKIYAR.

The Practical End Of The Two-Party System?

Kathleen Sebelius received confirmation from the Senate for the job of Health and Human Services Secretary, and among the 65 Senators in support was Sen. Arlen Specter (D-PA).

That's not a very hard call for him to make. And he still remains opposed to Dawn Johnsen, though I await seeing how he'll vote on cloture. But psychologically, there is an undeniable advantage to having 60 Senators who want to pass a bill rather than 60 concerned primarily with defeating it. While Newt Gingrich and his cadres are somehow yelling BWAHAHA! while they stay on the rat-free sinking ship, the truth is this represents a real loss for conservatives, who see their party marginalized and regionalized, without hope and without a meaningful constituency. Which is probably why some conservative activists are having second thoughts.

Self-reflection was hard to find from the Republican Party and from activists who had attacked Specter as an example of the GOP’s image problem — a man who prevented them from appealing to voters as the party of small government. Steele accused Specter of trying to “further his personal political interests because he knew that he was going to lose a Republican primary due to his left-wing voting record.” Eric Odom, the conservative web guru who launched TaxDayTeaParty.com — and who denied Steele’s request to speak at the Chicago anti-spending rally — responded to the news by tweeting “THANK GOD we don’t have to deal with an ugly GOP primary in Specter’s district.” According to Adam Brandon, a spokesman for the Tea Party-supporting FreedomWorks, the group’s chairman Dick Armey laughed at the news and asked: “Will anyone be able to tell the difference?” [...]

Among some other conservative activists, there was more regret, and more worry about how Specter’s switch would aid Obama and the Democrats. Gary Bauer, the longtime Republican evangelical activist who is now president of American Values, said Specter’s critics did not give him enough credit for his work in the Senate. “I don’t think that Clarence Thomas would be in the Supreme Court today if not for Arlen Specter,” said Bauer. “Having the support of what are derisively referred to as RINOS — Republicans in name only — can be important in the Senate.”

Bauer rejected the idea that the Republican brand would be strengthened now that Specter was no longer giving bipartisan cover to Democrats — and that Republicans were being shaped into the clear conservative choice that voters were missing in 2008. “I take a back seat to nobody in wanting the Republican Party to be Ronald Reagan’s party,” said Bauer. “But I would remind folks that Ronald Reagan picked George H.W. Bush to be his running mate. Ronald Reagan understood that there was another element of the party that needed to be brought along. We gain nothing if we replace RINOS with Democrats.”

Bay Buchanan, the president of the American Cause, acknowledged that Specter had been a “huge problem” for conservatives who opposed pathways to citizenship for undocumented immigrants, but worried that he would become even worse as a Democrat.

“Did he give us a few things?” asked Buchanan. “Did he owe President Bush something because he flew into the fray in 2004 and saved him in the primary with Toomey? Were we able to call in a few chits? Absolutely. And now the Democrats will call in their chits. This is not good for Republicans. I’m not going to tell you that we’re cleansing the party and that this is good for Republicans.”

The conservatives who have any inkling about how Washington works knows this is a problem for them. It's actually a problem for America. I know that "we need a vital two-party system" is a cliche, but that doesn't make it untrue. My hope is that the Conservadems and the liberals will split and we can have this debate from the center left where it belongs.

We Can't Have People With Personal Experience Giving Their Opinion!

From dumb as a stump and proud of it Brian Kilmeade on his radio show:

ANDREW NAPOLITANO (co-host): You may not know the name unless you live in California. Jay Bybee was a professional researcher for the Justice Department when he authored the principal of -- the main one -- of the torture memos.

President Bush awarded him by appointing him to the United States Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit. That's the level of appellate court just below the Supreme Court. He was appointed to the 9th Circuit, which covers the western third of the United States.

There's a lot of pressure on Jay Bybee -- on Judge Bybee, now, because these memoranda, which obviously were not known about under -- during the time of his confirmation came -- came out.

Here's what John McCain had to say about it yesterday.

JOHN McCAIN [audio clip]: A resignation would be a decision he would have to make on his own, but he falls into the same category as everybody else as far as giving very bad advice and misinterpreting fundamentally what the United States is all about, much less things like the Geneva Conventions.

Plus, under President Reagan, we signed a agreement against torture. We're in violation of that.

BRIAN KILMEADE (co-host): Oh, come on. Number one, we all know John McCain is not a lawyer; this guy is. Number two, Judge, you knew at that time, this is --

NAPOLITANO: This is your guy, John McCain.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Now, now. Come on.

KILMEADE: No, he's not my guy. I like John McCain. I respect him. But there's a lot of issues I don't understand. Plus, he should not be allowed to talk on torture because he is clearly somebody who went through unspeakable pain and punishment --

NAPOLITANO: You mean, he shouldn't be allowed to talk -- he has an opinion like everybody else. He represents the state of Arizona.

KILMEADE: But he was tortured. He was tortured. And --

NAPOLITANO: Therefore, his views on torture are --

KILMEADE: -- are skewed.

NAPOLITANO: -- irrelevant because of what happened --

KILMEADE: -- are skewed.

NAPOLITANO: -- in 'nam? I think his views are particularly telling because he's been through this kind of thing.

KILMEADE: But what do you think he's going to be -- pro-torture --

NAPOLITANO: No.

KILMEADE: -- after he's been through it?

NAPOLITANO: Of course, he's not going to be pro-torture.

KILMEADE: And plus, I don't think this is torture. And they don't subscribe to the Geneva Conventions. We had this debate in 2002. You were on our set -- you were on constantly saying, "Look, they don't -- right -- the way the courts look at it right now, they do not fall under the Geneva Conventions." And that was what they were going under.

NAPOLITANO: I never said they didn't fall under the Geneva Conventions.

I should just submit this without comment, because it speaks for itself. But allow me a word on this. Kilmeade's belief that nobody should be allowed to have an opinion backed up with experience or knowledge tracks perfectly with the conservative movement, on a variety of subjects. We shouldn't listen to scientists on climate change, or health professionals on health care, or weapons inspectors on Iraq. The plural of data is not anecdote. Nobody with an informed opinion can possibly be dispassionate. Reality has a well-known liberal bias. This is simply a distilled form of that worldview.

The bigger problem lies in treating torture like it's a debate, complete with polls. The moment a debate over torture was engaged was the moment that America lost its moral authority. Obviously it's ridiculous to seriously state that anyone who has been tortured can't be part of a debate over torture. But it's just as ridiculous to have the debate at all, a debate over an issue that has been not only self-evident, but ingrained in the standard codes of law in civilized societies for centuries. We can open the subject again, but at that point we do lose the right to call ourselves civilized.

I See Socialist People

Spencer Bachus (R-AL) gets in touch with his inner Joe McCarthy and outs the "17 known Socialists" in Congress.

From The Hill's Briefing Room:

Rep. Spencer Bachus (R-Ala.) puts the number of socialists in the House at 17.

"Some of the men and women I work with in Congress are socialists," Bachus told local government leaders on Thursday, according to the Birmingham News.

Bachus gave the specific number of House socialists when pressed later by a reporter.

Actually, there is one avowed socialist, his name is Sen. Bernie Sanders and he has been elected multiple times by the state of Vermont. Unfortunately for Bachus, however, this talk of "socialism" has less bite than it used to.

Only 53% of American adults believe capitalism is better than socialism.

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found that 20% disagree and say socialism is better. Twenty-seven percent (27%) are not sure which is better.

Adults under 30 are essentially evenly divided: 37% prefer capitalism, 33% socialism, and 30% are undecided. Thirty-somethings are a bit more supportive of the free-enterprise approach with 49% for capitalism and 26% for socialism. Adults over 40 strongly favor capitalism, and just 13% of those older Americans believe socialism is better.

Many have remarked on this, but it's worth repeating - the conservative idiots outsmarted themselves. They demonized Barack Obama as a socialist for wanting to raise the top-end marginal tax rate by three points, and invest in universal health care and education and green energy, and all they did was to MAKE SOCIALISM MORE POPULAR, particularly among young people who have no memory of the Berlin Wall falling or the Cold War generally. They've equated socialism with Obama's moderate technocratic agenda, which is disarming that epithet almost as much as they've disarmed "liberal" through constant use. This is all backfiring because the nation has seen the opposite of the Obama agenda in action, and it broke the world.

There's No Way To Make "I Hope He Fails" Sound Good

Mike Pence is trying his best, but it's just not possible.

SANCHEZ: Did you hear what Rush Limbaugh said, “the dirty little secret is all Republicans want Barack Obama to fail?” Very direct question to you, Sir. Do you want Barack Obama to fail?

PENCE: Come on, Rick. Nice try. I know what Rush Limbaugh meant. … Everyone like me, Rush Limbaugh and others who believe in limited government, who believes in conservative values, wants the policies that this administration is bringing forward, higher taxes, massive increase in government spending, a huge increase in the role of government, in our daily lives, departure from traditional values. You bet, we want those policies to fail. Because, Rick, we know big government, increases in debt, the micromanagement of the economy out of Washington, DC is a policy that will fail.

The leader of the Republican Party himself, in an email exchange with Greg Sargent, couldn't say that a successful economic recovery would be good for the country.

I asked:

I understand that you don’t think Obama’s policies are destined to succeed. Reasonable people can disagree about that. However, putting aside the question of what the policies are destined to do, is it true that if they succeed in their stated goal of righting the economy — however far-fetched that may be to you and others — then would that be good for the country?

Or, alternatively put, putting aside the question of what the policies are in your view destined to do, is it true that if they fail in their stated goal of righting the economy, won’t the country suffer further as a result?

Rush answered:

I reject your premise, especially since you are rejecting my answers. I will not put aside the question of what the policies are destined to do because that IS THE POINT.

This is actually better than the "I hope he fails" terminology, but not by much. The idea conservatives are trying to say is that they feel Obama's policies would move the country in the wrong direction. It's laughable given the direction we're in as a result of the last Republican President's policies, but it's at least an argument. But with the initial phrasing on the table, it's impossible for them to wind themselves out of this mess. They can't divorce themselves from almighty Rushbo, so they have to say "yes, I hope he fails" and then fill in the blanks with an alternative language where hoping the President fails doesn't mean that they hope the country goes into ruin.

It seems to me that conservatives are guilty of what they accused Democrats of doing for many years - wanting the war in Iraq to fail, wanting the economy to fail, etc. But of course, Democrats never put it in those terms. They argued that Bush's policies wouldn't succeed, and they were RIGHT. That's a far different construction.

Some on the progressive side like Peter Daou doesn't think that elevating Rush Limbaugh makes a lot of sense. I don't think Democrats have a lot of power in this equation. Rush is perfectly capable of elevating himself within the Republican ranks - the Big Money Boyz are offering Michael Steele a fat cup of STFU on the issue. The point is that Rush is entirely unpopular with the vast majority of the country, who don't listen to his show. Limbaugh cost the Republicans the US Senate in 2006 when his Michael J. Fox bashing elevated Claire McCaskill. It's a proven strategy, and Republicans talking about Limbaugh means they're not talking about anything appealing to the country at large. I fully agree that Obama and the Democrats will be assessed on whether or not they can bring the country out of this economic death spiral; we're always judged on cleaning up the mess, they're never judged on making it. But there's no reason that Republicans shouldn't have to run in circles and be forced to reconcile the hateful extremism of their de facto leader in the meantime. "I hope he fails" is a great tombstone for these guys.

...This is both amusing and useful. It's an automatic Limbaugh apology generator! Give to the conservative politician who criticizes Limbaugh only to have to retract it in your family.

Set It Aside

Norm Coleman thinks that we shouldn't argue anymore about who beat who and just try again in the spirit of compromise:

For more than a month, Norm Coleman stressed flaws in Minnesota's election system.

And on Monday, Coleman lawyer Jim Langdon wrote the three-judge panel to suggest the problems are so serious they may not be able to declare a winner.

"Some courts have held that when the number of illegal votes exceeds the margin between the candidates -- and it cannot be determined for which candidate those illegal votes were cast -- the most appropriate remedy is to set aside the election," Langdon wrote in a letter to the court.

Coleman continued this line of reasoning in an interview today, saying that "there is a question whether this court can certify who got the most legally-cast ballots."

This is basically an admission of defeat, as this DSCC spokesman said cleverly today ("I'm sure Senator John McCain would like to throw out the results of November 4, 2008 as well"), but even if it doesn't succeed, it furthers the conservative project. There has been a simmering effort in conservative circles to delegitimize the election process - to characterize any poor or black voter as a potential fraudster, to accuse community groups like ACORN of stealing elections, to cast doubt on the process in general. This serves two purposes - 1) it sets the stage for increasingly draconian voter ID laws that intentionally suppress Democratic votes, and 2) it throws a shroud of suspicion over any Democrat who happens to get elected. Al Franken will never be seen as a legitimate Senator to the majority of the right - despite his going through the regular channels of the recount process, he will be painted as a thief, a usurper, an illegitimate pol who used the activist courts to take away Norm Coleman's rightful place in the Senate.

And that's the other part of this - to question the impartiality of judges and the legal process. The Minnesota Supreme Court made a few rulings during the recount process, but by and large the elections system was allowed to work on its own. But that doesn't matter - if and when the court issues a final ruling, the Coleman camp will not only appeal but blast the legal system for handing the election to Al Franken. The more sinister prospect here is to further the depiction of judges as wild liberal activists who must be stopped. Related to that is Republicans' new demand to the President, signed by every Senator in their ranks, to confirm George Bush's judges or face filibusters:

President Barack Obama should fill vacant spots on the federal bench with former President Bush’s judicial nominees to help avoid another huge fight over the judiciary, all 41 Senate Republicans said Monday.

In a letter to the White House, the Republican senators said Obama would “change the tone in Washington” if he were to renominate Bush nominees like Peter Keisler, Glen Conrad and Paul Diamond. And they requested that Obama respect the Senate’s constitutional role in reviewing judicial nominees by seeking their consultation about potential nominees from their respective states.

“Regretfully, if we are not consulted on, and approve of, a nominee from our states, the Republican Conference will be unable to support moving forward on that nominee,” the letter warns. “And we will act to preserve this principle and the rights of our colleagues if it is not.”

In other words, Republicans are threatening a filibuster of judges if they're not happy.

And thus we see how the conservative movement always moves forward, like a shark. I eagerly await the Republican Senator who says "Obama would rather deny these fine jurists and nominate people like the ones who stole the election for Al Franken in Minnesota." The Coleman lawsuit is really a textbook example of how one issue is used to chip away at multiple other ones. I know that conservatives appear to be imploding at the moment, but under the radar they are always working to undermine American institutions.

Teabaggery

Wingnut populist of the nation united yesterday for a mass action of tea parties that shook the government to its knees. OK, its ankles.

Remember all those "Chicago Tea Parties" Americans were supposed to participate in, taking out their righteous anger against Obama's anti-American economic plans? It was supposed to the be first wave of Americans taking to the streets against socialism, the birth of the New Minutemen.

The results? Not so impressive.

Let's see...a whopping 79 people showed up today in Jacksonville, FL. Looks like maybe over a dozen showed up in Asheville, NC. Almost 10 people made it to the Buffalo, NY, protest. About 100 people throughout all of Los Angeles came out to Santa Monica Pier. All of about 300 people made it out throughout the entirety of Atlanta. 250 made it out to Dallas for the tea party there. 150 in Lansing. Looks like about 100 went to watch the Joe the Plumber and Michelle Malkin teabag fest in D.C. (if you had to retch, it's not my fault, just your dirty, dirty mind...)

The very best numbers these jokers managed to pull was 1,500 people in St. Louis, and somewhere between 500-1,000 in Chicago--if reports from the organizers are to be believed.

Perhaps most hilarious is the 250-person turnout in Houston which was said to be

"pretty good turn-out considering the livestock show barbeque cook-off in Reliant Park was a competitor."

Dave Weigel was on the scene in Washington - where thousands of CPAC activists were already gathering and yet only 100 were willing to trod their butts out in front of the White House. I don't even know what to say about this.



Now, I've put together things like this. They're not easy to coordinate. Especially when your entire movement is composed of armchair ranters who are more comfortable typing about what other people are doing. Of course, I didn't have huge wingnut email lists behind me. And when you fall this flat, you don't brag about it, using the line "fiscal responsibility is the new counterculture." Yeah, man, they're doing their own thing, baby! Free love and cuts in the capital gains tax!

And Glenn Reynolds used the opportunity to reminisce about Lebanese protest babes. Computer cleanup at the Univ. of Tennessee Law School, I imagine.

This is what's left of the conservative movement. Their folk hero is an unemployed plumber who is quickly wearing out his welcome with the general public. Their new mascot is a 13 year-old kid which some kind of hyperactive disorder who's two years away from being permanently stuffed in a locker for his entire high school career. Their key innovations to the policy debate include questioning the President's citizenship and wondering what "volcano monitoring" means. Their formal leader is a black guy to which their membership feels comfortable saying You be da man, probably because he is some sort of parody of a black man himself, the kind of guy who vows an "off the hook" public relations offensive. Their response to the worst economic crisis in the past 70 years is to throw a tea party. And their spiritual guru, the man who is as singularly powerful as anyone in the movement, is a drug-addled radio talk-show host who hopes the country fails.



Is this a political ideology or a circus?

World's Tiniest Violin

Seems that ex-Bush officials can't get hired anywhere these days. I am somehow unsympathetic! Krugman nails this:

Show some independence, and you’ll face a lavishly financed primary challenge from the Club for Growth. Be a loyal soldier, and you will be taken care of — through what’s commonly referred to as “wingnut welfare.”

Thus, lose an election, and a think tank with the usual funding sources will create an America’s Enemies program for you to direct. Mess up the occupation of Iraq, and you’ll be appointed to run the World Bank; mess up there, and there’s still a chair waiting for you at AEI.

But it appears that wingnut welfare is breaking down when it comes to former Bush officials. Is this the beginning of the end for movement conservatism?

At one level, the fact that Bush's minions are having trouble looking for work should be the least of their worries, compared to staying out of jail. But Krugman is right - if nobody can finance movement conservatives, it means that nobody can finance movement ideas. And that provides an opportunity for a different kind of Republicanism, one that would be good for the country.

As a side note, it was extremely odd to see Krugman and Nouriel Roubini - who the media insist on calling "Dr. Doom" while acknowledging that he got the whole financial crisis right - on the same ABC Sunday show panel this morning, along with George "I'm a lying sack of crap" Will and Suzy "Jack Welch's wife" Welch. Will was on his best behavior because he knew he'd get beaten down if he wasn't, so the result was a very elevated debate, for Stephanopoulos.

Impacts Of Conservative Demagoguery

The result of the recent conservative dominance on cable, even if not a lot of people are watching, is a growing amount of misinformation delivered to the public, over the course of many years. One of the reasons we focus on this and think it's so important is that progressives are cutting through 30 years' worth of rhetoric designed to push conservative movement ideas into the mainstream. And without a sustained effort to demystify those ideas, they will hold in the minds of the public EVEN IF the result of those ideas has been disaster. Republicans destroyed the country and people fully understand that, and yet their ideas haven't been invalidated. See this Rasmussen poll.

Paul Krugman, last year's winner of the Nobel Prize for economics and a regular columnist for the New York Times, recently wrote that you should “write off anyone who asserts that it’s always better to cut taxes than to increase government spending because taxpayers, not bureaucrats, are the best judges of how to spend their money.”

If you follow that advice, you’ll be writing off a majority of Americans. The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found that 53% say that it’s always better to cut taxes. Only 24% share Krugman’s views.

Krugman’s views are a bit more aligned with public opinion when he asserts that “public spending rather than tax cuts should be the core of any stimulus plan.” On this point, the public is evenly divided--34% agree, 34% disagree, and 32% are not sure.

While overall public opinion is divided on that question, there is less public support for another Krugman claim. The columnist wrote that “it’s clear that when it comes to economic stimulus, public spending provides much more bang for the buck than tax cuts.” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi echoed that view on ABC’s This Week on Sunday when she said, “There is more bang for the buck by investing in food stamps and in unemployment insurance than in any tax cut.”

Thirty-one percent (31%) agree with Krugman and Pelosi that “public spending provides much more bang for the buck than tax cuts.” Forty-two percent (42%) disagree.

Now, running polls on factual statements by Paul Krugman isn't going to get the best result, especially because Krugman is a high-profile liberal and a small segment of the population will knee-jerk dismiss anything he says. The point is that conservative ideas live on despite the fall of conservatives nationally. Voters definitively favor Democrats over Republicans, but the ideas remain.

I try to think about the reaction to yesterday's party-line vote from the perspective of a low-information non-junkie. They saw Republicans vote as a bloc against a popular President who wants to create jobs. That's probably a net negative for Republicans as people. It has nothing to do with invalidating their ideas. And the Village obviously isn't going to help with that. Here's chief lickspittle Mark Halperin explaining how Obama "didn't go for centrist compromises" in the stimulus.

This is a really bad sign for Barack Obama to try to change Washington... he needs bipartisan solutions. They went for it, and they came up with zero... The other thing he could have done, you can go for centrist compromises, you can say to your own party, sorry, some of you liberals aren't going to like it, but I'm going to change this legislation radically to get a big centrist majority, rather than an all-Democratic vote. He chose not to do that. That's the exact path that George Bush took for most of his Presidency, with disastrous consequences for bipartisanship and solving big problems.

See, it was all Obama's fault. He didn't compromise enough and kick the left. By the way, I don't remember the media reporting on those "disastrous consequences" of George Bush's approach in real time, do you? Funny how bipartisanship only matters with a Democratic President.

I don't think Halperin's insanity will be listened to by the public, but the effect here is that conservative ideas are still respected while conservatives aren't. And so tax cuts will always be prominent in bills like this, limiting their effectiveness. "Market solutions" will always be preferred. People will think that conservative solutions done right are the path to success. And that is a looming disaster.

As it stands right now, there's one man being listened to seriously that can command an audience: the President. He hasn't used the bully pulpit to a great degree yet, though I assume that's coming. Until conservative ideas are rejected, we will continue in this muddle, blocked from the tools we need to get out of this economic crisis.

They Wish They Knew How To Quit Him

A quick return to prominence for the Republican Party would require some vision, some new ideas, or even old ideas bottled in a new package. I'm almost certain that the wrong way to go about this is through a loving tribute to the most hated President in history on the House floor:

George W. Bush is gone from office…but he is not forgotten, at least not by Reps. Trent Franks (R-AZ), Mike Pence (R-IN), and Steve King (R-IA). On Thursday, the three men spent almost 40 minutes delivering their final love letters to Bush. Some highlights:

• FRANKS: “President Bush often had to walk like a knowing lion — like a knowing lion, Mr. Speaker, through the chattering of hyenas. … [I]f those critics do not devour themselves in the meantime, Mr. Speaker, they may face the bared teeth of an enemy that will make us all wish the lion still walked among us.”

• PENCE: “I truly believe that this nation owes a debt of gratitude to George W. Bush.”

• KING: “I’m here to say thank you to President Bush for the things that he has done when he’s had his steady hand on the till of leadership, and especially with our national defense.”

At one point, Franks began to tear up when talking about how Bush made the country “brighter” and “more hopeful” for his children.

Republicans still love George W. Bush because George W. Bush was a through-and-through Republican. There have been times over the last several years when conservatives have tried to throw Bush over, but there's no denying that he embodied the full spectrum of conservative policies, proving them all to be a hideous failure. And the same arguments that Bush so eloquently made throughout his Presidency are the arguments that conservatives are making as they try to derail the stimulus package.

Next, write off anyone who asserts that it’s always better to cut taxes than to increase government spending because taxpayers, not bureaucrats, are the best judges of how to spend their money.

Here’s how to think about this argument: it implies that we should shut down the air traffic control system. After all, that system is paid for with fees on air tickets — and surely it would be better to let the flying public keep its money rather than hand it over to government bureaucrats. If that would mean lots of midair collisions, hey, stuff happens [...]

These are only some of the fundamentally fraudulent antistimulus arguments out there. Basically, conservatives are throwing any objection they can think of against the Obama plan, hoping that something will stick.

But here’s the thing: Most Americans aren’t listening. The most encouraging thing I’ve heard lately is Mr. Obama’s reported response to Republican objections to a spending-oriented economic plan: “I won.” Indeed he did — and he should disregard the huffing and puffing of those who lost.

As should we all - especially the paeans to their Dear Leader.

Goodnight Bush

I promise this will be the last time I come back to this today, then I'll start looking forward and not backward. But just to look way backward for a moment, The Nation reprinted their editorial from 1933 waving farewell to Hoover and the Republicans in favor of FDR, and the similarities are striking.

At the risk of gilding the tinsel, let the record be set down finally as The Nation takes leave this week of the "only party fit to rule." American memories are short. Four years from now the public will be asked to restore the Republicans and prosperity [...]

There is no need to set down once more the repeated mistaken prophecies which issued from the White House as the country sank deeper into economic chaos. Those forecasts were sufficiently quoted during the recent Presidential contest. But Mr. Hoover's record as a false prophet continued consistent to the end [...] It is needless to stress the hollowness of these final promises and assertions. Unemployment mounts—thirteen million men out of work is today a conservative estimate; a 3.9 per cent drop in employment with a 5 per cent pay-roll decrease was recorded for the month ending January 15, according to the latest Department of Labor statistics available. The people's savings continue to be confiscated as banks close at an undiminished pace—272 closed in the month of January, 1933, and toward the close of February they closed, no longer singly, but by States —Michigan, Maryland, Ohio. Bankruptcy is becoming epidemic. The private and local relief upon which Mr. Hoover's policies relied are increasingly inadequate; destitution, undernourishment, actual hunger are spreading through the land.

But we are taking leave not merely of a single Administration. For twelve years the Republican Party has been in power. During ten of those years it controlled the executive and legislative branches of the government. When, a few years hence, an attempt is made to minimize the disaster of this last quadrennium, and to point to a preceding eight year period of material development and growth, let it be noted that in a purely material sense the American people are much worse off today than they were twelve years ago. Far more than was gained has been swept away. Savings have been dissipated, lives have been blasted, families disintegrated. Misery and insecurity exist to a degree unprecedented in our national life. And spiritually the American people have been debauched by the materialism which made dollar-chasing the accepted way of life and accumulation of riches the goal of earthly existence. The record of Republicanism must be judged as a whole, although, in fairness, the consequences of the World War and the major responsibility of the Democrats for putting the United States into it must not be forgotten. The Republicans were as eager to make war—and both parties continued, until well after the crash, to be proud of their attitude in 1917. Moreover, economic disaster has been only a part of this sterile decade's legacy, the burdens of which will descend to unborn generations. Our worthiest traditions have been impaired; vital tenets of American life have been destroyed. What has become of that fundamental American axiom "salvation by work"? In all our previous history it has been taken for granted that ours was a land of opportunity, and that rewards bore some relation to initiative, effort, and ability. Granting the large mythical content of these beliefs, they were more nearly valid in America in the first century and a half of our national existence than anywhere else on earth. They are no longer true today. The promise of American life has been shattered—possibly beyond repair [...]

Have these captains and kings departed—not to return? The epoch of their wanton and repulsive leadership is ending. Their incompetence and their betrayal are manifest. But much of the evil they have done lives after them. The coming years will see the struggle to purge America, to reassert the promise of American life, to validate, in consonance with the changed times and conditions, the high aspirations of the founders of the nation. Mr. Roosevelt has the opportunity to be the leader of this renaissance, but he will have to forge as his instrument a wholly different Democratic Party from that which so long has been indistinguishable from the Republican.

I mean, it's uncanny. And in a sense, it is the continuum we have often faced in this country. People vs. powerful. Rich vs. poor. Special interests vs. the rights of man. Roosevelt, in the wake of the misery created by Republicanism, chose a different path and ushered in both eventual prosperity and the weaving of a social safety net that is probably the only reason we aren't all in bread lines today. It remains to be seen how Obama will react, though there were some good signs in the address today (I will cover that in a later post).

What needs to be remembered is that George W. Bush, while a dull, selfish, pathetic figure, is not remarkable in the annals of Republicanism. His policies and the work of his execrable staff falls along the same lines of the moneyed Republicanism of the 1920s, the Nixonian secrecy and lawlessness of the 1960s and 1970s, the anti-government crusades of the 1980s and the theocratic revolutions of the 1990s and beyond. In the Bush years, the consolidation of all these efforts into an insidious whole created a government that hated itself, that existed for the benefit only of the wealthy, concerned with taking profits and humiliating enemies. And it produced success for those few, but utter failure and disgrace for the country, and ultimately for those individuals that directed it. The depressing final-night soiree of those souls oozes metaphor.

"Are these all white people -- I mean White House people?" I asked someone in a genuine Freudian slip. Turned out the crowd was a mix of alumni from the White House, State Department, Treasury, and Justice and a few campaign workers. The mood felt more sweet than bitter. Many staffers had spent the weekend clearing out their offices. The question I kept hearing was "What's next?" Some were applying to grad schools, others were heading to D.C. law firms or think tanks, and others were returning to their home states or traveling. One outgoing Treasury employee had already landed a job as a manager at Abercrombie & Fitch [...]

"This is objectively the finest group of people ever to serve our country," he said. "Not to serve me, not to serve the Republican Party, but the United States of America."

"I am glad we made this journey," he went on. Then he engaged in a little reminiscence. "Remember the time in 2003 when Bartlett came to work all hung over?" Laughs. "Nothing ever changes."

He continued: "We never shruck--"

"Shirked!" someone yelled.

"Shirked," Bush corrected, smiling. "You might have shirked; I shrucked. I mean we took the deals head on."

This is not unusual. This is the consequence of putting people into power who hate government. May America not have such short memories again.

A Step Back

Before we close the book on John McCain's political career, do give a read to this compendium of the five biggest flops of the election. McCain's penchant for "crazy stunt politics" - inserting Joe the Plumber into the debate, or "suspending" his campaign to deal with the bailout bill - was ill-suited to the sobriety of the political moment. I think the most amusing part of the election is how the Obama campaign used McCain's love of "crazy stunt politics" to bait him into running hard in Pennsylvania when the state was already wrapped up.

1. Obama's campaign learns McCain has just $37 million entering October.

2. Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell says he's "nervous" that McCain is gaining ground.

3. Obama's team "leaks" an internal poll proving Rendell's anxiety.

4. McCain pulls back in other states to "flood" Pennsylvania with resources.

In the end, Obama won Pennsylvania by double digits.

The key here is the leaked poll. The Obama camp never leaked anything. They were mute. But suddenly, you have their Pennsylvania operation losing track of an incredibly damaging internal poll showing them only two percent abover mcCain, even as all the public pollsters were showing a far less competitive race. And then you have Ed Rendell anxiously running his mouth off in public about his desire to get Obama back in the state. None of it vibed with how the Obama campaign generally operated, and none of it vibed with what we actually seemed to know about the fundamentals in Pennsylvania. But the McCain campaign certainly leapt on it, and time and money that could have gone to Ohio and Colorado and Indiana instead went to Pennsylvania.

I think they were accounting for the fact that McCain rolling the dice in Pennsylvania was a "story" that he couldn't pass up - it would get on the news and allow for lots of discussion. Of course he'd take a swing at that pitch in the dirt. I don't know if you can extrapolate anything out of how Obama would deal with, say, North Korea based on this maneuver, but it was very strategic.

There's plenty of talk that suggests McCain had to shake up the race because running as your basic Republican couldn't have won. Except that, in the public perception, McCain wasn't a basic Republican. He matured into one during the election. Now, it's true that the Obama campaign did a decent job of defining him as a Bush Republican. But McCain had a hand in this as well:

But McCain barely even tried to take advantage of the fact that, when the race began, he wasn’t closely identified with the rotten GOP brand. Of course when he decided he wanted to be president, the first thing to do was to start running to the right in order to win the primary. That’s what you do. And that’s what he did. And it worked — barely — he won, albeit in a way that relied on a lot of independent and crossover votes. Then having won the primary, you want to tack a bit to the center. That’s how the game is played. And it’s especially how the game is played when your party’s image is terrible.

But McCain didn’t do it.

On the climate/energy/environment issues where he really had staked out an unusual position for a Republican, he moved right during the primaries and then moved even further right during the general election, embracing drilling and coal as the centerpiece of his agenda. He shed his image as a moderate on cultural issues with the Palin pick. And he didn’t make up for those rightward thrusts with anything else. Instead of trying to undue the damage to his brand that was caused by shifting right during the primaries, he compounded it by continuing to move right, closing the campaign by dogmatically insisting that run-amok inequality is the essence of America (or something).

I suppose he figured that he had to nail down the conservative base. But they turned out in roughly the same numbers for McCain that they did for George Bush, and it's not like he totally cleared the hurdle of skepticism about him. What McCain lost big was independents, which was supposed to be where he could draw his greatest support. This is why he only improved on Bush's numbers in the Appalachian region and the Deep South, where conservatism is another religion. The far-right strategy is a downward spiral.

It seems like there was another campaign that could have been run. Maybe it wouldn't have succeeded. But it might not have had the same consequences of failure.

The Clinton Rules

While some conservative activists have the idea to rebuild their party by using the Obama-Dean inclusive vision of organizing and party infrastructure in service to the exclusive vision of conservatism, and others are waging jihad against anyone who dares cross Sarah Palin (by the power of Grayskull Redstate, we will purge you!!!), I think we know how this is all going to turn out, right?

HH: And I think he will be very concerned with the two issues I’m going to raise with you – national security and immigration. Now I believe the Committee On the Present Danger filled a need in the 70s which we need to reorganize an equivalent now. But what do you think, Bill Kristol?

BK: Oh, I agree, and we did a little of that in the 90s with the Project For the New American Century. And I actually think there are people talking about this. And there’s a lot of good foreign policy and defense thinking on our side, the Fred Kagans and Bob Kagans and Reuel Gerechts of the world, Victor Davis Hanson, et cetera. But a little bit of a political organization for them wouldn’t be bad. And I think we should support Obama, incidentally, if he does the right thing.

OF COURSE there will be another PNAC. As the media - and lots of Democrats - do the conservatives' dirty work for them by warning Obama not to read any kind of Democratic victory into the resounding Presidential and Congressional victory, the connected white men at the top of the party will shrink into the background, plot, seek ways to undermine the new President, and basically lie in wait. They aren't going to throw money into 50-state organizing or the Internet - that's for the little people. They are convinced that Obama's agenda will fail and they will stand ready, using their message machine to continue to feed rancid ideas into the media bloodstream. They've already got most of the Democratic Party urging for bipartisanship and restraint like the well-trained litter Grover Norquist et al. always wanted them to be. Fox News and right-wing radio and blogs will continue to work themselves into frenzies. Direct-mail groups will start sending letters to the base about how mysterious that Obama's grandmother and the Nevada state director died on the same day - they'll be added to the Obama Death List. Regnery books arguing against the radical Obama vision will fly off the shelves and into the pulping machines, with the authors all over cable news. AEI and Heritage will schedule conferences on "Why Moving The Top Tax Rate To 39% Kills Poor People" and other illuminating subjects. It will still be difficult to break a filibuster, and the minority party won't make it any easier on anything that matters.

The right doesn't have to "do" anything, I imagine is the consensus. All the structures of an opposition movement already exist, they just have to turn on the switch and sit back and wait.

Now, the question is whether our side has learned anything from 1993-94, or not.

Is This So Hard To Say

"Politics is not left, right or center ... It's about improving people's lives."

-Paul Wellstone, Election Night 1990 acceptance speech

We are 18 years on from that piercingly simple statement, and yet nobody in the Democratic Party has managed to use it as the antidote to this endless effort to analyze and re-analyze the election through a conservative frame, by claiming this is a center-right country and Obama had better be cautious in enacting an agenda too far to the left, which would anger the public. This is of course true if you believe the public is directly analogous to the Washington commentariat. I've had a hard time chronicling everyone who has told me that, in the wake of the largest victory for Democrats since 1964, in the wake of winning a majority of the votes cast in 4 out of the last 5 Presidential elections, in the wake of reducing the Republican Party to a regional outpost in the South and part of the Great Plains, this is a profoundly conservative nation. Here's a partial list:

Ron Brownstein, Jon Meacham, Peggy Noonan, Howard Fineman, David Broder, John Heilemann, John King, Mark Penn, Doug Schoen, Charles Krauthammer, Ruth Marcus, Marc Halperin, Dan Balz, Peter Wehner, William Galston, Bob Kerrey, Fred Barnes, Pat Buchanan and Joe Scarborough.

I think they call that a meme. Just for fun, here's a textbook example of the genre:

"My own hunch is that Obama is smart enough not to want to govern as a liberal," said Peter Wehner, a former Bush administration official.

(On our side we have Nina Easton. Whoop-de-damn-do.)

Most of these are movement conservatives masquerading as journalists, but of course they have a disproportionate impact on their Village buddies, who are just as fearful of any altering of the status quo and just as protective of it. So they fundamentally misread the Clinton years and concern troll Barack Obama against making the "same mistakes."

This is one of the classic myths that conservatives and establishment pundits, helped in no small part by conservative Democrats, like to flog. The reality is that we lost the 1994 elections mostly because of the disappointment from working-class Democrats and independents, especially women, who had voted for us in big numbers in 1992 but didn't show up to vote in 1994. We lost because we didn't deliver for our voters, not because we over-reached.

The first major fight was over our first federal budget. As folks may remember, Bob Rubin and other deficit hawks convinced Clinton to dramatically scale back on his campaign promises for investments in domestic programs, and to delay health care reform until we got that budget passed. While Clinton complained that we were going with an approach more like Eisenhower than like a Democrat, he went along with the green eyeshade guys. The budget got progressively more modest over the course of the legislative battle, most importantly taking out Gore's carbon tax idea. The bill that ended up passing was reasonably progressive, but way scaled back from 1992 campaign promises or what progressive members of Congress/groups had been pushing.

The next big fight was over NAFTA, a real example of lefty over-reaching. Yeah, right. And once again, those of us in the White House pushing hard for health care reform to be prioritized early were left disappointed as once more the drive to get health reform passed got delayed. Meanwhile, our allies in the labor movement who were excited about helping us pass a health care bill had to spend millions in fighting the NAFTA battle [...]

For all of our over-reaching, we didn't deliver much to those working class voters who gave us our victory in 1992. Family and Medical Leave was a great thing, and very popular, but very modest compared to bigger picture economic issues. An increase in the Earned Income Tax Credit was also terrific, but helped only a relatively small number of people.

Not delivering much is what cost us the 1994 election. I did a thorough analysis of the 1994 exit polls after the election and did a memo to my fellow White House staffers. What I found was that the key to the election were the voters that stayed home who were non-college educated, lower and middle income, younger, more women than men, and heavily Democratic. Disproportionately large among those non-voters were working class and unmarried women. Overall, there was a 22-point difference in terms of Democratic support (in the wrong direction, of course) between those who voted and those who had in 1992 but didn't in 1994, thereby sealing our fate.

It's a funny thing, the public wants you to improve their lives a bit and keep your campaign promises to do so, and they don't really seem that concerned about whether you're moving too far to "the left" or "the right."

In fact, the entire notion of "what kind of a country is America" becomes quickly tautological. This is a centrist country in the sense that the center would be the median ideology of everyone in it. The question becomes where is that center. And it's completely clear that the public agrees with Obama's agenda, which includes investments in public health, education, energy and infrastructure, an end to the war in Iraq, increased diplomacy, reproductive choice, and a more progressive tax code.



If you want to call that a progressive majority, it would be hard to argue with you. But more than anything, it's a recognition on the part of the vast majority of the public that they would rather have a government that improves people's lives instead of one that actively harms it. So while looking at self-described ideology shows that the electorate is in pretty much the same place as it has been, that's a false indicator. People want to stop being screwed, and they intuitively understand that a conservative agenda was doing that repeatedly. They don't want to be ruled by monsters anymore. The best way to show them that you're not a monster is to marginally improve their lives, fulfilling your role as a public servant to the greater good.

Obama has a difficult task. He has a Village media culture that wants him to go slow instead of looking at what's necessary for the historical moment. He hears every day to push aside those DFHs and mean ol' liberals who would run his Presidency into the ground. He hears the same thing from conservative Blue Dog members of his own party who've suddenly found their fiscally conservative backbone, and even the party leadership, fearful of a backlash and continually stuck in early 1995 mode, weighing risk and reward and gaming out the politics of it all instead of, and let me say this one more time, IMPROVING PEOPLE'S LIVES.

I actually think Nancy Pelosi tried to say this yesterday in a soundbite that Digby flagged yesterday. If you listen to the whole quote, you'll see that she says that raising the minimum wage, increasing CAFE standards, cutting student loans in half and creating the 21st-century GI Bill, all ideas that came out of the progressive wing, were embraced by both parties.

She ended up saying it in a very stunted way, when it doesn't have to be that difficult. The role of government is to improve people's lives. Through initiating projects through collective action that the individual cannot do themselves, like building roads and bridges and police and fire departments. Through equalizing opportunity for success through education programs. Through making sure the least of us doesn't slip into grinding poverty with a social safety net, rather than just socialism for the rich and connected. Through making sure that we have a health care system that provides access and treatment as a basic human right. Through defending the nation with diplomacy and international engagement instead of sending in the military at the slightest provocation. Through adhering to a Constitution that has been ignored and mocked the last eight years.

I think Obama's instincts in this regard may be decent.

The debates unnerved both candidates. When he was preparing for them during the Democratic primaries, Obama was recorded saying, "I don't consider this to be a good format for me, which makes me more cautious. I often find myself trapped by the questions and thinking to myself, 'You know, this is a stupid question, but let me … answer it.' So when Brian Williams is asking me about what's a personal thing that you've done [that's green], and I say, you know, 'Well, I planted a bunch of trees.' And he says, 'I'm talking about personal.' What I'm thinking in my head is, 'Well, the truth is, Brian, we can't solve global warming because I f---ing changed light bulbs in my house. It's because of something collective'."

But he's going to need a great deal of help, and this is where Digby was going previously. The liberal blogosphere is uniquely positioned to act as the counterweight to this large gelatinous mass tut-tutting that we mustn't rock the boat and have the candidate who ran on change actually change anything. Progressive organizations like Media Matters can attack this meme and treat it with the withering contempt it deserves. Obama is going to hear this in his ear (probably from his new Chief of Staff) every ten seconds from the moment he takes the oath of office. It's important for us to make sure he hears something else.

Improve people's lives, President-Elect.

"Any jackass can kick down a barn but it takes a good carpenter to build one."

-Lyndon Johnson

Obama's Wind At His Back

The snap polls are coming in for Barack Obama in much the same numbers that they did in the first two debates. CNN has it 58-31 for Obama. CBS' poll is similar. That's because Obama came out, in the same way as the other debates, with the same even keel. And also, the fundamentals of the race have crashed on McCain and Republicans. All Obama has to say is that McCain supports the same policies as George Bush and everyone gets knocked over as if with a feather. McCain can make ideological arguments about big government and higher taxes and liberal ideas all he wants, but the public has thoroughly rejected them. Just completely. Obama's specifics are pretty cautious and circumscribed and nuanced and I don't agree with all of them. But he doesn't have the weight of party identification against him. Given the Bush/Republican known they are more than willing to grasp the unknown.

People know one thing that can't be dislodged from their minds - Republican governance has been a total failure. A 90-minute debate isn't going to change any of that.

And staying focused like a laser on the issues about which Americans clearly care the most helped as well. This is the anti-smear campaign no matter how much the fever swamps want it. The Ayers question in this debate - which I rightly called at Bob Schieffer's wet kiss to McCain - was a microcosm of the campaign. McCain wanted to simultaneously take the high road and the low road. He tried some ju-jitsu by forcing Obama to distance himself from John Lewis' remarks. No sale, Obama rightly brought up the impetus for the remarks - the hateful rhetoric coming from McCain/Palin rallies. Then McCain shifted into a backlash-type defense of his supporters. Obama flicked it off, and was finishing up the question, and McCain sensed he was losing his moment, and cut off Obama mid-sentence to get in his licks about Bill Ayers and ACORN, in kind of an erratic way. It was a meandering exchange, was highly negative and misleading, and it ended with Obama saying that making Bill Ayers the centerpiece of his campaign says a lot more about McCain than anyone else.

John McCain is a terrible candidate and that is the perfect example. But even if he was a stellar, superior candidate, I just don't think it would matter. People have rendered their verdict on conservatism.

...other fun facts:

McCain cares so much about regular Americans like Joe the Plumber that he mispronounced his last name.

The abortion question was seriously a mess for McCain, offending conservatives (no litmus test), liberals (the "pro-abortion" movement) and the truth (the nonsense about Obama's votes in the Illinois State Senate).

"Senator Government" was not a slip of the tongue.

McCain totally - totally - lied about his own health care plan, and Obama's. His claim that the average health care plan costs $5,800 and he would give a $5,000 health care tax credit is true - but the $5,800 is for INDIVIDUALS and his $5,000 is for A WHOLE FAMILY. Just one example.

Obama was excellent on trade, IMO.

UPDATE:

Fundamentals

People are having fun with John McCain's economic adviser's absurd statement that McCain invented the Blackberry (that "serial liar" tag is going to stick any minute now, right?), but the Obama campaign is staying on message.

"If John McCain hadn't said that 'the fundamentals of our economy are strong' on the day of one of our nation's worst financial crises, the claim that he invented the BlackBerry would have been the most preposterous thing said all week," said Obama campaign spokesman Bill Burton.

The "fundamentals are strong" line, which is directly analogous to a line spoke by Herbert Hoover the day after the 1929 stock market crash, is really symbolic of what this election is about. Republicans have funneled cash to the moneyed class, removed oversight and regulatory restrictions, and turned Wall Street into a Wild West show. McCain was right there the entire time, and his economic guru Phil Gramm is as responsible as anyone for the mess we've gotten ourselves in. (Krugman had a great line yesterday: "Ben Bernanke and I think Hank Paulson understand that we could manage to have another Great Depression if we work at it hard enough. I think Phil Gramm might be just the guy to do it.") Failed Republican policies have brought us to the brink of financial collapse and Barack Obama knows it. He's released a strong new ad targeting the "fundamentals" line.



And his campaign events are doubling down on this attack and connecting McCain to the Republican establishment which has made a hash of things.

Yesterday, Wall Street suffered its worst losses since just after 9/11. We are in the most serious financial crisis in generations. Yet Senator McCain stood up yesterday and said that the fundamentals of the economy are strong.

A few hours later, his campaign sent him back out to clean up his remarks, and he tried to explain himself again this morning by saying that what he meant was that American workers are strong. But we know that Senator McCain meant what he said the first time, because he has said it over and over again throughout this campaign -- no fewer than 16 times, according to one independent count [...]

Make no mistake: my opponent is running for four more years of policies that will throw the economy further out of balance. His outrage at Wall Street would be more convincing if he wasn't offering them more tax cuts. His call for fiscal responsibility would be believable if he wasn't for more tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, and more of a trillion dollar war in Iraq paid for with deficit spending and borrowing from foreign creditors like China. His newfound support for regulation bears no resemblance to his scornful attitude towards oversight and enforcement.

John McCain cannot be trusted to reestablish proper oversight of our financial markets for one simple reason: he has shown time and again that he does not believe in it.

Even his ads on other topics - like this one seeking to reassure hunters - goes right back to the economy and contrasts Obama's support for workers with McCain's.

The truth is that McCain can't get his story straight about deregulation. He's championed it for years, his economic advisers have championed it for years, and now he's trying to reinvent himself as some sort of populist. The New York Times noted the disconnect today.

On the campaign trail on Monday, Mr. McCain, the Republican presidential nominee, struck a populist tone. Speaking in Florida, he said that the economy’s underlying fundamentals remained strong but were being threatened “because of the greed by some based in Wall Street and we have got to fix it.”

But his record on the issue, and the views of those he has always cited as his most influential advisers, suggest that he has never departed in any major way from his party’s embrace of deregulation and relying more on market forces than on the government to exert discipline.

While Mr. McCain has cited the need for additional oversight when it comes to specific situations, like the mortgage problems behind the current shocks on Wall Street, he has consistently characterized himself as fundamentally a deregulator and he has no history prior to the presidential campaign of advocating steps to tighten standards on investment firms.

In fact, McCain called for more and less government regulation today in the space of an hour.

These are not the terms on which McCain wants to fight the election, but events have intervened. McCain has continued to stand with his party, deny the scope of the problem and hold to the conservative position of free-market nirvana (except when the corporations fail - then it's time to get in line at the Treasury Department soup kitchen for their handout). And now that the excrement has hit the fan, McCain is today proposing - no lie - a Beltway commission.

Republican presidential candidate John McCain on Tuesday called for a high-level commission to study the current economic crisis and claimed that a corrupt and excessive Wall Street had betrayed American workers. [...]

Appearing Tuesday on the three network morning shows, McCain said there was indeed a financial crisis and that to understand what had caused it, the nation would need a review on the order of the one led by the Sept. 11 commission. [...]

"I warned two years ago that this situation was deteriorating and unacceptable," McCain said on "Good Morning America" on ABC. "And the old-boy network and the corruption in Washington is directly involved and one of the causes of this financial crisis that we're in today. And I know how to fix it and I know how to get things done."

If there was ever a do-nothing solution to a problem, it's to convene a commission of insiders to write a paper that'll sit on a shelf unread. Obama mocked this today.

Just today, Senator McCain offered up the oldest Washington stunt in the book - you pass the buck to a commission to study the problem. But here's the thing - this isn't 9/11. We know how we got into this mess. What we need now is leadership that gets us out. I'll provide it, John McCain won't, and that's the choice for the American people in this election."

Cynics resist the idea that a Presidential election can be about issues anymore, but outside events have a way of making talk about lipstick and arugula look a bit dated. Obama's doing the right thing.

Conservatism's Wild Financial Ride

What a great day for McCain advisor Donald Luskin to tell us all that the economy is just fine and to quit our bitching! Expert timing!

In one of the most dramatic days in Wall Street’s history, Merrill Lynch agreed to sell itself on Sunday to Bank of America for roughly $50 billion to avert a deepening financial crisis, while another prominent securities firm, Lehman Brothers, filed for bankruptcy protection and hurtled toward liquidation after it failed to find a buyer.

The humbling moves, which reshape the landscape of American finance, mark the latest chapter in a tumultuous year in which once-proud financial institutions have been brought to their knees as a result of hundreds of billions of dollars in losses because of bad mortgage finance and real estate investments.

I think this has been summed up the best by a former finance minister in an NPR story this morning: "Even my 6 year-old daughter knows that you don't lend money to someone who can't pay you back."

In the end, that's what this is all about. Global investors needed a security to make them a yield, and the housing market was booming in the US, so financial institutions lent to anyone who walked in the door. They thought they could stay one step ahead of the inevitable crash, but in the end it was impossible. And because millions of people couldn't pay them back, they disintegrated.

What's different here is that Lehman was allowed to slip into bankruptcy. With Bear Stearns the government stepped in and created so much grease for the wheels of a sale that it was a bailout in function if not in name. This time, while the Fed is extending liquidity, there is no wholesale takeover or bailout in place. Enough was enough, and the American taxpayer couldn't be expected to bear yet another burden of shortsighted decision-making by the big banks. The feds had to end the moral hazard that would have resulted in bailouts for any financial services giant with a hangnail. (UPDATE: Krugman sez it's more of a bailout than it appears.)

However, anyone that thinks this represents touching bottom is crazy. AIG could go under, and a major insurer bugging out would be an even bigger hit to the economy. The big banks are all going to be on the hook for their poor decisions, sooner or later.

Here's Barack Obama's statement:

"This morning we woke up to some very serious and troubling news from Wall Street. The situation with Lehman Brothers and other financial institutions is the latest in a wave of crises that are generating enormous uncertainty about the future of our financial markets. This turmoil is a major threat to our economy and its ability to create good-paying jobs and help working Americans pay their bills, save for their future, and make their mortgage payments.

"The challenges facing our financial system today are more evidence that too many folks in Washington and on Wall Street weren’t minding the store. Eight years of policies that have shredded consumer protections, loosened oversight and regulation, and encouraged outsized bonuses to CEOs while ignoring middle-class Americans have brought us to the most serious financial crisis since the Great Depression.

"I certainly don’t fault Senator McCain for these problems, but I do fault the economic philosophy he subscribes to. It’s a philosophy we’ve had for the last eight years – one that says we should give more and more to those with the most and hope that prosperity trickles down to everyone else. It’s a philosophy that says even common-sense regulations are unnecessary and unwise, and one that says we should just stick our heads in the sand and ignore economic problems until they spiral into crises.

"Well now, instead of prosperity trickling down, the pain has trickled up – from the struggles of hardworking Americans on Main Street to the largest firms of Wall Street. This country can’t afford another four years of this failed philosophy. For years, I have consistently called for modernizing the rules of the road to suit a 21st century market – rules that would protect American investors and consumers. And I’ve called for policies that grow our economy and our middle-class together. That is the change I am calling for in this campaign, and that is the change I will bring as president," said Senator Barack Obama.

This is exactly right. It's a failure of deregulation - as sure as the Enron meltdown and the accounting scandals were failures of deregulation. Nobody was paying attention to the mass lending to those who couldn't pay it back. And it wouldn't hurt to add that deregulation's biggest champion is McCain economic adviser Phil Gramm. It's a fundamental tenet of conservatism that you allow the "free hand of the market" to reign supreme. Of course, when capitalists make bad decisions they go running to the feds for a handout like good little corporate Communists. But the end result is that other federal services gets stripped of funding. And government shrinks. And so this meltdown is a designed one.

And by the way, Obama has been saying this for at least a year and it was a key moment in his acceptance speech at the DNC. The problem is conservative theories that increase inequality and squeeze the middle class, choking off the potential for prosperity as a nation. This is also the result of an economy that consists of flipping burgers and pushing papers instead of creating and building. The green jobs program that Obama has supported fills the biggest economic hole we have, in the manufacturing sector.

McCain released a similar statement to Obama today, but he also decided it would be a good day to keep using his line that "the fundamentals of the economy are strong." It's completely unclear what he even means by that, but it wasn't lost on the Obama campaign:

“Today of all days, John McCain’s stubborn insistence that the ‘fundamentals of the economy are strong’ shows that he is disturbingly out of touch with what’s going in the lives of ordinary Americans. Even as his own ads try to convince him that the economy is in crisis, apparently his 26 years in Washington have left him incapable of understanding that the policies he supports have created an historic economic crisis,” said Obama campaign spokesman Bill Burton.

Joe Biden jumped on this as well today ("...friends, I could walk from here to Lansing, and I wouldn't run into a single person who thought our economy was doing well, unless I ran into John McCain."). And the SEIU.

This roller coaster in the financial markets was constructed by conservatism and serves the goals of conservatism. This is the connection that must be made.

...apparently, "fundamentals" means workers, in McCain's world. Why do you hate workers so much?

John McCain, Abolitionist

This is another kind of pedestrian ad from Barack Obama, but one with a strong message that I'm glad he's getting out:



It's one of these sometimes-hidden points among conservatives that they all favor the abolition of the Department of Education. McCain actually went a step further and wanted to ax the Department of Energy, too:

FRANK SESNO: Senator McCain, would you favor doing away with the Department of Housing and Urban Development or the Department of Energy?

Sen. JOHN McCAIN: I would certainly favor doing away with the Department of Energy and I think that given the origins of the Department of Education, I would favor doing away with it as well. HUD had experienced many failures under both Republican and Democrat administrations and I would certainly want to revamp it from the bottom up, because, clearly, public housing in America is almost as big a disaster as the welfare program...

This is an extreme position that is unpopular broadly with the public. Nice to see the Obama campaign dredge it up.

The GOP Restoration Starts Today... Snicker

So with Hurricane Gustav thankfully rerouting away from New Orleans and with the damage more minimal than expected, the Republicans will try to fire up their red meat machine in force tonight to make up for lost time. Of course, the looming hurricane didn't stop them from partying with the band "Hookers & Blow" last night.

The problem is there's another hurricane in the Gulf that could hit Florida and Georgia on Thursday, and with the GOP already on record as refraining from attacks in the midst of a natural disaster, they are constrained and in a box here. So it's kind of a hybrid convention instead of the expected full-fledged assault on Barack Obama. They had to shuffle the schedule, and tonight Unca Fred Thompson and Droopy Dog Lieberman are on tap, along with President Bush. They couldn't even dodge that bullet of having Bush associated with McCain at the convention; literally everything he says tonight can be made into 30-second TV commercials. And the behind the scenes stuff is delicious:

Almost certainly, Bush had to cancel his planned speech while Gustav loomed. But the sources say he didn't like the idea and felt pushed. Bush is described by sources as "furious" at McCain for being deprived of his last appearance before his party, which nominated him twice, as a sitting president. He believes he is being treated disrespectfully.

Shuttering the convention for a night was probably inevitable given the hurricane, but to provide a cover-up for scratching Bush and Cheney it became absolutely necessary. But once the hurricane passed, Bush asserted his primacy as president and forced his way back on the schedule to deliver a satellite speech to the convention.

McCain is desperately seeking ways to pivot from Bush, whose in-person appearance on the first night of the convention threatened to obliterate his message as a "maverick" and "reformer." Even though McCain himself would not be onstage, Bush and Cheney would have dominated the opening and underlined continuity between their administration and McCain. The cancellation of the first night of the convention is a small price to pay for their absence.

McCain's campaign is perfectly aware of the mortal danger of Bush's embrace. He has needed the president to rally the Republican base. But once he has the nomination his imperative is to project himself as an antidote to what has gone wrong with Republicanism.

This is the reason for putting Lieberman on the same night as Bush, to somehow show that McCain's Republican Party is even crazier than Bush on foreign affairs moderate and post-partisan. So much so that Lieberman has previously praised Obama to the hills, which won't be repeated tonight.

The Republicans wanted a week of sustained attacks on their opponent. But they got a muddled convention filled with distractions over hurricane on the ground and Hurricane Sarah Palin and Hurricane Bush's Ego. Not to mention that there's a 10,000-strong contingent of Ron Paul supporters having a bigger and more interesting convention right next door, which is starting to get some media attention.

There's no room at the Xcel Energy Center for maverick Ron Paul, so his acolytes have packed their cars, hitched rides on "Ronvoys" and will pitch tents at Ronstock '08 in defiance of next week's GOP convention in St. Paul, Minn.

Almost 9,800 tickets had been sold for the Rally for the Republic, being held in Minneapolis, which seeks to bring together activists who are anti-war, anti-government regulation, anti-immigration, anti-taxes, anti-Federal Reserve, anti-outsourcing, pro-individual liberty, pro-civil liberties and pro-Paul.

The Ronvoys — fleets of buses and vans carrying Paul's loyalists — were to begin arriving Saturday. A few rally-goers planned to walk from Green Bay, Wis., and join up with Paul for the final miles of their Walk4Freedom. Other attendees are driving, carpooling or flying in for the convention alternative.

The McCain camp blocked Paul from speaking on the convention floor despite his getting more votes than Giuliani or Thompson in the primaries. He's expecting 18,000 at his own rally today.

The Paul movement is the only real one in St. Paul today. The conservative movement is flailing.