Blog

I’ll be on MSNBC‘s Countdown tonight around 8:30 EDT.

Two things:

With the 500-word limit in my last post I wasn’t able to include the obvious caveat that Norquist’s worldview is odious and that’s he a pretty malign influence in American political life.

Also, he was strikingly off message. At point he said that letting the Bush tax cuts lapse was “not a tax increase.” Interesting since this is the opposite of the GOP and McCain talking point on the matter.

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Go ahead and break ‘em off with a little preview of the remix. (NSFW)

At a talk at New America this morning, Grover Norquist hit upon one of my abiding obsessions in politics, the difference between what issues people respond to in polls and what they actually vote on.

In describing the nature of the center-right coalition he said that all the different groups that make it up have their own “vote-moving issue,” the thing that gets them to the polls, motivates them to make phone calls and give money. It’s important, Norquist said, to understand “the difference between intensity and preference.” That is, between issues that move people’s actual votes, and what preferences they might express in polls. He noted that 70% Republicans are skeptical of free trade but, “they don’t vote on that issue, so at one level I don’t care.”

Same with the growth of government under Bush. Since each constituency in the Republican coalition has gotten what it wants on its “vote-moving issues” (judges, assault weapons, tax cuts), they tolerate increased spending even if they don’t like it. “Thank you very much for my vote-moving issue and grumble, gumble, you spend too much,” they say according to Norquist. But ”‘spend too much’ doesn’t make people walk out of the room, it doesn’t make people throw heavy objects.”

Democrats have a tendency to look at polls and see vast majorities that support all kinds of things from higher minimum wages, to universal healthcare to campaign finance reform, but fail to recognize that very few of these issues are vote-movers. That doesn’t mean they can’t be turned into vote-movers through organizing and movement building, but on a lot of the most important issues we’re not quite there yet.

The worst example of mistaking preference for intensity is on the issue of “fiscal responsibility.” Tune into CSPAN at random and you’re likely to hear a Democrat railing against fiscal irresponsibility and the budget deficit. The worst offenders are the Blue Dog caucus of Democrats from conservative districts who are positively obsessed, with a kind of monomaniacal zeal, on balancing the budget and matching revenue to expenditures. So much so, in fact, that they’re now threatening to block Jim Webb’s excellent G.I. Bill because its expenses aren’t adequately off-set.

This is asinine. The notion that it will somehow be politically beneficial to go back to a conservative district and crow about killing a bill to give educational benefits to veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan is loony. And the notion that voters will base their vote on fiscal rectitude is ungrounded both empirically and experientially. Can someone name the last time a member of congress was voted out of office because the deficit was too large? I understand that Democrats in conservative districts will vote differently than those from, say, Manhattan or Oakland. But the Blue Dog caucus has chosen an inexplicably stupid issue to plant their flag on. And their obstinacy is going to cause massive headaches should there be a Democrat in the White House come January.

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Some things to read this morning:

1) Digby on vote suppression and disenfranchisement in Missouri.

2) George Bush partying like it’s 1939. Again.

3) What would an internet presidency look like?

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In last week’s lede editorial, the editors wrote:

The stinging defeats of the Bush years (and, stretching back, of the age of Reagan) have induced a nagging self-doubt among many on the center-left. They just don't trust that a majority of people are actually with them--or they've stopped believing that public sympathy will mean much once the right unleashes its culture-war arsenal. But a CBS/New York Times poll showed a majority opposed to the gas tax cut, exit polls showed voters to be largely unfazed by Reverend Wright, and Obama maintained or increased his share of the working-class white vote in Indiana and North Carolina. Which means: blue-collar voters, and voters in general, are smart enough to see through the condescension of politicians selling a policy their own advisers say is bunk or peddling guilt by association.

So, too, it seems with the good voters of Mississippi’s first district, who last night elected Democrat Travis Childers with a comfortable eight point margin.

A few weeks ago, in the midst of the hotly contested race, the NRCC started running an ad attacking Childers for having received the endorsement of Barack Obama. “When Obama’s pastor cursed America, blaming us for 9/11,” intoned the narrator. “Childers said nothing.”

If there’s anywhere, an ad like this could have some serious effect, it would be in Mississippi’s heavily Republican (and white) first district. But Childers’ victory last night can instead be added to a growing cluster of datapoints that suggest we’ve reached a point of diminished returns for the Rove-style politics that have been so effective these last eight years.

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Josh Marshall has a great post up about Obama’s problem in Appalachia, which the media has confused with a broader problem with working class or rural white voters. The numbers just don’t bare out that latter analysis, as Josh elaborates:

But these claims are both inaccurate because they are incomplete. You can look at states like Virginia, Ohio, Pennsylvania and other states and see the different numbers and they are all explained by one basic fact. Obama's problem isn't with white working class voters or rural voters. It's Appalachia. That explains why Obama had a difficult time in Ohio and Pennsylvania and why he's getting crushed in West Virginia and Kentucky.

If it were just a matter of rural voters or the white working class, the pattern would show up in other regions. But by and large it does not.

In so many words, Pennsylvania and Ohio have big chunks of Appalachia within their borders. But those regions are heavily offset by non-Appalachian sections that are cultural and demographically distinct. West Virginia is 100% Appalachian. If you look at southeastern Ohio or the middle chunk of Pennsylvania, Obama did about the same as he’s doing tonight in West Virginia.

Read the rest here

A lot of people wrongly believe Barack Obama is a Muslim. As I documented in a cover story for the magazine, this is largely due to a viral internet rumor that’s been spread via email.

Of course, Obama is a Christian. (Not, it should be added that that should make a difference one way or the other, but, of course, it does) Here’s a clear cut example where there’s fact and fiction and the press has the simple job saying which is which. But instead you get this insidious hedge, like this line from a reporter on Good Morning America:

Just for the record he constantly says he's a Christian

He doesn’t “say” he’s a Christian any more than he “says” his name is Barack Obama or that he represents Illinois in the United States Senate. These are just facts. They need to be openly stipulated as such.

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GOP‘s New Slogan Already Being Used To Market Anti-Depressant

Oh man. How awesome are Josh Marhsall’s readers?

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From the Times
, a constituent reacts to congressman Vito Fossella admitting he’d fathered a child with a woman with whom he was having an affair:

James Mahones, 26, expressed a common sentiment as he waited for a customer at his barber chair at Aces Barbershop on Giffords Lane, not far from the home in Great Kills that Mr. Fossella shares with his wife and three children.

“We still support the guy,” Mr. Mahones said. “He is a good guy. It happens to the best of us.”

Micah Sifry replies here with his own thoughts.

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Yesterday, I blogged about a Pakistani couple that had been detained by Immigrations and Custom Enforcement for apparently no good reason.

Today comes word they’ve been released:

The Hashmis have been released! It seems that efforts on many fronts—grassroots, legal, and political—sent a powerful message to Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

The Hashmis arrived home late Wednesday night. They are tired but relieved to be home with their daughters. They have three short weeks left in the US.

Message from Waheed and Nusrat Hashmi:

We are so touched by the outpouring of sympathy and concern that came during our ordeal. So much love and support came from the people we know and from people we will probably never meet. It was a horrible experience but despite what was done to us, you all helped us keep our faith in humanity. We need to continue to speak out against a system that is utterly inhumane and inconsistent in its handling of immigration issues. We feel that people who are decent, honest, hard working and who obey the law should be valued, and respected, and honored—not put in jail. We all need to continue to speak out against atrocities committed against innocent people. Thank you for everything!

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Sez the Philly police department. Well…

(via)

Stiglitz:

THE world’s central bankers are a close-knit club, given to fads and fashions. In the early 1980s, they fell under the spell of monetarism, a simplistic economic theory promoted by Milton Friedman. After monetarism was discredited — at great cost to those countries that succumbed to it — the quest began for a new mantra.

The answer came in the form of “inflation targeting”, which says that whenever price growth exceeds a target level, interest rates should be raised. This crude recipe is based on little economic theory or empirical evidence; there is no reason to expect that regardless of the source of inflation, the best response is to increase interest rates. One hopes that most countries will have the good sense not to implement inflation targeting; my sympathies go to the unfortunate citizens of those that do…

Today, inflation targeting is being put to the test — and it will almost certainly fail.M