Ian Welsh

The horizon is not so far as we can see, but as far as we can imagine

Category: Electoral Politics Page 30 of 31

How’s that Mid Term Looking ?

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On July 4, 2010

4 Comments

Some fairly depressing news for Dems (via Digby):

Hart and McInturff then looked at the change among the most-interested voters from the same survey in 2008. Although 2010 is a “down-shifting” election, from a high-turnout presidential year to a lower-turnout midterm year, one group was more interested in November than it was in 2008: those who had voted for Republican John McCain for president. And the groups that showed the largest decline in interest? Those who voted for Barack Obama — liberals, African-Americans, self-described Democrats, moderates, those living in either the Northeast or West, and younger voters 18 to 34 years of age. These are the “Holy Mackerel” numbers…

And yes, I fucking told everyone so. (Notice that that post was left to die, because back then serious people knew that the Republicans were dead for a generation so it wasn’t worthy of front page space.)

Why are people so stupid?

During a base election year the smart thing to do is to demotivate the base.  Really. Honest.

Assuming, of course, your main goal is to restore the rich’s wealth, push corporate profits to record highs and to continue war as usual.  And you really don’t care that much what happens in elections, because you personally will be taken care of by the wealthy whose interests you served.

So maybe it’s not Obama and Dems who are stupid.

Catching Up with the Obama Dilemma

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On June 21, 2010

48 Comments

I haven’t had much to say the last bit, because the rest of the blogosphere and even mainstream pundits are catching up to where I was a while ago.  Let’s see where we are, and where we’re going.

To recap:

1) the stimulus bill was neither big enough, nor well enough put together to do the job.  However many jobs it “saved and created” they weren’t enough.

2) Obama is not in the least interested in doing progressive things unless great pain is inflicted on him, personally.  This is most likely because he is not a progressive.

3) On civil liberties, Obama is probably actually worse than Bush.  Yes, that’s quite an accomplishment, but there you have it.

4) He’s an incompetent leader, who over-centralizes decision making, refuses to delegate, then makes decisions slowly and badly.

5) His courtiers are not the problem (although they’re almost all scum), he is the problem: he chose them.

6) The spring job recovery is already petered out, and around the world virtually every major economy other than China is turning to austerity, including the US.  US cities and States are in a horrible state, gross income is down, and bank lending is still not recovering.  The US economy has become more oligopolistic and more sclerotic than ever before, with the major firms who run the economy making their money by squeezing little people who have nowhere to turn.  Thanks to Bernanke, Paulson, Geither, Bush and Obama’s bailouts, and refusal to engage in meaningful restructuring of the economy or the financial industry, their profits have recovered.  That means, to them, that the crisis is over.

7) Election results in the midterms are looking really bad.  I was warning about this in beginning of 2009, because if Obama’s economic policies didn’t work, and if he continually alienated the base, it was going to cause problems.  The only thing Obama and Congressional Dems have going for them is how bloody awful the Republicans are.  But being the lesser evil isn’t always enough.  Liberals and progressives can’t vote Republican, but they can refuse to donate, not volunteer, and in many cases, not vote.

Going forward Obama is faced with a choice.  He won’t do enough to make the base happy, because he genuinely doesn’t believe in any progressive ideals.  What he can do, however, is goose the economy. He has most of the TARP slush fund to play with.  He could dump it into the economy post-haste in order to rescue the mid-terms.

Whether to do so is a dilemma for him.  On the one hand standard methodologies are still showing that the Dems (barely) hold onto the House, and keep the Senate.  But it isn’t much of a stretch for the Republicans to win the House.

If they do so, Obama’s presidency is effectively over.  The Republicans will Clintonize him, tying him down in a blizzard of subpoenas and fake scandals.  He will get nothing done for the next two years, and will probably lose re-election.

On the other hand, if he spends the money in 2010, it won’t be there in 2012, and after all, Dems might squeeze through without it.

Choices, choices…

I’d feel sorry for him, but he’s made clear that he isn’t a Democratic president, and he isn’t a liberal or a progressive, so I see no point in wasting any angst on personal problems he himself created.  All of this was totally predictable, and was, in fact predicted by multiple people.

Obama never made a sincere effort to fix the economy, to end the wars, to stop civil liberties abuses or to revamp the financial industry.

As he reaps, so he sows.  It is unfortunate Americans have to suffer even more than he does (he’ll be taken care of after he leaves the Presidency, never fear), but such is life.  Maybe it’s time to stop voting for people who say they love Reagan and that they don’t believe in Democratic solutions to problems.

Coming up…

We’re still in a Depression

and

Why it is never in Congress’s interests to look after Americans

Not Fighting Alito and Roberts Mean the End of Your Democracy

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On June 12, 2010

12 Comments

The NYTimes:

In a burst of judicial activism, the Supreme Court on Tuesday upended the gubernatorial race in Arizona, cutting off matching funds to candidates participating in the state’s public campaign finance system. Suddenly, three candidates, including Gov. Jan Brewer, can no longer receive public funds they had counted on to run against a free-spending wealthy opponent…

…

In 2008, the Supreme Court eliminated the Millionaires’ Amendment, which let Congressional candidates raise more money when running against candidates who pay for their own campaigns. In January, in the Citizens United case, the court eliminated limits to campaign spending by corporations. Both cases cited the First Amendment rights of the wealthy, and in that depressing sequence, state finance programs would be the court’s next conquest.

If the court pushes on with its chainsaw, cutting down programs that trigger matching funds, it would threaten systems in Connecticut and Maine, and judicial-race financing systems in Wisconsin, North Carolina and elsewhere. It might even shake New York City’s system, which provides higher matching funds when a well-financed opponent does not participate in the system. Candidates with no prospect of matching funds would be reluctant to join a system that limits their spending. Unless the court veers from its determined path, there will be no limit to the power of a big bankbook on politics.

I remember back when Alito and Roberts were nominated, I expected the Dems to fight.  They were both clearly radical right wingers (spare me about Roberts, it was obvious he was a judicial nutjob).  But hey, whatever…  Even most of my commenters thought I was being unreasonable to expect Democrats to fight, to force the Republicans, if necessary, to use the nuclear option.   It was unreasonable to expect a mutli-million dollar public campaign to the make the two of them noxious to the public (doing so with Alito would have been especially easy.

And if the nuclear option had been used would having done so hurt Dems in any way?  No.  But it would have given Dems one less argument to use against actually doing the right thing in this Congress.  Not, of course, that that would have stopped them from doing all the wrong things, since that’s what the majority of Senators want to do.

The NYTimes is full of it in one respect, though, the influence of money on politics in the US is already decisive.  This is just an attempt to hammer home that advantage, to make it permanent.

Doing so will make the US into a banana republic, of course, assuming one doesn’t consider it already nothing more than a powerful third world nation living on legacy investments from prior generations.

Lemmings Have Nothing On Democrats

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On January 20, 2010

15 Comments

So, in addition to screwing up healthcare and escalating in Afghanistan, it seems that Obama is set to appoint a deficit reduction panel.  Their job will be to come up with a “bipartisan” way of cutting the deficit by cutting Medicare and Social Security.  There is no other way to cut the deficit, because the only other large bucket of money, the defense budget, is off the table, and no one is willing to radically raise taxes on the rich.

Despite being called “bipartisan”, cutting Social Security and Medicare will take place under a Democratic President, though probably not a Democratic Congress (since the vote will occur after the 2010 elections.)  The Republicans will allow just enough members to vote to get it through, then will run, as a party, blaming Democrats for gutting SS and Medicare.

And people thought my piece yesterday yesterday predicting electoral carnage in 2010 and 2012 was overwrought?

Excuse me while I take time out to laugh.

(Update: I meant Congress, not Senate.  I don’t see the Dems losing the Senate in 2012, I do see them losing the House.  Oops.)

Coakley Concedes, You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet

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On January 19, 2010

25 Comments

Well, so much for that.

What does this mean?

First of all, this will be taken as meaning HCR must be passed exactly as the Senate Bill.  That’s already clear.  The Democratic reaction to losing Kennedy’s seat will be to do exactly what voters were punishing them for.

In 2010 Democrats will be slaughtered, absolutely slaughtered, because Obama and the senior Democratic leadership does not learn.

In 2012 Obama will become a 1 term president, and a right wing populist will get into power.  That populist will turn out not to be a populist, and will do even stupider things than Obama economically (and may start a war, too).

The job is to prepare for this, to get new members and leadership in in 2014.  Start working on it now.

Because 2014 and 2016 are going to be your last chance.  If the US doesn’t elect people who are willing to do what it takes in those two election years, then the US economy is going to be a smoking ruin, far worse even than it is now.

This group of Dems have proved they can’t learn.  Fortunately, and yes, I do mean fortunately, they are going to be swept out of power.  Yes, they’ll be replaced by Republicans who are marginally worse, but that will give you your one chance to fix America.

Up to you if you’re up for it.  Good luck.

Ummm, No

By

On January 19, 2010

Just no:

The corporations that make money from health care — and want the status quo — know whose side Scott Brown will be on:

An index of health-care companies in the S&P 500 led the advance with a 1.9 percent rally. U.S. Democrats face the possibility of losing a Senate seat held by the late Edward Kennedy as voters in Massachusetts go to the polls. A loss could cost them a 60-vote supermajority needed to help pass a health- care overhaul.

Investors know that Brown winning means the Senate bill passes exactly as is, which is what they want.  When the Senate bill passed, the stock market went up.

Partisan instincts are overcoming rationality amongst most progressive bloggers.

Coakley Is A National Election

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On January 19, 2010

24 Comments

And yes, it is a referendum on Obama, and health care.  The more Coakley said she was the 60th vote for healthcare “reform”, the worse her numbers became.  The more she said “I’m Obama’s 60th vote” the worse her numbers became.  Yes, she took the election for granted at the beginning, but let’s be honest: who the hell thought the Democrats could lose Ted Kennedy’s seat?

What people are hearing; what they believe, is that the money for HCR is coming from cuts to Medicare, and not from cuts to the insurance industry, pharma or taxes on rich people.  And, actually, they’re right about this.  One might argue that the Medicare cuts are “fat” and “justified”  but people aren’t buying it.

Win or lose, if Democrats are in trouble even in Kennedy’s seat, then 2010 is looking grim indeed.  And while I have been surprised by how close this election has become, I am not surprised by the fact that 2010 is looking grim.  I have been warning since the stimulus bill (a horrible mess) that bad policy leads to bad outcomes which leads to voters hating the party in power.  I have been warning since Obama pushed through TARP that if Democrats refused to be populist, right wing populism would surge.

No matter the outcome, Obama needs to try fake populism (because we all know he won’t do the real thing) and needs to pray that his economic program, such as it is, produces better economic results than even his own economic advisers think likely.  This will be done by faux populist measures such as the bank levy, and on the economic front, by both using the unlimited guarantees given to Freddie and Fannie to reinflate the propery market and through military Keynesian stimulus from the Afghan escalation.

I suspect it’s going to be better than people think, but it’s still not going to be enough.  The 2010 elections are going to be ugly for Democrats.

Which, sadly, is exactly what they deserve.

Oh hey, look at that: Republicans ahead on Generic ballot

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On November 12, 2009

13 Comments

When I wrote that Rasmussen found Republicans more trusted than Dems, the immediate response was “you can’t trust Rasmussen”, ignoring the fact that even Rasmussen hadn’t found such results for years.  In other words, they were a leading indicator.

Now this:

Republicans have moved ahead of Democrats by 48% to 44% among registered voters in the latest update on Gallup’s generic congressional ballot for the 2010 House elections, after trailing by six points in July and two points last month.

The Nov. 5-8 update comes just after Republican victories in the New Jersey and Virginia gubernatorial elections, which saw Republicans replace Democrats as governors of those states.

As was the case in last Tuesday’s gubernatorial elections, independents are helping the Republicans’ cause. In the latest poll, independent registered voters favor the Republican candidate by 52% to 30%

What a surprise.

Not.

Meanwhile, we have further stupidity from the “centrists”:

Seven members of the Senate Budget Committee threatened during a Tuesday hearing to withhold their support for critical legislation to raise the debt ceiling if the bill calling for the creation of a bipartisan fiscal reform commission were not attached. Six others had previously made such threats, bringing the total to 13 senators drawing a hard line on the  committee legislation.

The panel, which has been championed by Conrad and ranking member Judd Gregg (R-N.H), would be tasked with stemming the unsustainable rise in debt.

Among its chief responsibilities would be closing the gap between tax revenue coming in and the larger cost of paying for Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid benefits. The Government Accountability Office recently reported the gap is on pace to reach an “unsustainable” $63 trillion in 2083.

The panel would also have the power to craft legislation that would change the tax code and set limits on government spending.

The legislation would then be subject to an up-or-down vote; it could not be amended.

Brilliant.  Now, the purpose of this committee would be to provide cover to slash Medicare and Social Security.  Imagine the reaction if, under a Democratic President, with a Democratic majority Congress, Medicare and Social Security got slashed.  Who do you think would get the blame?

A number of Democratic Senators are strongly backing this.  The hypothesis that Democrats want to be back in the minority is proving to have great predictive power.

A bill stripping abortion rights from women couldn’t pass in the Republican Congress.  It may well in a Democratic Congress.  Likewise a bill allowing Social Security and Medicare to be gutted couldn’t pass under Bush.  Will it pass under Obama?

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