Like most Democrats, I was gleeful after the Dems took a big lead in the Senate. Sure, part of that was about getting our agenda pushed through, but mostly I was happy because it meant that defenestrated Sen. Joe Lieberman, Joe-Conn., would soon be out of a job. His gavel would be stripped, his epaulettes ripped from his shoulders, and he’d be sent out of the Democratic caucus into the cold twilight of the GOP caucus, where he’d have to put up with idiots like Tom Coburn. It would be glorious.
But a funny thing happened to Holy Joe: he got his butt saved by former Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., who happens to be the President-Elect that Lieberman spent all summer campaigning against. Obama suggested quietly to the Democratic caucus that they not throw Joe to the wolves, and the Democrats obliged, letting Joe keep his committee chairmanship, the removal of which, Lieberman said, would force him from the caucus.
And so you might expect me to be a bit disappointed. But I’m not. Because I think, on careful reflection, that Obama did precisely the right thing — and the thing that will cause Lieberman the most consternation. He saved him.
Yes, Obama will win plaudits for being bipartisan and moderate and sensible and whatnot, and the usual suspects will take the opportunity to claim the left is dead. But before you despair, think about what would have happened had Lieberman been stripped of his chairmanship and forced from the caucus. We like to say that Lieberman would then become just another Republican, but we know better: Lieberman would still have been a media darling, the Democrat Too Moderate to Stay a Democrat. Throughout the next four years, Lieberman would have been invited on Fox and CNN to gravely intone as to why his ejection from power was proof that the Democrats had gone to far. I can hear him saying, “I didn’t leave the party — the party left me” ad infinitum, and to Joe and Jane Bagadonutz, it might even sound somewhat accurate.
Far from punishing Lieberman, he would have been liberated to be the complete douchebag that we know him to be. And make no mistake — he would have been more in demand than ever.
But that’s not what’s going to happen now. Now, Lieberman is in the Democratic caucus, but only because Obama and the Democrats were forgiving of his trespasses. From Obama to Reid, the message today is, “Okay, Joe’s a douchebag, but we’re going to let bygones be bygones.” Yes, Joe gets to keep the gavel — but with the gavel comes some big strings. Joe’s not going to be able to go on Fox and declare that Obama’s destroying the country, nor is he going to be able to vote against cloture on Obama’s first SCOTUS nominee, not without risking a public shellacking. If Lieberman strays off the reservation, the Democrats can cut him off — and do so more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger, explaining that they tried to work with Lieberman, but he made the decision for them. Instead of being a thorn in the side of the Democrats, the man most likely to work against them, and a guy who would bet everything on a GOP revival in 2012 (for he has no real shot at re-election), Lieberman has become a Democrat with every incentive to toe the party line.
Is it the most viscerally satisfying solution? No, it isn’t. But if you’re looking at the next four years, it’s probably the smartest poltical move for the Democrats. Even if we’re stuck at 58 or 59 votes in the Senate (and I think that’s probably where we are; we might win Minnesota or Georgia, but the odds of winning both are slim), Lieberman’s presence in the caucus means we only have to snag one or two Republicans to break a filibuster, which is easier than three or four. And Lieberman’s presence in the caucus makes that easier, because Reid can squeeze Holy Joe to go out and try to win over Lindsey Graham or John McCain on this global warming bill or that torture bill.
In short, Lieberman will be a good soldier. If not, he’ll be forced out — but after proving once and for all that he can’t be trusted. And in the meantime, he’ll become just another Democratic senator, one whose time on the talk shows will be curtailed, who can’t lay into Obama without looking like an ungrateful wretch. It’s not viscerally satisfying, but if you believe in politics as a means to an end, it’s for the best.
…than to speak out and remove all doubt. This bit of wisdom, oft attributed to former President Abraham Lincoln, is something John Ziegler should take to heart. Ziegler is the producer of a new movie that totally proves that a lot of Obama supporters were misinformed, partly through the use of a Zogby poll that asks inaccurate questions. Nate Silver called out Zogby earlier today for running what amounted to a push poll; Ziegler responded by demanding an interview with Silver.
Hilarity ensues:
[Nate Silver]: Do you stand by all the statements in the survey as being unambiguously true?
[John Ziegler]: I stand one hundred percent by the notion that there is absolutely zero ambiguity as to what the right answer is to any of the questions. With the one exception of the Palin-Russia-Alaska question which we asked the way we did for a very specific purpose which was to try and gauge the Tina Fey Effect which I think we did in a very effective manner which was what was actually said by Tina Fey, everyone attributed to Sarah Plain. But for purposes of scoring Obama supporters’ answers we counted Palin as a correct response.
NS: What was the right answer to that [Palin] question?
JZ: The technically accurate question [sic] is that none of the four people said that, but we counted it as correct if they said Sarah Palin.
NS: Why would you commission a survey question with no correct response?
JZ: The purpose of the question, you pinhead, was we wanted to determine the Tina Fey Effect.
[...]
NS: Did you have financing for the project or was it paid for out of pocket?
JZ: It is not self-financed.
NS: Who paid for it?
JZ: You think I’m going to tell you that? When you’ve already shown yourself to be the enemy?
NS: Was it paid for by the RNC?
JZ: [Laughs]. In your world, the question that I would ask you is what question [in the survey] is there any ambiguity as to what the answer is?
NS: Well, that Obama ‘launched his career’ at the home of two former members of the Weather Underground –
JZ: That happens to be one of the questions that Obama supporters did the best on! They did better on that question than on any other Obama-related answers! And here you’re telling me that it’s not true?
NS: What do you mean by “launched his career”?
JZ: The first campaign as told by the person whose position he took in the State Senate, as told by her admission, his first campaign event was in the home of Bill Ayers and his wife. [Laughs] Unless you live in the Obama kool-aid world! That is astonishing to me that you would not accept that! And by the way, when you’re given four responses to that question, what else was the response going to be? Sarah Palin?
NS: Well, her husband was a member of a secessionist party.
JZ: You are such a hack! That’s a very good analogy.
NS: Do you think that certain types of voters are less well informed?
JZ: I think anyone that looks rationally at these poll results would have to conclude that Obama voters are incredibly poorly informed about major issues that occurred during the campaign — my guess is because McCain voters got their information from different types of media than Obama voters did.
NS: What types of media would you consider credible? JZ: I think you need a variety of sources, but I do not accept the notion that if it’s not in the New York Times it’s not true and if it is in the New York Times it is. Just because Sean Hannity says something doesn’t mean it’s not true.
The whole thing is full of win, especially the half-dozen times that Ziegler argues that Silver won’t post the transcript of the interview. Because the transcript, I suppose, makes Silver look bad. Or something.
Pity the Nice Guy™. Please. His world is all topsy-turvy. All he wants is to know exactly what all women want, so that he can have sex with them. But it turns out that different women want different things. Some women believe firmly in traditional gender roles, while others are believers in egalitarianism. Some women are all about hooking up, others want a commitment. And this means that a Nice Guy™ is completely unable to get it right on every single date. Quelle horreur!
The latest bit of Nice Guy™ wankery comes courtesy of Kay S. Hymowitz, writing in City Journal, who explains that the rules just don’t matter anymore, and that’s just terrible for the menz. She had written a previous article arguing that today’s men are too childish (which is another stupid stereotype for another day), and men wrote in to say nuh-uh, it’s all girls’ fault:
It would be easy enough to hold up some of the callow ranting that the piece inspired as proof positive of the child-man’s existence. But the truth is that my correspondents’ objections gave me pause. Their argument, in effect, was that the SYM is putting off traditional markers of adulthood—one wife, two kids, three bathrooms—not because he’s immature but because he’s angry. He’s angry because he thinks that young women are dishonest, self-involved, slutty, manipulative, shallow, controlling, and gold-digging. He’s angry because he thinks that the culture disses all things male. He’s angry because he thinks that marriage these days is a raw deal for men.
Here’s Jeff from Middleburg, Florida: “I am not going to hitch my wagon to a woman . . . who is more into her abs, thighs, triceps, and plastic surgery. A woman who seems to have forgotten that she did graduate high school and that it’s time to act accordingly.” Jeff, meet another of my respondents, Alex: “Maybe we turn to video games not because we are trying to run away from the responsibilities of a ‘grown-up life’ but because they are a better companion than some disease-ridden bar tramp who is only after money and a free ride.” Care for one more? This is from Dean in California: “Men are finally waking up to the ever-present fact that traditional marriage, or a committed relationship, with its accompanying socially imposed requirements of being wallets with legs for women, is an empty and meaningless drudgery.” You can find the same themes posted throughout websites like AmericanWomenSuck, NoMarriage, MGTOW (Men Going Their Own Way), and Eternal Bachelor (“Give modern women the husband they deserve. None”).
Ah, yes, the mating call of the MRA: “Women suck and they just want our money and they totally suck and they’re slutty and icky and dirty and I really hate them because they don’t want to be with me.” You’d think, at some point, that these men would be happy that they’d figured out that women were all evil whorebags, and be satisfied with being single. I mean, if women really are as universally evil as the MRAs claim, why would men want to be with them?
Now, I would tend to think that this level of anger comes from a deap-seated hatred of women, one with roots probably going back to childhood. Through self-examination, these men might be able to overcome these problems. But Hymowitz knows better. These men are really upset that women aren’t all on the same page:
The reason for all this anger, I submit, is that the dating and mating scene is in chaos. SYMs of the postfeminist era are moving around in a Babel of miscues, cross-purposes, and half-conscious, contradictory female expectations that are alternately proudly egalitarian and coyly traditional. And because middle-class men and women are putting off marriage well into their twenties and thirties as they pursue Ph.D.s, J.D.s, or their first $50,000 salaries, the opportunities for heartbreak and humiliation are legion. Under these harsh conditions, young men are looking for a new framework for understanding what (or, as they might put it, WTF) women want. So far, their answer is unlikely to satisfy anyone—either women or, in the long run, themselves.
Ah, yes. What do women want? Let me ask a different question: what do men want? Well, it depends, you might say. Some men want a family. Some want sex. Some want an equal. Some are looking for a homemaker. Some are looking for someone to snuggle with on a cold winter’s night, and some are looking for someone to cuckold them while they hide in the closet and take pictures. If there are 150 million American men, there are 250 million different things that those men want.
And the same goes for women. There is no one thing that “women want.” Different women want different things. Some are looking for a friend and companion that will be with them as they build careers. Some are looking for a potential father. Some are looking for a night of commitment-free sex. Some are looking for a threesome. Some are looking for all of the above, or none of the above. And many women — and many men — aren’t sure exactly what they’re looking for.
Confusing? Yes, it is. Welcome to the 21st century. Two hundred years ago, it was easy — everyone was supposed to want the exact same thing. Of course, many women and many men were deeply unhappy then.
Now, men and women have probably been a mystery to one another since the time human beings were in trees; one reason people developed so many rules around courtship was that they needed some way to bridge the Great Sexual Divide
The older I get, the more I believe that women and men are a mystery to each other only because we are constantly told from birth that women and men are a mystery to each other, who speak different languages and are unable to actually communicate. It turns out that men and women are a lot alike. There may be minor differences, but nothing that can’t be figured out by asking questions. Indeed, much of the trouble in relationships could be solved by teaching our children that if they have questions about that boy or girl they’re interested in dating, the best thing to do is just bite the bullet and go ask them. And that if they get asked an honest question, then give an honest answer. Instead, we teach boys and girls that they have to deal with girls and boys through an elaborate system of games and deception. It’s a wonder any relationships work at all.
By the early twentieth century, things had evolved so that in the United States, at any rate, a man knew the following: he was supposed to call for a date; he was supposed to pick up his date; he was supposed to take his date out, say, to a dance, a movie, or an ice-cream joint; if the date went well, he was supposed to call for another one; and at some point, if the relationship seemed charged enough—or if the woman got pregnant—he was supposed to ask her to marry him. Sure, these rules could end in a midlife crisis and an unhealthy fondness for gin, but their advantage was that anyone with an emotional IQ over 70 could follow them.
Today, though, there is no standard scenario for meeting and mating, or even relating. For one thing, men face a situation—and I’m not exaggerating here—new to human history. Never before have men wooed women who are, at least theoretically, their equals—socially, professionally, and sexually.
By the time men reach their twenties, they have years of experience with women as equal competitors in school, on soccer fields, and even in bed. Small wonder if they initially assume that the women they meet are after the same things they are: financial independence, career success, toned triceps, and sex.
And you know, there are a lot of women who are into those things. And a lot of women who aren’t. A lot of men aren’t, too — for example, I don’t even know where my triceps are, and I assume they probably aren’t toned. And if a woman wanted to date me, but was insistent that my triceps were toned…well, it wouldn’t work out. Because I tone my triceps for no earthly being.
But then, when an SYM walks into a bar and sees an attractive woman, it turns out to be nothing like that. The woman may be hoping for a hookup, but she may also be looking for a husband, a co-parent, a sperm donor, a relationship, a threesome, or a temporary place to live. She may want one thing in November and another by Christmas. “I’ve gone through phases in my life where I bounce between serial monogamy, Very Serious Relationships and extremely casual sex,” writes Megan Carpentier on Jezebel, a popular website for young women. “I’ve slept next to guys on the first date, had sex on the first date, allowed no more than a cheek kiss, dispensed with the date-concept altogether after kissing the guy on the way to his car, fucked a couple of close friends and, more rarely, slept with a guy I didn’t care if I ever saw again.” Okay, wonders the ordinary guy with only middling psychic powers, which is it tonight?
Well, here’s a way to find out, guy with middling psychic powers: ask the girl. She’ll tell you.
Or maybe she won’t, but then you’ll know that she’s just looking to play games. And you’ll have to decide whether you want to play along.
Now, maybe the woman gives you an answer you don’t like. Maybe you want a relationship, and she just wants sex. You know what you do then? Thank her for her time, and move along. Because there’s another woman out there who does want a relationship, and you’re looking for her. And there’s another man out there who’s just looking for sex, and you’re getting in his way.
In fact, young men face a bewildering multiplicity of female expectations and desire. Some women are comfortable asking, “What’s your name again?” when they look across the pillow in the morning. But plenty of others are looking for Mr. Darcy. In her interviews with 100 unmarried, college-educated young men and women, Jillian Straus, author of Unhooked Generation, discovered that a lot of women had “personal scripts”—explicit ideas about how a guy should act, such as walking his date home or helping her on with her coat. Straus describes a 26-year-old journalist named Lisa fixed up for a date with a 29-year-old social worker. When he arrives at her door, she’s delighted to see that he’s as good-looking as advertised. But when they walk to his car, he makes his first mistake: he fails to open the car door for her. Mistake Number Two comes a moment later: “So, what would you like to do?” he asks. “Her idea of a date is that the man plans the evening and takes the woman out,” Straus explains. But how was the hapless social worker supposed to know that? In fact, Doesn’t-Open-the-Car-Door Guy might well have been chewed out by a female colleague for reaching for the office door the previous week.
Please. You know what you do when you go out on a first date with a woman who’s really upset that you didn’t open the car for her (or did, wev)? You don’t go out on a second date with her. The reverse is true, too. First dates aren’t binding, long-term contracts. They’re a chance to meet someone and decide if they’re right for you. If you find a person whose idea of a relationship is different than yours, then you’ve probably found a person you don’t want to build a relationship with.
I don’t believe in relationships where the man is supposed to be the guy in charge, and so I’m going to avoid them. If I meet a woman who expects me to plan every date, she’s going to be disappointed in me, and I’m going to be disappointed in her, so why would I be upset that she didn’t want to date me again? If she and I are so incompatible, I don’t want to waste my time dating her again, either.
The cultural muddle is at its greatest when the dinner check arrives. The question of who grabs it is a subject of endless discussion on the hundreds of Internet dating sites. The general consensus among women is that a guy should pay on a first date: they see it as a way for him to demonstrate interest. Many men agree, but others find the presumption confusing. Aren’t the sexes equal? In fact, at this stage in their lives, women may well be in a better position to pick up the tab: according to a 2005 study by Queens College demographer Andrew Beveridge, college-educated women working full-time are earning more than their male counterparts in a number of cities, including New York, Chicago, Boston, and Minneapolis.
This is a bit of a muddle, but only because we’re processing through the change from the era when men worked and women didn’t to an era where everyone’s equal, and that means that the bill question isn’t cut-and-dried. But again, so what? My ex-wife wasn’t overly impressed that we split the bill on our first date (I was being egalitarian, and I was also poor), but it wasn’t a deal-breaker for her, because she understood that it’s not cut-and-dried. She didn’t let a minor faux pas become bigger than it was.
By and large, I think moving to a he-or-she-who-asks-pays rule is probably good, but it will take time to work itself out. And until it does, everyone should be patient and let it work itself out. And women and men alike can show patience in that process — and those that can’t might not be worth another go-round.
Sure, girls can—and do—ask guys out for dinner and pick up the check without missing a beat. But that doesn’t clarify matters, men complain. Women can take a Chinese-menu approach to gender roles. They can be all “Let me pay for the movie tickets” on Friday night and “A single rose? That’s it?” on Valentine’s Day. This isn’t equality, say the male-contents; it’s a ratification of female privilege and, worse, caprice. “Women seemingly have decided that they want it all (and deserve it, too),” Kevin from Ann Arbor writes. “They want to compete equally, and have the privileges of their mother’s generation. They want the executive position, AND the ability to stay home with children and come back into the workplace at or beyond the position at which they left. They want the bad boy and the metrosexual.”
Well…I want to be able to stay home with my daughter and come back at the position I left. You see, being able to be with your kids isn’t simply something women want, it’s something parents want. You make choices and sacrifices, but wanting the best outcome isn’t the end of the world.
Again, though, look at all the theys in the above sentence, all the painting of women as a monolithic entity. But they aren’t. Some women want to pay for movie tickets and melt at a single rose for Valentine’s Day. Some women want the executive position and really hope their husband will stay home with the kids. Different women want different things.
This attraction to bad boys is by far guys’ biggest complaint about contemporary women.
No it isn’t. Not remotely. It’s Nice Guys’™ biggest complaint about contemporary women. The “bad boy” exists primarily in the fevered imagination of Nice Guys™ everywhere, primarily defined as the guy the girl I’d like to be dating is dating.
Young men grew up hearing from their mothers, their teachers, and Oprah that women wanted sensitive, kind, thoughtful, intelligent men who were in touch with their feminine sides, who shared their feelings, who enjoyed watching Ally McBeal rather than Beavis and Butt-Head. Yeah, right, sneer a lot of veterans of the scene. Women don’t want Ashley Wilkes; they’re hot for Rhett Butler, for macho men with tight abs and an emotional range to match.
Yes, some are. Other women are most certainly attracted to sensitive men. Other women are looking for a mixture of the two extremes — a sensitive man who can also be assertive when he needs to be.
According to a “Recovering Nice Guy” writing on Craigslist, the female preference for jerks and “assholes,” as they’re also widely known, lies behind women’s age-old lament, “What happened to all the nice guys?” His answer: “You did. You ignored the nice guy. You used him for emotional intimacy without reciprocating, in kind, with physical intimacy.” Women, he says, are actually not attracted to men who hold doors for them, give them hinted-for Christmas gifts, or listen to their sorrows. Such a man, our Recovering Nice Guy continues, probably “came to realize that, if he wanted a woman like you, he’d have to act more like the boyfriend that you had. He probably cleaned up his look, started making some money, and generally acted like more of an asshole than he ever wanted to be.”
Yes, I remember, we’ve dealt with this asshole before. And that’s what he is — an asshole. Because only an asshole could write, “You used him for emotional intimacy without reciprocating, in kind, with physical intimacy,” and not realize that he was betraying a completely facile and stereotypical idea of What Women and Men are Supposed to Want. Men want sex, women want emotional intimacy. If you’re a guy, and you’re a friend to a girl, she owes you sex. That’s the payback. Never is it noted that the guy might have received emotional intimacy from his female friend — what guy feels emotion? No, he wanted sex, and didn’t get it, and now he’s gonna whine about it.
There’s a ton more to the article — it goes on and on an on, talking about the Seduction Community and Darwinist Dating and how women really want to marry a rich guy, before coming to the obvious conclusion:
Nevertheless, you might ask, are there really so many dating Darwinists on the prowl? Is dating really hell, as the website would have it, for the majority of contemporary SYMs and Fs? Probably not. It’s a safe bet that for all the confusions and humiliations of dating, most men will still try to be nice guys who say “please” and avoid asking a woman about her sexual history until, say, the third date. And if the past is any guide, most of them, even the most masterly PUAs, will eventually find themselves coaching Little League on weekends. In a national survey of young, heterosexual men, the National Marriage Project, a research organization at Rutgers University, found that the majority of single subjects hoped to marry and have kids someday.
Um…yeah. You see, as most of us who live here in the real world know, dating isn’t particularly hellish. There are awkward moments and bad dates and people you don’t want to see again, but there are funny stories and entertaining anecdotes and every so often, a person you really, really are glad you met. Equality hasn’t ended dating, it’s just made it more chaotic and free. And while it may take a bit more time to find the person who fits with you, in the end you’re more likely to. And that makes all the difference.
That’s gonna leave a mark. Hey, George, here’s a tip for the future: don’t just yammer about economic history when you’re sitting next to a Nobel laureate. Knowing your stuff works a lot better.
I’ve been a space geek since I was roughly four, and while we don’t have the moon bases, space habitats, and manned Mars missions I was promised back in 1978, we’ve finally started making some nice incremental improvements in space technology of late, primarily related to the impending retirement of the space shuttle fleet, which were far more expensive and far less useful than originally advertised, and tragically much less reliable. The Ares/Orion pairing should be, if nothing else, far safer than the shuttle fleet, and while Orion capsules are only expected to be reusable up to ten times, they should be less expensive to maintain than the shuttles, which are incredibly fragile.
The shuttles’ retirement does eliminate one key resupply element for the International Space Station. While people and supplies will continue to be supplied by Soyuz capsules after 2010, and until Orion debuts, water is used much more frequently by humans, and is expensive and heavy to launch. Previously, water came from the shuttles’ fuel cell electrical systems, which creates water as a byproduct of electricity generation. The water was saved up and delivered to the ISS. With crew for the ISS scheduled to increase to six, and only twenty shuttle missions left, there’s obviously a need to wring every drop of usefulness out of water on the station. And that’s where the current mission of Space Shuttle Endeavour comes in. Because Endeavour is carrying new sleeping compartments for the ISS, as well as a new water recycling system that will recycle up to 92 percent of water in the air and wastewater into potable drinking water.
If you do the math, you realize quickly that wastewater includes, well, waste water:
NASA plans to double the size of the space station crew from three members to six next year. The shuttle carries two new sleeping compartments and a water recycling system that will enable the crew to purify urine and other wastewater for drinking.
“We did blind taste tests of the water,” said NASA’s Bob Bagdigian, the system’s lead engineer. “Nobody had any strong objections. Other than a faint taste of iodine, it is just as refreshing as any other kind of water.”
“I’ve got some in my fridge,” he added. “It tastes fine to me.”
And it probably does. It doesn’t usually pay to think too deeply about the many processes that water goes through on its way through the cycle, but there’s about a 100 percent chance at least part of that glass of water you’re drinking was at some point part of some creature’s waste, if not a human’s. And, you know, so what? It’s gone through a long natural process of filtering through ground and into an aquifer and out into a river, or lake, or well, or what have you; it’s not part of waste any more.
Similarly, most of urine is simply water — remove the waste and what’s left is all water. And aside from the psychological hurdle of realizing that the water you’re drinking was inside someone recently, it’s just H2O.
What’s important about this, other than extending the life and efficiency of the ISS, is that its development is key to any sort of long-term manned missions. While I tend to be pessimistic about a human mission to Mars any time in my lifetime (for a variety of reasons, it’s very, very difficult), a human base on the Moon will probably be established in the next thirty years. Astronauts are going to be expected to live there for months, even years. And while there is ice on the Moon and Mars alike, the less time our astronauts have to spend gathering ice, the more they can spend doing productive things, like golfing. Doing this work now allows us to have one less thing to invent in 2023. And that’s a good thing for those, like me, who believe humankind’s future includes travel beyond this island Earth.
My governor, Tim Pawlenty, has been a regular media gadfly during his first press availability of the 2012 campaign media statements at the Republican Governors’ Association meetings. He’s had the combover line and the less ideology, more doing line, and he let loose with a nice cheap shot against his 2012 rival rebuke to Sarah Palin, saying that “Drill, baby, drill” was just a slogan. If you didn’t know anything about Minnesota’s governor, you might think he was a decent, pragmatic guy who was willing to stand up to his party’s orthodoxy.
Those of us who live in Minnesota, of course, know better. Gov. Timmy has not been willing to buck his party, not at all. He’s still refused to sign a tax increase during his six years in office, going so far as to veto a transportation funding bill that passed in the wake of the I-35W bridge collapse because it had a gas tax attached to it. Jeff Rosenberg has a nice roundup for those who’ve forgotten some of Timmy’s greatest hits, like the time he line-itemed funding for the central corridor transit proposal that he’d supported, just to stick it to the DFL.
Pawlenty is no less beholden to the social conservative wing of the party; while Pawlenty is not his wife, former Judge Mary Pawlenty, she’s well-regarded in the conservative evangelical community, and Timmy’s done nothing that would make the Palin wing actually reject him. He’s been appropriately anti-gay, vetoing the 2007-08 omnibus state departments appropriation bills because it allowed benefits for domestic partners. He also signed a pledge supporting an anti-gay marriage amendment — doing so along with its primary supporter, then-State Sen. Michele Bachmann, R-Stillwater.
His former law partner, now Chief Justice of the Minnesota Supreme Court Eric Magnuson, was praised by LifeNews as a pro-life advocate. And he was a big supporter of the “right to know” act, which requires women in Minnesota to read a packet of material before having abortions because, you know, women don’t think of such things; the first materials issued by the Department of Health included previously debunked claims of an abortion-breast cancer link.
His first commissioner of education — one ultimately defenestrated by the DFL-controlled Senate — was Cheri Pierson Yecke, who pushed unsuccessfully for including soi-disant Intelligent Design theory in Minnesota’s standard curriculum.
I can tell you what your worst nightmare is. It’s one of the big-spendin’, tax-raisin’, abortion-promotin’, gay marriage-embracin’, more welfare-without-accountability lovin’, school reform-resistin’, illegal immigration-supportin’ Democrats for governor who think Hillary Clinton should be president of the United States.
So yes, it’s nice to hear Tim Pawlenty sounding like Arne Carlson. But talk is cheap. And Gov. Timmy has spent the last six years governing much more like Sarah Palin than George H.W. Bush. And if he ends up as president, I suspect he’ll model himself on a different Bush, one who talked a good, bipartisan game during the campaign — and governed from the hard right.
I haven’t jumped on the Hillary Clinton at Foggy Bottom rumor, mainly because it’s just a rumor. Like all the rumored appointments — Kerry and/or Richardson at State, Gates and/or Hagel and/or Kerry at Defense, Alberto Gonzales back in a triumphat stint at AG — they’re just rumors, and none of them should be taken particulary seriously yet. Did she talk to Obama about it? Possibly. Does that she’s a lock for the job? Of course not. Nobody should be considered a lock for State, any more than they should for President. It’s arguably the third-or-fourth most prestigious position in American government, roughly equal to House Speaker or Senate Majority Leader, ahead of Vice President, behind only the Presidency itself and Chief Justice — and those two positions aren’t open.
That said, Clinton is an intriguing choice for State. Some can argue that her opinion and Obama’s don’t mesh exactly on foreign policy, and that’s true — emphasis on “exactly.” But my sense is that Obama views minor disagreements as a feature, not a bug. Certainly, he doesn’t seem like a guy who would be unwilling to listen to Clinton if she had an idea on foreign policy that was at variance to his — indeed, his lack of rigidity is one of his strengths. More to the point, Clinton’s positions are not nearly as different from Obama’s as the primary made it seem; Clinton is perhaps a bit more hawkish than Obama, but both are basically in the mainstream of Democratic thought. And Clinton has shown every evidence that she can hold her ego in check when dealing with Obama; like all politicians, Clinton has an ego, but she also has the sense of when to hold it in check.
Clinton would obviously be an instantly recognizable and powerful figure in the position of top diplomat. Her husband is well-known throughout the world, obviously, and Clinton has been almost as well-traveled herself. Additionally, there’d be no question whether Clinton could command respect the way there could be with, say, Bill Richardson. Clinton is probably the second-most-respected politician in America right now, behind only the President-Elect. And she’d be an ideal person to begin the hard work of righting America’s standing in the world.
The main question is whether Clinton would want to take the position, one that would have her serving at the pleasure of President Obama. Clearly, Clinton can hold her seat in the Senate in perpetuity, and she’s likely to keep moving up in the Democratic caucus, perhaps to the Majority Leader position someday. If Obama falters, and loses in 2012 — and we’re a long way from 2012, and a lot could happen — Clinton could potentially run for the presidency again in 2016. She would only be 69, which, while on the older side for a presidential candidate, is certainly not out of the ballpark. Indeed, Clinton could be the odds-on favorite for the Democratic nomination in 2016 even if Obama has two successful terms; Joe Biden is turning 66 next week, and would be 74 in 2017, almost certainly too old to seek his first term in office, especially compared to Clinton.
Clinton could bide her time in the Senate, serving as a point person on health care reform and a vocal member of Congress, using her clout to position herself for a run in eight years; certainly, she’d be able to be more vocal than she could be in the State Department. That said, Clinton could potentially serve four years at State and take a couple years to gear up for her final run for the presidency — and if Obama’s been successful, she could be the most-like-a-vice-president candidate in 2016, assuming Biden doesn’t run.
Essentially, for Clinton, being offered State is a win/win; either she takes it, and positions herself as an heir apparent, or she rejects it, and positions herself as one of the key figures in the Senate. Frankly, if I was Obama, I’d offer her State (or possibly its equally powerful mirror image, Defense); it won’t be Health and Human Services or the Vice Presidency, positions that are arguably beneath her talents. Instead, it would be a position that would suit her strengths, and keep her close in the coming years. If nothing else, allowing Clinton to reject the position would leave her a closer ally than not offering it, and would make one of the leading lights of Congress shine more favorably on the Obama administration.
You know what I haven’t done for a while? That’s right — rip some MRA’s screed to shreds. To be fair, I’ve been busy, what with the election, and the fact that MRAs have that deep well of anger that makes each one of their posts into a billion-word screed, which is daunting. Still, these articles aren’t going to fisk themselves. So let’s see what’s on Men’s News Daily….
All right! Here’s a good one by the aptly named Angry Harry. It’s sheer genius, if by sheer genius one means the most crazy thing I’ve read since I read the transcripts of Sarah Palin’s interview with Katie Couric. Its title?
Why Governments Love Feminism
Stop laughing — young Master Harold’s argument is that governments actually love feminism, which explains why the Bush Administration has embraced pro-woman policies like limiting access to birth control and banning D&X abortions. Because governments love feminism!
But why? Why do governments love feminism so much? Well, first, let’s define feminism as something it isn’t.
Feminism has very little to do with equality between the genders, and it also has very little to do with the rights of women.
That’s right, feminism is actually a brand of skin cream. Who knew?
First and foremost, feminism is about various groups seeking to acquire power and money, and to build huge self-serving empires in which millions - literally millions - of people nowadays have a vested interest - a vested interest that is, in fact, highly detrimental to those societies in which these people operate.
To be fair, this is true. Approximately 150 million women in the United States alone have a vested interest in feminism allowing them to have a rough level of legal equality. And it’s detrimental to the society as a whole, except the opposite.
But why does the government love this crazy system of working to allow men and women to choose their own destinies? To understand, let’s engage in an overly simplistic and easily refuted thought experiment:
To see how their game is played, I just want you to imagine a society - a somewhat idealised society - wherein the women are happy to spend their days being closely associated with their homes and their children, while the young men and the fathers are reasonably happy to troop off to the workplace - wherever this might be.
And, further, I want you to imagine that most of the people in this society are mostly quite content with their situation.
In other words, it is a reasonably happy place.
And then I’d like you to imagine that the people who aren’t content with their situation are simply beaten until they shut up. And since nobody’s complaining, everything’s wonderful!
And now the question that I want you to contemplate very deeply is this one.
What’s in it for government?
Well…accepting arguendo that the fake world you describe ever could exist, I’d say that the government benefits by having a relatively stable and orderly society, which will work well to churn out workers for the coal mines and soldiers for our nation’s glorious armies, which will crush our licentious enemies.
How can government - and government workers - benefit from having to exist within a society of people who seem to be quite happy and at peace with each other?
Uh…they don’t have to break up fisticuffs?
On what grounds can the government say to the people, “You need more government. Give us more tax money.”
Oh! Well, let’s see, they would use it to build roads, fund police departments, raise armies, educate children, provide health care and social services, build parks, fund the judicial system, build jails, fund libraries, and, you know, do all the other things that governments do.
All right! Well, we’ve answered Harry’s question, so now…
Well, clearly, in such an idyllic society, it would be very difficult indeed to persuade the people to part with more of their own resources - acquired through their own labours - in order to fund ‘more government’.
However, if this reasonably happy society can be disrupted by some force or other - some force that induces ‘disharmony’ within the population - an increase in crime, say - then the government will find it much easier to extract a bigger piece of the society’s pie. For example, if there is an increase in crime, the people will far more readily agree to fund a bigger police force. If the men and women start fighting against each other, and begin to split apart, with married couples getting divorced, then the government can justify extracting further resources from the people in order to create a larger social services workforce to look after the women and children who are now on their own.
Aha! So feminism is the cause of all evil in society, no matter what! Because everyone knows that crime didn’t exist prior to the 1960s. Indeed, no government existed at all before evil ol’ feminism caused divorce, but evidently didn’t allow women to work because…something.
And the point that I am trying to get across here is this.
You’re a complete moron?
Governments benefit not by the people being at peace with each other, but by them being at war with each other in some way.
Wow, man, that’s deep. And incredibly, incredibly stupid. I know MRAs have this big crossover with libertarian douchebaggery, but in reality, governments are instituted by people, at least in liberal democracies, of which America is one. And those governments have a vested interest in not having to do too much, because the people, bless our flinty hearts, have a tendency not to want to pay too much in taxes, you know, ever, which leaves our government perpetually cash-strapped. Except for the Pentagon.
Of course, governments can benefit from many other things too, but the point here is this. Governments clearly benefit from what I shall henceforth simply call ‘disharmony’ - societal disharmony; such as crime.
And again, there was no crime before feminism! Damn you women and your two pillars of feminism. Basic equality with men — okay. But that long part where you advocate committing crimes — that’s been nothing but trouble.
And because governments have massive power in comparison to ordinary individuals, they will tend to use this power to create more and more societal disharmony - with much success. Of course they will do this. Why? Well, because governments, and millions of government workers, benefit from disharmony, and they are not going to use their huge collective force to undermine themselves - which reducing ‘disharmony’ would do.
Which explains, among other things, why police routinely encourage murders, why schools teach our students that violence solves everything, and why the EPA poisons people.
Well, actually that last one might be happening under the Bush Administration, but you get my point.
At the very least, government workers do not want to lose their funding, their jobs, their security, their pensions etc etc etc. And so they need to be perceived to be needed.
Better still for them, are bigger empires with bigger salaries, and much more status and power.
After all, in this respect, they are no different from anyone else!
And, collectively, by hook or by crook, these government workers can, and will, create the most monumental force in order to get these various benefits for themselves; a force that the people simply cannot counter.
Indeed, it would be bordering on the preposterous to believe that such an enormous body of government workers would not exert a force in a direction from which they, themselves, would benefit.
After all, these people are not gods. They are human beings!
And by human beings, Harry means that they’re evil, and that they choose to go into government service and get those lucrative five-figure salaries and all the stock options that the government usually offers, all so that they can systematically destroy society from within. It’s all coming into focus now.
In a nutshell: These government workers want bigger empires with bigger salaries and bigger pensions. They want more status and more power. And, collectively, they will exert such a huge force that no-one can actually stop them from getting these things; as the monumental growth in government over the past 120 years or so in the west has clearly shown. (Central governments have grown more than one hundred-fold over the past 120 years.)
The last 120 years? Why, you’d almost think growth in central government had nothing to do with feminism, but instead things like our radically higher standard of living and radically larger population! But no, it’s probably all about the government using feminism to build torture centers at Guantanamo Bay.
Now, because the main aim of feminists is to create as much disharmony as possible between men and women in order to fund their own empires, governments just love them; because, remember; for governments, the more disharmony, the better.
Wait — because I’ve been lulled to sleep by Harry’s rambling, repetitive tripe, I missed the part where he showed that feminists were actually out to create disharmony. You know, with any statements or evidence or stuff. Let me go back and read here…
Well, I’ll be darned — there isn’t any evidence! Why, it’s almost as if Harry’s just come up with some random strawfeminist jackholery to serve as the perfect foil to his fictitious government that doesn’t act like any government on earth. But I’m sure Men’s News Daily wouldn’t publish something like that! Not with their high standards!
So let us return to our rather over-simplified society, and see what happens when married couples with children within this reasonably-happy place start more often to divorce and to separate.
Well, typically, the men will go off and live on their own somewhere, but they will continue working. The women, however, will have to choose some combination of going out to work and staying at home with the children.
Because obviously, men wouldn’t want to raise the children, and women wouldn’t let men do that. And men and women never would do something as crazy as work together to adjust schedules so that kids were taken care of. That’s impossible!
If the women decide to stay at home, then they must be given a source of income by the government. This means that the government must take away money from others in order to fund them. And, already, this means creating a whole system of laws involving lawyers, judges, administrators, social assessors, financial offices and various allied bureaucratic systems.
In other words, divorce and separation provide a whole plethora of benefits for governments and their workers.
This is, of course, true, except for the majority of cases where women do in fact work, because, you know, they live in a society where women are allowed to work full-time. It’s strange, I wonder how that happened?
Furthermore, of course, no-one in the population wants to see women and children left destitute, and so government now gets the benefit of some further popular support for its endeavours. Thus, the government also wins on this score.
And, of course, the women who are put into this position with their children are now at the mercy of the government.
In other words, they become dependent on the government; which is also great for government.
“If you women do not vote for us, then you will get a smaller income from the government!”
This, in turn, explains why the rest of society is happy to keep voting for this bizarre, threatening government that doesn’t let women work, because of feminism.
Now, of course, women who have divorced - whether or not they have children - might instead decide to go out to work; in which case the government wins yet again - because it now has more workers from whom it can take money through the tax system.
In other words, encouraging divorce and separation is a winning strategy for government.
Indeed, it is win-win all the way.
Exactly, because no woman would choose to work while married; that never happens, am I right, ladies? And the government will need that tax money to pay for all the women who aren’t working, because they are working and now they have money to pay for them not working so they can get the money from their work and now I’ve gone cross-eyed.
And, most importantly, this remains true whether or not the women have children, and whether or not they go out to work. It is the growing division between men and women that is the key to the government’s winning strategy.
And government loves division between men and women, given that the government is an entity much like the Yeti or the Blancmange, completely alien to humanity, and not, in fact, a large and diverse organization made up of human beings.
In summary, therefore, government has an enormous amount to gain by increasing the divide between men and women, because this enables government workers to justify the creation and the controlling of many large empires, they can more easily extract higher taxes, they can tax more people, they can make more people dependent upon them, and they can gain themselves some extra popular support.
Wow. That’s just an incredibly stupid article, one that has no rational basis, one that invokes that most famous of philosophical arguments, “If A=B, and B=C, then A=Feminists are Evil.” And I’m just glad it’s done.
But this is just the beginning.
Wait — what?
Many, many further benefits accrue to the government when the close relationships between men and women are broken apart. For example, the negative social consequences of not having strong fathers around their children are positively huge. These tend to impact most directly on boys, but the repercussions reverberate across the whole of society - for decades. For example, youngsters - both girls and boys - without fathers in the home are far more likely to …
… live in poverty and deprivation, … be troublesome in school, … have more difficulty getting along with others, … have more health problems, … suffer from physical, emotional and/or sexual abuse, … run away from home, … get sexual diseases, … become teenage parents, … offend against the law, … smoke, drink alcohol and take drugs, … play truant from school, … be excluded from school, … behave violently, … give up on education at an early age, … make poor adjustments to adulthood, … attain little in the way of qualifications, … experience unemployment, … have low incomes, … be on welfare, … experience homelessness, … go to jail, … suffer from long term emotional and psychological problems, … engage only in casual relationships, … have children outside marriage or, indeed, outside any partnership.
Indeed, a whole cascade of social problems - i.e. a great deal of ‘disharmony’ - is generated by the effects of youngsters not having fathers around.
Oh my God, he’s not done, is he? He’s still arguing the same claptrap he was before, only moreso.
But, clearly, governments benefit fantastically from this; because governments can use these enormous problems to justify even further increases in both taxes and power.
After all, the people want to be protected from all the negative social consequences of fatherlessness - and, of course, the victims themselves could clearly do with a bit of extra help.
It’s not fair — he’s now leapt into an insane universe where the breakdown of society is good for government because a broken society makes government bigger, and hey, government isn’t part of society, right? And in a democratic society, the breakdown in society wouldn’t lead government to, say, lose badly in the next election, because…who knows? He’s now completely jumped the rails of reality and gone off into another word entirely.
I’ll save you the 3500 (not kidding) more words in which he spins his obviously insane argument into proof that feminism is the cause of global warming, immigration is a secret government plot, and governments are actively working to make marriage more difficult. Okay, that last one may have some merit when talking about California, but I don’t think Grumpy Harold is talking about gay couples.
All I know is that feminism is far worse than I ever thought it could be. Here I thought it was a philosophy that said men and women should have equal opportunites. Little did I know that it also was the lynchpin in making ours a communist society. You might have mentioned that, ladies. Oh well.
You have to hand it to the modern Republican Party. Most candidates facing a recount would be quietly going about their business, lining up their legal advisors, maybe making a few points about what they view as important in the procedural approach to the count.
Not today’s GOP. Rather than do what Al Franken is doing — keeping his head down, asking a few questions, generally expressing support for a fair count — the GOP has decided to go nuclear, trying to destroy decades of fair, reasonable elections in Minnesota. Their primary evidence? Secretary of State Mark Ritchie, DFL-Minnesota, is a Democrat!
You may think that’s kinda obvious, given the DFL after his name. He is, you know, a Democrat. He ran as a Democrat, against the previous Secretary of State, Republican Mary Kiffmeyer. And won.
The GOP views this as proof that Mark Ritchie is the Katherine Harris of 2008. Now, I’m glad to see the Republicans belatedly acknowledging that the 2000 recount in Florida was a completely unfair and backward process that led to a flawed and likely incorrect result, and I’m sure my fellow Democrats will join me in agreeing that the GOP can have Norm Coleman in exchange for a voiding of all laws, appointments and decisions made by George Bush between 2001 and 2005. No trade? Okay, I guess we’ll go to the recount then.
Democrat Mark Ritchie spoke at the Democratic National Convention!
The Communist Party once wrote nice things about Ritchie, thus proving he’s a Communist!
ACORN endorsed Ritchie, proving Ritchie is Bill Ayers!
Before being elected, Ritchie ran a voter drive affiliated with ACORN, proving Ritchie is Satan!
Ritchie said that the state was prepared for high turnout, and noted few irregularities with voting!
Truly, these are dizzying allegations, which have been summarized neatly by local GOP mouthpiece and Strib columnist Katherine Kersten, and by “summarized” I mean “repeated verbatim.” Kersten spends paragraph after paragraph detailing these shocking allegations of a partisan Democrat being a partisan Democrat, before leading up to her big conclusion:
Thus far, Ritchie has shown no evidence of misconduct. But many Minnesotans are questioning the openness and transparency of the vote tally that just ended.
That’s right! There’s no evidence that Mark Ritchie has done anything but operate a fair and above-board process; indeed, today he appointed the canvassing board, and included on it such crazed liberals as Chief Justice Eric Magnusson and Justice G. Barry Anderson, both appointees of Gov. Tim Pawlenty, a Republican.
Sure, but look at this photographic evidence that Ritchie is a Democrat, ganked from Mikey Brodkorb:
Shocking! A DFLer who supported DFL-endorsed candidates! Franken’s predecessor, Mary Kiffmeyer, never would have done such a thing. She was totally moderate and non-partisan all the time. Right?
Oh.
But still, that aside, Kiffmeyer was a totally above-board player, right?
The head of the DFL Party on Wednesday accused Secretary of State Mary Kiffmeyer of playing partisan politics in brochures her office printed up to explain Minnesota’s precinct caucuses.
The brochures say the caucuses will be held Tuesday, March 7. That’s true for the Republican, Reform and Constitution parties. But the DFL, for the first time, will hold its precinct meetings the following weekend in an effort to improve attendance.
DFL chair Mike Erlandson said that Kiffmeyer, a Republican, was trying “to politicize a democratic process that’s intended to be accessible to all Minnesotans.”
Ah. Yes. That’s right. Kiffmeyer was a partisan hack — which is why the GOP is as freaked out as they are. The Republicans are all about projection, and they know darn well that Mary Kiffmeyer would be working overtime to put her thumb on the scales, if only she had the chance. The idea that Mark Ritchie might value the state above his party never crosses their minds — he’s obviously guilty, evidence be damned.
Since her failed re-election bid, Kiffmeyer has appeared more concerned with her legacy than she is with a smooth handover to Ritchie, who takes office next month. The paranoid election official even told The Fargo Forum in November she plans to have a Capitol Security officer accompany her on a pre-departure walkthrough of her office to “protect my record and my reputation” against “any potential false claim.”
After thinking it over, however, it appears Kiffmeyer decided a Capitol Security officer can’t really provide good political cover. After all, the security force is non-partisan, which doesn’t play to her strengths. Instead the vanquished secretary of state called in the Republican cavalry – in the form of Michael Brodkorb, of Minnesota Democrats Exposed fame.
It didn’t take long for the high-profile disinformation specialist to begin his campaign to “defend” Kiffmeyer’s record by impugning Ritchie’s.
“In my opinion, Ritchie did not seem prepared to discuss the transition nor was he versed in the functions of the Secretary of State’s (O)ffice,” Brodkorb opined shortly before noon Thursday.
What’s his basis for that judgment? Brodkorb has been a very successful political operative for more than a decade, but nowhere on his Web site’s “About Me” page is there information that would indicate he has anything more than a cursory knowledge of the Secretary of State’s Office – unless peddling propaganda for Mark Kennedy can somehow be construed as comparable to overseeing elections statewide.
It’s simple, though. To Mike and his fellow partisans on the right, all DFLers are unqualified, partisan boobs until proven otherwise. The real story of today — that Ritchie appears to have appointed a fair, ideologically balanced canvassing board with ties directly to the head of Minnesota’s GOP — is lost in the screaming about how Ritchie’s party affiliation disqualifies him from serving his state. If the right wants to argue that the Secretary of State’s office should be truly nonpartisan, then fine — I’ll be the first one in line to back that proposal. But the right doesn’t object to partisanship in the Secretary of State’s office — they object to Democrats in the Secretary of State’s office. Partisan Republicans who went on to fundraise for anti-Catholic preachers? Totally fine.
Mark Twain once said that history does not repeat itself, but it does rhyme. And if there’s one thing pundits and wonks like to do, it’s to look at those rhymes for hints about where things are going.
This is easier said than done, of course. Karl Rove had convinced himself that 2004 rhymed with 1896 — a period that began a generation of Republican dominance. Instead, it rhymed with 1976 — a period in time where one party appeared ascendent, and another moribund. Which was true, but the opposite of what everyone thought at the time.
Now US News and World Report, in its new virtual incarnation, has decided that 2008 rhymes with 1992 — and that’s bad news for Barack Obama. Now, you may wonder why it is, given that Bill Clinton won re-election in 1996, but still — bad!:
That’s right, the “O” in “Obama” may stand for “One Term.” For starters, there’s a strong chance that when voters head to the polls on Nov. 2, 2010, they likely will still think the economy is awful. Not much debate about that. (Good chance the Democrats’ two-election winning streak comes to an end.) And while voters may be somewhat patient for two years, patient for four years? Really unlikely. If history is any guide at all, voters may still be terribly cranky about the economy when they cast their ballots on Nov. 6, 2012 and thus likely choose the 45th president of the United States — be it Mitt Romney, Sarah Palin, Bobby Jindal or some other Republican without “Bush” for a last name. Once again a “change” election for an impatient America. The same bad economy that doomed John McCain in 2008 will have sunk Obama, as well.
Well, that’s all very interesting, but James Pethokoukis is wrong about his analogy. It isn’t 1992 all over again. It’s 1980.
The 2008 election had a lot in common with the 1980 one. The country is in a malaise, the upstart challenger was untested, but in the end, he was charismatic and seemed like a stable leader. The country decided to pass on a continuation of what appeared to be failed policies, in favor of change and hope. Ronald Reagan in 1980, Barack Obama in 2008 — polar opposites politically, but of a piece when it comes to their sense of optimism that America’s best days lie ahead of us.
Reagan won in 1980 at the end of the dismal ’70s, which had seen America’s prestige battered in a senseless war, seen energy prices spiking, seen the economy grind to a halt. No president could fix all that in a couple years, and Reagan didn’t; the economy went into the worst recession since the Great Depression during his first term, a recession that lasted until November of 1982, the year of the mid-term elections. Democrats gained 26 seats that year, but could not retake the Senate; the recession ended, and the economy improved over the next couple of years.
But it didn’t improve magically, nor did was all perfect in 1984. Unemployment was still over 7 percent on Election Day of 1984, though that was down from the 10.8 percent it had hit at the peak of the recession. But by the time Reagan faced Walter Mondale in 1984, the economy was recovering. Things appeared to be on the right track. Inflation had moderated, corporate earnings were up. Reagan won a historic landslide over Mondale, and today the recession is barely mentioned by Reagan’s haigiographers on the right.
Obama has the chance to experience a similar fate. Undoubtedly, we have some hard years ahead of us, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see the Democrats lose some seats in the mid-terms — indeed, given what a high-water mark the Democrats are at now, it will be all but impossible not to lose some seats in the mid-terms. But if the economy is in recovery come 2012, the odds strongly favor Obama winning re-election.
If the economy is still failing, of course, that would be different. But if it is, then we’re in a Depression, and we haven’t had a candidate stand for re-election during a Depression since 1936.
Michael Bérubé tells the heart-wrenching story of those most devastated by Obama’s election: the professional concern trolls.
“Obama’s election is a historic event,” said former Clinton advisor Lanny Davis, co-chair of the newly-formed Fox News Democrat Caucus. “But I’m concerned that Obama may have raised expectations too high. What will happen when he has to face down the left-wing Congressional leadership or the Daily Kos brigades, who will undoubtedly try to goad him into adopting a narrowly partisan agenda? I worry that Obama won’t have the courage to cut those people loose when he needs to.”
Journalist Amy Sullivan agreed, adding, “I’m hearing a lot of concerns about where the Democratic party goes from here. Specifically, I’m concerned that fewer Democrats are going to be willing to take seriously the concerns of people who want to reach out across the aisle and establish a bipartisan consensus that abortion is wrong. What will happen when the party is no longer concerned about these people’s concerns? Based on what I’m hearing, I have to worry that it will back itself into increasingly radical and unpopular positions on this important issue.”
Other members of the Concerned Democrats focused more on the 2008 electoral map than on “hot-button” social issues. Democratic strategist David “Mudcat” Saunders, in a plenary address to the group, noted that Obama had managed to make inroads into traditionally Republican southern states such as Virginia and North Carolina, while sweeping Ohio, Florida, Iowa , and even Indiana, which had not voted for a Democrat since 1864. “There’s a real problem looming here,” said Saunders, “even if most Democrats don’t want to face it right now. As the Republican party increasingly becomes the party of old white people living in Appalachia, the Ozarks, and the barren windswept areas of the Louisiana Purchase, Democrats are going to be less and less inclined to listen to advisors who insist that the Democratic Party must choose leaders who are white male Southern Baptists familiar with barbeque, NASCAR, and the music of Lynyrd Skynyrd.
Truly, it is a conundrum. Now that Democrats have won a healthy majority of House and Senate seats, not to mention the presidency (with a black guy named Barack Hussein Obama), how will the concern trolls be able to convince Democrats of the dangers of supporting racial equality, legal abortion, or any rights for LGBT people? How will they be able to warn of the danger of asking the rich to pay somewhat higher taxes, or the electoral catastrophe that surely faces any candidate willing to state his opposition to the Iraq war?
I don’t know what will happen to the Democrats if they stop listening to the concern trolls, but if we do, I’m sure it will be bad. For the concern trolls, if for nobody else.
In Minnesota’s 2006 senate race, the audit detected just 53 discrepancies out of 94,073 ballots tested, or an error rate of 0.056%. However, these are the cases of machine error only, whereas the state has a liberal voter intent law to cover cases of voter error as well during the process of an actual recount.
From our Florida data set, we believe that machine error represents approximately one-third of the total number of correctable errors. That would imply that about 0.169% of ballots — roughly 1 ballot out of every 600 cast — will be reclassified in Minnesota. Given the total number of ballots cast in Minnesota’s senate race, this translates to 4,835 ballots that will in fact be reclassified during the hand recount.
Would this number be sufficient to provide Al Franken with a victory? It is very, very close. Using the Daily Kos estimate that 52.5% of recounted ballots will go to Franken (after dropping votes for third parties), we estimate a net gain of 206 votes for him, which is almost exactly the margin by which he presently trails Norm Coleman.
Indeed, it’s not almost exactly the number; it is the number. If Silver’s math is on, there’s a chance that this recount could end with Coleman and Franken in a flat-footed tie. Which would mean Franken and Coleman would have to draw lots to determine the winner. Undoubtedly, this would lead to local GOP operative/paid blogger Michael Brodkorb running a series of all-caps headlines complaining the flipped coin came from the Denver mint, which is in a blue state, and therefore it’s totally unfair to Coleman.
The Blogger Formerly Known as Hindrocket is one of nature’s simplest creatures. He derives his sustinance from the posterior of George W. Bush, to which his mouthparts are permanently affixed, and he rids himself of waste by emitting foul, noxious gasses, which he bottles for posting on the internet.
Obama thinks he is a good talker, but he is often undisciplined when he speaks. He needs to understand that as President, his words will be scrutinized and will have impact whether he intends it or not. In this regard, President Bush is an excellent model; Obama should take a lesson from his example. Bush never gets sloppy when he is speaking publicly. He chooses his words with care and precision, which is why his style sometimes seems halting. In the eight years he has been President, it is remarkable how few gaffes or verbal blunders he has committed. If Obama doesn’t raise his standards, he will exceed Bush’s total before he is inaugurated.
Wow. Just…wow. Words fail. It’s like a perfect Zen riddle: how detached from reality can John Hinderaker get? There is no answer, for each time one thinks one has quantified his detachment, he reaches a whole other plane of existence.
150 years ago or thereabouts, a group of reformers began to talk about changing marriage. It was wrong, they said, that women were not equal partners in marriage. Men could divorce women, but the opposite was not true; women who were divorced were not guaranteed any support. Men controlled the bank accounts in a marriage by virtue of law. Women could not deny their husbands sex — marital rape did not exist. Women were placed in the same category as children — they were subject to their husbands’ decisions. Indeed, when Miss Jane Smith married Mr. John Doe, she became, not Mrs. Jane Doe, but Mrs. John Doe, an appendage of her husband.
Conservative forces fought these reforms. Divorce would increase, they said. Women would forget their place, and begin taking a more active role in the decisions made in their families. Men would no longer be the unquestioned rulers of their personal fiefdoms. The very nature of marriage would change.
Conservatives fought long and hard against the changes; indeed, they are still fighting some to this day. And they fought long and hard because all their predictions came true. Divorce did increase, women’s roles in marriage did change, men’s ability to rule their marriage unquestion ultimately ended, and the very nature of marriage did change.
Conservatives slowed adoption. In the end, though, society wanted that change. And because of that, the conservatives lost.
At the height of the civil rights era, interracial marriage was illegal in half the country, and frowned upon in the other half. A group of reformers worked to change this. It was unfair, they said, that a man and a woman who loved each other would be forbidden from marrying the person they loved. It was unfair that a couple would have to fear being arrested for the sin of living with a person who they had chosen to marry.
Conservatives fought this change. It would change racial relations, they said. It would eliminate the sharp distinctions between black and white, the obvious differences that had necessitated an American apartheid system. It would narrow the racial divide, and over time, it would undermine the very idea that there was a meaningful distinction between the races.
Conservatives fought long and hard against this change; some still fight it to this day. And they fought it because all their predictions came true. Interracial couples managed to marry and raise children just like anyone else, they lived together, loved each other, and through their example showed that there was no reason blacks and whites could not be friends, equals, and partners. The increasing number of biracial and multiracial children have challenged the very notion of what race is, and while we are obviously far from eliminating racism, interracial marriage has helped to get us closer.
Conservatives slowed adoption. In the end, though, justice demanded this change. And because of that, conservatives lost.
Today, the fight on marriage has moved to the field of same-sex marriage. It is unjust, say reformers like me, that two people who love each other are barred from joining their lives together. It is unfair that a couple should be denied the right to legal marriage because they are of the same gender. It is damaging to liberty, and it is wrong.
Conservatives are fighting this, as they have fought marriage reform before. They are fighting, they say, because same-sex marriage will change the definition of marriage. It will mitigate against the very notion that in marriage, men are the breadwinners and women are homemakers. It will increase tolerance for homosexuality, normalizing behavior that had once been illegal. It
Like most Democrats, I was gleeful after the Dems took a big lead in the Senate. Sure, part of that was about getting our agenda pushed through, but mostly I was happy because it meant that defenestrated Sen. Joe Lieberman, Joe-Conn., would soon be out of a job. His gavel would be stripped, his epaulettes ripped from his shoulders, and he’d be sent out of the Democratic caucus into the cold twilight of the GOP caucus, where he’d have to put up with idiots like Tom Coburn. It would be glorious.
