Is this Carly Fiorina ad the worst political ad of all time of this year? Yes, but of course, the year is young.

So much fail, so little time. Is it the way Fiorina suggests that good fiscal conservatives are mindless sheep? The way she attacks Campbell for deficits while simultaneously attacking him for supporting tax hikes that might have ameliorated them? No, truly the best part of the ad is the Demon Sheep Itself:

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

Incidentally, the title of this post comes courtesy of Cake:

As you no doubt have heard by now, President Obama is expected to announce a non-defense discretionary spending freeze in tomorrow’s State of the Union address. Given that we’re only kinda, sorta on the way to recovery — and that spending freezes are not typical Democratic Party policy — this is obviously a terrible, awful idea that proves the firebaggers right and Barack Obama hates the left and Rahm Emanuel delenda est, right?

It depends on what the meaning of “freeze” is. Indeed, under certain conditions, this could be a great idea.

Before you try me for heresy, read this bit of reporting by Jonathan Chait:

Within the administration, White House budget director Peter Orszag appears to have settled on another solution. Last month, Orszag raised eyebrows when word leaked that he’d asked most cabinet agencies to prepare two budgets: one that freezes spending, the other that cuts it by 5 percent. Many congressional liberals were livid, and, according to multiple sources, Larry Summers’s National Economic Council reacted negatively to the emphasis on the deficit. (“The economic team has a healthy debate about most major issues,” says an administration official. “Getting people back to work is central to addressing the deficit. Similarly, putting the country back on a fiscally sustainable path is vital to confidence in the economy.”) The concern among wonks outside the administration is that clamping down on domestic discretionary spending without touching entitlements would take money out of the economy in the short term while doing nothing to close the long-term deficit.

These same liberals and wonks rejoiced when Obama backed job creation. But there is a logic to Orszag’s gambit, which runs roughly as follows: It’s almost certain that Congress will pass, and the president will sign, a jobs bill early next year, probably in the neighborhood of $100 billion to $200 billion. Given that, and given the difficulty of doing anything about the long-term deficit next year, the administration needs some signal to U.S. bondholders that it takes the deficit seriously. Just not so seriously that it undercuts the extra stimulus.

My guess is that this is the plan — announce, with great fanfare, a “spending freeze” that covers basic departmental budgets and not much else. A freeze that doesn’t come within a furlong of covering the cost of a jobs bill. It’s brilliant politics — you get all the benefits of posing as deficit hawks without any of the actual deep spending cuts (including, it can not be stressed enough, defense) and/or tax increases that a real attack on the deficit would require. Actually, since this is how deficit hawks really behave (when’s the last time Joe Lieberman suggested actually cutting defense? Or Evan Bayh floated a tax hike?), you simply become deficit hawks. And as we all know, deficit hawkishness is A Very Good Thing In Official Washington. Obama’s bound to get great press out of this.

What’s more, eventually, cuts are going to be necessary, as will tax increases. Not now — actually taking on the deficit in the midst of a deep recession would be catastrophic. That said, at some point, some day, we will have to take the deficit on. And that will require dealing with the budget like responsible adults, not Americans. A relatively small, symbolic cut this year to offset a jobs bill and a health care expansion isn’t a bad idea, politically and policywise.

But that’s the key — the Obama Administration can and should find ways to reach out to the center. But they also have to find a way to energize the left. Failing to pass a health care bill would be catastrophic; it guarantees a GOP takeover of at least the House come fall. Passing a health care bill, a jobs bill, and a repeal of DADT while simultaneously limiting other spending growth? That’s a trade that liberals can and should be willing to make.

Of course, if there’s no quid pro quo — if this is a spending freeze just for the sake of freezing spending, and if no jobs bill or health care bill is forthcoming — then it should be rejected out of hand. There’s making a play for the middle, and then there’s rank stupidity. I’m going to bet that the Obama Administration isn’t stupid. But we’ll see.

From Conor:

Only a partisan hack could deny that all aspects of this election bolstering my analysis happened to be most significant, whereas factors that cut against my thesis were ultimately irrelevant to the outcome. Let this be a lesson to my political and ideological opponents in future contested elections — insofar as it is advantages my policy preferences, what happened in Massachusetts is a harbinger of things to come in the 2010 midterms, and even in 2012. Meanwhile all precedents seemingly at odds with my national political proclivities were unique, and should be ignored.

I assume everyone is watching Massachusetts as anxiously as I am?

I’m somewhat desperately — is “desperately” too strong? Maybe. But maybe not — hoping that Martha Coakley wins the election today, because although the Democrats certainly can pass health care reform no matter who wins today, they might not if Scott Brown wins.

But if Scott Brown wins — as seems likely — I can see a silver lining. I don’t think a far-right tea-bagger type is likely to win a regular election in Massachusetts, so if Brown wins, he’s almost certainly a one-termer. In contrast, Martha Coakley — who has been exactly the sort of prosecutor I loathe, the sort who doesn’t give a damn about keeping innocent people in prison as long as her conviction record looks good — would probably be in the Senate until the day she dies.

(Related: The reason the Dems are in such deep shit today is mostly the economy and the usual mid-term problems. “To reinforce this point, try and list the times when the economy was in a downturn, but approval of the governing party was in an upswing. Outside of post-election honeymoons and the aftermath of the September 11th attacks, you simply are not going to find any examples. At all.”)

As you all most certainly know, an embarrassing quote from Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., surfaced over the weekend. Reid apparently stated during the 2008 election that then-Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., would be an electable African-American candidate because he was lighter-skinned, and because he had the ability not to speak in a “Negro dialect.”

The quote was cringeworthy, and full of what Josh Marshall once described as “racial grandpaism,” the sort of archaic, muddled statement made by a guy who is generally well-meaning, but also generally possessed by some racist baggage left over from their upbringing.

Was the quote racist? Well, yes. But racism is not a capital offense; I have said racist things and so have you. One can’t grow up in America and not be suffused with some of the racist legacy our culture carries. The best any of us can do is recognize this and strive to overcome it, and apologize and learn when we fail to live up to our responsibility to overcome it.

More to the point, Reid’s statement, while clumsy and racist, was not malicious. He wasn’t saying that Obama shouldn’t be president because he was a charlatan, or that it was reasonable and proper that darker-skinned African-Americans should be less electable. A more artful phrasing of what he was trying to say might have gone something like this: Because of the legacy of racism in this country, a candidate like Barack Obama, who is biracial and who is able to speak to audiences in a manner that is less connected with stereotypically African-American speech patterns, will be more electable than a candidate like, say, Al Sharpton, who is darker-skinned and whose speaking style is more stereotypically African-American.

That doesn’t mean that this is right; it’s a value-neutral statement of fact. And what’s more, it’s true. Just as it’s true to say that being white makes one more “electable,” historically, than not being white, or that men are more likely to be elected president than women. It’s not right. It’s not fair. It’s something we should work to change. But it’s true, and saying so doesn’t make one a racist or sexist. Saying so makes one observant.

Which brings us to former Sen. Trent Lott, R-Miss.

As you may recall, Trent Lott used to be Senate Majority Leader until, in 2002, he was forced out in a scandal involving a statement he made that included racist language. The then-Majority Leader’s statement that got him in trouble came in a tribute to retiring Sen. Strom Thurmond, KKK-S.C. Lott said of Thurmond:

I want to say this about my state. When Strom Thurmond ran for president, we voted for him. We’re proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn’t have had all these problems over all these years either.

Strom Thurmond ran for president in 1948, at a time when he was a Democrat of the traditional Southern variety — i.e., a flaming racist douchebag who nevertheless had an illegitimate biracial daughter conceived, quite probably, in rape.

Southern Democrats were furious at efforts by President Truman to ameliorate the damage caused by the apartheid system of segregation. The breaking point came at the 1948 Democratic National Convention, at which a young Minneapolis mayor by the name of Hubert Humphrey urged the party to “get out of the shadow of states’ rights and walk forthrightly into the bright sunshine of human rights.” The speech prompted a walkout of Southern Democrats, who left to form their own party, the Dixiecrats. The Dixiecrats nominated Thurmond, at the time the Governor of South Carolina, as their standard-bearer.

The party’s platform was simple: States’ Rights. Anti-Miscegenation. Pro-Segregation. Pro-Lynching. They were a party whose raison d’être was the full-throated defense of Jim Crow. Perhaps their platform was summed up best by Thurmond, who during the campaign said, “I wanna tell you, ladies and gentlemen, that there’s not enough troops in the army to force the Southern people to break down segregation and admit the nigra [sic] race into our theaters, into our swimming pools, into our homes, and into our churches.”

Again, when he said those words, he had a 23-year-old African-American daughter.

Flash-forward back to today. Many on the right, apparently wowed by their ability to connect that both Trent Lott and Harry Reid were or are Senate Majority Leaders, and that both were accused of racism, are now calling on Reid to step down as Majority Leader, because the situation is totally the same. Sen. John Kyl, R-Ariz., said flatly, “If he [Lott] should resign, then Harry Reid should.”

This is, in a word, bonkers.

Again, what Reid said was inartful and cringe-inducing and yes, racist. But it was not malicious. A different phrasing could save it from racism, and the core idea — that America in 2010 will treat candidates of varying racial backgrounds in different ways — is absolutely true.

Compare to what Lott said. Lott said that if America had followed Mississippi’s lead in 1948 and voted for the Dixiecrats, that America today would have avoided a lot of problems.

And yet the Dixiecrats stood for the worst sorts of barbarism committed in this country. They were the spiritual heirs to the slaveholders, the men and women who were absolutely and completely committed to keeping a boot of the throats of all non-white Americans. They expressly supported lynching, for God’s sake.

There is no way to save that quote, no way to phrase it that does not make it offensive and malicious. Lott was saying, flatly, that if only we’d maintained a system of segregation and racial apartheid in the South, that America today would be better off.

To compare the two situations is ludicrous.

As Ta-Nehisi Coates puts it:

Claiming that Harry Reid’s comments are the same, is like claiming that referring to Jews as “Hebrews” is the same as endorsing Nazism. Whereas a reputable portion of black people still use the term Negro without a hint of irony, no black person thinks the guy yelling “Segregation Forever!” would have cured us of “all these problems.”

Leaving aside political cynicism, this entire affair proves that the GOP is not simply still infected with the vestiges of white supremacy and racism, but is neither aware of the infection, nor understands the disease. Listening to Liz Cheney explain why Harry Reid’s comments were racist, was like listening to me give lessons on the finer points of the comma splice. This a party, rightly or wrongly, regarded by significant portions of the country as a haven for racists. They aren’t simply having a hard time re-branding, they don’t actually understand how and why they got the tag.

Exactly right. Harry Reid said something stupid while arguing that a specific African-American man could get himself elected to the presidency. Trent Lott endorsed the worst part of America’s racial legacy, and held it up as our nation’s salvation. That Republicans can take these two situations and not see a difference between them says far more about the Republican Party than about Harry Reid.

In an open thread, Ron and Rob discuss the prospect of a Constitutional challenge to health care reform, and in particular to the individual mandate:

Ron: Anybody have any idea how this might turn out? I’m trying to think of anything else the government forces me to buy. I have to buy car insurance if I buy a car, but then I don’t have to buy a car and if I don’t I don’t have to buy car insurance. I’m trying to think of anything that the government forces me to buy purely for the privilege of living in the U.S. and I’m coming up short. [...]

Robert: As for how the court challenge will go - I’m inclined to think the courts will be fairly sympathetic to the individuals not wanting to make the payments. The other side’s interest amounts to “We really really want health care reform and making people buy insurance is the only way we could find to make the political deal work”. That’s good enough for legislation, but not good enough to override people’s rights.

Of course, the government isn’t going to force RonF to buy anything. My possibly mistaken recollection is that Ron has a job that includes health benefits; if so, the individual mandate wouldn’t apply to Ron. But if it did apply to Ron, Ron still wouldn’t be forced to buy health insurance; he could always elect to pay a tax instead.

The constitutional arguments about the individual mandate hinge on two questions: whether or not Congress has the authority to create an individual mandate as part of health care reform, and whether or not Congress has the authority to tax individuals in this way. In both cases, the answer seems to be yes.

Conservatives have argued that the commerce clause doesn’t give Congress the power to mandate individual’s personal decisions. Jonathan Adler, writing at the conservative legal blog Volokh Conspiracy, writes:

As much as I oppose the various health care reforms promoted by the Obama Administration and current Congressional leadership (and as much as I would like to see a more restrictive commerce clause jurisprudence), I do not find this argument particularly convincing. While I agree that the recent commerce clause cases hold that Congress may not regulate noneconomic activity, as such, they also state that Congress may reach otherwise unregulable conduct as part of an overarching regulatory scheme, where the regulation of such conduct is necessary and proper to the success of such scheme. In this case, the overall scheme would involve the regulation of “commerce” as the Supreme Court has defined it for several decades, as it would involve the regulation of health care markets. And the success of such a regulatory scheme would depend upon requiring all to participate. (Among other things, if health care reform requires insurers to issue insurance to all comers, and prohibits refusals for pre-existing conditions, then a mandate is necessary to prevent opportunistic behavior by individuals who simply wait to purchase insurance until they get sick.)

Congress’ power to tax individuals is extremely well-established.

For further reading, see Michael Dorf’s articles at FindLaw (part 1, part 2); this statement from Max Baucus; Jack Balkin on taxing authority; the general discussion at Volokh; and especially this debate between David B. Rivkin & Lee A. Casey, and Jack Balkin.

But what about the Supreme Court — couldn’t they decide health care reform is unconstitutional? Remember Bush v. Gore — it’s within the Supreme Court’s power to make transparently partisan and unprincipled decisions.

Yes, the Court could overturn health care reform. But they probably won’t. At Volokh, conservative legal scholar Ilya Somin writes:

Current Supreme Court precedent allows Congress regulate virtually anything that has even a remote connection to interstate commerce, so long as it has a “substantial effect” on it. The most recent major precedent in this field is Gonzales v. Raich, where the Court held that Congress’ power to regulate interstate commerce was broad enough to uphold a ban on the use of medical marijuana that was never sold in any market and never left the confines of the state where it was grown. This regulation was upheld under the “substantial effects” rule noted above. As I describe in great detail in this article, Raich renders Congress’ power under the substantial effects test virtually unlimited in three different ways:

1. Raich holds that Congress can regulate virtually any “economic activity,” and adopts an extraordinarily broad definition of “economic,” which according to the Court of encompasses anything that involves the “production, distribution, and consumption of commodities.”

2. Raich makes it easy for Congress to impose controls on even “non-economic” activity by claiming that it is part of a broader regulatory scheme aimed at something economic.

3. Raich adopts so-called “rational basis” test as the standard for Commerce Clause cases, holding that “[w]e need not determine whether [the] activities [being regulated], taken in the aggregate, substantially affect interstate commerce in fact, but only whether a rational basis exists for so concluding.” In legal jargon, a “rational basis” can be almost any non-completely moronic reason for believing that a particular claim might be true.

Any of these three holdings could easily justify a federal requirement forcing people to purchase health insurance.[...]

…it is highly unlikely that the Supreme Court would invalidate a major provision of the health care bill, should it pass Congress. In addition to requiring the overruling of Raich and considerable revision of other precedents, such a decision would lead to a major confrontation with Congress and the president. The Court is unlikely to pick a massive fight with a still-popular president backed by a large congressional majority. Of course, it is still possible that the Court could invalidate some minor portion of the bill on Commerce Clause grounds. But even that is unlikely so long as the majority of justices remain committed to Raich. Five of the six justices who voted with the majority in that case are still on the Court. The only exception - Justice David Souter - has been replaced by a liberal justice who is unlikely to be any more willing to impose meaningful limits on congressional power than Souter was.

Even if you don’t buy that the Court would be unwilling to pick a major fight with the other two branches — or even if you don’t buy that Obama is still popular, or that Democrats will continue to hold a significant majority in Congress¹ — it’s still unlikely that a Court with five justices who voted for Raich plus Sotomeyor, will overturn Raich.

1. And by the way, if you’d like to discuss these questions, please take them to an open thread. (back)

Fox News go-to guy on terror and long-term terrorist supporter Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., says something that is, in fact, true:

The fact is while the overwhelming majority of Muslims are outstanding people, on the other hand 100% of the Islamic terrorists are Muslims, and that is our main enemy today.

The fact is that while the overwhelming majority of Americans are outstanding people, on the other hand 100% of the idiot Republicans in Congress are Americans. They are, fortunately, only the enemies of reasoned discourse.

The government can function if the minority party has either the incentive to make the majority fail or the power to make the majority fail. It cannot function if it has both.

Ezra has a series of filibuster-related posts up today with are worth reading, beginning with an overview.

This might seem an odd moment to argue that the Senate is fundamentally broken and repairs should top our list of priorities. After all, the Senate passed a $900 billion health-care bill Thursday morning. But consider the context: Arlen Specter’s defection from the Republican Party earlier this year gave Democrats 60 votes in the Senate — a larger majority than either party has had since the ’70s. Democrats also controlled the House and the presidency, and were working in the aftermath of a financial crisis that occurred on a Republican president’s watch. This was a test of whether a party could govern when everything was stacked in its favor.

The answer seems to be, well, not really. The Democrats ended up focusing on health-care reform’s low-hanging fruit: the bill the Senate ultimately passed does much more to increase coverage than it does to address the considerably harder problem of cost control, it strengthens the existing private insurance system and it does not include a public insurance option. And Democrats still could not find a single Republican vote, which meant they had to give Nebraska a coupon entitling it to a free Medicaid expansion and hand Joe Lieberman a voucher that’s good for anything he wants. If the Senate cannot govern effectively even when history conspires to free its hand, then it cannot govern.

There’s an interview with a political scientist, who “published a study showing that about eight percent of major bills in the 1960s faced filibusters or filibuster threats and 70 percent of bills in the current decade did the same.” The point being, the filibuster has not, historically, been a routine supermajority requirement.

There are two interviews with currently sitting Senators about how the filibuster rule might be restored to what it originally was — a guarantee that no bill could be passed without some opportunity for debate.

First, Senator Tom Harkin, who wants it known that he was actively in favor of fixing the filibuster even when his party was in the majority minority, brings back a proposal that he and Joe Lieberman (!) came up with in 1995:

The idea is to give some time for extended debate but eventually allow a majority to work its will. I do believe there’s some reason to have extended debate. If a group of senators filibusters a bill, you want to take their worries seriously. Make sure you’re not missing something. My proposal will do that. It says that on the first vote, you need 60. Then you have to wait two days, and on the third day, you need 57 votes. And then you need to wait two days, and on the third day, it’s 54 votes. And then you’d wait another two days, and on the third day, it would be 51 votes.

And there’s an interview with Jeff Merkeley (Oregon has really great Senators, incidentally), who has this suggestion:

…one question we’re asking is how do you get two-thirds of the body to agree to change the rules when there’s immediate pressure for the minority to protect themselves? Your rule changes could kick in in 6 to 8 years. Or you could have rule changes that are designed to trigger when the two sides are more or less even. So when there’s a 55-45 majority, it wouldn’t kick in, but it would at 52-48. Or think about with nominations. We’re really paralyzing the executive branch.

Back to quoting Ezra:

The danger of reforming the Senate is that, like health-care reform before it, it comes to seem a partisan issue. It isn’t. Members of both parties often take the fact that neither Democrats nor Republicans can govern effectively to mean they benefit from the filibuster half the time. In reality, the country loses the benefits of a working legislature all the time.

But members of both parties have become attached to this idea that they can block objectionable legislation even when they’re relatively powerless. This is evidence, perhaps, that both parties are so used to the victories of obstruction that they have forgotten their purpose is to amass victories through governance. Either way, a world in which the majority can pass its agenda is a better one, a place where the majority party is held accountable for its ideas and not for the gridlock and inaction furnished by the Senate’s rules.

As all denizens of the internets know, Jumping the Shark is a phrase that has come to represent that moment in which a good something becomes permanently broken. It originally referred to the moment on Happy Days when Fonzie, for no evident reason, has to jump over a shark on waterskis because…well, because he had to, okay?

The actions of the formerly redoubtable Jane Hamsher during this health care debate, sadly, have now reached a point beyond Jumping the Shark. Hamsher has Transcended Sharks. She has rocketed over ever every member of Superorder Selachimorpha, and she is gone.

It’s not just her incessant parroting of right-wing talking points on individual mandates in her quixotic quest to “Kill the Bill.” Yes, Hamsher’s rhetoric since the public option was stripped has essentially mirrored the right-wing talking points (the evil government is gonna make you buy insurance! And if you’re doing well, you might even end up spending more on insurance, which will help others get insurance, but so what? What about your rights?), and that was the point at which she jumped the shark.

But now…well, now Jane has just gone beyond beyond. Because she’s allying herself with the worst elements of the Republican party. And I don’t mean that figuratively:

Jane Hamsher, Grover Norquist Call for Rahm Emanuel’s Resignation

By: Jane Hamsher Wednesday December 23, 2009 12:17 pm

Today, Grover Norquist and I are calling for an investigation into Rahm Emanuel’s activities at Freddie Mac, and the White House’s blocking of an Inspector General who would look into it. The letter follows: [...]

This is, in a word, unforgivable. It would be akin to working directly with Dick Cheney. Norquist is, quite frankly, a man who has devoted his entire life to destroying the Democratic Party, and any form of government more robust that that which exists in Somalia. He famously has said of his aims, “I don’t want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.” He wants to eliminate the FDA, the NEA, the IRS, and the Department of Education.

Norquist cut his teeth working with the Contras for Ollie North. He helped Newt Gingrich write the Contract With America. He’s the genius behind the TABOR legislation that’s been slowly strangling Colorado. Norquist was an early and enthusiastic backer of then-Gov. George W. Bush’s run for the presidency in 2000, and he has been associated with Karl Rove for decades. His goals are anathema to the goals of Democrats, or indeed anyone more liberal than James Inhofe.

Quite honestly, if Grover Norquist approached me and asked me to help him in his quest to save puppies, it would lead me to rethink my feelings about puppies. So it’s not just alarming, but flatly wrong for Hamsher to join in common cause with Norquist, even if there was strong evidence that Rahm Emmanuel had done something specifically wrong during his brief tenure at Freddie Mac, which there isn’t.¹

At any rate, Hamsher isn’t concerned about Emmanuel’s ethical problems. She’s mad because Emmanuel put pressure on the Senate to find a compromise that could get through the Senate, and that led us to the bill which lacks the public option, which alone has caused mandates to go from fairly understandable requirements to the worst! violation! of liberty! ever!!! And Hamsher wants to punish Emmanuel and the Obama Administration however she can. if that means making common cause with the likes of Norquist or Phyllis Freakin’ Schlafly, so be it.

Well include me out. I can understand being so frustrated with the bill coming out of the Senate that you’d oppose it. I think the idea that a better bill is just waiting for more willpower, or attacks on Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., or a really good speech from Barack Obama betrays a certain naïveté about the realities of the American system of government, and I think the main lines of attack from the Kill Bill crowd have been specious at best, but I can understand the frustration shared by anti-compromise forces; indeed, I share it, even as I understand that reality means we have to give in to Ben Nelson or Joe Lieberman because that’s the way the system works.

But Hamsher has moved beyond principled opposition to the bill, and beyond even strong and forceful criticism of the Obama Administration. She’s now working with people who do not wish to improve the Obama Administration, but instead wish to destroy it. She’s working with people who do not want to improve the bill working its way though Congress so that more people are helped and corporations get their just deserts, but instead with people who want Congress to end Medicaid because it helps the wrong sort of people.

I’m sorry, but that’s beyond the pale. Hamsher may have the purest of intent. But her actions are helping and emboldening the right. She has, ultimately, become the mirror of her greatest adversary, Holy Joe Lieberman, another person who started out a moderate liberal, and ended up joining forces in common cause with the Republican Party. In his case, it was just the war he was with them on. In Hamsher’s case, it’s just health care and Rahm Emmanuel. In both of their cases, they’re gone. And they’re never coming back.

1. There is some evidence that Emmanuel did nothing during his brief tenure at Freddie Mac, and that he basically received a paycheck for doing said nothing because he’d been a high-ranking official in the Clinton Administration, but while such a deal may be unethical — indeed, is unethical, in my opinion — it isn’t criminal, and isn’t much different than, say, Halliburton hiring a politically-connected former Defense Secretary as its chief. Indeed, such practices are sadly common, on both sides of the aisle. That may be reason to think Rahm isn’t particularly ethical, or even a reason to think Emmanuel’s a bad person. It isn’t by itself reason to call for his resignation. And it certainly isn’t the real reason Hamsher or Norquist are doing so. (back)

So do you remember when Sen. Tom Coburn, R-ExxonMobil, was telling teabaggers the other day to pray that “something” would happen to prevent a Democrat from making it to the Senate to cast their vote for cloture on health care reform? Sure you do. It was essentially a call to pray for the death of 423-year-old Sen. Robert Byrd, D-State Now Named for Robert Byrd.

Anyhoo, it was pretty despicable, and it made Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., pretty furious. I think Coburn thought he was being cryptic enough that nobody would catch on, but Coburn really isn’t that bright. I mean, even Treason-in-Defense-of-Slavery Yankee backed him in hoping for the death of the Senior Senator from Byrdland.

At any rate, it will not surprise you that teabaggers took Coburn’s call to pray to heart. It may surprise you, however, to find out that the prayers worked. A senator did miss a vote today. But not Byrd. Nor conservative bête noire Sen. Al Franken, DFL-Minn. Nor Patty Murray, Roland Burris, nor even Holy Joe Lieberman. No, the senator unable to make it to vote was Sen. James Inhofe, R-Chevron.

Yes, the lulz are serious with that. Coburn managed to encourage a prayer that took out his fellow Oklahoman-slash-Corporate Whore. But it gets better. Because of course, the teabaggers did pray. And they’re a little bit worried about the powers they are dealing with.

It is to laugh.

The best part of the video — which, for the YouTube impaired, features a tearful teabagger telling Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., that his group had “prayed real hard” that Sen. Byrd would die or be unable to make the vote — is the man essentially accusing Barrasso of not praying hard enough for Byrd’s death, thus causing God to punish James Inhofe for…something.

Of course, if I was a man of deep and abiding faith in a God who wants to influence the Senate by killing off its members one-by-one, I would tend to suggest that God making Inhofe sick is not so much evidence that teabaggers weren’t praying hard enough for a senator to die, but more that God has different ideas about which senators are expendable. It might even make me think that God kind of wants this bill to pass, and might support our nation’s slide into Muslim Marxist Communist Fascism.

Alas, I imagine that Inhofe is just under the weather.¹ Still, while I don’t believe in a God that interferes directly in our lives, this tests my lack of faith; if I were God, making Coburn’s fellow Republican just a bit too sick to make the vote is exactly the sort of thing I’d do in response to Coburn’s prayer. The only change I’d make would be that Coburn himself would have food poisoning or a bad cold or some other temporary, non-lethal ailment.

But I suppose that would be too obvious — proof denies faith, after all. And God wouldn’t want that.

Hmm. You don’t think…?

Well played, God. Well played.

UPDATE: Inhofe evidently missed the vote because he had to fly with his wife back to Oklahoma, but he’s going to then fly back to DC to cast more votes. Now, I’m assuming his wife isn’t eleven years old, so I’m not sure why she can’t fly home on her own, other than the general conservative belief that women are not, in fact, people.

1. Which is proof that global warming doesn’t exist. Also. (back)

They really are hollow people, with no hearts at all:

A bill introduced earlier this year by Rep. Mike Honda (D-Calif.) dealing with family reunification policies for immigrants was completely rolled into the reform package, except for its provisions allowing same-sex partners of permanent residents to qualify for a visa. The decision behind the little-noted change sparked friction between liberals hoping to kick off debate with an all-inclusive bill and Hispanic leaders more focused on keeping religious leaders on board with the plan.

“All the evangelists, Catholics and churches that are part of this were whacking out “over the gay and lesbian provisions,” said a Democratic lawmaker familiar with negotiations on the bill.

Democrats say they’re planning to reinsert the provision later in the process. I hope they do.

I can’t imagine what sort of human being would oppose a simple, compassionate policy like this. Allowing longtime, committed cross-national couples does not “endanger” marriage, nor does it harm any straight person in any way at all. But even a tiny bit of compassion towards LGBT people is more than organized right-wing Christians can stand.

You think it would get old; you think I’d stop being shocked by things like this. But no; I’m continually astonished at how some (not all) Christians — and in particular, politically powerful, organized Christian groups — lack even the most basic decency or compassion. What the hell makes them so petty?

In an earlier post, while criticizing Nader for a racist comment (a criticism I agree with), Jeff wrote:

… if I was someone who was instrumental in ensuring the election of George W. Bush to the White House, I’d hide my head in shame. [...] I will note that Nader is a big Kill the Bill guy. Now, I know that in and of itself doesn’t prove that killing the bill would be a disaster of Brobdingnagian proportions for the Democrats, one that would cause the party to spiral out of control for years.

Jeff, would you say Al Gore and Bill Clinton should hide their heads in shame?

After all, it was Gore and Clinton — along with the other “third way” leaders of the Democratic party in the 1990s — who chose to marginalize progressives. And once progressives realized they were being totally ignored, their predictable frustration created space for Nader’s 2000 candidacy.

But we’ve all learned our lesson, and will never take a chance on that happening again, right?

Cue Barack Obama’s presidency.

The White House does not view progressives as equal partners, as people who have legitimate concerns and priorities that need to be included in any deal. They still take the Clintonian view that the “left” can be appeased either through a few nice words in a speech, and if that fails, can be crammed down by being told they’re wreckers, being told this is the best progressives can get, being told that progressives are irrelevant (even while the WH’s defensive actions show they’re anything but irrelevant).

The White House hasn’t yet grasped that some basic and timeless rules of politics still apply: that you have to deliver something to your supporters to keep them on board.

I’m not a “kill the bill” person; I think we’re better off passing the bill and trying to improve on it. Nonetheless, it’s likely that kill the bill activists have made the bill marginally better than it would otherwise be (as Nate Silver argues). There’s an important lesson in that. The Obama administration expects progressives to meekly compromise our goals and priorities, over and over, while Obama and Reid rush to proffer a hanky every time Lieberman/Nelson/Snowe has a sniffle.

Elections aren’t won by the best policy ideas — if they were, there wouldn’t be a Republican in congress. Elections are won, by and large, by the side that works harder. In 2008, an angry and passionate left kicked the ass of a demoralized Republican party. We’re in danger of seeing that dynamic in reverse in 2010. Obama and the Democrats, by giving virtually nothing to progressives — not even a good fight — have demoralized the left. So who’s going to make the phone calls and knock on the doors in 2010, and in 2012?

Nader is a jerk, but the 2000 Nader campaign was a perfectly ordinary response by progressive Democrats to Clintonism. Lacking a home within the Democratic party, progressives looked elsewhere. I think the pain of George W. is too fresh in everyone’s minds for progressives to look for a new political home — yet. But if progressives are too dispirited to campaign for the Democrats in 2010, it’ll have the same effect.

And without Nader to scapegoat, who will Democrats blame if they get their asses kicked in 2010?

You know, if I was someone who was instrumental in ensuring the election of George W. Bush to the White House, I’d hide my head in shame. But not Ralph Nader. No, he’s back, happily using racist epithets to refer to the current president, who is, at last check, an African-American:

Nader, who has been viciously critical of Obama since before his inauguration, said he was encouraged to see many of the president’s campaign allies beginning to turn on his agenda.

“Is the title of your article ‘I told you so?’” he asked. “This is what I meant a year ago when I said the next year will determine whether Barack Obama will be an Uncle Tom groveling before the demands of the corporations that are running our country or he’ll be an Uncle Sam standing up for the American people.”

You know, words really fail me. I don’t really know what possesses an old white guy to use the words “Uncle Tom,” you know, ever, but I really don’t get why a soi disant progressive would use those words to describe the first African American to serve as president. Quite frankly, it’s disgusting, and it stands as exhibit 3,492 in my ongoing argument that Ralph Nader is one of the worst humans alive today.

I will note that Nader is a big Kill the Bill guy. Now, I know that in and of itself doesn’t prove that killing the bill would be a disaster of Brobdingnagian proportions for the Democrats, one that would cause the party to spiral out of control for years. I mean, hey, Nader was right about the Ford Pinto, so, you know, it’s possible he could be right again. But I do know that given his record since 2000, if Ralph Nader says the sky is blue, I’m going to assume it’s pink until further examination. After all, he once declared there wasn’t a dime’s worth of difference between Al Gore and George W. Bush, and…well, let’s just say that didn’t exactly work out for the United States, humanity as a whole, or the universe in general.

As we all know at this time, the junior Senator from Minnesota refused to agree to granting Sen. Joe Lieberman, JoeForJoe-Conn., an additional minute or two beyond the ten he’d been recognized:

Now, it’s a minor moment, one that those who aren’t familiar with the arcana of parliamentary procedure would see as…well, kind of weak. But this is exactly the sort of thing that we need more of from the Democrats.

Look, first off, Lieberman wasn’t being cut off maliciously — Franken cut him off because, frankly, Democrats are trying to get the health care bill done, and they’re drawing a firm line that when you have ten minutes to speak, you have ten minutes to speak. This does end one of the old rules about the comity of the Senate — that members could speak a bit more if they needed to — but it does so in response to a breakdown in comity regarding cloture, which used to be used only once in a great while, but now is used routinely.

One of the frustrations that I share with my progressive friends is that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., has been running the Senate as if it’s still 1990, and the general rules of comity hadn’t broken down. They have. And, to be blunt, it’s not the Republicans’ fault that the breakdown in the “gentleman’s agreement” over cloture has happened. Yes, I think they’re being irresponsible, but from their perspective, they’re doing what they have to do to stop a bill they oppose, and they’re using the tricks allowed by parliamentary procedure to slow things down, and hopefully stop them.

When your opponents begin using parliamentary procedure against you, you can do three things. First, you can give up on what you’re trying to do, at least for now — not smart, but on a minor issue, maybe the best course of action. You can pretend it isn’t happening — which has been Reid’s stance thus far. Or you can start pulling out your own arcane, weird rules that allow you to make trouble for the minority.

It’s that last one that Reid needs to do. At this point, starting over with reconcilliation is probably not going to work (though fixing the bill that gets through via reconcilliation can and should be on the table). But back in June or July, that was very much a possibility and very much something that Reid could have pushed through. And he should have pushed things through via a muscular definition of reconcilliation that went above and beyond the spirit, and if necessary, the letter of the rules. As the Republicans noted during the debate over the nuclear option, a ruling from the chair on a point of order requires only a simple majority to uphold, and all that needs to happen to let a bill through that is non-conforming to Senate rules is for the chair to rule it doesn’t violate the rules, and a majority of Senators to agree with him or her.

Reid threatening to make reconcilliation essentially allow for everything might be enough to crack the Republicans on cloture — because the loss of the filibuster would be a disaster for the minority. And once reconcilliation’s established meaning was “whatever the majority says it is,” that would doom the filibuster once and for all. It’s easy to imagine Republicans agreeing to be more agreeable on cloture motions in exchange for the ability to use it when it really, really mattered.

My criticism of Reid is not that he’s unable to make Joe Lieberman less of a douche, or Ben Nelson less of a Republican. Those are problems that would have bedeviled Lyndon Baines Johnson at the height of his powers. No, my problem is that Reid doesn’t seem to understand that parliamentary procedure can be wielded as a weapon by the majority as well as the minority. He seems to be perfectly content with the rules of the Senate as they are, and completely unwilling to look to the places where they can be bent. And that’s a shame. Because one of the key jobs of the Majority Leader is to find ways in the rules to get the majority’s will enacted. And it’s a place where Reid has simply proven to be incompetent.

Okay, so this may be a cheap shot … wait, no. Strike that. It is a cheap shot, but it’s also awesome.

Okay, seriously, Palin is a joke, and her supporters are laughably ignorant. It hardly needs saying, and isn’t some huge revelation.

That being said, it does point to a larger problem though, that there is great appeal in the modern political climate for oversimplification of issues, and for the idea that there are simple solutions to complicated problems. The appeal of this worldview is twofold.

First, of course, if there are easy solutions, then hey, we’re not that bad off! Drill, baby drill! Ignore the complications and context! Just do it! It’s easy!

Second, if there are easy solutions and your political opponents are not taking them, but are instead insisting on complicated trade-offs between competing values … well, it becomes much easier to believe that they’re not just mistaken but actually malevolent.

I think this POV is poison to democracy. It exists across the political spectrum, and (of course) there have been times historically when it concentrated on the left, but I think modern day it’s fair to say that it’s far more concentrated on the right.

It’s what lay behind tarring Al Gore and John Kerry as ‘eggheads.’ It’s what lead ‘policy wonk’ to become something of a slur, rather than the compliment it ought to be. It’s what lead pundits to wonder if Barack Obama might just be too smart for his own good¹. It’s the reason Glen ‘oligarhy’ Beck has a job. This surging anti-intellectualism, as I said, isn’t exactly new, but that doesn’t stop it from being worrisome.

EDIT: Steve Benen makes some great points on this very topic here, while riffing off of Ross Douthat’s recent column.

Please do not comment unless you accept the basic dignity, equality, and inherent worth of all people

1. Well, that and racism, I mean. (back)

So as you may recall, a couple weeks ago Hannity “accidentally” used video from Glenn Beck’s 9/12 rally to show how well-attended Rep. Michele Bachmann’s rally was. An easy mistake, of course — anybody could accidentally mistake raw footage of a recent rally with archival footage from a completely different rally two months ago.

So hey, I was totally willing to buy Sean Hannity’s claim that it was a totally innocent mistake, because Fox News wouldn’t lie to further the Republican agenda. I mean, the very idea!

So you can imagine just how shocked I was to discover that Fox making exactly the same sort of mistake again, this time to support Sarah Palin:

Now, it’s an easy mistake to make, confusing footage from a McCain/Palin rally from last year with a video of a book tour that’s going on now. I mean, it’s not like there were McCain/Palin signs in the video itself. Oh wait, there were? Damn.

Maybe Fox really is more shameless than Pravda.

(Via Think Progress)

I am trying very hard to see where Newsweek’s choice to use Sarah Palin’s Runner’s World photo as their cover is a horribly sexist decision that belittles women everywhere. No, seriously, I am — I’m aware I’m not going to see a flaw the first time I look at something, and I find it not just possible, but likely that a major newsmagazine would use sexist imagery to depict the most popular woman in the GOP.

But I’m sorry, no matter how many times I’m told the sexism is obvious, I just don’t see it.

It’s not that the image doesn’t play on sexist tropes. Dear Ceiling Cat, does it ever. If it was a Photoshop job, I’d absolutely decry it for portraying Palin as a bizarre faux-patriotic fembot. I mean, look at it:

That’s out of control. And it reminds me of another image that mixed faked überpatriotism with extreme conformity to gender roles. You may remember this one. It was all the rage in April 2003:

The images are almost a perfect yin-yang of the conservative vision of female and male. Sarah Palin: athletic, but not so athletic that she can’t strike a cheescake pose. A mom, first and foremost, keeping the home fires burning (note the careful positioning of the Blue Star banner over her right shoulder). So in love with her country that she’ll desecrate the flag in order to show it. And George Bush: a total warrior with a big cock. Not concerned about family, but about blowin’ stuff up. A guy fighting in war (or, you know, avoiding it; same difference, right?). So in love with his country that he’ll use soldiers and an aircraft carrier in a premature photo-op to prove it.

Both of these images were calculated — Palin’s, to show she’s not one of “those” women, who choose sensible clothes when they run, but who is sexy all the damn time, because she can be. To show that she loves her country, war, apple pie, and the beautiful scenery you can see from her front porch, the one that was built with kickbacks she received as mayor. And Bush? Bush, of course, to show he isn’t a wimp like Clinton, but a true Warrior-King, one who literally conquered Mesopotamia himself.

Both photos also show something else, something hiding behind the artifice: that both Bush and Palin are Potemkin representations of these ideals. By trying to oversell the idea that they are perfect representations of their genders, Bush and Palin remind us of how hollow those representations can be. Bush is not a warrior, and he looks silly playing dress-up. Palin is not a pin-up girl, and she looks silly playing dress-up. Both took what could be powerful symbols and went so over-the-top with them that they look like fools.

That’s why Newsweek chose this cover. Not because it shows Palin as sexy, but because it shows her as a caricature of herself. As a sitting governor, Palin chose to engage in a photo shoot that would do a better job of validating the “Caribou Barbie” epithet than anything the most misogynist liberal could come up with. As Lindsay Beyerstein accurately says:

Predictably, Palin complained that Newsweek’s use of the image was sexist. Yes, the image was plucked from its original context. The whole point was that the picture was appalling it its original context. Newsweek is holding this picture up to the world and asking: Who does this?

The bottom line is that Palin’s a clown. She doesn’t get a pass because her chosen clown persona is stereotypically feminine.

She caricatures herself. Day in and day out. Good for Newsweek for pointing and laughing.

And that, my friends, is the point. One cannot point out the absurdity of Sarah Palin’s wallowing in sexist tropes without using the very sexist imagery that she herself approved of. Yes, the image is appallingly sexist. But that is not Newsweek’s fault. It’s Palin’s.

Using a photo shoot that Palin posed for and endorsed after the fact to make the point that Palin is a caricature of herself is not sexist. It’s good journalism. Believe me, I will defend Palin from true sexism wherever it rears its ugly head (like, say, this bit of “humor” from HuffPo, which is crappy, and simply an excuse to attack Palin for being a woman). But this is not a case of sexism being used to attack Palin. This is a case of Palin’s own sexism being used to attack Palin. And there’s nothing wrong with that.

First of all, please check this list of Representatives at RH Reality check. If one of them is your representative, please give them a call right now. They’ll be voting at any time now, so don’t wait.

The news:

House Democratic leaders agreed Friday night to settle an impasse over abortion by letting the entire House vote on a proposed solution, a risky decision that could determine the fate of their trillion-dollar overhaul of the nation’s health care system.

Under the agreement, anti-abortion Democrats will be permitted to offer an amendment on the House floor to the health-care overhaul bill. The amendment would prohibit a new government-run insurance plan created by the health-care bill from offering to cover abortion services, congressional sources said. It would also block people who received federal subsidies for the purchase of health insurance from buying policies that offered coverage for abortions.

The deal clears the way for the dozens of Democratic lawmakers who oppose abortion to lend their support to the health care package, the most dramatic expansion of health coverage in more than 40 years. It also satisfies the demands of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, which had threatened to oppose the House bill.

If the amendment from Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.) passes, said Richard Doerflinger, associate director of the bishops conference, “we become enthusiastic advocates for moving forward with health care reform.”

The amendment is expected to pass with the combined support of more than 40 anti-abortion Democrats and virtually every House Republican. That likelihood meant that leaders of the much larger group of Democrats who support abortion rights were not happy to learn of the deal.

“There will be no abortion, not just with public funds, but with private funds under the public option, and that’s not acceptable,” said Rep. Diana DeGette (D-Colo.).

House leaders met with that bloc of Democrats late Friday to try to quell their frustration., but the agreement makes clear that they believe abortion-rights Democrats will find it difficult to vote against the health-care bill even with such a restriction attached to it.

According to Politico, “Female Democrats on the Rules Committee, including Rules Chairwoman Louise Slaughter, left the room during consideration of the Stupak amendment and didn’t cast a vote.”

Keep in mind, even before this amendment, the House bill restricted abortion coverage. But it didn’t do enough to punish poor women, so that wasn’t good enough for either the Blue Dogs, the Republicans, or the Catholic Church.

Ezra writes:

If this amendment passes, it will mean that virtually all women with insurance through the exchange who find themselves in the unwanted and unexpected position of needing to terminate a pregnancy will not have coverage for the procedure. Abortion coverage will not be outlawed in this country. It will simply be tiered, reserved for those rich enough to afford insurance themselves or lucky enough to receive from their employers.

From USA Today (via Jack and Jill Politics):

Nearly 90% of private health insurance policies now offer abortion coverage, and almost half of women with private insurance have it. But women covered under the new system would have to find supplemental insurance or pay out of pocket for an unanticipated procedure that can cost from hundreds to tens of thousands of dollars, depending on complexity. For anyone unable to afford it, this would amount to a de facto ban.

From Democrasheild:

If the Stupak amendment passes, uninsured women who get health care through the public option will have to pay out-of-pocket to get an abortion. And even if a woman uses her own money to buy an insurance plan from a private company through the exchange, she won’t be able to get a plan that covers abortion. [...]

The “exchanges” discussed there are health insurance exchanges, which are marketplaces where people will be able to purchase insurance. Since insurance companies will have to compete against one another and the public option. the exchanges will provide better insurance plans at lower costs. They’re designed to help those who don’t have insurance or who have inadequate insurance but can’t afford better.

Because many small employers are expected to switch to using the exchanges, this means that women who currently have abortion coverage through their small employer, will have their coverage replaced with insurance that doesn’t cover abortion.

Ezra also points out, even if (as now seems likely) this amendment is part of the bill the House passes, that doesn’t guarantee it’ll be in the final legislation: “Even if it muscles into the House bill, it will also have to pass in the Senate, and then survive conference, before it becomes law.” That seems like a pretty thin reed of hope to me, but better than no hope at all.

I’ve been trying to find out if the Stupak Amendment contains exceptions for abortions necessary to prevent immediate threats to the life or health of the woman. I haven’t been able to find out, so far.

This is a post-election thread; feel free to discuss any of the recent election news, future election trends, etc., here.

Virginia and New Jersey: No surprises here. I don’t think these races indicate national trends, but I can’t blame Conservatives for grabbing on to any hope they can.

In the end, I think the single best thing the Democrats can do for 2010 is to get aggressive and desperate about improving the economic situation; for instance, with a big temporary cut in payroll taxes. But I doubt they’ll do it, since “gutsy” has never in my lifetime been something Democrats do well.

New York: Frankly, the Republican who was pushed out of the race — who was pro-choice and pro-marriage equality — really does seem out of step with the Republican base. For that reason, I think the Republican base in NY did the principled thing by rebelling, just as the Democratic base in Connecticut was right to rebel against being represented by Joe Lieberman.

Will this be really good for the Democrats in the end, as many Democrats are currently crowing? I don’t know.

Washington state: Huzzah for a victory on civil unions. Dammit that it was so close.

Maine

Maine should be the death of the claim that people don’t hate gays, they just hate being told what to do by the Courts. The folks who oppose equality have never cared about that, except as a pretext, so they could oppose equality while pretending not to be bigots.

The folks in Maine did everything the way they’re “supposed” to. They were polite, they were organized. They spent years building up support with face-to-face contacts. They went through the legislature, not the courts.

None of that makes any difference to the people who oppose equality. None of it ever did.

Quoting Andrew Sullivan:

The hard truth is: people are still afraid of this, and our opponents knew how to target their fears very precisely. They have honed it to an art - their prime argument now is that although adults can handle gay equality, children cannot. And so they play straight to heterosexuals whose personal comfort with gay people is fine but who sure don’t want their kids to turn out that way. One way to prevent kids turning out that way, the equality opponents argue, is to ensure that they never hear of gay people, except in a marginalized, scary, alien fashion. And this referendum was clearly a vote in which the desire to keep gay people invisible trumped the urge to treat them equally.[...]

But civil rights victories, the final and enduring ones, are always built on the foundations of defeats. Sometimes, the defeat of a minority’s sincere aspiration to equality helps reveal the injustice of the discrimination and the cruelty of the marginalization. Sometimes, it helps show just how poorly treated we are, and galvanizes a community to fight back more fiercely as we saw in that amazing march on DC last month. That has certainly been true of previous civil rights movements. It is just as true of ours.

So congrats, Maine Equality. You did a fine job. Congrats, HRC. You helped. No congrats to Obama who is treating this civil rights movement the way Kennedy first treated his. But we don’t need Obama.

We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. And we will win in due course, with a good spirit and keen arguments, and with passion and conviction in our hearts. We will win.

We’ve heard it before, but it’s always neat to see a map:

Via Matt, who got it from Openleft, at a link which is currently dead but which I hope will revive. Matt writes:

…progressive politics is badly disadvantaged by a situation in which the overwhelming majorities of political leaders and prominent media figures are white men. There are plenty of white men with progressive views, but in general the majority of white men are not progressive and the majority of progressives are not white men. Drawing from the relatively small pool of white male progressives means drawing from a shallow talent pool.