Statesman Journal Endorses Sal Peralta

The Statesman Journal out of Salem today endorsed Salvador Peralta in the race for House District 24. They cite as their primary reason Peralta's vision compared with Nelson's complete absence of acheivements.

He's passionate about campaign-finance reform; he helped get two measures on the November ballot.

Peralta is clear about what he wants to achieve, and he has ideas about how to pay for it. For instance, his top priority is improving Oregon's funding for K-12 and higher education, which he says ranks among the lowest in the nation. He would find money by eliminating the corporate kicker and allowing communities to expand systems-development charges to pay for school construction.

He would be a strong advocate for doing the people's business in public and giving citizens the same access as lobbyists. He wants to put more money into providing health insurance for children and combating meth addiction.

Peralta has so much conviction in the importance of campaign finance reform that he has refused to take any out of State PAC money. This race comes down to two very different visions of Oregon, someone who brings fresh ideas and a commitment to bettering people's lives by improving schools and healthcare, versus someone who wants to drop the Oregon minimum wage all the way down to the federal minimum of $5.15 an hour. The choice should be clear here in McMinnville and across Yamhill County.

This is not America

The Bush Torture Act of 2006 passed the Senate today, I don't know what to say except to ask the following questions:
Is this China?
Iran?
Saudi Arabia?
the return of the USSR?
We have now gone down the path of dictators everywhere, following in the footsteps of Augusto Pinochet. The United States does not torture. Not the United States I know. What country is this? The United States has always been a beacon of hope for the world. We have been the light of liberty, and of due process to the world, now we torture. We were once a great nation, now we've lowered ourselves to the company of lowly dictatorships. Lowly dictatorships that have no respect for human rights. This is not America. Where has my country gone?

CNN Is Unbelievable

Apparently CNN cannot read their own transcripts or listen to their own shows. CNN.com summed up an interview with Former FBI Agent Dan Coleman with the incredible headline "Former FBI agent: Clinton never approved a plan to kill bin Laden," this gives readers the impression that Clinton lied on Fox News when he said that he did. However, what Coleman actually said was nearly the opposite, in fact Coleman expressed some gratitude the Clinton reacted like he did in the Fox interview.

ARRIS: What do you give Clinton credit for in the hunt for Osama bin Laden and his attempts to disrupt al Qaeda?

COLEMAN: President Clinton is very careful in his comments. I was at least happy to see him get angry about something and at least try to fight back.

I doubt that anything he said was incorrect because he's too careful a man. But as far as I know, he may -- he approved the assassination of bin Laden, but he never approved a particular plan.

HARRIS: His claim is that he couldn't get the CIA and the FBI to agree on responsibility, for example, for the Cole attack and to launch countermeasures.

COLEMAN: I disagree with that.

HARRIS: He said he had a battle plan drawn up to go into Afghanistan, overthrow the Taliban, and launch a full-scale search for bin Laden.

COLEMAN: Well, he didn't do it.

HARRIS: Did you see evidence of a plan?

COLEMAN: Not at my level. No, sir.

HARRIS: So what do you make of his claim?

COLEMAN: He was saying that he made a very specific statement about getting a forward operating base in one of the former Soviet republics which he was not able to get. ... You don't need a forward base in one of the former Soviet republics to go in and do a quick operation.

Coleman never says anything approaching what CNN lead with, and of course the headline has far more impact than the transcript, for example I didn't read the rest of this interview, only the parts pertaining to Clinton, so if they made a sweeping claim about something else I wouldn't have known about it because I, like most people am busy and too fundamentally lazy to read the entire transcript. Now that I've established what Coleman did not say, lets look at what he did say. I have put the important parts of this in bold. He said, "I was at least happy to see him get angry about something and at least try to fight back." The implication of this statement is apparent, Coleman thinks that in the face of outrageous charges against President Clinton in relation to how he responded to terrorism, Clinton has generally not done enough to defend himself and the work of his Administration. That is the only reason that Coleman would be "happy to see him [Clinton] fight back." Next Coleman says "I doubt that anything he said was incorrect." Coleman claims no real inside knowledge to Clinton's claims, but states that as far as he knows its correct and he doubts that Clinton would have been dumb enough to say something untrue in the interview. Yet CNN leads with a headline that clearly suggests that Coleman believes Clinton lied in the Fox News Interview. Finally He says that Clinton did approve the assassination of Bin Laden, the exact opposite of what the lead suggests, the lead claims that Coleman said Clinton did not, when Coleman in no uncertain terms stated that Clinton did in fact approave the assassination of Bin Laden.

All Coleman said in this interview was that he had no knowledge of a specific plan to assassinate Bin Laden, that while Clinton did approve Bin Laden's assassination, he did it in general terms and did not give an explicit instruction based on specific information of where Bin Laden was at a given time to assassinate him. This headline really teeters on the line between misleading, and flat out lying. CNN should be ashamed of themselves.

US House Passes Anti-Oregon Voting Law

The United States House of Representatives today passed a law that would require all voters to show identification at the polls. There are two major problems with this that are immediatly obvious. First, and most importantly, it violates the 24th Amendment banning poll taxes. And Secondly, because it is blatantly anti-Oregon.

This seems to me clearly to violate the 24th amendment as it essentially is a poll tax. Unless all United States citizens are given a free voter ID card, then the cost of obtaining an ID or drivers license, makes requireing their presentation at the polling booth in order to vote unconstitutional. Two Courts have recently ruled precisely this, one overturning a Georgia law requiring ID in order to vote, and the other in Missouri doing much the same thing. Why are judges throwing out these laws right and left? Because it isn't really a difficult Constitutional question, clearly these laws are fundamentally the same as a poll tax as banned by the 24th Amendment.

The bill also is anti-Oregon, or rather anti-Oregon voter. With the highly successful mail-in ballots (Oregon has about a 67% voting rate), sending a drivers licence or other identification would be highly inconvenient to Oregon voters, and would undoubtedly cause Oregon's voting rate to decrease, as some voters would be unable to run to kinkos before mailing their ballot. Representative Peter DeFazio points this out.

"There are going to be plenty of people who are going to be reluctant to take some of their most secure identification, Xerox it, stick in an envelope and send it to the Elections Division," DeFazio said. "What are they going to do with it? Do they keep it on file? Do they shred it?"

Oregon Secretary of State Bill Bradbury agrees calling it the "Oregon Copier Acquisition Act." Stating:

"This bill does nothing other than destroy the accessibility of vote by mail, and makes it a chore, not a right, to vote," wrote Bradbury, who oversees the state Elections Division.

Anyone who voted in favor of this piece of crap bill should be ashamed, and anyone from Oregon who voted for this piece of crap bill should be chased out of the State. Shall we see if any of them did (as the law passed in a 228-196 vote).

Rep. Greg Walden, R-Ore., the only Oregon representative to vote for the bill, said he has received an assurance from House leadership that the final version will address Oregon's concerns.

Aha, Eastern Oregonians should promptly vote Mr. Walden out of office shortly, due to his desire to prevent his constituents from voting. Congrats to the entire Democratic Oregon delegation for soundly opposing this anti-Oregon bill. How does Mr. Walden justify himself? Better question is how does he live with himself, but we'll answer the one that can be answered here.

"In my district, 70,000 square miles, if every voter every time has to photocopy their ID and put it with a ballot that they send in, it raises some issues," Walden said on the House floor Wednesday. "I think there are other ways to guarantee that only citizens get ballots to vote."

Walden said he'd like to address those issues when the bill moves to conference committee. During Wednesday's floor debate, he asked one of the bill's sponsors, Rep. Vernon Ehlers, R-Mich., for his support in "trying to address that issue" in conference committee.
...
Walden spokesman Matt Daigle said Walden secured a "really solid concession."

"He supported the bill because he supports this sort of reform and trying to not disenfranchise voters," Daigle said. "But his support was strongly conditional."

Aha! A "really solid concession," he just won't tell anyone what that concession was. In addition to all I said before, Bradbury brings up a good point. All this effort, and high risk of voter disenfranchisement, is in response to a complete non issue.

Oregon, Bradbury wrote "does not have a problem with ineligible voters." Of the more than 10 million votes in Oregon cast since 1991, Bradbury wrote, "only 10 people have met criteria that would even warrant an investigation into their citizenship. Of those 10, two have been prosecuted."

Sure, some States are probably higher, but there has been no real reason to suspect that masses of noncitizens are voting, and the rates in other States I feel confident in saying, is also extremely low. This is really a cynical attempt to keep poor people away from the polls, and has the added side affect of keeping Oregonians in general away from the polls. This unconstitutional bill must be stopped in the Senate.

The GOP "Rebels" are Anything But

I could also have entitled this post "David Broder has lost all contact with reality," for the day's outrage begin when I read Broder's collumn printed in the Oregonian.

American politics reached a critical turn last week. The revolt of several Republican senators against President Bush's insistence on a free hand in treating terrorist detainees signaled the emergence of an independent force in elections and government.

This movement is not new, but the moral scale of the issue -- torture -- and the implications for both constitutional and international law give it an epic dimension, even if it is ultimately settled by compromise.

The senators involved -- John McCain, Lindsey Graham and John Warner -- were also instrumental in forming the "Gang of 14," the bipartisan bloc that seized control of the Senate last year and wrote the compromise that prevented a drastic change in the filibuster rule that otherwise would have triggered a bitter partisan divide.
...
They were joined in their opposition to Bush's call for extraordinary interrogation techniques by Colin Powell, the former secretary of state and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who is still, despite the controversies over his role in Iraq policy, one of the most admired Americans.

That these Republicans -- and others -- were ready to join the Democrats in rejecting Bush's plan caused the White House to scramble for alternatives and House Republican leaders to postpone a scheduled vote. The revolt goes well beyond three men.

What it really signals is a new movement in this country -- what you could rightly call the independence party. Its unifying theme can be found in the Declaration of Independence's language when Jefferson invoked "a decent respect to the opinions of mankind."

Ok Broder, now to begin with, the Republicans on the "gang of 14" evidently were just using the agreement to bully Democrats into not filibustering a few of Bush's extremist judges, since Lindsey Graham has publicly stated that the agreement didn't mean a goddamn thing.

[a filibuster] based on a judicial philosophy difference or an ideologically driven difference, I don't believe that, with all sincerity, I could let that happen.

Secondly, everyone praised in the Broder article has been a major enabler of the Iraq war, with the only people showing any inklings of dissent on Iraq mentioned as the heroes of "indendepence" in the Broder article have only dissented by saying we need more troops there. If they were truly independent of the Bush Administration, the people Broder turns to have more than enough clout to force an investigation into Iraq, which has had no investigations yet, the only American war that has not had Congressional investigations and oversight as Harry Reid noted on the Senate floor yesterday.

Broder really bases his article off a specific case of "independence" where some Republicans have broken off of the Bush Administration to not allow torture, which should be a no brainer to any sane person that we shouldn't be torturing people. However, the alleged "independence" of these Senators fails to hold true even in this current case, as they struck a deal with the White House today on an interrogation bill which gives the White House exactly what it wants, the authority to torture people and use secret evidence in judicial proceedings, the Constitution be damned.

Seeing as how they are announcing this with Steven "Probable Cause is Irrelevant" Hadley, forgive me for having my doubts on that one. Doubts that are confirmed by this next statement:

Mr. Frist said the agreement had two key points. "Classified information will not be shared with the terrorists" tried before the tribunals, he said, according to Bloomberg News. And "the very important program of interrogation continues."

And how was that "very important" program viewed by these would-be rebels prior to this compromise?

The three senators have contended that the administration was undermining Geneva Convention protections in a way that could leave Americans vulnerable in the future, and that its plan for military tribunals of terror suspects would allow evidence obtained coercively, and information they were not allowed to see to be used against them.

The "very important program of interrogation" that they have agreed to preserve is torture. Torture is at the heart of this program and is what the administration has been fighting for since the Supreme Court handed down Hamdan. What's more, Frist's statement makes clear that the Uniform Code of Militart Justice, which guarantees that defendants have the right to see the evidence against them, is going to be gutted in this "compromise."

Talking Points Memo has a slightly different but equally frustrating take on the agreement, which shoots down Broder's rosey picture just as well.

from what I could tell the torture compromise is that we agreed not to reinterpret the Geneva Conventions, only to continue violating them. The Post now has its editorial out. And they appear to have to come to something like the same conclusion. (Can't wait to hear the Dean's verdict.) The senate won't formally reinterpret the Geneva Convention or explicitly sanction the president's torture policies. But they'll allow him to keep using them.

That's the compromise.

So the alleged independence doesn't even exist on this issue that Broder is specifically writing about, now admittadly this deal developed after Broder wrote his article, but a little bit of skepticism about a group that has a past more than shady enough to warrant skepticism would be nice. In fact, Talking Points Memo goes on to call Broder out in a different post.

I must confess that I am simply dying to hear what Dean David Broder has to say about this torture compromise. In yesterday's paper he was positively rhapsodic about his prized Republican moderates channeling Thomas Jefferson and standing up to President Bush's lawless presidency. He even managed to get in a few digs against the only people who've actually opposed this lawless chief exeecutive. So where does he come out now that his 'independence party' has conceded most of the points of contention, folded abjectly and basically given up?

Broder goes on about the hope that comes with this new coalition of independents.

A "decent respect" begins at home, with an acknowledgment of public opinion. Americans are saying no to excess greenhouse gases and no to open borders; yes to embryonic stem cell research, yes to a path to earned citizenship for millions of illegal immigrants and yes to a living wage. Six more states are likely to approve increases in the minimum wage through ballot initiatives in November.

That paragraph came right after Broder trashed Sherrod Brown, praised Lincoln Chaffee, and accused Ned Lamont of being controlled by "rthe vituperative, foul-mouthed bloggers on the left." What the fuck having a foul mouth has to do with anything is way the hell beyond me, but I guess I don't give a damn. The point is this, Broder singles out Democratic Party platform issues, that have been opposed by Republicans. Republicans will not pass a living wage, by and large do not want a path to citizenship, and do not take greenhouse gasses seriously. The "open borders" argument is nothing but a straw man so I'll dismiss it. If Broder really sincerely cared about these issues, he would understand that the way to get them passed would not be to send back Chafee and DeWine who will vote for probably Mitch McConnell as Majority Leader, who will in turn put all those issues on the backburner. The way to advance the very agenda Broder wants acheived is to elect Democrats in November. Broder's article serves as nothing but an argument for Republicans to use to pretend to be independent from the White House and to hide the fact that they are Republicans.

But what do I know? I'm nothing but a goddamn foul mouthed blogger.

Race to Watch: OR House Dist 24

I, along with the rest of the Linfield College Democrats met with Salvador Peralta tonight, the Democrat challenging Incumbent Donna Nelson in the McMinnville race for the 24th House District in Oregon.

This is not a seat commonly thought of as one that would be up for grabs, its a very conservative district, as demonstrated for its amazing ability to elect someone as far right as Donna Nelson, who even proposed a bill in the State Legislature to lower the State minimum wage to the national minimum, $5.15 an hour. She is the worst kind of anti-worker, anti-gay, far right Republican, someone who definately deserves to go.

In spite of the trends of this district I was struck by Peralta's passion and his strong belief that he can win this race, and indeed it looks plausible, as he pointed out to us, and points out in a diary at Daily Kos, his race has been targeted by multiple election observers and Democratic activists as key to winning back the State House of Representatives. On the Democracy for America Endorsement I just linked to, Peralta is in with some impressive company including Sherrod Brown, Ned Lamont, Francine Busby, Bernie Sanders, Mary Jo Kilroy, and Ciro Rodriguez.

Peralta's talk with us in many ways mirrored the diary that I linked to above from DailyKos. Something very important that was left out of the diary is that he was told when he got into the race not to bother talking to Republicans because it is a waste of time. But Peralta defied their advise and has found that many Republicans in the current political climate are very frustrated with the direction of the country and ready for change. The simple truth of the matter is that in a county like Yamhill, you cannot win as a Democrat unless you get the support of Republicans. The only way to win is to reach out to Republican moderates, and Peralta realizes that, and also realizes that if there is any time that these people can be reached it is now, when more than ever people are open to new ideas, to voting differently than they have in the past. I was bowling a week ago and had a discussion afterwards with the team I was subbing with about the state of our political world. These were clearly conservative people, people who had voted Republican their entire lives, people who believed that Iraq was involved in 9/11 even in spite of all evidence to the contrary. And yet, in spite of all this, they were clearly open to new ideas, they were clearly frustrated with the same things that we all are frustrated with. With the way the war in Iraq was going, with the state of the economy, particularly with the state of the economy in Oregon. They could be reached by a candidate who tried to reach out to them, but the conventional wisdom says not to try. Peralta understands how wrong that conventional wisdom is, for if the last 5 years have revealed anything it is the failures of conservatism and Republican ideology. People want representatives who will work to ensure as the founders put it "a more perfect union". They want change, and while their mindset is still conservative what they want more than anything is a change of course, and a change of course is precisely what the Republicans cannot and will not provide.

Salvador Peralta can do great things for Oregon and great things for Yamhill County, his race is key to ensuring a Democratic legislature that can push through serious reforms in the next session, reforms that help ordinary Oregonians. Getting rid of Donna Nelson even without consideration of the power for change that a Democratic Oregon House of Reps can wield, is an added bonus. Salvador Peralta's campaign website can be found here.

The Lieberman Republican Campaign

An amusing quote, I won't say yet who supplied this rich line to the Hartford Courant, but it reveals something important about the Lieberman campaign.

I oppose the Lamont model of leaving now or prematurely in a few months

One would think that it is Joe himself, attacking his opponents position on the war. That would be respectable enough, but wait, its not Lieberman at all, it is Connecticut Republican Congressman Christopher Shays who is in a tight battle for reelection in a race that could shift the balance of power in the House of Representatives. Why would Shays be singling out Lamont? A separate race involving 2 "Democrats"? A race that on a surface level does not effect Rep. Shays? Because Shays needs to coordinate his campaign with the Lieberman campaign to be viable, Lieberman currently as much as 15% up on Ned Lamont in some polls has become the de-facto Republican nominee for Senate as Alan Schlesinger is polling arround 5%. Lieberman, with his Sean Hannity, Anne Coulter, and Michelle Malkin endorsements has become a symbol for Republicans, particularly on the war for preventing a pullout from the mess in Iraq. The solidarity that he has expressed with the President ove the war has tied him closely to many figures on the far right. Lieberman's support in the polls is coming heavily from Republicans who have abandoned Schlesinger for not being viable. That's why Shays must coordinate his talking points with the Senate race, because the better Lieberman does, the more Republicans in Connecticut will have voted. Of course Shays denies all this, but that's just an attempt to hide what he's doing, trying to link his campaign with Liebermans.

One thing I'd like to say to all of you [reporters] is that you are dead wrong if you think the Lamont-Lieberman race had anything to do with what I'm going to decide on war or peace.

Shays needs Lieberman, and by attacking Lamont together they drive up Republican turnout. With three endangered Republican incumbents in the State of Connecticut, Lieberman's very presence in this race is a threat to a Democratic House as the Shays comment demonstrates. Lieberman can no longer seriously be called a Democrat when his fate goes hand in hand with the fate or Republicans in his State. If Lieberman does well he dramatically improves the chances of Shays, Johnson, and Simmons. And all the players in this game know that, that's why Shays joins Lieberman to attack Lamont's position. If Lieberman expects to be welcomed back to Washington as a Democrat with his committee seniority in place its time he does something for the Democratic Party instead of standing with Republicans. Lieberman should be standing with Dianne Farrell, Chris Murphy, and Joe Courtney instead of standing with Shays.

Here's the link to the article with the Shays quote, I just didn't want to give it until after I had revealed who said it.

9/12 Primary Day

Incumbent Republican Senator Lincoln Chafee has beaten back a far right primary challenge from Steve Laffey today in the Rhode Island Senate primary. Chafee now has his work cut out for him to hold the seat. Chafee trails in the polls to Democrat Sheldon Whitehouse by 2-4% depending on what poll you look at. We're still waiting for a result out of Maryland where Congressman Ben Cardin is in a battle with former Congressman and former head of the NAACP Kweisi Mfume. Cardin currently leads by just under 10%, 46-37 with nearly 60% reporting. Whoever wins that Maryland primary seems well positioned to squash Michael "stem cell research is the same as the Holocaust" Steele the Republican nominee. When I get a final result from Maryland I'll post it here if I feel like it. Maybe not, depends on my mood and whether I'm awake or not.

John Yoo's Rejection of American Government

This is a great post on John Yoo, the crazy man who is actively destroying the system of checks and balances that characterizes government in the United States, go read it. The juicy outrageous John Yoo quote is as follows.

"We are used to a peacetime system in which Congress enacts the laws, the president enforces them, and the courts interpret them. In wartime, the gravity shifts to the executive branch.''

Final Change to the Cwech Dozen

My list of a dozen candidates to support for the November election is now complete with the addition of Peter Goldmark. A recent Rasmussen poll showing Harold Ford within 1% of Bob Corker in the Tennessee Senate race told me that I better get rid of that free spot before abe starts lobbying me hard to add Ford. So, coming in at #12 is Peter Goldmark, an excellent candidate in the Washington 5th covering the far eastern part of Washington State stretching from the Canadian border all the way down to the Oregon border. This rural district was once represented by Tom Foley and is made up primarily of farming communities, Goldmark brings an expertise as a molecular biologist specializing in wheat genetics. He has raised cattle and farmed wheat, a perfect background to represent this district in Congress. For more information check out his diaries at Daily Kos

Bush's Puppet in the Judiciary Committee

Arlen Specter's warrantless wiretapping bill that pretends to provide oversight on the President's surveilance program which bypasses the FISA Court to spy on Americans without a warrant, was beaten back at least temporarily in committee today. Specter's complaint about the day's event is very interesting.

Forced to delay his committee's vote, Specter grumbled that without his legislation the White House would continue its domestic wiretapping program virtually unchecked by the courts.

I've written before in these pages about how Specter's bill only pretends to provide oversight when in fact it is a blank check to the executive for Bush to continue doing whatever he wants.

Gonzales said the bill gives Bush the option of submitting the NSA program to the intelligence court, rather than requiring the review.

An administration official said Bush will submit to the review as long the bill is not changed in ways that he sees as undermining security. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the deliberations are internal, said the bill would preserve the right of future presidents to skip that court review.

Right Specter, not passing your rubber stamp bill allows the President to continue to excercise too much power, but passing it wouldn't. I really hope Specter doesn't believe the crap that comes out of his mouth, because if he does I really worry about his mental state.

Labor Day Post

I woke up this morning and went to the Linfield campus convenience store for a coffee. The woman who was working the store at that time said to me "it sure is quiet on campus this morning, is there no class? I thought you only had major holidays off." This statement struck me as odd, that someone within the category of people who labor day is supposed to celebrate did not even consider labor day to be a "major" holiday. I responded, "well, it is labor day." To which she said nothing at all and I went on my way. But if anybody is going to have labor day off it shouldn't be the students and the professors, it shouldn't be the CEOs of corporations, it should be the working people who the holiday celebrates, rather those very people are the only ones who do work on labor day. The Oregonian pointed this out this morning in a short collumn in the "Metro" section. Given this, its no surprise that the woman I talked to this morning did not consider labor day to be a "major" holiday, because labor day does not celebrate her contributions to society, rather it pretends to celebrate them while in actuality it celebrates their employers. Labor day is supposed to be the workers holiday yet it has been robbed from workers to such a large extent that they don't even feel any connection to it.

New York Times Does About Face

The New York Times, apparently realizing the stupidity of their series of "the Democrats just can't get their act together" articles, now turns arround suddenly and gets the picture that the Republicans are in trouble. The growing conventional wisdom is that the Democrats will likely take back the House in November, something that I've been saying for several months now. That conventional wisdom may or may not prove to be correct, but the national climate certainly seems tilted in the Democrats favor. In response, Republicans have turned to the argument that the national sentiment doesn't matter.

“Democrats are trying to indict an entire class of people, who happen to be called Republican candidates for Congress,” said Glen Bolger, a Republican pollster handling dozens of House races. “We have to bring individual indictments with different cases and different pieces of evidence.”

Bolger here hits on precisely what the Democrats need to be doing, running against the Republican Party and Bush Administration as a whole. It was Republicans who created the Iraq mess, it was Republicans who screwed up the Katrina response, Republicans who created the massive deficit, Republicans who want to destroy social security, Republicans who ignore the law to spy on Americans, Republicans who refuse to question the President when he ignores the law to spy on Americans, Republicans who want to change the law to make it legal for the President to spy on Americans. I could keep going but I think I've made the point. When you control all three branches of government and govern as badly as the Republicans have, its hard to expect that blame will be placed anywhere but on your Party, and when you run for office as a Republican you associate yourself with all of that. It makes perfect sense that Republicans want to make this about individual candidates and take the national scene out of the debate, but Democrats need to be doing the exact opposite and placing them all in the same boat, for that's where they belong.

Its the Middle Class Stupid

It was apparent looking at the national exit polling after the 2004 disaster that there was something to be said of the role of economics in the election. There was a clear correlation between support for Bush and family income which had most middle class voters supporting Bush. One could argue that the bigger the tax cut the stronger the support for Bush, and that this dynamic made the difference in the election much more than the culture wars or national security. The argument is there, up front in the exit polling, and that is precisely the argument that Anne Kim, Adam Solomon, and Jim Kessler make in the Democratic Strategist.

At Third Way, we not only believe the what's-the-matter-with-Kansas analysis is wrong, but that it represents a dangerous red herring for Democrats. In a report we co-authored called The Politics of Opportunity, we isolated five areas of disconnect between how Democrats talk about the middle class and view the economy and how the middle class view their own economic situation and that of America.

Disconnect one is optimism versus pessimism. Whether it's the "people versus the powerful" Al Gore's convention speech or John Kerry's "Benedict Arnold companies" where American workers see their factories "unbolted, crated up, and shipped thousands of miles away," the Democratic economic message is pervasively pessimistic. Democrats see the American Dream fading, the middle class being squeezed, jobs disappearing, schools crumbling, and wages stagnating.

That is not the way middle-class Americans view their own lives. Days after 9/11, 80% of Americans expressed optimism about the year ahead. Two months after gas hit $3 per gallon, 73% said they were optimistic about their family's finances. In 2004, 78% said they were doing "fairly well" financially. And only 22% believe they will not "earn enough money in the future to lead the kind of life [they] want."
...
Disconnect two is economic decline versus economic strength. Democrats have become the "falling behind" party. America is falling behind China and India in innovation. Our kids are falling behind in math and science. Our middle class is shrinking. And by the year 2062 our GDP will be half the size of Burma's.

Fortunately for America, and unfortunately for Burma, this does not reflect economic reality. Most economists who advise investors seeking to earn money (rather than those who advise politicians seeking to win votes) are confident in America's future. Most see America winning the competition against India and China, just as we did over Japan in the 1980s and Germany in the 1970s. They know that our economy boasts strengths unmatched by other nations, including flexibility, resiliency, strong capital markets, financial and political transparency, legal protections for intellectual property and an unparalleled university system.

It is true that our national prosperity is threatened by the Bush policies of high debt, tax giveaways to the most affluent, a theocratic faith that corporate America will solve our health care and energy crises, and the growing income inequality found in our country. Yet even with six years of wrong choices behind us, the bursting of the tech bubble, the attacks of 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, and sky-high oil prices - America's vital economic signs are fundamentally robust.

Disconnect three is economic security versus individual opportunity. Democrats rarely talk about individual aspirations of greatness or success; they mostly talk about people's economic status or about their economic fears.

As Americans have grown more affluent -- and with a few blips along the way, American households have steadily grown more affluent over the past 60 years -- they have come to care less about economic security and more about economic opportunity. In the past, individuals were far more likely to aspire to a job that offered modest pay but high security. Today they would rather choose a potentially higher paying but riskier job.

Economic security should be addressed, but equal time should be given to the yearning most Americans have to get ahead.
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Disconnect four is ideas. Most signature Democratic ideas do not benefit middle class people; they benefit those who aspire to the middle class. The typical Pell Grant recipient earns less than $20,000. The minimum wage impacts less than 2% of working Americans. The earned income tax credit phases out to a pittance for families over $25,000. Head Start, food stamps, and WIC are for the poor, poorer, and poorest of society. The middle class believes in these programs, but they are wondering when someone will pay attention to them.
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Disconnect five is an unconvincing economic critique of conservatives. Folks, if bashing rich people, the oil industry, and the drug companies were an effective political strategy, jets would be landing at Michael Dukakis National Airport in Washington.

An effective economic critique should tell a story. The conservative story about Democrats is that they believe the government does a better job of spending your money than you do. Every conservative economic argument against the left derives from this statement. Democrats need a story of their own.

In a conversation this weekend a friend argued that John Edwards was unelectable because by talking about "two Americas" and ending poverty he gave the middle class nothing to vote for. The thing is that Edwards, more than anybody else creates the story that is discussed here in the article. The author's here move on to prescribe a number of initiatives that the Democrats should be pushing, I would add universal health care to their list, but it fits well within the same argument.

The answer to the critique that Edwards is only really appealing to a group of people who don't vote and needs to be talking middle class is to respond with social contract. This is the idea that must be pushed by Democrats, that we are all tied together and that we have collective political obligations to one another. We have collective interests that must be defended, and part of that is dealing a blow to poverty in America, but another part of that is to defend middle class interests as the author's suggest. John Edwards' response should be that we are all in this fight together when someone accuses him of only defending the poor. And that is precisely what he's doing, from Edwards' One America Committee:

This is not about pumping money into a broken government program. It's about finding ways to help everyone who works hard and makes responsible choices get ahead. It's about creating a new kind of social contract that I call the "Working Society."

Edwards is not the only one catching this boat, in fact it seems to be a boat that many are rushing to catch after Michael Tomasky argued in the American Prospect that Democrats must return to their social contract roots, Howard Dean has picked up on the idea too.

America's busted social contract is already being discussed on the presidential campaign trail, most notably by Howard Dean, who gave a major policy speech on December 18 on this theme. But Dean barely mentioned the word "values" as he outlined his New Social Contract.

What the author's at the Democratic Strategist call "disconnect five" is a very important part of the social contract campaign that the Democrats should be running as well. However, the author's miss the boat here by focusing so much on the narrow interest of "the middle class". It's Katrina stupid. Hurricane Katrina last year revealed something important about the Republican agenda. The Republican Party seems to believe that government is always evil, and that we owe no collective obligations to each other. This is the narrative that Katrina spelled out for Democrats to create for the Republican Party, and the failure of the Federal government to come to the aid of Americans in their darkest hour showed a Party that only wishes to govern for the sake of a few elite interests. That is the narrative that Democrats are looking for to frame Republicans with. They hate government and only use it cynically to help their friends, we will use it to help the middle class and poor Americans to govern for the collective of America instead of just the elite few.

At this point that framing of the Republicans will be difficult to do because of the way that the concept of guilt has been laid out in relation to the Katrina disaster. That narrative that has emerged is that "everyone screwed up, everyone is guilty." But to channel Hannah Arendt here, "where all are guilty no one is." And to place blame everywhere takes it away from where it really belongs, the Bush Administration. Who had the resources to manage this disaster? The federal government, did they? No. Did the State of Louisianna have the resources? No, they had some, but not nearly the resources the Federal Government had. Did the city itself? Absolutely not. I'm not a Ray Nagin fan, but he had no ability to do anything.

So yes, the Democrats need to respond to their growing problems with white middle class voters, but the answer lies in emphasizing social contract and the Republican's violation of that fundamental idea. The author's miss that point but make a strong case that Democrats should be paying far more attention to the middle class.

US Poverty Rate Holds Flat

The US Census released its annual poverty report, and amazingly, the poverty rate did not increase last year. In fact it dropped slightly, but the decrease was not statistically significant. This is the first time the poverty rate has not increased during the Bush Administration, though the President still seems to be effectively countering John F Kennedy's famous argument that "a rising tide lifts all boats."

With the poverty rate steady but median household income rising, ''that could represent an increase in inequality'' between the wealthy and the poor, said David Johnson, chief of the Housing and Household Economic Statistics Division of the Census Bureau.

Furthermore, more evidence emerged in this study that drastic changes to US health care policy are needed.

However, the number of people without health insurance increased to 46.6 million in 2005. About 45.3 million people were without insurance the year before.

So, better news than has been seen on this front for several years, but still not good news, the Bush Administration is still a phenomenal failure on income equality issues, and a major overhaul of the health insurance system is desperately needed. Elect Democrats to the House and Senate in November and maybe some of this can start to change.

Pew Poll on Politics and Religion

Pew released a poll recently regarding perceptions of the parties as they relate to religion. The results showed a decline in the Republican monopoly of being "friendly to religion," and a very low number of people believing that the Democratic Party was "friendly to religion." Those initial numbers, with the Republicans polling at 47% friendly to religion and Democrats at 26% I don't particularly find problematic, this surface question shows no indication that anyone who the Democrats have any hope of reaching anyway considers whether the party is "friendly to religion" a voting issue. If people consider the Democrats to be unfriendly towards religion and don't vote based on that it doesn't matter. However, there are parts of this study that do show the Democrats having a problem of perception.

Sixty-nine percent agreed that liberals had “gone too far in trying to keep religion out of schools and government”

This is a perception problem, and it is probably fueled by the Constitutional illiteracy of most of the American public. Democrats should not change their positions as far as school prayer, and other "religion in the public square" issues. In large part because the Democrats hold a position that is consistent with years and years of Supreme Court precedent, it appears to be the "right" interpretation of the establishment clause, and Democrats should stand behind that, but what needs to happen is that a way to frame these issues while still upholding the essential core constitutional principles needs to be used by Democrats in which people begin to understand why Democrats hold these kinds of positions. This is precisely the point Barack Obama was making when he was chastised by much of the liberal blogosphere back in June. The poll, also interestingly has bad news for Republicans on this question:

And 49 percent agreed that conservative Christians had “gone too far in trying to impose their religious values on the country,” also a three percentage point increase.

This means that there is a large block of respondents who just flatly don't know which way is up, responding merely to a raw perception without any knowledge of either the Democrats or Republicans views on these issues. Which again feeds into Obama's point that Democrats need to reframe the debate on these kinds of perception issues.

Above anything else, I think this poll demonstrated that the public is by and large ignorant of either Party's approach to these "religion in the public square" issues. Republicans seem to wish to impose Christianity on American society, a fundamentally un-American idea, and Democrats have failed to make this case. Too many Democrats try to hide in the shadows until these issues pass by, which concedes the entire debate to the Republicans who can frame Democrats any way they like. Democrats should be standing up and explaining their positions instead of just conceding this ground to the Republicans as so many seem to want to do. One of the lessons of the 2004 election was that when the Republican Party tells boldfaced lies it hurts much more than it helps to ignore the lies and hope they go away.

Segregated Survivor?

I will admit I don't watch Survivor anyway, and it has never been something that I've been inclined to watch, it strikes me as silly, pointless, and stupid. But now it seems to have crossed a line from bad TV to downright disturbing with the anouncement that in the upcoming season teams will be segregated by race. CBS has justified this by contending that they "wanted to get more minorities on the show", which is fine, but to suggest that the only way to do that is by segregating out contestants by race is to suggest that people of different races can never really coexist as friends and equals. Admittadly, Survivor was never a model of civic committment and collective effort to begin with, as it seems to mirror some Machiavellian view of the world in which all that matters is self interest rather than social good. Organizing survivor teams by race will send the message that we're better off sticking to our own kind, in fact some commentators have even admitted as much, suggesting that minorities always get ripped off in survivor and the new setup gives racial minorities something to root for. Americans have succeeded historically through collective action that transcends such irrellevent differences as race. When people have been divided, the oppressed have lacked the power to create any change, only when people with a common collective interest saw through such categories to work for a common good has America succeeded, the most notable of these was the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s which set the stage for the Great Society, one of the greatest expansions of workers rights in American history. When Americans have been pulled together collective interests have been expanded, when Americans have been pushed apart, those interests were ignored by the elite and powerful who pursued a narrow self interest. This is a dumb idea and sets the absolute wrong cultural message.

Oregonian Runs Outlandish Fluff Piece on Gordon Smith

The Oregonian runs a silly fluff piece about how "bipartison" and "middle of the road" Gordon Smith is, with a press corps like this its no wonder its hard to convince people of the fact that Gordon Smith is little different than any other Republican. There are even little pieces in the article that demonstrate that Smith is in fact very Conservative, but the author merely brushes over them ignoring the implication. The article seems to make the claim that because every once in a while Gordon Smith breaks ranks with the Republican Party, he is therefore a moderate. But the rarity of Smith breaking ranks pretty much decimates the argument that Smith is a moderate. Furthermore, the article uses contrasting votes to demonstrate this when they don't demonstrate moderation at all, but rather a bad sense of public policy.

Additionally, Smith has been an adamant defender of Medicaid. The Pendleton millionaire whose high-end pin-striped suits earned him the "best dressed" senator award in a survey of congressional aides in Washingtonian magazine has earned praise nationally as an advocate for the poor.

Last year, amid escalating war costs and a growing federal deficit, Republican congressional leaders and the Bush administration planned massive cuts to Medicaid. Smith balked, leading a fight to reduce the cuts in the health care program.

Health care advocate Ron Pollack calls Smith "the most significant legislator" guarding the Medicaid safety net.

"Senator Smith has become the leading, and most effective, member in the Senate protecting low-income children, seniors and families needing health care," Pollack, executive director of national advocacy group Families USA, says in an e-mail.

But Smith also has supported tax cuts that opponents say help mainly the wealthy. For Chuck Sheketoff, an advocate for low-income Oregonians, Smith's positions are difficult to reconcile.

"He on the one hand very truly wants to protect Medicaid," says Sheketoff, executive director of the Oregon Center for Public Policy. "I've sat in his office and talked with him. He's totally sincere about that. . . . On the other hand, it is unbelievably frustrating that he is so fiscally irresponsible when it comes to budget rules and budget process and taxes.

Supporting the tax cuts that put Medicaid in danger and then opposing cuts to medicaid is not moderate, it is just flatly stupid. Sheketoff is correct, that set of policy positions is not moderate, it is just fiscally irresponsible. If you're going to vote tax cuts for the insanely wealthy, sane public policy suggests that you should then support the spending cuts that go with it, otherwise you're just running up a massive deficit in order to give rich people a tax cut. Either way I think the policy is deplorable, but that demonstrates not moderation, but an attempt to have it both ways that simple cannot exist in good governance, Smith should either oppose the tax cuts or support the spending cuts that they cause.

The author goes on to claim that "the National Journal ranked Smith the most moderate member of the U.S. Senate [in 2005]." I can't find National Journal's rankings right now, but I'll take the claim at face value and disect it from there. The Republican Party has astounding Party loyalty, and the difference between the 10th most conservative Senator and the 50th most conservative Senator may not be very great. National Journal is not the only group that does in depth analysis of voting records. ProgressivePunch.org does this too. Progressive punch too finds Smith to be almost in the dead center of the body of the Senate ranking #52. But a closer look at the actual scores that Senator's recieve shows us that this is not a product of Gordon Smith being a moderate, but rather an astounding Party loyalty on the part of the Republicans. Progressive punch gives Smith a score of 14.8, meaning that Smith votes with the progressive wing of the Senate 14.8% of the time, or to put it the other way, he votes with the most conservative wing of the Senate 85.2% of the time. This is consistent with the author's own analysis of Smith's voting record, determing that:

Most Smith votes have toed the party line. Of about 200 votes this year that were not unanimous, Smith voted the same way as Senate Republican Leader Bill Frist 170 times.

170 of 200, that comes out to 85%, so the two approaches to analyzing Smith's voting record yielded nearly the exact same result. This separates Smith from the Senate's two most moderate members (proximity to a progressive score of 50) by 35, that same range which encompasses only 3 Republicans and 1 Democrat, can be equated to the +35 range over a progressive score of 50. While comparing Smith's voting record to Democrats with the inverse (Democrats who vote with the liberal wing 85% are the inverse of Republicans who vote with the conservative wing 85% as Smith does), we find that 20 Democrats fall within the same proximity to the middle point of the Senate as 3 Republicans So Joseph Biden of Delaware who ranks #25 in the Senate votes with the liberal wing the same amount of the time that Gordon Smith (who ranks 52 in the Senate) votes with the conservative wing. When one party has such astounding loyalty as the Republicans do, some members are made to appear far more moderate than they are, especially in studies like the National Journal's (I actually like National Journal in terms of methodology, they just don't show enough info) that don't show actual scoring only a comparison with the rest of the Senate.

In the most important cases, Smith has sided with the far right, he voted for the confirmation of Chief Justice John Roberts, he voted for the confirmation of right wing ideologue, Anthony Scalia's mini-me, Samuel Alito, and the article points out a number of other votes he has cast with the far right fringe of America.

On several recent controversial issues, Smith voted with Republicans. For instance, he supported the constitutional amendment to prevent flag desecration. Smith says all rights -- including freedom of expression -- have limits.

"I promised our veterans I would vote for it," he says.

Smith, who campaigned in 2002 as an advocate of gay rights, also has supported a federal amendment to prohibit gay marriage.

Finally, I'll leave you with a nice gem quote at the end of the article showing Sen. Smith's general mindset demonstrating without a shadow of doubt that Smith is no moderate.

The senator quickly dismisses Democratic criticism of his votes.

"I've beaten them more than they've beaten me," he says. "The Democratic Party is not my constituency. These are people that believe in socialism. I don't."

That is a mindset that opposes any kind of pragmatism or compromise, it labels the opposition inaccurately in a way that sets them up as an ultimate evil to be opposed. If I were to adopt Mr. Smith's mindset I would call him a fascist to reciprocate, but I won't, because Smith's attitude does nothing for the country, and a reciprocation is just as bad as his initial remark.

Gordon Smith is not a moderate, he doesn't act like a moderate, he doesn't vote like a moderate. The Oregonian should stop running these kinds of fluff pieces that make incumbent Senator's nearly impossible to defeat. If the Oregonian is going to be fair they should run a feature on how moderate Ron Wyden is next week, after all, his progressive score is 88, only 3% more liberal than Smith is conservative. Smith can pretend to be a moderate all he wants, and he can run for reelection in 2008 that way if he wants, but he doesn't need any help from the press to spread his lie.

I'm slow

Sometimes you just get so mad about something that you can't even bring yourself to write about it. So, here are some thoughts on Bush's outrageous press conference on Monday in which he once again tied Iraq together with 9/11, then proceeded in the very next sentence to claim that he had never suggested a link.

...imagine a world in which Saddam Hussein was there, stirring up even more trouble in a part of the world that had so much resentment and so much hatred that people came and killed 3,000 of our citizens.

You know, I've heard this theory about everything was just fine until we arrived, and kind of "we're going to stir up the hornet's nest" theory. It just doesn't hold water, as far as I'm concerned. The terrorists attacked us and killed 3,000 of our citizens before we started the freedom agenda in the Middle East.

The President was not even being subtle here in trying to equate Saddam Hussein's Iraq with the 9/11 attacks, and in response a reporter called him on it (a rare occassion).

Q What did Iraq have to do with that?

THE PRESIDENT: What did Iraq have to do with what?

Q The attack on the World Trade Center?

THE PRESIDENT: Nothing, except for it's part of -- and nobody has ever suggested in this administration that Saddam Hussein ordered the attack. Iraq was a -- the lesson of September the 11th is, take threats before they fully materialize, Ken. Nobody has ever suggested that the attacks of September the 11th were ordered by Iraq. I have suggested, however, that resentment and the lack of hope create the breeding grounds for terrorists who are willing to use suiciders to kill to achieve an objective. I have made that case.

Oops, Mr. Bush got caught so he had to backtrack. Iraq was involved in 9/11 until someone catches Mr. Bush spreading that lie, then Iraq wasn't, but they were still a threat to us and still tied to Al-Qaeda, also a lie. Bush is trying to toe a fine line here where he wants to tie Iraq into the "terrorist threat" while still not being accused of lying to the public about connections between Iraq and 9/11, it can't be done for the obvious reason that Iraq had absolutely nothing to do with 9/11.

Where the White Women At?

Every August we seem to have the return of "Where the White Women At?" The quest in the SCLM to locate our nation's missing white women. This week, the return of the JonBenet Ramsey story. Don't get me wrong, its a horrible story, someone killing a mere child as is suspected, but lets be real. This kind of stuff happens all the time. If JonBenet had not been a rich white girl, and had instead been a poor inner city black girl, none of us would ever have heard of her. The most attention the story would have recieved would have been a local newspaper story, it certainly never would have become a favorite of network television and a nationwide story. Instead it is a story that is universally well known by the American public. And why? Because the media loves a missing rich white girl, and JonBenet Ramsey fit that profile.