Biggest upset last night was professional right-wing activist Christine O'Donnell beating career pol and relative moderate Mike Castle. This is a mystery to many people: She's a very, very flawed candidate.
I'd like to suggest that Democrats should not count their chickens about this or any other seat.
Try to watch without judging substance here:
O'Donnell may be flaky, and even dishonest. But she's an effective speaker: She seems to mean what she says; she's urgent; she talks about kitchen-table issues; and that she's an attractive female doesn't hurt. (Sound like anyone?)
I don't want to overstate the magnitude here: O'Donnell won with 30,000-some votes. Tea Party activists raised a $216,000 for her — nice, but not a gigantic money-bomb.
But I'm interested in learning the reason for Tea Party/Glenn Beck-style energy — again, without the interference of judging the substance. (Yes, I agree, it's hideous.) What they're creating, using, and directing here is a sense of community, of holding together. That they've identified an enemy in the personage of Obama is part and parcel of that — an enemy can help define a commonality.
I want to riff off of something that O'Donnell alludes to: The paleo-conservative idea that government supplants relationships and prerogatives that are properly left to the individual or community. This is true of politics, too; and it's something we're now enduring as left-Democrats.
When your party controls the branches of government, the process and institutional prerogatives (i.e. the inner workings of the Senate; the House; the Presidency; institutional Washington) supplant the communal energies of the grassroots, which is now what wins primary elections.
This disaffection crippled the Republicans in 2006 and 2008: The grassroots-right didn't really identify with the Bush administration (Medicare Part D; immigration; Harriet Miers). The largely-successful fights over health care and financial re-regulation have splintered and enervated the grassroots left, rather than energizing them.
The rhetoric of opposition can afford to be lofty, or gritty, or heroic. We can compare ourselves to historic battle heroes. Everything lives in a shining future, in a world of emotion, of values.
Successes in governance are quickly forgotten by the world of politics — or perhaps not forgotten but absorbed. The question always comes around to, What else have you got?
In an election year of such dislocation and uncertainty, there is no such thing as a candidate that's “too extreme”. When there is such widespread distrust of leadership, even radical ideas are evaluated anew.
But a successful rebuff to the Tea Party right will address emotions, values, relations, and high aspirations for the future. It will do more than merely acknowledge disappointment — it will actively channel it for greater change.
They are seizing the populist mantle. That’s why you need to consciously ignore the message. The message is secondary. And BMG people are, generally speaking, wonks. Populist appeal can make people vote against their own interests. If we haven’t learned that by now…
Yes, they have picked up on the populist message. But then they spin it to make the problems we face the governments fault and call the corporations the voice of freedom. The problem is that they have the first part right. It is the governments fault. They failed to monitor and regulate the worst of corporate practices. Then, when they decided to regulate and get involved, they planted a few regulations yet did not do anything to reduce the costs, such as the case with healthcare.
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p>She would not even have a voice in this race if the government would find a way to cut the costs of living, so that regular folks across the land can work hard,
support their families, save a few dollars, and have a little left for discretionary spending. Of course, the runaway capitalist society started to become apparent and blatantly unhidden starting with Bush, but Obama and Congress perpetuated and extended the problem, now making some of it the law of the land (concrete). Her answer to the problem is ridiculous. The corporations are not our ticket to freedom. The profit motivated corporations are our ticket to oppression. I think people know this, but they are desperate and angry. They aren’t thinking clearly and they just want a lifeboat out. They will take it from anyone standing their with one, even if it’s got a million holes in it.
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p>If the Democrats had created a healthcare plan that was affordable and reliable, if the cost of other household budget essentials(utilities, food, etc )would stabalize or drop, if local governments didn’t have to keep raising regressive taxes, if the working middle class felt even a modicum of relief from the election of Barack Obama, we would not be talking about this today.
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p>So we can ignore or even laugh at this message, but no-one will be turning to us for an answer either.
I thought this would happen. If only the Tea Partier in NH could have pulled it out, maybe we could have suddenly began to talk about gaining seats in the US Senate, which really would have ruined the GOP’s election night.
Christine O’Donnell is speaking out against something that almost everyone opposes: making people anonymous cogs in a big government wheel. She doesn’t bother with the facts, or that no one in the Obama administration is trying to do that. The democrats need to stop wasting their time trying to prove to the Christine O’Donnells of the world that they’re not socialist Muslims and start talking about what the country would look like if the republicans were in charge.
You wrote:
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p>Exactly.
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p>Exactly, because we know what the country would look like — it would like pretty much exactly the way it looked the last time Republicans were in charge, two years.
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p>Exactly, because they’ve already told us that, if re-elected, they will do the same thing they did the last time they were in power. Their proposals are the same — cut taxes (especially for the wealthy) and dismantle government (except the parts that benefit the wealthy).
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p>I think we should start asking:
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p>Are you better or worse off than you were in the fall of 2008, the last time the Republicans were in charge?
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p>because aside from Wall Street and big businesses profits success story, there has been no palpable change on Main St.
Apparently you forgot to label the vertical axis of your graph (presumably it’s unemployment).
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p>President Obama took office approximately when the skyrocketing unemployment crossed the 8% mark.
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p>President Bush took office, with a Republican congress and senate, at the beginning of your graph — with an unemployment rate of 4% inherited from the Clinton administration. After seven years of Republican control, it almost got back to its starting point — and then the chickens came home to roost.
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p>President Bush took office with a 4% unemployment rate and left office with the rate above 8%. He had a GOP house, senate, and Supreme Court for most of that time.
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p>Here is a graph showing more context — US Unemployment for the last sixty years (the source of this data is here):
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p>I’ve colored Democratic administrations in blue, Republican in pink. I call your attention to the unemployment rate at the start and finish of each administration.
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p>I note that both Bush administrations left office with significantly higher unemployment then when they took office. The immediate impact of the Reagan administration was a huge spike (the recession of 1981-83) — so much for his “supply-side economics”. Once he abandoned that fantasy, he was able to manage a recovery, so that he (alone of the recent Republican presidents) managed to leave office with the unemployment rate lower than when he took office.
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p>It is clear from this graph that both the Johnson and the Clinton administrations were good for workers. Even the much-maligned Carter administration did no harm.
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p>This chart graphically illustrates that Republican economics are terrible for workers.
I didn’t color the bars, but please note that Truman administration was similarly good for workers, while unemployment was significantly higher at the end of the Eisenhower administration than at the beginning.
I was only addressing the idea of asking people if they were better off in 2008 vs today and I think the unemployment chart (sorry for not labeling) shows there were more people working in 2008 than there is today in 2010. And if you go back any further 2007, 2006… it only gets better.
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p>Af for your chart, we keep hearing about Obama’s “inherited” problems from Bush which I guess makes the point that when a President takes over he has to work with the trend of the economy and the under-workings which are in play. If Obama is correctly using the past (Bush) as his defense of the present, can’t “any” President do the same and blame their predecessor OR give the credit for good times to the previous administration? I don’t think you can have it both ways?
When the prior administration took over from President Clinton, the trend of the unemployment graph was markedly down — and had been so during the entire 8-year Clinton administration.
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p>The prior administration took over, and unemployment immediately headed upwards.
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p>Similarly, when the first Bush administration took over from the Reagan administration, the unemployment trend line had been similarly downward (since the peak that President Reagan himself created with his stupendously-failing supply-side economics). The unemployment trend-line turned sharply worse immediately after the first President Bush took office.
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p>I think the key is to look at the inflection points in the graph. When a sharp and pronounced peak or valley coincides with a change in administration, I think it is fair to attribute the change (for better or worse) to policies of the new administration. We see these inflection points at the following transitions:
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p>In fact, there have been only two administration transitions that continued the trend they inherited:
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p>It would seem that President Ford managed to turn around the mess that President Nixon created, and President Carter continued that trend until the oil-shock and hostage crisis that destroyed his administration. President Reagan inherited a worsening unemployment rate from his predecessor, and corrected the trend when he belatedly gave up on “supply-side economics”.
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p>So we have six inflection points, four valleys and two peaks. I remind you that a valley is bad and a peak is good when considering unemployment rates.
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p>The two “good” administrations are (1) Kennedy/Johnson and (2) Clinton — both Democrats. The four “bad” administrations are (1) Eisenhower, (2) Nixon/Ford, (3) Bush I, and (4) Bush II — all Republicans.
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p>Here’s a different cut of the same data — we can rank each administration by the net change (positive or negative) in unemployment rate during their tenure (I’ve excluded President Truman because we don’t have data for his entire term):
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p>The only Republican who reduced the unemployment rate during his term was President Reagan. The Democrats have, by and large, been good for workers and the Republicans have been bad.
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p>President Clinton reduced unemployment the most in the last sixty years — he reduced the unemployment rate by 4% during his eight-year term.
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p>The second President Bush increased unemployment the most in the last sixty years — he doubled the unemployment rate, increasing it by 5% during his eight-year term.
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p>This analysis shows that the observation that the prior administration was terrible for the economy is not “just politics”, nor is it an attempt to “have it both ways”.
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p>President Obama and the Democrats have been working hard to dig out of the deep hole created by the prior administration. The GOP has steadfastly resisted every step.
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p>We have just begun.
Of course unemployment went up immediately– the dotcom bubble burst and all of those employees of Kozmo who made house calls to deliver a candy bar were out of work. Then it gott better, and then it got worse when the housing bubble burst–a lot worse.
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p>None of this changes that fact that for many of us, including me, I am significantly worse off today than I was in November 2008. Even if your simple explanation of complex economic issues is true, why on earth would this be a good question for a Democrat to raise in 2010?
If you think that you are worse off today because the Democrats and President Obama have done the wrong thing, and if you think that returning to the economic policies of the GOP during the prior administration will make things better for you, then you should vote Republican.
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p>In my view, the collapse of the housing bubble was not a random, unpredictable, and externally-imposed event. I challenge even the passive wording you chose — “when the housing bubble burst”, as if it were some act of God.
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p>The collapse of Enron stock prices didn’t happen coincidentally, and it wasn’t caused by random external events. The stock price was pumped up by fraudulent business practices — the collapse was inevitable.
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p>Similarly, the increase in housing prices (and, for that matter, a good part of the rest of the economy during the prior administration) was similarly driven by fraudulent accounting practices. The finance industry was writing second and third mortgages to virtually everyone, then “securitizing” that paper and using it to artificially inflate the prices of everything. They did that because (a) the GOP dismantled most of the government’s regulatory machinery, and (b) the resulting run-up in prices made the economy look much better than it was — benefiting the GOP incumbents.
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p>The truth was that real purchasing power for the lower and middle classes has been declining for decades. Most consumer spending during the prior administration was made possible by those fraudulent second and third mortgages — folks were borrowing against the artificially-inflated value of their homes to pay their bills.
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p>If cutting taxes was good for the lower and middle classes, then their real purchasing power should have increased in response to the tax cuts put in place by the prior administration. It did not.
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p>I think that until more of us face the truth about GOP economic lies, our situation will get worse and worse.
about the Republican lies; the Republicans know it too. But they have no moral compass and will never admit to their failure. If Barack Obama had taken office directly after Bill Clinton, we would be OK. Obama is taking the hit for the failure of the Bush years. The unfortunate thing is that Obama lost part of his base by not following progressive values and instead giving in far to often to the corporate right (congress did this too).
It’s very sad and very upsetting. It’s pretty much a lost cause at this point. We can still keep fighting, we just have to be careful, and not walk into a land mine.
Your other talking point:
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p>is a good one to use. It’s the truth and clearly states why Obama has not been able to turn things around.
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p>I am at a point to where I am just ready to let the chips fall where they may. It’s not your fault, it’s not my fault, and it’s not the grassroots fault. It the lying obstuctionist republicans fault, the timid, cowardly blue dog dems fault, it’s our progressive dems fault for not providing a clear message and it’s Obamas fault for not being a more forceful and demanding presence as a leader.
It is what it is.
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p>But you never know. I see something positive coming out of the tea partiers getting elected. The main stream republicans are starting to panic. I don’t believe they
planned on this sort of thing happening. Their grand plan to destroy Obama and the democrats is going off in a different direction. They are destroying their own safe, loyal, united party. When you look at it that way, we may win afterall. We may be witnessing the destruction of the Republican party as we know it. Now that’s something to smile about.
trying to help make everyone a homeowner. When Clinton started to really push CRA, the house prices began to diverge from the normal parity with inflation and house prices began to increase at a faster rate than inflation. As Fannie and Freddie were encouraged to lend to anyone with a pulse, and lending standards were relaxed to the point where actual ability to repay the loan became a secondary consideration. Barney Frank, repeatedly insisted that there was no housing bubble and the democratic controlled congress in 2006, resisted the repeated calls for reform of the GSEs before they caused a melt-down of our economy.
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p>This country cannot sustain the interest payments on the massive amount of new debt incurred by the Obama administration and this congress. When interest rates rise above the near zero rates for Treasuries, we will no longer be able to afford to service our debt. Our national security is gravely jeopardized by very soon being in a position to have to consult our lender(China), before being able to make any major expenditures.
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p>It’s also amusing how people forget about the major recession that we had immediately after 9/11 which was the reason for the tax cuts. While the liberals like to say, the tax cuts for the rich, well the reality of the situation is they are tax cuts for all. It just so happens that 70% of the taxes are paid by 10% of the people and 47% actually pay no federal income tax so there is no tax cut to be had, just a hand out. So if you were to cut taxes paid, those people paying them would be most likely in the top 10%.
“where would be if the Repubs were still in charge” is compelling enough to inspire the base, at least not the working middle class portion of it.
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p>We need to see some real results. We need to see action that may feel like a big risk politically, but in reality is what the nation is looking for. We need to walk past and ignore the Evan Bayhs and do whatever it takes to make this economy work for EVERYONE. Reconciliation to the maximum. They need to kick up some major dust. Why can’t they pass a new tax bill through reconciliation. Isn’t that how they passed the Bush tax cuts?
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p>We need courage. Not more pandoring to a group of voters that don’t even exist.
I fear you are allowing the perfect to become the enemy of the good.
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p>If the GOP was offering an alternative, then I would tend to agree with you — they are not.
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p>The GOP (and Tea Party) is offering the same mantra that they have been repeating for thirty years. We have seen the results.
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p>Yes, we need courage. Yes, we need to see some real results. Yes, we need action.
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p>Do you see any indication that the GOP or Tea Party will offer any of this, especially in comparison to the Democrats?
it doesn’t matter if the net change from Dems is zero and GOP is minus. People want to see some positive, or they’re going to go with the other guys.
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p>The Dems can’t simply say “we may be inept, but the GOP is way worse than that.” The Dems have to be able to say “we’re making positive change, and the Republicans make negative change.”
I agree that we must continue to emphasize the positive steps we’ve taken. I think President Obama has modeled how to do this in his recent press conferences and appearances, starting in Milwaukee on Labor Day.
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p>When we are climbing out of a hole, then I think the three best comparisons are to:
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p>
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p>In 2010, there is no discernible difference between the three; they are equally abhorrent.
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p>We see positive change from the Democrats on:
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p>Sadly, the truth is that the actual in-the-pocket improvement that all of us want to see for working- and middle-class men and women aren’t here yet, because the GOP has so badly wrecked things.
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p>It seems to me that we need to say “We are working to make the economy better for working- and middle-class men and women — the GOP is doing everything in its power to obstruct us.” In that context, I think it’s both true and effective to say “The policies that the GOP offers today are the same policies that created today’s economic disaster. If you want to build a better economic future, you want to vote for the Democrat.”
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p>The Republicans plunged us into a very deep hole the last time they were in charge — the result was a very large net minus. So large that we are still, despite two years of concerted effort by President Obama, digging out. Two years during which the GOP has loudly and relentlessly obstructed, delayed, and sabotaged every effort at every step.
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p>I think its long past time that we Democrats do a far better job of telling the American public who is working for them and who is working against them — and I think we need to name names, quote quotes, and cite dates.
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p>I know that you don’t mean to criticize either President Obama or the Democrats. At the same time, I think when some of us criticize President Obama and Democrats for “not doing enough” (I, too, am impatient), we effectively promote the GOP. I think that’s a terrible outcome, and I think the results of a GOP resurgence will be disastrous.
1 in 7 now living in poverty. Hope and Change…LOL
like jamming through a take over of health care using a rarely used procedural tactic. Doctoring the numbers with the CBO to make it seem like we could spend $1 Trillion dollars and save money…
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p>Oh, but now the CBO has rechecked its math and guess what, it isn’t deficit neutral as previously advertised. Just like the cooked books from Enron, but no outrage from the left…maybe because the “rich” will be the ones footing the bill and the children of the “rich”, the classification of which is swiftly ratcheting downward, will be left to pay the massive debts incurred by a reckless, congress.
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p>How about, cutting spending? Maybe the deficit could be reduced by getting rid of the hack jobs, the duplication of departments and the deviation from the government’s actual role.
So, Christine O’Donnell won in Delaware, does she have a chance in November? Can Jeff Perry beat Bill Keating — the mid-term election in November will be a lot different in terms so turnout than the special election was in January.
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p>I still haven’t figured out for myself if the tea party is more weighted toward
conservative values' however they are presented in a particular race, or just plainthrow-the-bums-out’ frustration. I tend the think the latter.<
p>Join in a chat on this week’s Friday Throwdown at the Boston Herald website, 12-1 today. Tea Time in America?
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p>http://www.bostonherald.com/ne…
and you’ll get a message that Tea Party Protestors are a small band of knuckle dragging right wing racist homophobic nutbags with a half a brain shared by all of them. Maybe people will start to take them a little more seriously, including the Republicans.
as opposed to consulting one’s sense of victimization, one might instead encounter a more nuanced evaluation of the Tea Party’s racism and an actual critique of what they standard for. To summarize that critique: what they stand for is misguided. The sources are out there on the Internet. This is no mere prejudice. Unfortunately.
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p>In this season when the GOP has a large structural advantage, it might be very tempting for Republicans to think that something is true if and only if it is popular.
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p>Decidedly, they are not the same thing.
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p>Our electorate is chock full of low information voters. You know the ones in 2003 who wanted to go to war in Iraq. Little did they know that, at great expense, we be providing Iran with a much-needed ally.
“one might instead encounter a more nuanced evaluation of the Tea Party’s racism”
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p>Since that is an accomplished, incontravertable fact, and all?
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p>I’m not a big fan of Michael Graham, but the title of his book said it all – ‘That’s No Angry Mob, That’s My Mom! I saw dozens of usually uninvolved voters stand and hold signs about taxes and healthcare. The vast majority, KB, not the LaRouche loons. And when they went home, they were told they were racist and spiteful.
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p>I’ve warned on BMG that you all would come to regret your sneering, your dismissiveness, your ill-concealed contempt, for ordinary voters. These non-wonks cast over 40,000 write-in votes (McKenna/Carbone combined, plus the FIVE NEW STICKER QUALIFIERS LIKE KIM ROY AGAINST SEN. MOORE) just for the chance to ‘fire’ ‘Marsha’ Coakley.
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p>I believe they may be uninterested in your nuance, as they see the disdain behind it.
David Brooks’ column today looks at liberal confidence that Tea Partiers once exposed will be too loony or extreme for most Americans and will thus cost Republicans some seats that they would otherwise win.
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p>He indicates that the data behind this assessment aren’t there. Now, it’s possible that negative campaigns might sink Republican Senate candidates in Kentucky, Alaska, and Delaware. It just hasn’t happened yet and the Democrats have not come out with a big negative campaign yet.
The Tea Party movement definitely does have a political narrative. It’s different from either the social conservative or Regan Revival narratives. It’s more than just a throw-the-bums-out story.