All Hat & Fake Cattle

If Democrats, Liberals, and Progressives had two ounces of sense to rub together, they'd make Rick "Miracle Man with a Silver Bullet" Perry's campaign for President the poster child for both the policies that got America into all our current messes and the politics of right-wing cognitive dissonance.



In fact, they could go after Perry for not being a fiscal conservative and only playing one when the cameras are rolling. That would, of course, make the "Perry is the Next Bush" politics far more credible than the crap they are likely thinking of running.



Such a focus will be far more credible than the coming campaign against the Confederate States of America some of those never-squander-an-opportunity-to-lose-the-South professional bloggers and activists are doubtlessly planning on running. It would also allow the DLP to actively challenge the very right-wing narratives and political marketing that have been so effective since 1994.



HT: Andrew Sullivan.



Perry is going to be the nominee. He is the embodiment of the current Right-Wing, GOP, Tea Party alliance. He displays all their strengths and weaknesses, and could give President Obama and what Democrats remain an actual foil to run against and turn their own numbers around.



And they don't even have to make stuff up to do it.



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Bonkers: The Democrats & Congress

It doesn't matter that John Boehner is as unpopular as Nancy Pelosi on the generic ballot or whatever.



A. Pelosi's unpopularity all came from one side of the aisle, unifying an opposition and allowing them to sell that unpopularity to independents. There is no similar marketing campaign to turn independents against Boehner.



B. If Democrats are somehow able to make Boehner's popularity an issue in national congressional elections, they'll be asking independents to exchange his leadership for....Nancy Pelosi. In a contest between two incredibly unpopular choices, the incumbent has an edge, and the best marketing has an edge. The GOP has both.



C. Republicans and Independents-who-vote-Republican will not express their displeasure with incumbent Republicans by voting for Democrats.



D. District boundaries matter. Both in how many likely voters live in each district (favors the GOP) and how much campaign infrastructure can be organized for Congressional elections (favors the GOP).



E. You have to have electable Democratic candidates to run in those Republican-leaning districts, and they have to be able to organize campaign infrastructure.



The Republicans will maintain control of the US House of Representatives. They will actually increase their majority. The Senate will be under the control of the GOP, possibly to a supermajority. The President can get reelected, but only if Democrats nationwide start realizing how many disadvantages they are actually facing in 2012.



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National Repercussions

The focus of Peach Pundit is on Georgia state politics, so when the politics of other states show up on the front page, it is generally for a purpose. Here's their thoughts on the Wisconsin recall elections, and if you were looking for a quick summary of what those elections meant, you won't find it put more succinctly:

The election results will likely embolden Washington conservatives to stand their ground in upcoming budget debates.

...

Imagine the crushing effect that a Wisconsin Democratic takeover victory would have had on state-level conservative reformers across the country. After all, our state governments are often the place where new ideas are incubated and then carried to Washington.

I added emphasis to that last part, because that statement by itself is of vital importance to understand why Democrats, Liberals, and Progressives continue to lose elections as well as policy and political questions. The GOP has gone after the states first, have built up their party organization, and have no end of ideas or candidates to bring off the bench into the national spotlight. Those ideas and candidates almost always have a support structure, press, and political review ready when they debut. Not only that, but they already have some idea what opposition to expect and how best to counter or discredit that opposition.



It didn't take long before another Peach Pundit front-pager chimed in:

Republicans are quick to note that Democrats just spent an amount that could run three competitive U.S. Senate races and their result was to pick off two State Senators, one with serious personal baggage. Moreover, they point to the fact that national union interests flooded a major union state with cash and workers, only to have the majority of Republican reformers affirmed by voters.

It isn't just Republicans who should note this dynamic. As I said before, the DLP needed to win or tie the Wisconsin recall elections. They did not. If DLP's can lose to Republicans in Wisconsin over the issue of union-busting and defunding public education, the rout is officially on: in 2012, expect the GOP to add to their number of state legislators, to bolster their majority in the US House of Representatives, to gain the majority in the US Senate, and probably oust the incumbent President of the United States.



And that's just national politics; as far as unions go, this election consigns their current political clout to the dustbin. They are finished under their current operating model. Their two options now is to deny that reality and continue losing competitive elections by inches or come up with a new way of organizing, adding value for their membership, and marketing themselves poltically.



Kyle Wingfield at the AJC puts it more succinctly:

Republicans held onto four of the six — and thus a one-seat majority in the Senate — by an average of 6 percentage points. The cumulative vote was 53 percent to 47 percent in the GOP’s favor.

A union-busting, defund public education GOP in Wisconsin.



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Southern Strategy Endgame

Why won't the Democratic Party regain the US House of Representatives for the next 12 years (at least)? For the same reason the Democratic Party is going to permanently lose Georgia State Senate and House seats in this round of reapportionment. Georgia House Minority Leader Stacy Abrams puts it this way:

They accomplished this by purging the state of Georgia of white Democrats.

Maybe Representative Abrams needs to get together with the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, and together they can tell the rest of the Professional Democratic, Liberal, and Progressive side of the aisle why they keep losing policy and political issues to the other side.



HT: Peach Pundit.



Of course, it would be par for the course for Republicans to point out that this kind of thing is A) the same thing Democratic officials did to the GOP for two generations, and B) that this is simply the logical result of the Voting Rights Act. < / Rolling Eyes >



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Another Left-Wing Narrative

"Poor and Working People make up one politically homogeneous demographic." Another can be added to this: "The Democratic Party represents poor and working people."



Right-wing narratives are easy to spot, and are marketed better. All you have to do is listen to a Republican, a Tea Partier, or Fox News for five minutes, and you'll hear no less than three repetitions of some assumed and politically marketed false choice or oversimplification sold with all the truth of accepted common wisdom.



On the left, they're a little more difficult to spot. One reason is because "the left" is really a loose, bickering coalition of competing interests that can hardly agree on any issue. They usually have to cut deals to achieve policy goals, and can't often get everything they want at once because so many varied stakeholders have to be in on the deal. That's one structural reason why the right-wing is usually the group setting the terms of every political conversation.



Luckily, every once in a while, I'm reminded that a few overarching left-wing narratives do exist that tie a huge majority of "the left" together. In this case, it is a narrative often used in dismay or disgruntlement by someone on the left, who is frustrated that politics are hard, and that the Democratic, Liberal, and Progressive coalition that makes up "the left" must usually factor into their governing philosophies the political priorities of the Libertarian, Conservative, Tea Party, and Republican coalition that makes up "the right."



This is especially true when "the right" has some sort of political power or capital that they are willing to cash in to get policy concessions from "the left." Such policy concessions are not seen as a necessary part of the governing process, they are considered wholesale surrender of all progressive political priorities everywhere and for all time, that will throw us immediately back into the 3rd World poverty and vassalism of the Dark Ages.



Since the Democratic Party so obviously has broken with the Liberals and Progressives in their coalition, the only answer is a third party that really represents poor and working people.



Just like the Tea Party is waiting on a 3rd party ready to represent the wishes of Real Americans (tm).



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Twelve Years

The next time the Democratic Party is able to name a Speaker of the US House of Representitives will be in 2023 at the earliest. Thus are the results of abandoning state parties and allowing the GOP to manage the congressional redistricting process in a majority of the United States.

And remember, that 2023 number is at the earliest. That's if the Democrats figure out right now the importance of reasonable districts, make that an issue with voters, and deliver on those promises. I don't expect that to happen.

Unfortunately, there are too many national Democratic representatives who like consolidating likely Democratic voters in their own districts and protecting their own job security. They will continue to allow the more numerous GOP to draw Democratic voters out of the more numerous Republican districts. While they will keep thier jobs (for a time) their actions effectively kneecap any chance Democrats have to put some of those other districts into play in general elections.

This is why I laugh at those Democrats, Liberals, and Progressives who are gnashing their teeth over Obama's "surrender" on the debt ceiling. The President is a pragmatist, a realist, and got the best deal he was able to get out of an undefeatable, stark raving mad Republican and Tea Party controlled Congress. And the reason he has to make deals like that is because too many of his party's House caucus surrendered the states to the GOP years ago.

That's why next year's "Mediscare" campaign isn't going to swing control of the Congress. And if that doesn't work, the Dems are out of political options. If voters in the majority of Congressional districts don't like their incumbent, they're going to choose another Republican in the Primary.

And what's really going to bake your noodle is the effect this will have on Senate and Presidential elections. The greatest voter turnout occurs when voters believe they have a form of agency, and that their vote matters. If Democratic voters live in a GOP district, and there is no credible Dem challenger, they are less likely to go to the polls and pull the lever for other offices. It may not make much of a difference, but in a country as evenly divided as this one, it could make all the difference.

I read an article the other day that was as much science-fiction as it was political. It was about Nancy Pelosi plotting her return to the Speaker's chair. I wonder if she realizes she'll likely have to serve in Congress for 20 more years before she even sniffs another chance. My money says Pelosi, Hoyer, and Clyburn will be retired Congress long before the next time the Dems choose a Speaker.

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Angry Liberals

Incapable of trying to contain a political loss, some House Democrats are now falling over themselves to multiply the Debt Deal fallout by using hyperbole to make themselves objects of ridicule.

Folks, the Debt Deal was an issue that was 1 part policy to 9 parts politics. This was so much theatre that I now think Washington has more to fear from a writers' strike than Hollywood. "Issues" like this only become issues because the GOP is good at playing politics and making mountains out of molehills, and the Democrats often lose at "king of the (imaginary) hill."

Think about this: after months (if not years) of Tea Party and GOP whining, pouting, getting an inch and taking a mile, victimization mythology, hyperbolic rhetoric, and marketing the snake oil of cultural and economic panic, the Democrats are the ones getting laughed at.

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Rationing

OH NOES! TEH DEATH PANELIZMS BE RATIONING MAH HEALTH CARES!!!

It sure doesn't take long to manufacture a dog-whistle, does it? Of course, Representative Gingrey phrases it like this:

Well, here are the facts: the only proposal to reform Medicare that President Obama has advanced is to employ a bureaucratic panel to ration health care. These 15 unelected individuals comprise a board called the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB), which was first created in Obamacare. It’s empowered to make decisions about critical coverage and payment policies regarding Medicare — without having to answer to the American people.

Wow, those are pretty words. The long form of "TEH DEATH PANELIZMS!" And yet,

These distracting gimmicks have allowed Democrats to avoid discussing the dangers of IPAB and unfairly rendered many Americans ill-informed.

Which brings me to another point regarding political communication. When Democrats, progressives, and liberals lose elections because they don't think they have to convince people to agree with them, their answer is "The American People are Stupid" or "Why Do People Vote Against Their Own Interests" or "WHHAAA! Politics is Hard!!"

On the other hands, the GOP blames Americans' status as "ill-informed" due to "distracting gimmicks" from the Democrats.

Guess who wins more credibility just through phrasing? (HINT: Who controls the US House of Representatives?)

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Too Big for a Nation

And too small for an insane asylum. I like Governor Brown's response to the proposal to create the state of South California: if you don't like it, there's always Arizona.

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The "Message"

At what point do you start disregarding facts entirely and start arguing about made up stuff? The farcical national conversation about the Stimulus could be "Exhibit A."

For what it is worth, the Stimulus was a disaster - a political disaster, especially for Democrats and Keynesians. Facing a looming economic catastrophe as our nation's people collectively maxed out their personal debt financed by banks who were maxing out theirs, the government had to spend money it didn't have to avoid getting us into a depression. That money combined with the vaporization of several trillion dollars in Monopoly-money wealth our nation didn't actually have to create some pretty gnarly budget deficits and government debt.

But, instead of hammering home each stimulus need individually (we need $200 billion for infrastructure - who doesn't like planes, trains, and automobiles?; we need $100 billion for schools - who doesn't think children should read?; we need $2 billion for alternative energy sources - who doesn't want cheap, renewable energy? etc.) the brainiacs in charge decided to completely ignore political reality, lump everything together and not talk about it.

Opponents were suddenly free to parade the words "omnibus" and "stimulus" around while waving the total price tag aloft, declaring we were getting this money from "our children." They found endless anecdotes and examples of "pork." Some were real, some were made up, and some were actually valuable government programs that monitor things like floods. It didn't matter what it was, there was so much in the bill it forced most Americans to rely on the lazy media to tell them. We all know how that turns out.

Now, a media-savvy Democratic Congress could have owned the news cycles and won political victories for two straight years just passing parts of the whole. They probably could have got more money for the big stuff, too. All those folks who later argued "the stimulus didn't work because it wasn't big enough," political problems in their own right, simply didn't understand how to gain political support to justify those additional expenditures.

But, noooo, Nancy Pelosi had a chance to destroy the GOP opposition on a host of issues the majority of Americans already agreed with her about and decided instead to do it in a way that actually turned Americans against the program, the party, and drove them into the waiting arms of a "Tea Party" ready to capitalize off the cultural and economic panic being felt across the country. GOP governors across the land decried the bill while taking the cash, and never paid a political price for it. Why would they? They were counting millions while the "Stimulus Ins't Big Enough" crowd took to the Op-Ed pages of the New York Times and got busy telling Americans the stimulus didn't work and that they needed more money.

That moment of decision, when the Democrats decided they didn't need to convince the American voters to agree with them, was when they lost the national argument over how to do something about the economic collapse. That was the moment they decided they would never get another chance to use Keynesian theories to save this economy, and that they'd never get a political chance to recover until the GOP allowed them to have one. That was the moment they assumed blame for the "stimulus didn't work" narrative, and they are still paying for it today.

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"An Odd Protest Movement"

David Brooks at the NYT wonders if the Republicans are normal. In discussing negotiations over raising the debt limit, he praises the political victories won by the GOP, but worries they will throw all that away at the altar of the Tax-Cut religion.

[We] can have no confidence that the Republicans will seize this opportunity. That’s because the Republican Party may no longer be a normal party. Over the past few years, it has been infected by a faction that is more of a psychological protest than a practical, governing alternative.

I still think the GOP is behaving in this way to more strongly negotiate with Democrats who have proven time and again that they will give away the store in order to avoid Republican political marketing in the next election (that they will face anyway). The GOP has no reason to believe that the Democrats will draw a line in the sand and start making them pay the political price for their own policies because they haven't done so since the Kennedy administration. What evidence do the Republicans have that now will be different?

HT: Andrew Sullivan, and Patrick Appel.

But here's the problem: even if the GOP does take this nation to default, they will not pay a political price for it. They own the national narrative, and can (and will) lay it all at the feet of the Democrats. They control the redistricting process, and have built themselves safe seats under any circumstamances. Past political organization decisions on the part of the GOP (focus on suburbs, exurbs and rural areas) and Democrats (abandon suburbs, exurbs and rural areas) mean the Dems have no political infrastructure in a majority of Congressional districts. The Dems simply have no political answer to make to GOP mandated default. None.

And that gives this "odd protest movement" more leverage than they know what to do with.

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Everybody's Doing It

Gerrymandering, I mean redistricting, is going on across the country. You'll notice how little the actual opinions of the voters comes into play in this analysis. The only time that matters is if the voters get angry at blatant redistricting overreach. Everything else makes it sound like a bunch of horse tradin'.

And, no, I still don't think Democrats will win control of Congress for the next decade, precisely for this reason.

(HT: Peach Pundit.)

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Remember, Folks

< sarcasm >

The economy was sunk by things like this. Pay New York Times editorial level attention to this house of cards built by scant government oversight and supported by Democratic insiders, because this is indicative of the kind of politics Democrats, liberals, and progressives are likely to continue.

On the other hand, pay no attention to the house of cards built by highly financed real estate developers and supported by GOP insiders. This is not indicative of the kind of politics Republicans, conservatives and God-fearing Americans are likely to continue. You can trust them not to do this again, they wear American flag pins on their lapels.

Now, repeat after me, "Fannie Mae was the problem." There is no need to look anywhere else or entertain the idea that dipping your hands in the real estate bubble is historically the most bipartisan American political activity.

Hat tip to Kyle Wingfield at the AJC who reminds us that:

Fannie Mae did all those things that Democrats accuse Big Oil, Big Finance, the military-industrial complex, et al. of doing.

Emphasis mine.

< / sarcasm >

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Why We Can't Have Nice Things

Mayor Landrieu makes the case for building the University Medical Center in New Olreans. This is a response to those who would seek to take the knees out from under the project and benefit their special interests under the cloak of "fiscal conservatism." All at the last minute, once an entire neighborhood has been destroyed and families have been uprooted.

In the larger context, Landrieu's rebuttal exposes the way individuals who play "conservative" on television willingly misrepresent tax figures as a means of providing for their own pork projects and protecting their own clients' subsidies.

For those of you who live in more progress-prone parts of the nation, you may be scratching your head wondering why this has been so difficult for New Orleans. Jeffery puts it in local context:

Ever content to remain the richest club in a poor and shrinking city, New Orleans' socialites resist any and every effort to grow the economy. They dress this conservative agenda up as "preservation" but it's better described as ossification. What gets "preserved" are old buildings, staid pageantry, anything that might make easy packaging for a hotelier or a filmmaker to sell.

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The Show Horse

Finally, some intelligent and thought-provoking analysis regarding the Only News Story of the Year.

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Credibility Matters (Mea Culpa Update)

Well, I guess that's one that Breitbart finally got right. Now this is all we'll hear about, regardless of his long line of previous failures, lies, misrepresentations, and video splices. He and his cohorts are still deeply in the red when it comes to credibility, and they remain so.

Especially because who Congressman Weiner flirts with - even inappropriately and outside his marriage, even over the internet - is only anyone's business if A) he did something illegal or B) if he ran campaigns based on "traditional family values."

Hell, there's a fairly high-value US Senator from the state of Louisiana who survived a much more sordid scandal, and he focuses almost exclusively on family values issues. Of course, he'd never have to feel threatened by the likes of Breitbart & Co....

Though in the age of the internet, I am constantly shocked to find out how many dudes, especially those with high profile jobs, think they can get away with this kind of drunken, college level type behavior. This is bush league stuff, and lacks class. At some point, fellas, it is time to start behaving like grown-ups.

But unless there's something we haven't heard yet, someone's position as a US Congressman is beholden only to voters and the law. Being a classless tool is not a career ending offense last time I checked.

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Credibility Matters

Look, I don't know a lot about New York congressman Anthony Weiner, and I really don't have the time to follow him closely. I think maybe I've seen some video of him in the past, probably regarding the "GOP's War on Women" narrative, and that was the last time I heard about him.

Which is probably why I'm I'm hearing about him now.

Of course, I'd find the whole thing far move believable if the first people to report on the scandal weren't the credibility deficit-running likes of Andrew Brietbart & Co. One of the golden rules of prank-playing is to let someone else discover your handiwork, so your involvement isn't immediately clear to anyone paying attention.

But after Brietbart's reporting on ACORN and NPR were proven to be manufactured, and after the Big Prankster spliced Shirley Sherrod's anti-racism speech into the last Common Sista Soulja music video and called it "news," his involvement with any story degrades its crediblity almost to the point of laughability.

Weiner could have made a solid case that his Twitter and Yfrog accounts were hacked in the first place. Brietbart's almost immediate involvement in the scandal-story only solidifies Weiner's claims, and tells us all we really need to know about this.

How does this get MSM play, though?

I've explained in the past why the GOP, with their lock-step talking points and reliance on winning elections based on emotional cultural issues rather than effective policy goals, is more vulnerable to scandal "coattails" than the Democrats. When your whole party choses to die on the hill of "traditional values," and the folks standing with you on "traditional values" get caught in decidedly non-traditional scandals, you're more likely to all look like fools. You all get hit with the charge of hypocricy, and the photos you took together get rolled out come election time (with typically mixed results based on your voting base).

The Dems, on the other hand, hardly agree on policy matters, much less talking points or stances on values. That's why Democratic sex scandals usually only affect those who engage in illicit behavior, and the staffers who help them keep things covered up. The scandal coattails usually don't extend very far (outside a typical demographic), even though the other side spends limitless talk radio wattage to do so.

And that's the rub. That's why right-wing operatives go to such lengths to try and manufacture scandals surrounding Democratic, liberal, progressive, and left-wing operatives, even when plenty of real (but boring) policy failures exist. These scandals A) play to the base, who love to hear a good scandal like the tabloid followers they are, B) pay the bills, because fake scandals = page views and advertising dollars, and to some limit C) control the narrative, because "Democratic Congressman Tweets Lewd Photo" is a headline people everywhere will remember if it gets picked up by the MSM.

What I can't figure out is why the MSM keeps falling for Brietbart's scams. Then I remember that he and his folks are running five or six or seventy of these types of scams every week, and not even the MSM can keep up.

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Chemical Weapons

I don't know what makes me angrier:

1. The company that has subjected the Gulf Coast to one of the worst environmental disasters in history

2. That the company gets tax subsidies for doing so

3. That Democrats allowed it to happen, and did everything they could to cover it up

4. That Republicans called what happened a "shakedown" and insist we do more to help the company responsible

5. That the big national media is obviously ignoring the story

6. That many Americans are happy to keep believing that everything is OK now

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Seriously

A lot of Democrats, liberals, and progressives need to stop laughing at the current clown car of GOP Presidential candidates and mocking Paul Ryan's budget plan as "unserious."

With the economy still vulnerable, Barack Obama's Presidency is at serious risk in 2012, and it will remain so no matter who the GOP nominates for the top post.

Not to mention the 23 Democratic Senate seats, compared to 10 GOP seats, that will be on the electoral table. Further down the ticket from that, redistricting will be ready to take effect, draining resources from state and local political organizations as candidates in combined districts get in ugly fights over their jobs.

Next time, before you laugh and make jokes, you should envision the possibility that Paul Ryan's budget proposals could be incredibly serious come 2013, as passed by a Republican House and a filibuster-proof Republican Senate, signed into law by President Romnalentbeerich, and upheld by a right-leaning Supreme Court.

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Confused

Democrats have been beaten so badly in Georgia that at least some of them appear to be confusing abandonment of positions for equal rights and reproductive rights with being "socially moderate."

What they appear to be missing, as they scrape for votes they aren't going to get anyway, is the freedom they are provided by not having a chance at winning elections. Because if you can't possibly win and have no chance to govern, you can take completely pure, uncompromising positions on policy and attempt to move the debate.

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