If Martin had won yesterday, giving the Democrats the potential for a 60 vote majority in the Senate (assuming Franken also wins), then the Republicans would be able to claim they got railroaded every time a piece of legislation passed by a party-line vote. And if the Democrats could not get closure on a particular bill even with a 60 vote majority (for example if one Democrat defected and voted against closure), then the Republicans would be able to claim that the Democrats can't even muster the discipline to pass their agenda even with a supposedly filibuster-proof majority, and the Democrats would look weak. Either way they could try to use the situation to their advantage.
With less than 60 votes, the Democrats now need to get a couple of Republicans to vote to cut off debate and allow a vote on their legislation. If they have to work to get a couple of Republican votes, so much the better. That will make their achievements look more bi-partisan. And if the Republicans stick together and block too many pieces of legislation, then the Republicans will look like obstructionists, and their popularity will sink even further.
We do not have a parliamentary system, and the Senate was not designed to work like the House of Commons, where all the opposition can do is shout at the Prime Minister. We have a system that is supposed to give the minority some real power. So if the people of Georgia voted with their eyes open to maintain the power of the minority to filibuster legislation, well then maybe all we should say is hooray for democracy!
In reviewing the electoral map (www.electoral-vote.com), it appears that Obama did better than Kerry did four years ago in every state in the country, except for Massachusetts, Arizona, Oklahoma, and West Virginia, where the results were essentially unchanged from four years ago; and Tennessee, Arkansas and Louisiana, where Obama did not poll quite as well as Kerry did.
Massachusetts and Arizona are understandable since they are respectively Kerry's and McCain's home states. The only explanation I can come up with for the results in these other states is not a very pleasant one. Anyone else have any ideas?
What is going to happen to this website? Will it continue to be a place for campaign junkies to gather? Will it morph into an organizing tool for other campaigns or other issues? Can a President Obama use a website like this one?
I will continue to check back here once in a while, but in the meantime, I started migrating my posts to my own site, hopeandchange.net
Please check it out and comment.
I saw first hand this week why Obama won this election. I was one of thousands of out-of-state lawyers recruited to do voter protection work in Ohio. On election day, I visited three campaign offices in Cleveland and met some of the thousands of volunteers who have been working tirelessly to canvass, phone call, and make sure the election was run properly. Why did we do it? We all know that no one volunteer is going to make the difference in the election, no matter how hard any of us worked. But I have no doubt in my mind that this collective effort did make the difference, particularly in close states like Ohio, Virginia, North Carolina, Indiana, Florida and others. There was simply no comparison between the level of commitment and enthusiasm shown by the grassroots-organized field staff in the Obama campaign and the Republican regulars who half-heartedly staffed the McCain campaign.
It seems the only argument McCain has left is the tired Republican argument against progressive taxation. But the way this argument is presented is almost always a lie. McCain is seeking to stir up resentment that the Democrats want to take "your" money (being the hard-working middle class McCain supporters) and give it to some undeserving other people (presumably a bunch of lazy unproductive freeloaders, and probably mostly of a different ethnic background from the audiences at McCain's rallies). In actuality the Democratic program would increase the progressivity of the tax system, but all that means is that higher-income taxpayers would pay a greater share of everything the government spends money on than they do now. That means the military, the national parks, the border patrol, the FBI, agricultural subsidies, and everything else the federal government spends money on. Rich people presumably benefit from all of these government services as much as poor people (many would say more). And even to the extent that government spending is re-distributing money from higher income people to lower income people, what justifies the assumption that all of this re-distribution is from the hard-working rich to the lazy poor? It seems like a lot of this re-distribution might be going from rich people who live on their capital gains or investment income to hard-working people who are only making minimum wage.
McCain gets applause by telling his audience that Obama wants to take "your" money and give it to someone else. The truth is that Obama's program is not threatening to the vast majority of the people listening to McCain. It is only threatening to John McCain himself and people in his income bracket. I would love to see McCain lay out exactly how much he himself would gain under his tax program vs. how much he would lose under Obama's and then make the same comparison for the average person attending his rallies. Then he should also explain to his audience how, contrary to his promises that he doesn't want to raise anybody's taxes, he actually plans to raise their taxes significantly by taxing their employer-sponsored health insurance benefits. Imagine what a McCain stump speech would sound like if McCain started telling the truth. He would have to say, "Don't vote for that Barack Obama. He wants to take more of MY money and give it to YOU people! Vote for me so that I can keep more of MY money, and take more of YOUR money!" If McCain told the truth about the candidates' respective spreading the wealth plans, his audience would probably start dwindling even faster than it already is.
I was more excited about voting this year than I have been since 1972, which was the first time I voted. I drove down to Norwalk on Sunday morning at 8:30 am, and was surprised at how many other people were already there. And not to judge too much by appearances, but most of these voters did not look like McCain supporters.
I doubt that Barack Obama needs my vote to win California, but I still feel that it was vital to vote. It would be rather self-aggrandizing to vote only because you are hoping that you will be the one to put him over the top. If we only voted because we thought we personally might affect the outcome, then elections would only reflect our selfish desires instead of the collective will. And we would have to perceive the system as terribly unfair, because some voters have a lot more of a chance to affect the outcome than others, depending on how close the election is expected to be in each state. But even voters in swing states are unlikely to affect the outcome all by themselves. We should therefore not think of voting as an expression of individual power, but instead as an expression of solidarity with a larger movement. The joy of voting is the joy of adding your voice to the chorus.
To give more practical reasons for voting, consider this: Even though it looks like Obama is going to win this election, it is still absolutely crucial to give as much legitimacy as possible to the outcome of the election, and to demonstrate the enormous size of this movement. We need a landslide of Reaganesque proportions to take the breath away from the opposition. We need for Sarah Palin and her supporters to wake up on November 5 wondering what happened to the country they thought they lived in. We need McCain's hard core followers to understand that they might be the ones who are part of a fringe movement, and that the real America has rejected their viewpoint decisively. We need to make sure that no one can argue that the outcome of this election was a fluke. I remember well the shock of the election of 1980. I was physically sick the entire night. I want Republicans to have that feeling. We also all remember the feelings we had after the contested election of 2000. We do not want an election that everyone argues about for years afterward.
Then after the members of the minority Republican party pick themselves off the floor, we will need to show some sympathy for their fears that this country is headed for socialism and appeasement. Those fears will dissipate once they see that the world is not coming to an end. We also need to have some understanding of their insecurity that the country is being taken away from them, and help them feel comfortable in a multicultural socieity. We need to let them know that even though we intend to move this country in a different direction from the one they would prefer, we still want to include everyone in the process, we respect their opinions, and we welcome them to continue to participate.
It astounds me that we are still hearing about Joe the plumber from the McCain campaign. Joe, who is not even a licensed plumber, is someone who does not really understand Obama's tax plan, but mistakenly believes that it will adversely affect him. He became famous after Obama tried to explain to Joe on videotape that even if Joe were to find himself making over $250,000 per year, he should not be too upset about having to pay 39% of his income in taxes instead of 36% because that is fair. But Joe is not buying that explanation because he has bought into the Republican mythology that taxes are always bad, and that even middle class people should be against taxes because they might be rich some day.
Joe should be thinking about whether it is really smart to finance the US government by excessive borrowing instead of taxes, which will mean that his grandchildren will have to pay these debts back with interest. He should be thinking about whether the recession which has been exacerbated by Republican policies of lax bank regulation may be more harmful to his business than any proposed Democratic tax increases. He should be educated on how the economy almost always grows faster under Democratic administrations than Republican administrations. But instead he is afraid of the tax bogeyman that the Republicans always use to scare voters, and he is seduced by the phony promises of the Republicans that we are going to be able to cut everyone's taxes and we will never have to pay for those tax cuts. Voters like Joe have allowed the Republicans to cut the taxes of the rich by enormous amounts in exchange for a pittance in tax cuts, which end up being outweighed by job and income losses, and by government service cuts that harm people like Joe the plumber the most.
Joe the plumber's story therefore does not even support the McCain program, but since Joe is deluded enough to buy what the Republicans have been selling, the McCain camp is cynically using him to falsely claim that Obama's economic plan is bad for the average Joe. Notice that they never talk about the actual facts of Joe's situation, and in fact protest when the media has attempted to investigate the facts. Instead they are relying on a character who simply thinks he will be hurt by the Democratic program, without regard to the truth. The Joe the plumber that McCain keeps talking about is therefore no more real than the Harry and Louise commercials that were used to defeat Clinton's health care plan in the 90's. But the big lie has worked before, so McCain hopes it will work again this year.
Obama wants to return the top marginal tax rate to what it was during the Clinton era. McCain wants to keep it at 36% after the Bush tax cuts. McCain supporters are accusing Obama of being a socialist because he said that returning to the 39% top tax rate would help spread the wealth around.
What I am wondering is, at what point does the top tax rate become socialistic? Is 36% still a capitalistic tax rate but as soon as you get to 37% that constitutes socialism? Or are they simply saying that moving the tax rate up just moves us down the slippery slope to socialism?
We need to recognize that any progressive tax system involves some redistribution of wealth. Even a flat tax rate asks rich people to contribute more than poor people simply because their incomes are higher. Only a head tax would avoid wealth redistribution entirely. So Republicans are involved in socialism just as much as Democrats as soon as they admit that they would not abolish the income tax entirely. And since just about everyone seems to be on board with the idea of partially nationalizing our banking system, I guess we are all socialists now.
I'm trying not to be overly optimistic, but was wondering if there are some voters who are telling pollsters they are voting for McCain, but when they get inside the voting booth, might vote for Obama. Maybe they don't want to admit in front of their spouse or whomever when the polling people call, that they have some doubts about McCain. Maybe they are afraid their friends will mock them for not being red-blooded American patriots if they suggest they might vote for Obama. Maybe they don't want people to know that they would actually vote for a black guy. But for any of these reasons, I wouldn't be surprised if there are a lot of closet Obama supporters out there in the heartland--people who know that things are seriously off track in this country, and have grave doubts about John McCain's judgment or temper or ideas or age or whatever.
It seems just as likely that there could be at least as many people like that as there are people who would tell a pollster that they are voting for Obama when they are secretly planning to vote for McCain.
McCain senior staffers have dropped hints to CNN that they are giving up on Iowa, Colorado and New Mexico, and going after Pennsylvania. If the Obama campaign were to take this talk seriously, that would mean McCain has decided that to make up for these three states that Bush won in 2004, he must try to take Pennsylvania from the Democrats. This reminds me of Robert E. Lee's strategy for some reason. Is it possible that McCain is just trying to coax the Obama campaign out of places like Virginia and North Carolina, where Obama has been making some real headway, and force him to spend some time and money shoring up Pennsylvania? Should the Obama campaign meet the McCain campaign on the fields of Gettysburg, and hope for a final, decisive confrontation?
Or should the Obama campaign march into Georgia like Sherman, and really throw the McCain people into confusion?
Colin Powell's story on Meet the Press this morning about the grave of a fallen American soldier, who happened to be a Muslim, summed up a vision of an America which practices tolerance, which welcomes people of all ethnic backgrounds, and which tells anyone that they can achieve anything they want in this country. It seems the final straw for Powell in moving him to endorse Obama was the McCain campaign's tactics of sowing suspicion of foreign-sounding names, engaging in guilt by association, and suggesting that only white Christian small-town voters are real Americans. Ask Colin Powell: which campaign is truly pro-American? Which campaign embraces everyone and excludes no one? Which campaign has the chance of uniting us instead of dividing us?
Conservative commentators are already trying to discount the value of the Powell endorsement by attempting to explain it away as one African-American supporting another. While such affinity must count for something--Powell himself said more than six months ago that he was excited to see an African-American running for president, and Condaleeza Rice has said the same thing--it would not have led to an endorsement had John McCain not run the type of campaign that he has. Indeed, trying to explain everything on the basis of racial affinity only reflects the kind of divisive mindset that is leading the McCain campaign to defeat. If your vision of America is narrow-minded, bigoted, xenophobic, and distrustful, then you are bound to judge everyone's actions with that same us vs. them mindset. On the other hand, if your campaign is open, inclusive, and tolerant, then you are going to be able to see the bigger picture. Recent statements by the McCain-Palin ticket reveal that they only have the capacity to play to a narrow subset of Americans. And they can call their supporters the real Americans, or the pro-Americans, or whatever they want, but it is becoming increasingly clear that by alienating everyone else, they are destroying their chance to win the election, or to govern effectively, even if they could win.
Colin Powell may have been torn because he is a Republican and because he has long admired John McCain, but after listening to his vision of the meaning of this country, and how it has been distorted by his party, the choice for him must have been clear-cut.
If John McCain could not improve his standing even after appearing in his favorite Town Hall format, he does not have many realistic chances of winning the election. The electoral map looks absolutely disastrous for him right now. People don't even seem to be listening to John McCain any more. He presented a plan for re-structuring people's mortgages, and nobody even seems to be discussing it. I would almost feel sorry for the guy except that I feel his election would be an unqualified disaster for the country. The first rule of politics is that people vote their pocketbooks, and when the economy is down the way it is, they are going to vote the party in power out of office. Hopefully by landslide margins.
I don't think going negative is going to work. I think the only way the Republicans can win is if something really unexpected happens, or if they manage to steal the election despite the Obama campaign's best efforts. So I think the challenges remaining for the Obama campaign are to get out the vote, keep the enthusiasm level high among Obama supporters, don't take anything for granted, focus on Senate and House races, and watch out for dirty tricks. The media will try to maintain interest in the presidential horse race, and maybe that is a good thing because it will keep us energized, but the election is essentially over.
The McCain campaign promises to get nasty. Their excuse is that nothing else will work. I mean, what do we expect them to do, talk about their approach to the issues? That will not win them very many votes. No, their only hope is to raise doubts about Barack Obama.
The Obama campaign should respond forcefully, of course, but should continue to resist the urge to engage in mud-slinging in return. That would be just what the McCain campaign wants. No less a political expert than John McCain himself said during the primary campaign (in reference to attacks on him by Mitt Romney), that if you get down in the mud and wrestle with a pig, you are going to get dirty, and the pig likes it!
We need to remember that the politics of hope and change have conquered the politics of hate and fear so far this year, and should continue to be successful on election day.
If anything illustrates the point that Barack Obama has been trying to make about our broken political system, the spectacle of today's vote in the House of Representatives defeating the bail-out plan does that. When Nancy Pelosi needed to strike a note of conciliation to get more Republican votes for the bill, instead she starts blaming President Bush for the problem, allowing Republicans to see the vote as an anti-Bush measure. That might have helped a few of those running for re-election this year, but probably gave more comfort to those Republicans voting against it. Then instead of taking some responsibility for defeating this bill, the Republicans get up and blame Nancy Pelosi for persuading them to vote against it. Barney Frank did a good job of pointing out what a bunch of cry-babies these Republicans are. But if the point is to pass the bill instead of giving politicians of both parties opportunities to blame one another, then the entire House of Representatives failed to function properly. And the first responsibility for that has to rest with the Democratic leadership of the House. If they wanted to get the bill passed, they could have put enough pressure on the Democratic members to get enough Democratic votes to pass it. But instead they chose to put partisan interests first.
Here we have a piece of legislation that all responsible parties--the Secretary of the Treasury, the Chairman of the Federal Reserve, the relevant Congressional committess, BOTH candidates for President, and the current President, have all decided is necessary to avoid a financial melt-down. And everyone recognizes that it needs bi-partisan support in order to get the American people on board. But enough congressman now seem to want to make some kind of ideological point, or use this bill as a tool for scoring political points in the middle of a financial crises, that the bill did not pass.
John McCain made a joke of coming to Washington to save the day last week. But maybe there is an opportunity for Barack Obama to help persuade the American people and their congressmen that enough of them better get together to get something done this week, or else we are all in big trouble. This may be extremely difficult for him to do, since House Republicans certainly don't want Barack Obama to get the credit for getting this bill passed. Moreover, at this point passing the bill may require either making some additional concessions to the Republicans, or making it look more like this is a Democratic bill, or continuing the stand-off until enough additional congressmen from either party feel the heat. The House leadership is supposed to be doing what is necessary to accomplish that. But if they aren't up to the task, Barack Obama has every right at least to criticize both Democrats and Republicans for playing politics with our financial future, instead of working together constructively to get something done.
It is a truism to say that history moves in cycles. The depression presented for most people a drastic failure of the capitalist system, and made people recognize that government was absolutely essential for making people's lives better. Most people held onto that world view for about 40 years. But starting perhaps in the 1970's it became fashionable to start thinking of the government as the enemy, and the private markets as infallible. That way of thinking has held on for the past 30 years.
The present crisis of the capitalist system may cause a shift in thinking back from Reaganism to Rooseveltism. People are starting to recognize that private businesses make mistakes, and that government can actually help. When we talk about change, to me this is the big change in attitudes that may be taking place. If so, then of course Barack Obama is moving with the tide of history, while John McCain is fighting against it.
The only silver lining of the continued crisis on Wall Street is that it is good news for the Obama campaign. With the focus back on serious issues, instead of silliness, the Obama campaign is in a good position to demonstrate that it has real answers to economic questions, while the McCain campaign seems to be doing a good job of demonstrating its continued cluelessness. The challenge is for Obama to be able to communicate these complicated issues clearly, in a way that resonates for people, while at the same time avoiding over-simplification, and without getting too downbeat. We cannot have six more weeks of people worrying whether or not the sky is falling. What we need is a continued message of hope, coupled with some serious talk about some difficult issues.
When Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch both fail on the same day, we should understand that something serious is going on. John McCain offers up nothing more than assurances that the fundamentals of the economy are sound and that the taxpayers won't be called upon to rescue every failing firm on Wall Street. But those of us who remember the collapse of New York City in the 1970's may have a sense of what is coming. After New York City maxed out its credit card, it was necessary for the city to demand sacrifices from everyone. The unions had to take less; the taxpayers had to pay more; and services had to be cut way back. Something like this will probably happen in the United States to pay for the excesses of the Bush years. I'm not sure either of the candidates should be scaring people at this point, but they ought to recognize that we are in for continued tough times, and that sacrifices are going to be necessary.
When things start getting bad enough that everyone realizes that drastic measures are necessary, the critical thing is that the remedies must be seen as fair, otherwise society is going to start coming apart at the seams. This is why we can't afford to have a president who is seen as overly beholden to the rich and powerful.
The more I read about Sarah Palin, the more I am starting to think it is a waste of energy to focus attention on her. People are not going to turn against her because the campaign is able to prove that she is inexperienced or that she doesn't know what she is talking about. Millions of voters are instead attracted to her precisely because she is a new face. They already know she is inexperienced but they are rooting for the new kid to succeed. And the more she is attacked, the more her sympathizers will take her side. Any sort of attack will be portrayed as mean and unfair. Even Obama's comment about lipstick on a pig that had nothing whatsoever to do with Sarah Palin was portrayed as an unfair attack on Sarah Palin. So perhaps it is best to just ignore her as much as possible.
Anybody remember Dan Quayle? The man couldn't spell "potato." Lloyd Bentsen absolutely devastated him during the vice presidential debate in 1988, with perhaps the greatest rejoinder of any debate ever ("You're no Jack Kennedy"), but it didn't matter. George Bush the first won anyway, even though very few people had much confidence in his choice for VP.
The election is between Obama and McCain. Obama needs to stick to his themes, and talk about the emptiness of McCain's promises. Sarah Palin is a boon to him in that she makes it harder for McCain to attack Obama as inexperienced. But I'm not sure the campaign gains any ground by pointing out Sarah Palin's obvious weaknesses.
