Who could have guessed he wouldn't be able to breathe -- little kids do that sort of thing at slumber parties.
This has bothered me for a while -- what is the proper way to punctuate such a sentence? I feel like there should be a question mark in there somewhere, since the first clause is a question. But putting it at the end doesn't really work, as that's not a question. I usually end up breaking these statements into two separate sentences, or sometimes I'll make it a single sentence with the latter clause as a parenthetical. But neither of these solutions seems entirely satisfactory.
I'm planning to call from cell phone on my lunch break -- I work in an office (hopefully for not much longer!) where calling a senator's office from my desk would be noticed an frowned on. Writing sloppy blog comments, not so much noticed though I imagine it would be frowned on.
People talk about habeas as if it were some legal nicety that we can't be expected to extend to terrorists.
Just to harp on this, because I don't think it can be stressed enough: someone is not a terrorist because they were caught up in a sweep and sent to a prison. When we talk of it as if we were wimpily wanting to protect the rights of terrorists, we forget that it's not as though terrorists all have big pink LEDs on their foreheads. Most of the people in Abu Ghraib seem to have been ordinary people suspected of being terrorists.
This 'Oh, you're soft on terror and you support terrorists' is a stupid line that needs to be called out. We are not omniscient. Arresting someone doesn't make them a terrorist, and for a party that professes never to trust the government because it screws things up they're more than willing to believe that it'll be okay, because we'd never arrest someone mistakenly.
I'll have to call when I get home tonight for the same reason in 8, but I will. Unfortunately, given my exquisitely shitty Senators, I doubt it will make much difference.
I'm full of sympathy for people who live in places like NC, where a call to a senator is an exercise in frustration. One solution, though, is after the frustrating call, to make another call to a friend in, say, Maine. And encourage them to make a call.
21 -> 19 -- and it should somehow incorporate "Pee-Wee's Big Adventure" -- automatic waker-upper-breakfast-makers are kind of a staple element of the genre that encompasses "Brazil", "W & G", and "PWBA".
While you're on the line, would you kindly tell your senator that your friend the Armsmasher is in need of congressional representation? Recently I was disgusted, thinking about our Congress's ineffectiveness, while voting for my "shadow" senator and representative. Not paying my taxes is the only nonsymbolic form of protest open to me.
I've got to hand it to the Democrats. The strategy of allowing the Republicans to "thrash out" their differences on the treatment and prosecution of detainees has played out exactly as planned...for the Republicans. Don't let anyone convince you that you can go to the well too often...that is if you are a Republican and your opponent is a fully inept Democratic Party.
Amidst a trend of favorable polling data and a firestorm of speeches by the President to refocus the voting public on their fear of terrorism, the Democrats stood in the background for the past two weeks and watched what the GOP will call the difficult work of creating legislation that preserves our commitment to civil liberties while at the same time providing our determined President with the essential tools needed to pursue those who seek to kill us all.
OK, perhaps I'm being too harsh. There is a possibility that in the past two weeks the Democrats were able to devise their sixth iteration of a campaign slogan and strategy to roll out with less than 50 days to the election. Perhaps they could call it "Fifty States, Fifty Days...But Never Fifty Percent"! It's catchy, it's succinct, and it may well be accurate come November 8th. Arrgghh!
Everyone should be reading Digby, who been talking about this pattern forever. Anyone who thought this whole thing was anything but theatre hasn't been paying attention.
I called Obama as well. If he actually filibusters this -- even if it's an empty gesture with no chance of succeeding -- he will have my vote basically locked in for the rest of his political career.
What if your favorite democrat gets elected in 2008, and then says the following:
1. Standard interrogations do not seem to be effective
2. getting accurate info will prevent a major terrorist attack in the US - thousands dead
3. The interrogation techniques aren't likely to kill anyone, at least not intentionally
4. no more than 1-5 innocent people will likely be subject to these techniques, and those people will all be arabs anyway.
In the stipulated case, would people think this airstrike a good idea, or a bad idea?
John Cornyn? Kay Bailey? And I learned long ago that Congresspeebles only listen to those who can really hurt or help them. Well, let me see, do I read today Burke and Kaufman about working in the system, or some more Situationist puppet theory?
A commenter over at TAPPED spoke about "giving them enough rope to hang themselves." Maybe wrong famous rope quote.
You have my permission to stop writing comments on blogs and commence the march on Washington posthaste, Bob, while I waste my time writing about what a fucking horrible thing this is and how McCain should indeed be ashamed. Let me know when you and the Multitude are schedule to arrive and I'll hop on a train to join you. Not that I think it's going to do any more good than writing to my Senators, mind you.
One reason I didn't write huzzahs to McCain and Warner a couple days back over their foot-dragging is that I was pretty sure this is how it was going to shake out.
In the short term, I'd still put my money on taking Bush's Congressional rubber stamp away from him as a way to check the most grotesque crap emanating from the White House, so the first question for me is, "How do you swing the most voters in the most critical districts and states?" Part of which is, "How do you not alienate some of those voters?" If you think that's old-fashioned or unimportant, Bob, again, you're welcome to mount a general strike or chain yourself to the Capitol steps or anything else that you think is more likely to stop this from happening. Believe me, if that's what works, you won't hear any bitching about puppets from me.
Dole's office actually answered, which threw me into such a state of shock I could barely tell the young bored woman why I was calling. I have never, in all my years of calling that creature's office and writing her letters, gotten anyone on the phone or ever received a reply.
Burr's office did what they always do. They advised me they'd tell the Senator and in a few weeks I'll get a letter telling me the Senator essentially doesn't care about his constituents' opinions. But at least he (or the polite young people in his office) bother to answer, for all the good it does.
Where's that post on Rove? For every bourgeosie becoming alienated one inner city or rural prole gains hope, and where is the Dem majority gonna come from? Silicon Valley? Academia?
When Dems can't get any corporate or managerial money they will return to their base. Yeah, we should alienate the straights as hard and as fast as possible.
43: It's really interesting that everyone treats the opinions and loyalties of voters as a brute given, ignoring the 50% of people who don't vote. No effort is made to mobilize such people, ever -- instead, we've got to work on massaging the egos of the Christian fundamentalists, since they're the ones who show up at the polls.
So, I sent an email out to the school listserv telling people to call their senators. Some people have already responded saying that they did, and some people writing in telling me that it is disgraceful for me to insult American soldiers by saying that they are torturing people.
Oh, is that who all those people are outside of my house? I'll give them directions to the puppet show right away. Sorry about that. One must be careful when one wields modest influence over perhaps 20-odd readers and teeny-tiny classes of students bound for the Peace Corps and non-profit community work.
Re: the people who don't vote. Again, if you've got some ideas about either how to get them to vote (and some expectation that they wouldn't just reproduce the existing split in the electorate) or ideas about how to get them to do something else that will bring political pressure, don't hold back, please do share. If one of the reasons they don't vote, at least in some cases, is a disgust at the political classes as a whole, what's likely to reach them? The typical constellation of issues and tactics that mobilize the left? Attempts to appeal to moderate/independent alienation from both political wings? I seriously don't know. I'm not real clear on why Bob is so sure it's the first, though--and if he is right, why it hasn't happened yet.
49:I'm warning ya, I am about to go all Leninist on ya, and you escalate to Jane Addams, and this fight over who is more ineffectual and irrelevant could get real ugly.
I can provide a hypothetical answer to that, that is an answer to "if the issues and tactics that mobilize the left are more likely to bring in new voters, why hasn't that happened yet?" (I don't want to make any judgment about the 'if' here.) It'd be because no major party has made any kind of strong commitment to those issues and tactics.
That is, you can't say that Bob and Adam are wrong because the Dems have tried running to the left, and it hasn't worked, because the Dems haven't tried running to the left in any meaningful sense.
51: I was trying to be a bit more complex than that. My point is basically that the people who don't ever vote are in a state where they cannot be reached by politicians, so any attempt for a politician to try to reach them is futile.
There are other ways that one could get through to these people, I think, but this is not a job for the political establishment. Whoever's job it is should really get cracking on it, though.
I should emphasize the hypothetical nature of it: I do not think that alienating the straights is an end in itself, and I do think that taking away Bush's Congressional rubber stamp is the most important thing we can do. OTOH if attempts to appeal to moderate alienation turn into mushy middleism I think that would be ineffective on several different levels. Standing for what you believe in, and being seen to do so, seems more likely to reach that alienation (not that TBurke has said anything that suggests this, but sometimes the idea of moderate outreach can slide in this direction; as when that TNR guy seems to suggest that the problem is that too many women vote Democratic).
56: People seem to mistake the historic support of organized labor for some kind of "leftism" among Democrats. In reality, support for labor was made possible by the alliance between big industry and big labor in the postwar years -- the system known as "Fordism" among irrelevant left-wing nutjobs such as me and Bob. (I apologize for using that term, because I think I just heard a swing voter in Ohio become alienated.)
Most of the Democrats' current support base is basically vestigial -- for instance, what have the Democrats done for labor unions or African Americans lately (even under Clinton)?
In short, I agree with Matt that actual leftism has not been tried in the postwar period.
"My point is basically that the people who don't ever vote are in a state where they cannot be reached by politicians, so any attempt for a politician to try to reach them is futile."
Then your point is garbled nonsense. Really. It's like saying that something that has never been tried is impossible for the reason that it hasn't been tried. Why if man were meant to fly . . .
Ezra's a good guy. Really workin the UHC thing with all he's got. But he has to do it in a neo-liberal economic context. He can say this particular market doesn't work for all the reasons markets don't work, but in the next breath he has to say markets almost always work. And so he really is working a very marginal game.
He needs an ideology. He is holding it in his hand, but can't use it because the of the limits of the discourse. And the Walmart worker will understand the pro-business free-trade Universal Health Care Party can't be trusted.
Completely free markets have never been tried, so we've never seen just how wonderful they would be.
Socialism has never really been tried, so we've never seen how wonderfully it would work.
If we only act with more unrestrained brutality in Iraq, the population will stop supporting the insurgents and they will fade away.
And so on: an appeal to do something which has never been done on the logic that it will only work if it is done in an utterly wholehearted and unrestrained manner, and that any failure is preemptively attributable to the failure to do it wholeheartedly.
I think the Dems *did* try running to the left once upon a time, with a guy named George McGovern, and there's some pretty good evidence that it didn't bring lots and lots of non-voters pouring out of the woodwork. I can think of some Democratic primary candidates who also ran hard and unambiguously to the left over the years, and I don't recall lots of people suddenly waking from their political slumber about them. (Harkin, etc.) Now you can say this is 2006, and a very different situation. You can say, "Oh, but those were all bad candidates." Fine. That doesn't absolve you of having to tell me how you know what you think you know about the 50% of the population that doesn't vote, and why running hard to the left is going to be the thing they're waiting for. What I know from the available information about that 50% (or even a smallish fraction thereof) suggests that they're not so different in demographic or ideological composition so as to think that they're just waiting for the Leftie Signal to light the night in order to head for the polling booths.
All is not lost, though. Here's my own pet theory about the thing which must be done wholeheartedly: the Democrats just have to stop running scared and they need to stop being policy wonks. They need less to come up with a forty-five point technocratic plan for a ten-phased withdrawal from Iraq and more say, "The Republicans are incompetent, untrustworthy, unaccountable in their leadership on the war and everything else, and they're dragging the United States into deep moral evil." Don't mince words, speak clearly and unambiguously. Be authentic.
This may basically translate into "being more leftist", I think. I don't buy that this should include Thomas-Frank style economic populism at this point, in fact, I think the Dems would benefit from some small-government Goldwaterian rhetoric playing to the paranoid style, especially when it comes to civil liberties. But on the stakes and nature of this political moment? Yes, absolutely, the Democrats should be blazing with fire at this point, not holding back any of their punches.
60: Who said it's never been tried? It's been tried over and over, always with the same surprising results: Non-voters don't listen to what politicians say. This is the problem and no amount of politicians saying stuff will fix it.
The point is that it hasn't been tried with a platform designed to motivate those people. Those people meaning those who, if they voted, would vote Democratic. It doesn't require voodoo to figure out who those people are.
Rock the Vote campaigns don't work because we've been rocking out to the middle, is the point. The people who don't vote aren't irrational; they're not voting because their needs aren't being addressed by either candidate.
And you use this as evidence not to address them. Which is garbled nonsense.
64 should perhaps be amended to 'Non-voters don't care about politics.' Pretending this is not necessarily the case is a good way to avoid fixing the problem.
I don't know whether it is possible to make established non-voters care about politics, but I am quite sure that there are no political means to do it. I think political literacy is a long-term educational process.
Either that or we can figure out a way to bribe people to vote. Maybe a van service to ferry people to the polls, and a free ice cream on your way home.
I faxed Hillary and Chuck. I'm not actually sure that the fax to Chuck's office went through. Our office has one of those combination fax/scanner/copier/Martian death ray devices, and sometimes its behavior is inscrutable. The problem is that your account sometimes times out before its finished dialing, so you don’t get the little printed report. You do hear the always pleasing fax sound, though, and sometimes the screen says “ok.” So I either faxed Chuck Schumer or obliterated Mars. I guess we’ll see on the news.
I prefer faxing to calling, because even a staff assistant can intimidate me on the phone and make me feel in articulate. I also have had some interesting results from directly faxing politicians.
63: But the Democrats we have are not going to be blazing like fire and they are definitely going to pull their punches -- any more than they're suddenly going to shift toward the left. So this is all pretty academic, and Tim Burke is as impractical as Bob McManus.
"I don't know whether it is possible to make established non-voters care about politics."
Yes, it is. One way is to appeal to their homophobia and confused religious beliefs. But that one's already been taken, se let's think of something new.
63:Intellectuals and pundits should not play tactics. The job is to provide "intelligence" for strategy. Like Thomas Frank. Like Galbraith. Where the fuck is my Galbraith, attacking the powerful, hated by the moderates? Oh, Thomas Frank.
Rock the Vote campaigns don't work because they don't appeal to people who don't care about politics.
Look, what do you think the difference between nations with 90% voter turnout and nations with 50% voter turnout are? Just that no political parties in the latter nations are trying to reach non-voters? I doubt it very much. There are major educational factors at play here, which is why I compared it to literacy in the first place. (If there were a word for people who know how to read but have never read a book voluntarily, I'd have compared it to that instead.)
But I am certainly willing to listen to what a campaign that targets non-voters in a way that has never been tried before would look like.
"Rock the Vote campaigns don't work because they don't appeal to people who don't care about politics."
A is A because A is A is A. You're arguing that people who don't care about politics can't be motivated to care because they don't care.
Whereas I am arguing that yes, it might be possible to make them care if we actually addressed their needs. And I don't mean just economic needs. I mean get inside their heads.
But you are arguing that it's futile to try--based on what? Please provide an argument.
That doesn't absolve you of having to tell me how you know what you think you know about the 50% of the population that doesn't vote, and why running hard to the left is going to be the thing they're waiting for.
See 58 and the parenthetical in 56. Din't say I know.
I think we agree on the main prescription, but I feel like arguing a bit anyway. So: I don't think the classification with 'socialism has never been tried' is fair, because what I'm saying is that running to the left has barely been tried at all, since McGovern. McGovern doesn't prove much; he lost big in an unfavorable environment, but Democrats running to the center have also underpeformed.
As for the Leftie Signal, if I were arguing for that strategy, I would point out that you don't need to mobilize all the 50% for that to work. You just have to mobilize ones who will be on your side. If, for instance, Latino people voted at a much higher rate, Texas would be much closer to a Democratic state. [pwned by 67]
Look, what do you think the difference between nations with 90% voter turnout and nations with 50% voter turnout are?
Laws that mandate voting?
More or less in agreement with Burke here. It depends on what the average non-voter looks like, and I don't think there's a sizeable proportion of leftists staying home because the party isn't addressing their needs. The strategy worked for the right, but there are a lot more fundamentalists than there are peaceniks.
Isn't Rock the Vote aimed at young voters? The same young voters who couldn't find where my section was because they didn't remember the room so they stayed home?
Leftists are welcome to do the same. Go to it, cowboy. Or, er, did they already try that, too? Or is that another one of the things that me and my Moderate Posse of Lemmings have managed to prevent from happening?
I don't accept the idea that Bush won in 2004 by appealing to non-voters. Everything I have read about the recent Republican campaigns suggest that they do the opposite: targeting their message to sympathetic voters, and making sure they show up to vote, with a precision that the Democrats can't match. Of course I'd be happy to read an article revealing that Bush won only because of people who have never voted in a Presidential election before.
By the way, we may be talking about different kinds of non-voters here; there are the 30% of people who never vote in any election, and then there are probably another 30% who vote sometimes but not always. The latter are eminently reachable and are the most fertile ground for any campaign; the former are, unfortunately, not. I believe Democrats would be getting more votes if they focused more money and attention on making sure likely voters actually vote (vans! vans!) and less attention on things that try to persuade, like TV commercials and making centrist noises.
Left a message for Sen. Reed. Staffer at Chafee's office said the Senator is reserving judgment until he sees the exact language, but that "he's been with McCain on this, against Bush." We'll see.
52: Non-voters. I used to have a link to a study of non-voters analyzed demographically and in terms of reasons given for not voting. I went through it and a considerable proportion of the poorer non-voters gave objective impediments as their reasons: transportation problems, conflicts with work, etc. Richer voters tended to be more in the complacent / can't be bothered category. Anyway, a first step would be to remove as many impediments as possible to registration and voting. The long term trend has been to make voting more difficult, and Republicans are very actively at work here.
I am convinced that the Democrats are not making the effort in this area because the dominant group does not want to do the things they'd have to do to motivate the poorer non-voters. DLC-type spokesmen characteristically slip back and forth between "This is the right thing to do" and "We need to do this to get votes" depending on who they're talking to. They have fundamental anti-populist, anti-dove convictions, and I believe that they would not want to make a populist (or a dovish appeal) appeal even if they could win that way.
Getting to poorer non-voters would require finding a few issues that would motivate these people (health insurance, minimum wage, and perhaps other labor issues), plus convincing them that we actually can deliver on these issues (a big Demo problem there), plus a multi year all-year effort at getting the word out.
Such a program would be a good place, BTW, to hire the sharpest locals you can find, regardless of credentials, (instead of Ivy League whiz kids) and paying them what is regarded as an OK wage in their community.
I've had it drummed into me that American demographics are middle-class by now and populist appeals can't work, but elections are won by one percent here and one percent there. Even if the genuinely poor demographic is only 20-30% now instead of 60-80% as it once was, from that 20% you might be able to get the margin of victory.
63, etc. One of the big weaknesses of Democratic outreach is that it is almost all concentrated in the immediate pre-election period. Republicans have that, but also get out their mesage 365-days year for 4 years.
Some populists do say, and all anti-populists accuse them of all saying, that all you need to do is put up a charismatic left candidate and the voters will magcally appear. There needs to be a lot more grass-roots yearlong effort than that.
You don't go to the alienated and win them over with:"Your alienation is unjustified. The system works. Look at me, I am doing fine." Now tactically or strategically, maybe if you run on alienation you will lose part of the system.
But I guess the most important thing is authenticity, whether you believe the system is working, how much you are alienated.
My thought is that it's always going to be an unfavorable environment for some forms of leftism in the United States. Which is an ancient argument on the American left. It's true that being "moderates" has lost too, just more slowly and anemically than I think a hard-left McGovern type national campaign would.
What I think has lost about the "moderate" Democratic consensus is not that it is "moderate" but that it is technocratic, that all the national Democrats are well-meaning policy wonk dweebs who signify to most people as inside-the-Beltway elites. This is where the move-to-the-left argument is pretty sound: you've got to do *something* that puts you in touch with people who are not technocratic elites. As folks here have pointed out, some of the things that might do so have already been taken by the cultural conservatives, and we wouldn't want to do that anyway. But anything deeply felt, authentically voiced, something that people believe in a kind of Jimmy-Stewart sort of fashion, will do. Hell, just asking people straightforwardly, "What kind of country do you want to be? A nation of torturers and tyrants, or a people who are trying to live up to a higher ideal?" would do.
Wait, now. McGovern wasn't leftist. He was anti-war. One problem there is that he was a Democrat against a war that had been started and executed by a Democrat. No Democratic candidate has that albatross this time around. This is George Bush's war and everybody knows it, because he's done nothing else for five and a half years except proclaim himself a war president.
The last honest-to-God Democratic nominee who ran to the left was FDR (or maybe LBJ). We've been running to the right going on three decades now and have gotten just about nowhere with it, unless we've had the most talented politician in a generation heading the ticket, helped by a third-party candidate who took a serious chunk of votes. That situation isn't likely to repeat itself any time soon.
There's a nearly unavoidable tendency to try to make this election fit the pattern of some past one, but I don't think it's a very reliable forecasting strategy. As to the great party of non-voters, I don't have any data to back this up, so take it for what it's worth, but I suspect they would break down pretty closely along the lines of the folks who do vote, if they gave a rat's ass. Which, for the most part, they don't.
I was in Pennsylvania in 2000. And in Wisconisin in 2004, so that's really not my fault.
Observation from the 2004 campaign: The Democrats could probably use even more vans, and MoveOn really needs to hire some people who know what they're doing as far as GOTV goes. (Actually the 'need more vans' may come from observing MoveOn, in which case never mind.)
This is a little off-topic, but do you think that some people are turned off by the idea of "working families" because they think that means reinstating child labor? (I'm just mentally cataloguing all the nice moderate things Democrats say to try to appeal to people in a Republicanesque way.)
I don't go to church. I have never gone to church, and I'm confident that I make the right decision in not going to church. I think going to church would just be a waste of my time. I prefer not to even think about going to church.
If MTV started a 'Rock the Church' campaign I seriously doubt it would impact me, because my decision not to go to church isn't because of lack of information or anything like that. I'm fully aware of church, I just don't care about it. I don't think this is the same as saying that there is no way to get me to go to church because I'm not interested in it; but if you want me to change my mind, talking about church in new and different ways is not going to do it.
Here is a good article about the Republican voting database. I didn't mean to say, by the way, that there is no way the Democrats could ever match it, just that they have not done so in the last 3 elections.
94: I don't think so. If it turns people off, it's because they hear 'poor' or 'single mom' for 'working families', and everyone believes that they are above average or will soon be there with hard work.
I don't mean to say we couldn't use new vans, and that the transportation issue isn't important. I was in South Dakota in '04, fwiw, on an Indian Reservation. Didn't work out so well, but there was a huge turn-out, and I met some interesting folks.
Sure. I just don't think in this case, the word is being used that way. Indeed it might count as an attempt to reclaim the word "family" for the home team.
Neil, here is why your atheism is not just like people who don't vote:
You do not believe in a god who wants you to go to church. Without the influence of said deity, church has no function, aside from a social one.
People who don't vote, I'm guessing their choice is not based on a lack of belief in the actual mechanics of voting, or the political institutions influenced by said vote. I'm sure there are lots of reasons why people don't vote, but none of them are your reason for not going to church.
The analogy was so poor, I frankly wonder at your sincerity.
Clown, I think you are talking about the Working Families Party in NY which as I understand is a way for lefty left types to vote Democratic while showing support of lefty policies, while Kotsko is talking about the national Dem party's occasional use of phrases like "supporting America's working families." Though looking through the google results for the phrase, it seems to be a union catchphrase kind of thing as well.
The worst thing about the McCain business is that it makes for cynicism about the idea of heroes and uncompromising men of principle in politics. I never thought he was much more than hype about that, despite real suffering on his part. But I'm well-informed. Saying that there are many senators who look less heroic but are in fact able to stand up better doesn't help. We've been trapped inside this hero-narrative for a long time, and neither its continuation nor its collapse will be good.
Even then, you are remarkably sure of the immutabilty of your current preferences and beliefs. That's called closed-mindedness. Other people, however, are succeptible to change.
105: I think your guess about why people don't vote is exactly wrong, which is why I chose the analogy I did. A lot of people in the US don't believe that there are valid reasons that they should vote, or that voting makes any difference. (I think you were making motions towards this point in 76.) If we want to increase voter turnout, this is the attitude that needs to be eliminated. But hey, at least we got to the heart of the disagreement!
MoveOn: as far as I know, MoveOn passes through like a flock of birds and leaves nothing behind. It seems almost to be a lark for college kids. If half their campaign $$ had been put into yearlong outreach, the campaign would have suffered very little and the long-term effects would have been great. (Though, sorry to keep harping on this, less so if they hired recent college kids for the outreach.)
I am just not strongly motivated by this particular election. Bush has backup, and I don't think the Dems can gain enough to even embarrass the Right. I think so many around are going to be disappointed.
I am interested in those historical moments when "liberal" institutions got created or solidified. 1932, 1950-55, 1965-75. Explanations for why the "left" has never taken hold in America include of course racism/slavery and heterogenity(?)/immigration. Immigration as a political factor has brought in generations of leftist leadership. But it seems like many of the policy advances occurred, with a lag, after the borders were shut down. Recent immigrants usually are a Dem base constituency, so maybe we have to lay low and let Republicans do that dirty job. And the prevailing ideology is so screwed up that an argument can't be made on the left.
But is the kinda things I think about. Not a house seat here and a Senator there.
In my impression, people who don't vote don't have reasons for not voting. If you ask them "why don't you vote?" they'll grab whatever excuse is closest at hand, like my vote doesn't make a difference, or I can't get to the polling place, but if that excuse weren't available, they'd just find another one.
People don't vote for the same reason they eat a bologna sandwich for lunch. It’s all habit. And people won’t change their habits even when it is in their own obvious self interest. A doctor friend of mine recently had to tell a diabetic patient that he had a choice, either stop eating potato chips or loose a leg. The patient said he would loose the leg.
If half their campaign $$ had been put into yearlong outreach, the campaign would have suffered very little and the long-term effects would have been great.
This is the considerable question that the DLC is facing under Dean's leadership, isn't it? Whether it's better to spend vast amounts on November races in hopes of spurring or abetting a turnover, or dedicate money to long-terrm strategic building? Without knowing all the issues, admittedly, I support the latter: I tend to think that the issues are fairly set in people's minds, and our GOTV mechanism both fairly inept and unlikely to be resolved by the sort of strategies that 2006 spending would involve.
117: If Democrats get subpoena power, things will really change. Even if Pelosi wimps, Waxman won't.
115: Never overestimate the voter. I've known a fair number of people who refused on principle to vote, but that's me. It's not an enormous demographic.
Outreach and removing impediments are the things that need to be done.
Making registration easier would help. I'm not the most politically aware of people, and I only registered to vote when I moved up here because someone knocked on a door and gave me a form and a pen.
One of my bitches about Clinton-Gore is that they were the ones who realized that it was possible to get around the rules on "soft money". "Soft money" was supposedly spent on party-building (long-term, year-round) rather than electioneering. But it was possible to cheat, so they did. And as a result, the party weakened.
People like this make not make me feel less lonely, but it helps with the crazy evil stupid stuff.
Every point in Graber's piece may not agree with me, but it does argue against most of Burke's points. For example:"Democrats are running as the party not as bad in vaguely specified ways as the Republicans." re:89. Maybe Burke would argue with the "vaguely" but the "less evil less torture" campaign ain't even gonna work.
I agree that the democrats should go more populist. I think Edwards does this well. Populism allows for a lot of leeway as to actual policy.
The torture debate points out how "moderate" is ambiguous. If the pole positions are "torture" and "no torture"; is the moderate position "some torture"?
I also don't see the democrats as being that out of it. The 2000 election was a coin flip. If Gore would have won, he probably would have won again in 2004. It easily could have been the republicans who would be sweating things.
Legal Realism 101 While I am at Balkin's, Sandy Levinson uses Ernst Fraenkel and Carl Schmitt to discuss John McCain. The "Dual State".
I really do believe Republican are using the 30's and 40's as their guide, and are actively seeking depression(deficits) and World War(Iran) to transform America irrevocably, or at least for generations. The stakes are way too high for moderation. They always are.
(PS:For those mad at the Democrats for their silence, the McCain vote is going to take place while bombs are bursting in air red rockets etc. They are very bad, but better informed and not stupid. Remember, beside the Iraq authorization, Bush also got his 2nd round of tax cuts and won seats in the fall of 2002. We are way outplayed)
One call to Boxer's office: no answer
One call to Feinstein: answered by earnest young thing who promised to convey message.
By-the-by - how many of you are aware that a teensy little provision of the McCain-Feingold Act makes it *illegal* for those leaving Federal civil service employ to say anything negative about the Administration for a year after they quit/retire? No whistle-blowing, no opinion, just sit there quietly. Or else.
I e-mailed Bingaman and Domenici. Bingaman's usually good on these issues; Domenici's a lost cause (he's already issued a press release supporting the compromise), but it's worth a shot.
Bingaman was a main player on this issue last fall, and likely will be again. No harm in reminding him, or getting friends to remind him, over the weekend.
Jesus, Bob, if your argument is "lay low and wait for the Republicans to fuck up on immigration so that liberal institution building can take place", how different is that from my "don't go around half-cocked like a bunch of left-wing bohemians, be patient and lay decency traps, and think about institutions and how they get built and reinforced"? This is just one of those Green Acres things: "I prefer my penthouse view/Darling I love you but give me Park Avenue", etcetera.
Thanks for the post LB; I called Senators Durbin (202-224-2152) and Obama (202-224-2854).
Neither has released a position on the bill; I relayed my oppositon, citing the three reasons you listed -- the rewriting of Article 3 so that only grave breaches are criminal and that the removal of habeus corpus and habeus jurisdiction provisions.
Sen Durbin's office confirmed that the language in the proposed legislation protects the president and US operatives from the acts they've been committing.
This bill could be voted on next week -- I second the request that everyone to call their senators.
137:Tim, it is only one of my arguments for one scenario. but the difference is having 50 years of the radical left working in the fields and up in Liliputian penthouses ready to go in 1932. Now Emma and Eugene didn't get White House jobs, but their agenda, which was not a moderate agenda, trickled down.
Maybe in ten years Ezra and MY will have those WH jobs, or someone in DC who reads them, and they will have a base that believes Walmart is their lot in life and an intellectual leadership that has been telling them that Walmart is the natural order of things. And instead of Social Security, they will enact HSA's.
"So, what do you purport to do? Posted by: DRR | Sep 22, 2006 8:21:10 AM
Bitch about it Posted by: Fred Jones | Sep 22, 2006 8:25:40 AM
Mainly, that's true ;-) ...Ezra"
Ezra did point to an article about anti-trust changes today. But ya know, I don't sense the confidence and determination of a Debs or Ruether. I just don't feel it. That is not Ezra's fault. His role isn't self-defined, he doesn't set the rules.
MY is a different problem, but in his foreign policy world, the discourse is limited to rational actors, enlightened self-interest, realism, internationalism.
When Bush screwed up Iraq, I think Matt was genuinely shocked, and could only say:"WTF? That's stupid and crazy!"
Torture, war on Iran, the unadulterated evil of the GOP, and the fecklessness of the Democrats are all depressing. Not a good way to start the New Year. Won't somebody post a picture of a kitten?
My Senators are Warner & Allen. Virginia doesn't link voter and party registration. But I have given money to Dems only and voted only in the Democratic primaries.
I'll call them, but I figure my opinion counts for very little with them.
I miss having cats around. The allergies may have contributed to my melancholy, but it may just as well have been the general squalor surrounding me in my apartment.
Here are some cat pictures that give the lie to those who claim that leftists aren't busy organizing.
Bob:We got torture!
Liberal:Bad guys!
Geneva don't work?
Bad guys!
Senate won't stop
Bad guys!
Two party system Dems don't win
Almost as bad guys?
But aren't the institutions there to stop the bad guys?
Don't hurt my institutions! I need them!
Take you teddy and go to sleep, my son. It was only a nightmare.
147: Kotsko, can my kid move in with you? I can't have cats until he's gone, and as you are apparently cat-deprived, it would make my life so much furrier. Even if cats = Satan.
156:Ok, stras old buddy if you are having trouble keeping up, I'll take it real slowly.
at 148 I wrote a little political theory in the form of a dialogue between a daddy and a suddenly frightened child which, though intentionally silly, childlike and crude and containing few words of more than two syllables, you apparently had trouble understanding, calling it "free verse gibberish" at 149. The general gist is that the existing institutions and processes designed to protect us from tyrannical leaders have failed us miserably and predictably, IMO. In the last two lines I compare a blind faith in liberal institutions in themselves to a child's teddy bear, and affectionately posit that though useless as protections, can be useful as illusions, providing comfort for those who need structure and an optimism about progress, society, and the good will of men.
In response to your pungent literary criticism at my formal failures, at 154 I jokingly offered to write political theory in a very advanced form. (Strauss and Schmitt are 20th century political theorists, a sestina is an long very difficult poetic form of 49 lines) but in some self-deprecating humour, I admitted by implication that such an ambitious project was beyond my abilities, that admission in the form of a substitute offer of oral sex, in no way serious. I am not gay and you are really fucking stupid and ugly.
Not offended, just bemused. Bob, who exactly are you're responding to, with your bold-if-incomprehensible broadsides against those with "blind faith in liberal institutions"? Are these actual people you can name, or figments of the McManian imagination?
Geneva don't work?
Bad guys!
Senate won't stop
Bad guys!
Two party system Dems don't win
Almost as bad guys? ...I am not gay and you are really fucking stupid and ugly... And I won't engage you in substantive conversation
Actually, Bob, I would like to hear something substantive from you once in a while. I see you comment on a few people's blogs, and I hear you make dire-but-vague predictions about totalitarian Republican governments scheming to gut the New Deal, and I hear you making even more dire, more vague talk about guillotines and the terror. I tend to assume your line goes a bit beyond the Kos school of strident partisanship, but you maintain a line so purposely ambiguous it's hard to say whether you're talking about molotov cocktails or just unusually detailed protest puppets. So really, what's the deal?
Jesus, SJ, where you been? Totalitarian Republicans trying to gut the New Deal is old news. McManus has nothing to do with Kos, and no resemblance at all. Being ambiguous is OK at Unfogged.
Jesus, SJ, where you been? Totalitarian Republicans trying to gut the New Deal is old news.
But Bob seems to think this is their primary goal - in other words, that the GOP is willing to lose a few elections in order to sink Medicare and Social Security. This sounds patently crazy to me. If Republicans simply wanted to scrap the New Deal, they could've done it already; Bush's privatization scheme collapsed once it became clear that it was increasingly unpopular (and thus, that Republican candidates wouldn't be able to get away with passing it).
Being ambiguous is OK at Unfogged.
Ambiguity is one thing, but I like to know what ideas are being expressed, especially when someone repeatedly makes a big deal over the fact that his ideas are different/purer/more extreem than soft-bellied liberal ideas.
The whole binary dialectic thing where you're either on the page or you're off the page has been totally transcended. There are 8 million pages in the Unfogged city. This is some of them.
I supprot making it easier to register to vote, but this is a hard sell. Maine has same-day voter registration, and it works well for them. If you're already registered with a particular party, you can't switch after X days before an election, but if you're not registered at all, you can just walk in and vote. No real problems with voter fraud.
There was a ballot initiative to allow this in California. I voted for it. The problem with that, though, is that all of the people who were voting had managed to register and get to their polling place, so they weren't likely to think that there was much of a problem with the current system.
I may just be projecting my own issues onto other people, but I think that a real, honest-to-god commitment to universal healthcare might help. None of this "expanding access to healthcare and making it more affordable."
I talked to a woman the other day who I was trying to get to vote for Deval Patrick. (I'm working on getting her to vote in the general election, but she says that she doesn't really follow the issues.) She's on disability (psychiatric, I'm guessing) and working part-time. She would love to work full time, but she would lose her health insurance. I don't know how large the disabled community (and their families are)--and there are a lot of people who don't give a shit about them--but there are a lot of people who make decisions because of health insurance issues. real commitment to universal healthcare in a significantly streamlined system could do a lot of good.
If you don't like single-payer, then consider managed competition. I think that 5 or 6 different options would be plenty.
I recently looked at forms for getting assistance, and the number fo programs are really mind-boggling, and they all cover different things. I'm smart, and I've got patience, but it's very confusing.
Katherine at ObWi notes that Arlen Specter and Carl Levin are co-sponsoring an amendment to restore habeas. Worth calling your senator to ask them to support this amendment. Though a call asking for a filibuster is probably also in order. I think these should be two separate calls as the requests are a little incoherent coming at the same time.
Did you read this morning's NY Times editorial about Stephen Hadley's backpedaling on the compromise?
Posted by Clownæsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 7:46 AM
Drum called this one a couple of days ago. I said as much to my daughter yesterday morning: by now we have no excuse for being surprised
Posted by I don't pay | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 7:50 AM
Who could have guessed he wouldn't be able to breathe -- little kids do that sort of thing at slumber parties.
This has bothered me for a while -- what is the proper way to punctuate such a sentence? I feel like there should be a question mark in there somewhere, since the first clause is a question. But putting it at the end doesn't really work, as that's not a question. I usually end up breaking these statements into two separate sentences, or sometimes I'll make it a single sentence with the latter clause as a parenthetical. But neither of these solutions seems entirely satisfactory.
Posted by Brock Landers | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 7:52 AM
God, how I hate John McCain. In some ways, I hate him far worse than Bush. Straight Talk Express, my ass.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 7:53 AM
Brock -- a q. mark would have been fine before the em dash in that sentence, or omitted as it stands.
Posted by Clownæsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 7:54 AM
5- Really? Both those answers seem wrong to me. But that's why I'm asking.
Posted by Brock Landers | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 7:56 AM
You've all got time to comment -- did you call?
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 7:56 AM
I'm planning to call from cell phone on my lunch break -- I work in an office (hopefully for not much longer!) where calling a senator's office from my desk would be noticed an frowned on. Writing sloppy blog comments, not so much noticed though I imagine it would be frowned on.
Posted by Clownæsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 7:59 AM
People talk about habeas as if it were some legal nicety that we can't be expected to extend to terrorists.
Just to harp on this, because I don't think it can be stressed enough: someone is not a terrorist because they were caught up in a sweep and sent to a prison. When we talk of it as if we were wimpily wanting to protect the rights of terrorists, we forget that it's not as though terrorists all have big pink LEDs on their foreheads. Most of the people in Abu Ghraib seem to have been ordinary people suspected of being terrorists.
This 'Oh, you're soft on terror and you support terrorists' is a stupid line that needs to be called out. We are not omniscient. Arresting someone doesn't make them a terrorist, and for a party that professes never to trust the government because it screws things up they're more than willing to believe that it'll be okay, because we'd never arrest someone mistakenly.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 8:00 AM
I'll have to call when I get home tonight for the same reason in 8, but I will. Unfortunately, given my exquisitely shitty Senators, I doubt it will make much difference.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 8:12 AM
10 -- another good reason to succumb to cellular, 'Po.
Posted by Clownæsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 8:20 AM
Lots o' kitties today! This place is feeling more and more like a cathouse.
Posted by Clownæsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 8:21 AM
I'm full of sympathy for people who live in places like NC, where a call to a senator is an exercise in frustration. One solution, though, is after the frustrating call, to make another call to a friend in, say, Maine. And encourage them to make a call.
This is still winnable.
Posted by CharleyCarp | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 8:29 AM
Anyone seen the movie "Brazil"? It was on TV the other night. Frighteningly prescient.
Posted by text | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 8:50 AM
I just mean with regard to the flat screens, and the dawdling on them at work.
Oh, and the incompetent fascism.
Posted by text | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 8:55 AM
(Also the grotesque plastic surgery.)
Posted by Clownæsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 8:57 AM
I just called Obama's office. You know, that's the first time I've ever done that. Sent tons of emails, but never actually picked up the phone.
Posted by m. leblanc | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 8:58 AM
So, thanks, LB.
Posted by m. leblanc | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 9:00 AM
and the automatic waker-upper-breakfast-maker, and the problems with said device.
Posted by text | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 9:00 AM
11 - Not good enough. I hates them.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 9:00 AM
Wasn't that in "Wallace and Gromit"?
Posted by Clownæsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 9:00 AM
21 -> 19 -- and it should somehow incorporate "Pee-Wee's Big Adventure" -- automatic waker-upper-breakfast-makers are kind of a staple element of the genre that encompasses "Brazil", "W & G", and "PWBA".
Posted by Clownæsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 9:02 AM
While you're on the line, would you kindly tell your senator that your friend the Armsmasher is in need of congressional representation? Recently I was disgusted, thinking about our Congress's ineffectiveness, while voting for my "shadow" senator and representative. Not paying my taxes is the only nonsymbolic form of protest open to me.
Posted by Armsmasher | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 9:02 AM
Nevertheless I called Senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson's office, so pissed in the wind for inalienable human rights I have.
Posted by Armsmasher | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 9:08 AM
23: If I'm guessing your location correctly, you also have those charming "Taxation without Representation" license plates.
Posted by Steve | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 9:09 AM
thanks, LB--
I called both of my senators, at both local and DC offices, and left messages telling them to go to the mats in opposition.
Posted by kid bitzer | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 9:12 AM
Balkinization on the meaning of this.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 9:14 AM
I've got to hand it to the Democrats. The strategy of allowing the Republicans to "thrash out" their differences on the treatment and prosecution of detainees has played out exactly as planned...for the Republicans. Don't let anyone convince you that you can go to the well too often...that is if you are a Republican and your opponent is a fully inept Democratic Party.
Amidst a trend of favorable polling data and a firestorm of speeches by the President to refocus the voting public on their fear of terrorism, the Democrats stood in the background for the past two weeks and watched what the GOP will call the difficult work of creating legislation that preserves our commitment to civil liberties while at the same time providing our determined President with the essential tools needed to pursue those who seek to kill us all.
OK, perhaps I'm being too harsh. There is a possibility that in the past two weeks the Democrats were able to devise their sixth iteration of a campaign slogan and strategy to roll out with less than 50 days to the election. Perhaps they could call it "Fifty States, Fifty Days...But Never Fifty Percent"! It's catchy, it's succinct, and it may well be accurate come November 8th. Arrgghh!
Read more here:
www.thoughttheater.com
Posted by Daniel DiRito | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 9:16 AM
Everyone should be reading Digby, who been talking about this pattern forever. Anyone who thought this whole thing was anything but theatre hasn't been paying attention.
Posted by gswift | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 9:18 AM
I called Obama as well. If he actually filibusters this -- even if it's an empty gesture with no chance of succeeding -- he will have my vote basically locked in for the rest of his political career.
Posted by Adam Kotsko | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 9:20 AM
Just as a question, what circumstances would, in the opinions of those here, justify the torture of suspected terrorists?
Posted by Brock Landers | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 9:22 AM
31 -- heh.
WRT the filibuster question, I am looking forward to a replay of the blog debate about whether to fear The Nuclear Option.
Posted by Clownæsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 9:24 AM
Brock, answer my question first.
Posted by Clownæsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 9:24 AM
31 - Failing to turn off cell phones in a theater or restaurant.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 9:27 AM
What if your favorite democrat gets elected in 2008, and then says the following:
1. Standard interrogations do not seem to be effective
2. getting accurate info will prevent a major terrorist attack in the US - thousands dead
3. The interrogation techniques aren't likely to kill anyone, at least not intentionally
4. no more than 1-5 innocent people will likely be subject to these techniques, and those people will all be arabs anyway.
In the stipulated case, would people think this airstrike a good idea, or a bad idea?
Posted by Brock Landers | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 9:27 AM
John Cornyn? Kay Bailey? And I learned long ago that Congresspeebles only listen to those who can really hurt or help them. Well, let me see, do I read today Burke and Kaufman about working in the system, or some more Situationist puppet theory?
A commenter over at TAPPED spoke about "giving them enough rope to hang themselves." Maybe wrong famous rope quote.
Posted by bob mcmanus | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 9:28 AM
The stipulated case does not sound like an argument for airstrikes.
Posted by Clownæsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 9:29 AM
37 - clowny is weak on terror!
Posted by Brock Landers | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 9:32 AM
You have my permission to stop writing comments on blogs and commence the march on Washington posthaste, Bob, while I waste my time writing about what a fucking horrible thing this is and how McCain should indeed be ashamed. Let me know when you and the Multitude are schedule to arrive and I'll hop on a train to join you. Not that I think it's going to do any more good than writing to my Senators, mind you.
One reason I didn't write huzzahs to McCain and Warner a couple days back over their foot-dragging is that I was pretty sure this is how it was going to shake out.
In the short term, I'd still put my money on taking Bush's Congressional rubber stamp away from him as a way to check the most grotesque crap emanating from the White House, so the first question for me is, "How do you swing the most voters in the most critical districts and states?" Part of which is, "How do you not alienate some of those voters?" If you think that's old-fashioned or unimportant, Bob, again, you're welcome to mount a general strike or chain yourself to the Capitol steps or anything else that you think is more likely to stop this from happening. Believe me, if that's what works, you won't hear any bitching about puppets from me.
Posted by Timothy Burke | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 9:37 AM
Dole's office actually answered, which threw me into such a state of shock I could barely tell the young bored woman why I was calling. I have never, in all my years of calling that creature's office and writing her letters, gotten anyone on the phone or ever received a reply.
Burr's office did what they always do. They advised me they'd tell the Senator and in a few weeks I'll get a letter telling me the Senator essentially doesn't care about his constituents' opinions. But at least he (or the polite young people in his office) bother to answer, for all the good it does.
Posted by winna | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 10:00 AM
39:The relevant Multitude is following you Tim, and tough to turn the lemmings around before they see the cliff.
Posted by bob mcmanus | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 10:05 AM
Bob, Show some respect. It's hard work being perfectly moderate.
Posted by Adam Kotsko | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 10:14 AM
Where's that post on Rove? For every bourgeosie becoming alienated one inner city or rural prole gains hope, and where is the Dem majority gonna come from? Silicon Valley? Academia?
When Dems can't get any corporate or managerial money they will return to their base. Yeah, we should alienate the straights as hard and as fast as possible.
Posted by bob mcmanus | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 10:16 AM
Unfortunately, my Senators are Frist and Alexander, so calling wouldn't do any good.
Posted by Zadfrack | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 10:17 AM
Menendez have I called. Lautenberg have I called. At each number a polite young man promised to give my message to the Senator.
Posted by Clownæsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 10:19 AM
43: It's really interesting that everyone treats the opinions and loyalties of voters as a brute given, ignoring the 50% of people who don't vote. No effort is made to mobilize such people, ever -- instead, we've got to work on massaging the egos of the Christian fundamentalists, since they're the ones who show up at the polls.
Posted by Adam Kotsko | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 10:20 AM
Well, Republicans do work on increasing that 50%. All those Voter ID requirements aren't for nothing.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 10:21 AM
So, I sent an email out to the school listserv telling people to call their senators. Some people have already responded saying that they did, and some people writing in telling me that it is disgraceful for me to insult American soldiers by saying that they are torturing people.
Awesome.
Posted by m. leblanc | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 10:36 AM
Oh, is that who all those people are outside of my house? I'll give them directions to the puppet show right away. Sorry about that. One must be careful when one wields modest influence over perhaps 20-odd readers and teeny-tiny classes of students bound for the Peace Corps and non-profit community work.
Posted by Timothy Burke | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 10:38 AM
46: And maybe after that, newspapers can increase their flagging circulation numbers by making inroads among the illiterate.
Posted by neil | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 10:42 AM
Is 50 saying that getting a non-voter to vote is as difficult as getting an illiterate person to read? That doesn't sound quite right to me.
Posted by Clownæsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 10:45 AM
Re: the people who don't vote. Again, if you've got some ideas about either how to get them to vote (and some expectation that they wouldn't just reproduce the existing split in the electorate) or ideas about how to get them to do something else that will bring political pressure, don't hold back, please do share. If one of the reasons they don't vote, at least in some cases, is a disgust at the political classes as a whole, what's likely to reach them? The typical constellation of issues and tactics that mobilize the left? Attempts to appeal to moderate/independent alienation from both political wings? I seriously don't know. I'm not real clear on why Bob is so sure it's the first, though--and if he is right, why it hasn't happened yet.
Posted by Timothy Burke | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 10:46 AM
Took me about ten seconds to get through to Schumer, and five minutes to get Clinton. Not bad on average.
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 10:46 AM
yeah, it sounds pretty ridiculous in light of the successful Republican strategy of '04.
Posted by text | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 10:47 AM
49:I'm warning ya, I am about to go all Leninist on ya, and you escalate to Jane Addams, and this fight over who is more ineffectual and irrelevant could get real ugly.
Posted by bob mcmanus | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 10:49 AM
if he is right, why it hasn't happened yet.
I can provide a hypothetical answer to that, that is an answer to "if the issues and tactics that mobilize the left are more likely to bring in new voters, why hasn't that happened yet?" (I don't want to make any judgment about the 'if' here.) It'd be because no major party has made any kind of strong commitment to those issues and tactics.
That is, you can't say that Bob and Adam are wrong because the Dems have tried running to the left, and it hasn't worked, because the Dems haven't tried running to the left in any meaningful sense.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 10:50 AM
51: I was trying to be a bit more complex than that. My point is basically that the people who don't ever vote are in a state where they cannot be reached by politicians, so any attempt for a politician to try to reach them is futile.
There are other ways that one could get through to these people, I think, but this is not a job for the political establishment. Whoever's job it is should really get cracking on it, though.
Posted by neil | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 10:51 AM
I should emphasize the hypothetical nature of it: I do not think that alienating the straights is an end in itself, and I do think that taking away Bush's Congressional rubber stamp is the most important thing we can do. OTOH if attempts to appeal to moderate alienation turn into mushy middleism I think that would be ineffective on several different levels. Standing for what you believe in, and being seen to do so, seems more likely to reach that alienation (not that TBurke has said anything that suggests this, but sometimes the idea of moderate outreach can slide in this direction; as when that TNR guy seems to suggest that the problem is that too many women vote Democratic).
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 10:56 AM
56: People seem to mistake the historic support of organized labor for some kind of "leftism" among Democrats. In reality, support for labor was made possible by the alliance between big industry and big labor in the postwar years -- the system known as "Fordism" among irrelevant left-wing nutjobs such as me and Bob. (I apologize for using that term, because I think I just heard a swing voter in Ohio become alienated.)
Most of the Democrats' current support base is basically vestigial -- for instance, what have the Democrats done for labor unions or African Americans lately (even under Clinton)?
In short, I agree with Matt that actual leftism has not been tried in the postwar period.
Posted by Adam Kotsko | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 10:59 AM
"My point is basically that the people who don't ever vote are in a state where they cannot be reached by politicians, so any attempt for a politician to try to reach them is futile."
Then your point is garbled nonsense. Really. It's like saying that something that has never been tried is impossible for the reason that it hasn't been tried. Why if man were meant to fly . . .
Posted by text | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 11:00 AM
You know who would filibuster? Paul Wellstone, peace be upon him.
Posted by Armsmasher | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 11:01 AM
Money Driven Medicine
Ezra's a good guy. Really workin the UHC thing with all he's got. But he has to do it in a neo-liberal economic context. He can say this particular market doesn't work for all the reasons markets don't work, but in the next breath he has to say markets almost always work. And so he really is working a very marginal game.
He needs an ideology. He is holding it in his hand, but can't use it because the of the limits of the discourse. And the Walmart worker will understand the pro-business free-trade Universal Health Care Party can't be trusted.
Posted by bob mcmanus | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 11:02 AM
Matt:
I class that, in some measure, with:
Completely free markets have never been tried, so we've never seen just how wonderful they would be.
Socialism has never really been tried, so we've never seen how wonderfully it would work.
If we only act with more unrestrained brutality in Iraq, the population will stop supporting the insurgents and they will fade away.
And so on: an appeal to do something which has never been done on the logic that it will only work if it is done in an utterly wholehearted and unrestrained manner, and that any failure is preemptively attributable to the failure to do it wholeheartedly.
I think the Dems *did* try running to the left once upon a time, with a guy named George McGovern, and there's some pretty good evidence that it didn't bring lots and lots of non-voters pouring out of the woodwork. I can think of some Democratic primary candidates who also ran hard and unambiguously to the left over the years, and I don't recall lots of people suddenly waking from their political slumber about them. (Harkin, etc.) Now you can say this is 2006, and a very different situation. You can say, "Oh, but those were all bad candidates." Fine. That doesn't absolve you of having to tell me how you know what you think you know about the 50% of the population that doesn't vote, and why running hard to the left is going to be the thing they're waiting for. What I know from the available information about that 50% (or even a smallish fraction thereof) suggests that they're not so different in demographic or ideological composition so as to think that they're just waiting for the Leftie Signal to light the night in order to head for the polling booths.
All is not lost, though. Here's my own pet theory about the thing which must be done wholeheartedly: the Democrats just have to stop running scared and they need to stop being policy wonks. They need less to come up with a forty-five point technocratic plan for a ten-phased withdrawal from Iraq and more say, "The Republicans are incompetent, untrustworthy, unaccountable in their leadership on the war and everything else, and they're dragging the United States into deep moral evil." Don't mince words, speak clearly and unambiguously. Be authentic.
This may basically translate into "being more leftist", I think. I don't buy that this should include Thomas-Frank style economic populism at this point, in fact, I think the Dems would benefit from some small-government Goldwaterian rhetoric playing to the paranoid style, especially when it comes to civil liberties. But on the stakes and nature of this political moment? Yes, absolutely, the Democrats should be blazing with fire at this point, not holding back any of their punches.
Posted by Timothy Burke | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 11:05 AM
60: Who said it's never been tried? It's been tried over and over, always with the same surprising results: Non-voters don't listen to what politicians say. This is the problem and no amount of politicians saying stuff will fix it.
Posted by neil | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 11:05 AM
I like Ezra and all, but it should be known that he cheats in touch football.
Posted by Armsmasher | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 11:05 AM
Agree with Burke.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 11:08 AM
The point is that it hasn't been tried with a platform designed to motivate those people. Those people meaning those who, if they voted, would vote Democratic. It doesn't require voodoo to figure out who those people are.
Rock the Vote campaigns don't work because we've been rocking out to the middle, is the point. The people who don't vote aren't irrational; they're not voting because their needs aren't being addressed by either candidate.
And you use this as evidence not to address them. Which is garbled nonsense.
Posted by text | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 11:12 AM
64 should perhaps be amended to 'Non-voters don't care about politics.' Pretending this is not necessarily the case is a good way to avoid fixing the problem.
I don't know whether it is possible to make established non-voters care about politics, but I am quite sure that there are no political means to do it. I think political literacy is a long-term educational process.
Either that or we can figure out a way to bribe people to vote. Maybe a van service to ferry people to the polls, and a free ice cream on your way home.
Posted by neil | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 11:16 AM
>I think the Dems *did* try running to the left once upon a time, with a guy named George McGovern
The republicans tried running to the right once upon a time with a guy named barry goldwater. It failed miserably so they never tried again.
I called my senators.
Posted by joe o | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 11:18 AM
I faxed Hillary and Chuck. I'm not actually sure that the fax to Chuck's office went through. Our office has one of those combination fax/scanner/copier/Martian death ray devices, and sometimes its behavior is inscrutable. The problem is that your account sometimes times out before its finished dialing, so you don’t get the little printed report. You do hear the always pleasing fax sound, though, and sometimes the screen says “ok.” So I either faxed Chuck Schumer or obliterated Mars. I guess we’ll see on the news.
I prefer faxing to calling, because even a staff assistant can intimidate me on the phone and make me feel in articulate. I also have had some interesting results from directly faxing politicians.
Posted by rob helpy-chalk | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 11:18 AM
63: But the Democrats we have are not going to be blazing like fire and they are definitely going to pull their punches -- any more than they're suddenly going to shift toward the left. So this is all pretty academic, and Tim Burke is as impractical as Bob McManus.
Posted by Adam Kotsko | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 11:19 AM
"I don't know whether it is possible to make established non-voters care about politics."
Yes, it is. One way is to appeal to their homophobia and confused religious beliefs. But that one's already been taken, se let's think of something new.
Posted by text | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 11:21 AM
63:Intellectuals and pundits should not play tactics. The job is to provide "intelligence" for strategy. Like Thomas Frank. Like Galbraith. Where the fuck is my Galbraith, attacking the powerful, hated by the moderates? Oh, Thomas Frank.
Win 20 house seats, 5 Senate seats watcha gonna win. Whisper:nothing.
Posted by bob mcmanus | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 11:22 AM
Rock the Vote campaigns don't work because they don't appeal to people who don't care about politics.
Look, what do you think the difference between nations with 90% voter turnout and nations with 50% voter turnout are? Just that no political parties in the latter nations are trying to reach non-voters? I doubt it very much. There are major educational factors at play here, which is why I compared it to literacy in the first place. (If there were a word for people who know how to read but have never read a book voluntarily, I'd have compared it to that instead.)
But I am certainly willing to listen to what a campaign that targets non-voters in a way that has never been tried before would look like.
Posted by neil | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 11:22 AM
That NAMBLA-like party in some European country might be a place to start. I fully support their desire for free train travel.
Posted by Adam Kotsko | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 11:24 AM
The difference might have something to do with the wider array of political options in parliamentary democracies, Neil. Oh yes, it just might.
Posted by text | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 11:24 AM
Arlen Specter's office, interestingly, is not answering their phone at all today.
Calling Rick Santorum obviously wouldn't do me much good. Unless I want to ask if his refrigerator's running or something like that.
Posted by Timothy Burke | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 11:26 AM
"Rock the Vote campaigns don't work because they don't appeal to people who don't care about politics."
A is A because A is A is A. You're arguing that people who don't care about politics can't be motivated to care because they don't care.
Whereas I am arguing that yes, it might be possible to make them care if we actually addressed their needs. And I don't mean just economic needs. I mean get inside their heads.
But you are arguing that it's futile to try--based on what? Please provide an argument.
Posted by text | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 11:28 AM
That doesn't absolve you of having to tell me how you know what you think you know about the 50% of the population that doesn't vote, and why running hard to the left is going to be the thing they're waiting for.
See 58 and the parenthetical in 56. Din't say I know.
I think we agree on the main prescription, but I feel like arguing a bit anyway. So: I don't think the classification with 'socialism has never been tried' is fair, because what I'm saying is that running to the left has barely been tried at all, since McGovern. McGovern doesn't prove much; he lost big in an unfavorable environment, but Democrats running to the center have also underpeformed.
As for the Leftie Signal, if I were arguing for that strategy, I would point out that you don't need to mobilize all the 50% for that to work. You just have to mobilize ones who will be on your side. If, for instance, Latino people voted at a much higher rate, Texas would be much closer to a Democratic state. [pwned by 67]
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 11:28 AM
Look, what do you think the difference between nations with 90% voter turnout and nations with 50% voter turnout are?
Laws that mandate voting?
More or less in agreement with Burke here. It depends on what the average non-voter looks like, and I don't think there's a sizeable proportion of leftists staying home because the party isn't addressing their needs. The strategy worked for the right, but there are a lot more fundamentalists than there are peaceniks.
Isn't Rock the Vote aimed at young voters? The same young voters who couldn't find where my section was because they didn't remember the room so they stayed home?
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 11:29 AM
69:
Conservatives built movements after Goldwater.
Leftists are welcome to do the same. Go to it, cowboy. Or, er, did they already try that, too? Or is that another one of the things that me and my Moderate Posse of Lemmings have managed to prevent from happening?
Posted by Timothy Burke | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 11:30 AM
I don't accept the idea that Bush won in 2004 by appealing to non-voters. Everything I have read about the recent Republican campaigns suggest that they do the opposite: targeting their message to sympathetic voters, and making sure they show up to vote, with a precision that the Democrats can't match. Of course I'd be happy to read an article revealing that Bush won only because of people who have never voted in a Presidential election before.
By the way, we may be talking about different kinds of non-voters here; there are the 30% of people who never vote in any election, and then there are probably another 30% who vote sometimes but not always. The latter are eminently reachable and are the most fertile ground for any campaign; the former are, unfortunately, not. I believe Democrats would be getting more votes if they focused more money and attention on making sure likely voters actually vote (vans! vans!) and less attention on things that try to persuade, like TV commercials and making centrist noises.
Posted by neil | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 11:30 AM
Left a message for Sen. Reed. Staffer at Chafee's office said the Senator is reserving judgment until he sees the exact language, but that "he's been with McCain on this, against Bush." We'll see.
Posted by mrh | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 11:32 AM
52: Non-voters. I used to have a link to a study of non-voters analyzed demographically and in terms of reasons given for not voting. I went through it and a considerable proportion of the poorer non-voters gave objective impediments as their reasons: transportation problems, conflicts with work, etc. Richer voters tended to be more in the complacent / can't be bothered category. Anyway, a first step would be to remove as many impediments as possible to registration and voting. The long term trend has been to make voting more difficult, and Republicans are very actively at work here.
I am convinced that the Democrats are not making the effort in this area because the dominant group does not want to do the things they'd have to do to motivate the poorer non-voters. DLC-type spokesmen characteristically slip back and forth between "This is the right thing to do" and "We need to do this to get votes" depending on who they're talking to. They have fundamental anti-populist, anti-dove convictions, and I believe that they would not want to make a populist (or a dovish appeal) appeal even if they could win that way.
Getting to poorer non-voters would require finding a few issues that would motivate these people (health insurance, minimum wage, and perhaps other labor issues), plus convincing them that we actually can deliver on these issues (a big Demo problem there), plus a multi year all-year effort at getting the word out.
Such a program would be a good place, BTW, to hire the sharpest locals you can find, regardless of credentials, (instead of Ivy League whiz kids) and paying them what is regarded as an OK wage in their community.
I've had it drummed into me that American demographics are middle-class by now and populist appeals can't work, but elections are won by one percent here and one percent there. Even if the genuinely poor demographic is only 20-30% now instead of 60-80% as it once was, from that 20% you might be able to get the margin of victory.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 11:32 AM
Democrats offer vans to voting stations in almost every city in this country.
"with a precision that the Democrats can't match."
Well shite, let's all commit hari kari. You first, neil.
Posted by text | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 11:34 AM
82: Neil, come on -- you know that the best way to appeal to non-voters is to promise to put politics aside and work on common-sense solutions.
Posted by Adam Kotsko | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 11:38 AM
63, etc. One of the big weaknesses of Democratic outreach is that it is almost all concentrated in the immediate pre-election period. Republicans have that, but also get out their mesage 365-days year for 4 years.
Some populists do say, and all anti-populists accuse them of all saying, that all you need to do is put up a charismatic left candidate and the voters will magcally appear. There needs to be a lot more grass-roots yearlong effort than that.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 11:38 AM
You don't go to the alienated and win them over with:"Your alienation is unjustified. The system works. Look at me, I am doing fine." Now tactically or strategically, maybe if you run on alienation you will lose part of the system.
But I guess the most important thing is authenticity, whether you believe the system is working, how much you are alienated.
Posted by bob mcmanus | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 11:42 AM
79:
My thought is that it's always going to be an unfavorable environment for some forms of leftism in the United States. Which is an ancient argument on the American left. It's true that being "moderates" has lost too, just more slowly and anemically than I think a hard-left McGovern type national campaign would.
What I think has lost about the "moderate" Democratic consensus is not that it is "moderate" but that it is technocratic, that all the national Democrats are well-meaning policy wonk dweebs who signify to most people as inside-the-Beltway elites. This is where the move-to-the-left argument is pretty sound: you've got to do *something* that puts you in touch with people who are not technocratic elites. As folks here have pointed out, some of the things that might do so have already been taken by the cultural conservatives, and we wouldn't want to do that anyway. But anything deeply felt, authentically voiced, something that people believe in a kind of Jimmy-Stewart sort of fashion, will do. Hell, just asking people straightforwardly, "What kind of country do you want to be? A nation of torturers and tyrants, or a people who are trying to live up to a higher ideal?" would do.
Posted by Timothy Burke | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 11:43 AM
Busy signal at Hutchison's, but I got through to Cornyn, so bewteen Smasher and me we've got that covered. Two no votes!
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 11:43 AM
90: Living in Texas is like voting for Nader. You always waste your vote, so it's YOUR fault that Bush won in 2000.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 11:46 AM
Wait, now. McGovern wasn't leftist. He was anti-war. One problem there is that he was a Democrat against a war that had been started and executed by a Democrat. No Democratic candidate has that albatross this time around. This is George Bush's war and everybody knows it, because he's done nothing else for five and a half years except proclaim himself a war president.
The last honest-to-God Democratic nominee who ran to the left was FDR (or maybe LBJ). We've been running to the right going on three decades now and have gotten just about nowhere with it, unless we've had the most talented politician in a generation heading the ticket, helped by a third-party candidate who took a serious chunk of votes. That situation isn't likely to repeat itself any time soon.
There's a nearly unavoidable tendency to try to make this election fit the pattern of some past one, but I don't think it's a very reliable forecasting strategy. As to the great party of non-voters, I don't have any data to back this up, so take it for what it's worth, but I suspect they would break down pretty closely along the lines of the folks who do vote, if they gave a rat's ass. Which, for the most part, they don't.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 11:49 AM
I was in Pennsylvania in 2000. And in Wisconisin in 2004, so that's really not my fault.
Observation from the 2004 campaign: The Democrats could probably use even more vans, and MoveOn really needs to hire some people who know what they're doing as far as GOTV goes. (Actually the 'need more vans' may come from observing MoveOn, in which case never mind.)
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 11:49 AM
This is a little off-topic, but do you think that some people are turned off by the idea of "working families" because they think that means reinstating child labor? (I'm just mentally cataloguing all the nice moderate things Democrats say to try to appeal to people in a Republicanesque way.)
Posted by Adam Kotsko | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 11:50 AM
This has got me so upset my typing has gone to shit.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 11:50 AM
I don't go to church. I have never gone to church, and I'm confident that I make the right decision in not going to church. I think going to church would just be a waste of my time. I prefer not to even think about going to church.
If MTV started a 'Rock the Church' campaign I seriously doubt it would impact me, because my decision not to go to church isn't because of lack of information or anything like that. I'm fully aware of church, I just don't care about it. I don't think this is the same as saying that there is no way to get me to go to church because I'm not interested in it; but if you want me to change my mind, talking about church in new and different ways is not going to do it.
Here is a good article about the Republican voting database. I didn't mean to say, by the way, that there is no way the Democrats could ever match it, just that they have not done so in the last 3 elections.
Posted by neil | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 11:52 AM
This has got me so upset my typing has gone to shit.
You and Michael too, apparently.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 11:55 AM
94 -- ??? Working Families is pretty left relative to the Dem Partei. I don't think it is intended as an appeal to Reps.
Posted by Clownæsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 11:55 AM
I was just thinking that the word "family" has a certain Republican appeal. As opposed to "lazy homosexuals" or something.
Posted by Adam Kotsko | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 11:59 AM
94: I don't think so. If it turns people off, it's because they hear 'poor' or 'single mom' for 'working families', and everyone believes that they are above average or will soon be there with hard work.
Nothing to do with child labor, though.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 11:59 AM
I don't mean to say we couldn't use new vans, and that the transportation issue isn't important. I was in South Dakota in '04, fwiw, on an Indian Reservation. Didn't work out so well, but there was a huge turn-out, and I met some interesting folks.
Posted by text | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 12:00 PM
Sure. I just don't think in this case, the word is being used that way. Indeed it might count as an attempt to reclaim the word "family" for the home team.
Posted by Clownæsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 12:00 PM
102 -> 99
Posted by Clownæsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 12:01 PM
Also: Cala shirked her duty in not shouting the number of her comment. Shirker!1!
Posted by Clownæsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 12:02 PM
Neil, here is why your atheism is not just like people who don't vote:
You do not believe in a god who wants you to go to church. Without the influence of said deity, church has no function, aside from a social one.
People who don't vote, I'm guessing their choice is not based on a lack of belief in the actual mechanics of voting, or the political institutions influenced by said vote. I'm sure there are lots of reasons why people don't vote, but none of them are your reason for not going to church.
The analogy was so poor, I frankly wonder at your sincerity.
Posted by text | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 12:08 PM
Oh. Delayed Kobe!
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 12:08 PM
Clown, I think you are talking about the Working Families Party in NY which as I understand is a way for lefty left types to vote Democratic while showing support of lefty policies, while Kotsko is talking about the national Dem party's occasional use of phrases like "supporting America's working families." Though looking through the google results for the phrase, it seems to be a union catchphrase kind of thing as well.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 12:09 PM
The worst thing about the McCain business is that it makes for cynicism about the idea of heroes and uncompromising men of principle in politics. I never thought he was much more than hype about that, despite real suffering on his part. But I'm well-informed. Saying that there are many senators who look less heroic but are in fact able to stand up better doesn't help. We've been trapped inside this hero-narrative for a long time, and neither its continuation nor its collapse will be good.
Posted by I don't pay | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 12:10 PM
'occasional' is probably the wrong word.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 12:10 PM
The "Lazy Homosexual Party" sounds like a lot of fun. Not really as a political party. Just as a party party.
Posted by rob helpy-chalk | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 12:10 PM
Even then, you are remarkably sure of the immutabilty of your current preferences and beliefs. That's called closed-mindedness. Other people, however, are succeptible to change.
Posted by text | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 12:11 PM
106 -- that's better.
Posted by Clownæsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 12:11 PM
97: He isn't upset by the same thing I am (I'm not upset at any Unfogged commenters). And his typing is always shit. Cross-posted to standpipe's blog.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 12:12 PM
107 is correct -- I am more aware of the NY thing than the national thing.
Posted by Clownæsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 12:13 PM
105: I think your guess about why people don't vote is exactly wrong, which is why I chose the analogy I did. A lot of people in the US don't believe that there are valid reasons that they should vote, or that voting makes any difference. (I think you were making motions towards this point in 76.) If we want to increase voter turnout, this is the attitude that needs to be eliminated. But hey, at least we got to the heart of the disagreement!
Posted by neil | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 12:17 PM
MoveOn: as far as I know, MoveOn passes through like a flock of birds and leaves nothing behind. It seems almost to be a lark for college kids. If half their campaign $$ had been put into yearlong outreach, the campaign would have suffered very little and the long-term effects would have been great. (Though, sorry to keep harping on this, less so if they hired recent college kids for the outreach.)
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 12:18 PM
I am just not strongly motivated by this particular election. Bush has backup, and I don't think the Dems can gain enough to even embarrass the Right. I think so many around are going to be disappointed.
I am interested in those historical moments when "liberal" institutions got created or solidified. 1932, 1950-55, 1965-75. Explanations for why the "left" has never taken hold in America include of course racism/slavery and heterogenity(?)/immigration. Immigration as a political factor has brought in generations of leftist leadership. But it seems like many of the policy advances occurred, with a lag, after the borders were shut down. Recent immigrants usually are a Dem base constituency, so maybe we have to lay low and let Republicans do that dirty job. And the prevailing ideology is so screwed up that an argument can't be made on the left.
But is the kinda things I think about. Not a house seat here and a Senator there.
Posted by bob mcmanus | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 12:18 PM
Text, have any Janklow stories? That guy was Bull Connor worthy.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 12:19 PM
In my impression, people who don't vote don't have reasons for not voting. If you ask them "why don't you vote?" they'll grab whatever excuse is closest at hand, like my vote doesn't make a difference, or I can't get to the polling place, but if that excuse weren't available, they'd just find another one.
People don't vote for the same reason they eat a bologna sandwich for lunch. It’s all habit. And people won’t change their habits even when it is in their own obvious self interest. A doctor friend of mine recently had to tell a diabetic patient that he had a choice, either stop eating potato chips or loose a leg. The patient said he would loose the leg.
Posted by rob helpy-chalk | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 12:21 PM
If half their campaign $$ had been put into yearlong outreach, the campaign would have suffered very little and the long-term effects would have been great.
This is the considerable question that the DLC is facing under Dean's leadership, isn't it? Whether it's better to spend vast amounts on November races in hopes of spurring or abetting a turnover, or dedicate money to long-terrm strategic building? Without knowing all the issues, admittedly, I support the latter: I tend to think that the issues are fairly set in people's minds, and our GOTV mechanism both fairly inept and unlikely to be resolved by the sort of strategies that 2006 spending would involve.
Posted by Armsmasher | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 12:22 PM
117: If Democrats get subpoena power, things will really change. Even if Pelosi wimps, Waxman won't.
115: Never overestimate the voter. I've known a fair number of people who refused on principle to vote, but that's me. It's not an enormous demographic.
Outreach and removing impediments are the things that need to be done.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 12:23 PM
Making registration easier would help. I'm not the most politically aware of people, and I only registered to vote when I moved up here because someone knocked on a door and gave me a form and a pen.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 12:25 PM
One of my bitches about Clinton-Gore is that they were the ones who realized that it was possible to get around the rules on "soft money". "Soft money" was supposedly spent on party-building (long-term, year-round) rather than electioneering. But it was possible to cheat, so they did. And as a result, the party weakened.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 12:26 PM
The Coming Democratic Debacle ...Mark Graber at Balkin's
People like this make not make me feel less lonely, but it helps with the crazy evil stupid stuff.
Every point in Graber's piece may not agree with me, but it does argue against most of Burke's points. For example:"Democrats are running as the party not as bad in vaguely specified ways as the Republicans." re:89. Maybe Burke would argue with the "vaguely" but the "less evil less torture" campaign ain't even gonna work.
Posted by bob mcmanus | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 12:31 PM
RE 89
I agree that the democrats should go more populist. I think Edwards does this well. Populism allows for a lot of leeway as to actual policy.
The torture debate points out how "moderate" is ambiguous. If the pole positions are "torture" and "no torture"; is the moderate position "some torture"?
Posted by joeo | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 12:31 PM
119: Presumably this person isn't in the habit of walking.
Posted by Adam Kotsko | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 12:34 PM
I also don't see the democrats as being that out of it. The 2000 election was a coin flip. If Gore would have won, he probably would have won again in 2004. It easily could have been the republicans who would be sweating things.
Posted by joeo | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 12:39 PM
Here's an interesting survey on voter attitudes taken in California. Although it's a tricky subject to poll (people who believe voting is a waste of time probably believe the same goes for surveys, for instance) there are some interesting results.
Posted by neil | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 12:41 PM
Also, someone who answers "too busy to vote" might just think that because they have such a low opinion of the utility of voting.
Posted by neil | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 12:44 PM
126:
He wasn't; that's a part of morbid obesity.
He was also under indefinite psychiatric hospitalization. I still think he is a good analogue for the average American non-voter.
Posted by rob helpy-chalk | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 12:47 PM
Has anyone ever listed "too stupid" as a reason for not voting?
Posted by rob helpy-chalk | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 12:49 PM
Legal Realism 101 While I am at Balkin's, Sandy Levinson uses Ernst Fraenkel and Carl Schmitt to discuss John McCain. The "Dual State".
I really do believe Republican are using the 30's and 40's as their guide, and are actively seeking depression(deficits) and World War(Iran) to transform America irrevocably, or at least for generations. The stakes are way too high for moderation. They always are.
(PS:For those mad at the Democrats for their silence, the McCain vote is going to take place while bombs are bursting in air red rockets etc. They are very bad, but better informed and not stupid. Remember, beside the Iraq authorization, Bush also got his 2nd round of tax cuts and won seats in the fall of 2002. We are way outplayed)
Posted by bob mcmanus | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 12:51 PM
One call to Boxer's office: no answer
One call to Feinstein: answered by earnest young thing who promised to convey message.
By-the-by - how many of you are aware that a teensy little provision of the McCain-Feingold Act makes it *illegal* for those leaving Federal civil service employ to say anything negative about the Administration for a year after they quit/retire? No whistle-blowing, no opinion, just sit there quietly. Or else.
Posted by DominEditrix | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 1:44 PM
You can leave a message for Boxer at her san francisco office:
(415) 403-0100
Posted by joeo | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 1:50 PM
I e-mailed Bingaman and Domenici. Bingaman's usually good on these issues; Domenici's a lost cause (he's already issued a press release supporting the compromise), but it's worth a shot.
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 2:07 PM
Bingaman was a main player on this issue last fall, and likely will be again. No harm in reminding him, or getting friends to remind him, over the weekend.
Posted by CharleyCarp | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 3:00 PM
Jesus, Bob, if your argument is "lay low and wait for the Republicans to fuck up on immigration so that liberal institution building can take place", how different is that from my "don't go around half-cocked like a bunch of left-wing bohemians, be patient and lay decency traps, and think about institutions and how they get built and reinforced"? This is just one of those Green Acres things: "I prefer my penthouse view/Darling I love you but give me Park Avenue", etcetera.
Posted by Timothy Burke | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 3:21 PM
Thanks for the post LB; I called Senators Durbin (202-224-2152) and Obama (202-224-2854).
Neither has released a position on the bill; I relayed my oppositon, citing the three reasons you listed -- the rewriting of Article 3 so that only grave breaches are criminal and that the removal of habeus corpus and habeus jurisdiction provisions.
Sen Durbin's office confirmed that the language in the proposed legislation protects the president and US operatives from the acts they've been committing.
This bill could be voted on next week -- I second the request that everyone to call their senators.
Posted by Bailey | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 4:06 PM
137:Tim, it is only one of my arguments for one scenario. but the difference is having 50 years of the radical left working in the fields and up in Liliputian penthouses ready to go in 1932. Now Emma and Eugene didn't get White House jobs, but their agenda, which was not a moderate agenda, trickled down.
Maybe in ten years Ezra and MY will have those WH jobs, or someone in DC who reads them, and they will have a base that believes Walmart is their lot in life and an intellectual leadership that has been telling them that Walmart is the natural order of things. And instead of Social Security, they will enact HSA's.
Posted by bob mcmanus | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 4:06 PM
The problem with Health Savings Accounts is that if American consumers start saving money, the global economy will collapse.
Posted by Adam Kotsko | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 4:12 PM
Comments from a post about Walmart at Ezra's.
"So, what do you purport to do? Posted by: DRR | Sep 22, 2006 8:21:10 AM
Bitch about it Posted by: Fred Jones | Sep 22, 2006 8:25:40 AM
Mainly, that's true ;-) ...Ezra"
Ezra did point to an article about anti-trust changes today. But ya know, I don't sense the confidence and determination of a Debs or Ruether. I just don't feel it. That is not Ezra's fault. His role isn't self-defined, he doesn't set the rules.
I said "nationalize em" in comments. Silly, huh.
Posted by bob mcmanus | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 4:14 PM
So under what conditions would any of you suck McCain's cock?
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 4:16 PM
MY is a different problem, but in his foreign policy world, the discourse is limited to rational actors, enlightened self-interest, realism, internationalism.
When Bush screwed up Iraq, I think Matt was genuinely shocked, and could only say:"WTF? That's stupid and crazy!"
I say:"Duh."
What do they teach kids at Harvard these days?
Posted by bob mcmanus | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 4:21 PM
142:Canadian citizenship & a way north cabin.
Posted by bob mcmanus | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 4:23 PM
Torture, war on Iran, the unadulterated evil of the GOP, and the fecklessness of the Democrats are all depressing. Not a good way to start the New Year. Won't somebody post a picture of a kitten?
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 4:35 PM
My Senators are Warner & Allen. Virginia doesn't link voter and party registration. But I have given money to Dems only and voted only in the Democratic primaries.
I'll call them, but I figure my opinion counts for very little with them.
Posted by md 20/400 | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 4:43 PM
I miss having cats around. The allergies may have contributed to my melancholy, but it may just as well have been the general squalor surrounding me in my apartment.
Here are some cat pictures that give the lie to those who claim that leftists aren't busy organizing.
Posted by Adam Kotsko | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 4:44 PM
Bob:We got torture!
Liberal:Bad guys!
Geneva don't work?
Bad guys!
Senate won't stop
Bad guys!
Two party system Dems don't win
Almost as bad guys?
But aren't the institutions there to stop the bad guys?
Don't hurt my institutions! I need them!
Take you teddy and go to sleep, my son. It was only a nightmare.
Posted by bob mcmanus | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 4:52 PM
Playing the part of Bob McManus tonight will be several random lines of free verse gibberish.
Posted by strasmangelo jones | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 5:18 PM
147: Kotsko, can my kid move in with you? I can't have cats until he's gone, and as you are apparently cat-deprived, it would make my life so much furrier. Even if cats = Satan.
Posted by DominEditrix | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 5:57 PM
134: Thanks for the number; I'd called her LA office. I've now left a message in DC.
Posted by DominEditrix | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 6:00 PM
147: Mazie's a bit of an underwhelming name if that feline wants to be a member of the vanguard. How about Chairman Meow?
Posted by Stub | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 6:07 PM
Multi-county lawnmower theft ring
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 6:11 PM
149:What do you want, Strauss & Schmitt rewritten in sestinas...?
...would you settle for a blowjob?
Posted by bob mcmanus | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 6:14 PM
Wait until she's sent millions to their deaths, and then Maizie will seem like a pretty fucking fearsome name.
Posted by Adam Kotsko | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 6:53 PM
154: Bob, I might feel mildly offended if I ever had the slightest idea what your point was.
Posted by strasmangelo jones | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 7:20 PM
156:Ok, stras old buddy if you are having trouble keeping up, I'll take it real slowly.
at 148 I wrote a little political theory in the form of a dialogue between a daddy and a suddenly frightened child which, though intentionally silly, childlike and crude and containing few words of more than two syllables, you apparently had trouble understanding, calling it "free verse gibberish" at 149. The general gist is that the existing institutions and processes designed to protect us from tyrannical leaders have failed us miserably and predictably, IMO. In the last two lines I compare a blind faith in liberal institutions in themselves to a child's teddy bear, and affectionately posit that though useless as protections, can be useful as illusions, providing comfort for those who need structure and an optimism about progress, society, and the good will of men.
In response to your pungent literary criticism at my formal failures, at 154 I jokingly offered to write political theory in a very advanced form. (Strauss and Schmitt are 20th century political theorists, a sestina is an long very difficult poetic form of 49 lines) but in some self-deprecating humour, I admitted by implication that such an ambitious project was beyond my abilities, that admission in the form of a substitute offer of oral sex, in no way serious. I am not gay and you are really fucking stupid and ugly.
Now you can be offended.
Posted by bob mcmanus | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 8:13 PM
Now you can be offended
Not offended, just bemused. Bob, who exactly are you're responding to, with your bold-if-incomprehensible broadsides against those with "blind faith in liberal institutions"? Are these actual people you can name, or figments of the McManian imagination?
Posted by strasmangelo jones | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 8:19 PM
McManusian, if you please. I am too short already, I will not bear abbreviation.
Posted by bob mcmanus | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 8:21 PM
And I won't engage you in substantive conversation, since you apparently lack reading skills, a sense of humour, and good taste in free verse.
Posted by bob mcmanus | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 8:23 PM
FYI, I convinced my conservative Christian carpool-mates to call their senators, too. Republicans! Against torture! There is hope for us all.
Posted by mrh | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 8:27 PM
Wow -- excellent! Thanks!
Posted by Clownæsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 8:31 PM
157 is one of the funniest comments I've ever read here.
Posted by Adam Kotsko | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 8:33 PM
Geneva don't work?
Bad guys!
Senate won't stop
Bad guys!
Two party system Dems don't win
Almost as bad guys? ...I am not gay and you are really fucking stupid and ugly... And I won't engage you in substantive conversation
My apologies.
Posted by strasmangelo jones | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 8:34 PM
I can feel the love tonight, and I'm not just talking about the GFE in my apartment.
Posted by Stub | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 8:36 PM
Must be the holiday spirit.
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 8:39 PM
Actually, Bob, I would like to hear something substantive from you once in a while. I see you comment on a few people's blogs, and I hear you make dire-but-vague predictions about totalitarian Republican governments scheming to gut the New Deal, and I hear you making even more dire, more vague talk about guillotines and the terror. I tend to assume your line goes a bit beyond the Kos school of strident partisanship, but you maintain a line so purposely ambiguous it's hard to say whether you're talking about molotov cocktails or just unusually detailed protest puppets. So really, what's the deal?
Posted by strasmangelo jones | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 8:50 PM
Jesus, SJ, where you been? Totalitarian Republicans trying to gut the New Deal is old news. McManus has nothing to do with Kos, and no resemblance at all. Being ambiguous is OK at Unfogged.
Any more questions, just get in touch.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 9:01 PM
Jesus, SJ, where you been? Totalitarian Republicans trying to gut the New Deal is old news.
But Bob seems to think this is their primary goal - in other words, that the GOP is willing to lose a few elections in order to sink Medicare and Social Security. This sounds patently crazy to me. If Republicans simply wanted to scrap the New Deal, they could've done it already; Bush's privatization scheme collapsed once it became clear that it was increasingly unpopular (and thus, that Republican candidates wouldn't be able to get away with passing it).
Being ambiguous is OK at Unfogged.
Ambiguity is one thing, but I like to know what ideas are being expressed, especially when someone repeatedly makes a big deal over the fact that his ideas are different/purer/more extreem than soft-bellied liberal ideas.
Posted by strasmangelo jones | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 9:18 PM
Bob's not really on the same page as anyone else here. I don't think that's a problem.
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 9:21 PM
167:I save my felonious comments for other blogs.
What you want a plan, man? I ain't got no plan, unless attitude is a plan. Attitude and latitude is all I got left of the 60s, man.
They busted Willie tonight, man. Maryjane and mushrooms in Lafayatte, La. 73 years young.
Posted by bob mcmanus | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 9:45 PM
They busted Willie tonight
4 days ago, actually.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 9:54 PM
The whole binary dialectic thing where you're either on the page or you're off the page has been totally transcended. There are 8 million pages in the Unfogged city. This is some of them.
Bummer about Willie.
Posted by Michael H Schneider | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 9:54 PM
I supprot making it easier to register to vote, but this is a hard sell. Maine has same-day voter registration, and it works well for them. If you're already registered with a particular party, you can't switch after X days before an election, but if you're not registered at all, you can just walk in and vote. No real problems with voter fraud.
There was a ballot initiative to allow this in California. I voted for it. The problem with that, though, is that all of the people who were voting had managed to register and get to their polling place, so they weren't likely to think that there was much of a problem with the current system.
I may just be projecting my own issues onto other people, but I think that a real, honest-to-god commitment to universal healthcare might help. None of this "expanding access to healthcare and making it more affordable."
I talked to a woman the other day who I was trying to get to vote for Deval Patrick. (I'm working on getting her to vote in the general election, but she says that she doesn't really follow the issues.) She's on disability (psychiatric, I'm guessing) and working part-time. She would love to work full time, but she would lose her health insurance. I don't know how large the disabled community (and their families are)--and there are a lot of people who don't give a shit about them--but there are a lot of people who make decisions because of health insurance issues. real commitment to universal healthcare in a significantly streamlined system could do a lot of good.
If you don't like single-payer, then consider managed competition. I think that 5 or 6 different options would be plenty.
I recently looked at forms for getting assistance, and the number fo programs are really mind-boggling, and they all cover different things. I'm smart, and I've got patience, but it's very confusing.
Posted by Bostoniangirl | Link to this comment | 09-23-06 7:38 AM
BG, They tried a commitment to single-payer, and it didn't work.
Oh wait -- no, they never have.
Posted by Adam Kotsko | Link to this comment | 09-23-06 9:39 AM
Katherine at ObWi notes that Arlen Specter and Carl Levin are co-sponsoring an amendment to restore habeas. Worth calling your senator to ask them to support this amendment. Though a call asking for a filibuster is probably also in order. I think these should be two separate calls as the requests are a little incoherent coming at the same time.
Posted by Clownæsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 09-25-06 6:35 AM