LA Times’ Triple-Dip of Imus

Three fascinating pieces in today’s LA Times about the demise of that tedious (and, I think, clearly racist) old fart Don Imus.

First, in the news section, a story that should get a lot more attention: Imus’ unique role as a conduit for liberal and Democratic politicians to white, male voters:

With Imus’ show canceled indefinitely because of his remarks about the Rutgers University women’s basketball team, some Democratic strategists are worried about how to fill the void. For a national radio audience of white men, Democrats see few if any alternatives.

“This is a real bind for Democrats,” said Dan Gerstein, an advisor to one of Imus’ favorite regulars, Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.). “Talk radio has become primarily the province of the right, and the blogosphere is largely the province of the left. If Imus loses his microphone, there aren’t many other venues like it around.”

Jim Farrell, a former aide to 2000 presidential candidate and Imus regular Bill Bradley, said the firing “creates a vacuum.”

This week, when Sen. Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.) was asked by CNN why he picked Imus’ show to announce his presidential candidacy, Dodd explained: “He’s got a huge audience; he gives you enough time to talk, not a 30-second sound bite, a chance to explain your views; … and a chance to reach the audience who doesn’t always watch the Sunday morning talk shows.”

This is sad on so many levels. “Come for the racism, stay for the liberal talking points?” Because, let’s face it, Imus has been doing this kind of schtick for years, as documented here, here, and here, just for starters. But I guess Imus functioned as a kind of good-old-boy cultural guide for elitist Democrats, as best illustrated by his famous “Stop it, you’re going to ruin this,” scolding to John Kerry after the disastrous speech at Pasadena City College. Imus was trying to protect the Democrats’ chances to win over white males in the 2006 election, and he saw Kerry’s insult to the troops as dangerous.

There is at least one good liberal talk show host who seems to have an affinity for white males and vice-versa: Ed Schultz. He’s not a favorite of the left blogosphere, but then, for that matter, neither was Imus.

The next LA Times Imus piece that caught my eye was from an unlikely source: The pathetic “humor” columnist on the op-ed page, Joel Stein. It’s really worth reading! Stein explains that he first discovered Imus in junior high and liked him because he called everybody a “weasel.” Then, in high school, Stein switched to the funnier Howard Stern and forgot about Imus.

I was pretty shocked when Imus reemerged as a political cognoscente. Senators and journalists happily suffered the fool. Imus asked people such as John McCain dumber questions than Stern asked strippers, and they laughed it off. But without the sexy little giggle.

That’s because society’s aspirationals use politics as a refuge for their stupidity. They sucker you into long conversations at dinner parties about how Bush is stupid and how Bush is also really stupid. They feed on political blogs and newspaper columnists that reflect their side and parrot the best one-liners they can find. These are the people who furiously scream about policy decisions mostly because they need to furiously scream about something. If they were one rung down the socioeconomic ladder, instead of yelling about Nancy Pelosi’s trip to Syria they’d be shouting about Kobe’s refusal to pass.

This isn’t to say that politics aren’t important or interesting. It’s to say that most people who talk about politics aren’t important or interesting. And Imus was their king. He got to pretend to be smart with actual smart people.

The arena of politics is too confined to encapsulate all the topics worthy of intellectual debate. It’s as though we all go to a college where everyone has to major in political science. Newspaper columns, talk radio and cable news channels rarely have serious debates about art, literature, technology, sex, fashion or religion. If it weren’t for Monica Lewinsky, newspapers still wouldn’t acknowledge the existence of the thong. Look at the lengths Britney Spears had to go to just to inform us of long-standing fashion changes in personal grooming.

The more serious side of the LA Times emerges in the penseés of Tim Rutten, their ponderous, old-school media columnist.  In his piece, he asks the really important question:  How has Imus gotten away with making these kinds of comments for so long, while retaining the fawning support of the political and media elite?

This guy has been doing this stuff for years — insulting and disparaging not only African Americans but Jews and gays.

This week the Anti-Defamation League distributed a statement pointing out that it has been lodging protests about Imus’ anti-Semitic remarks for years and nothing has been done. There are examples it cites that, frankly, can’t be quoted in this column because they’re too purely offensive, including a characterization of Washington Post columnist Howard Kurtz that’s straight out of Julius Streicher. (He habitually referred to the late Johnnie L. Cochran Jr. with a similarly racist epithet.)

Why did he get away with it?

IT happened because he made millions for his network and syndicators and covered himself with a very shrewd strategy. He positioned himself as the thinking person’s shock jock and, when he wasn’t dishing out racism, prejudice or misogyny, invited onto his show a virtual who’s who of the national news media and publishing elite. Those people were only too happy to ignore their responsibility to call Imus on his reprehensible behavior because they profited from the promotional opportunities his program granted them. He helped sell books and journalists’ careers.

Another devil’s bargain, in the same mold as the Democrats’.  What does this say about the cynicism of the writers, broadcasters and politicians who seek to lead and instruct us, that they would find in Imus a useful tool?   Because from what Rutten and the various Democratic spokespersons quoted above are saying, we can expect the sales of books by journalists to drop, along with the percentage of white males voting Democratic, if Imus isn’t there to shine his peculiar light on them.

The mind reels at the implications.

Hollywood, Silicon Valley and Wall Street: Lining Up to Run America

Joel Kotkin sees a new power elite and a new political paradigm emerging from behind the ruins of George W. Bush’s failed administration.   The whole essay is worth reading. Here’s a taste:

How much things have changed in the past few decades! Hollywood once split its loyalties carefully among the parties; its only president came from its right. Now, as much as 80 percent of its largesse flows to the Democrats. The schism between Obama supporter David Geffen and those hanging tough with Clinton is important, not only because of how it reflects Hollywood’s endemic pettiness, but because much of the party, instead of regarding these wealthy prima donnas as deluded minstrels, now treats them as enlightened policy gurus.

Not long ago, Silicon Valley was a bastion of middle-of-the-road Republicans like former Congressman Ed Zschau. But as power once vested in industrial firms like Hewlett Packard has shifted to software and internet-based companies, high-tech politics have shifted both left and dark green. The rising powers of the 21st Century Valley, firms like Google and eBay, generally don’t worry about trifles like groundwater regulations or factory emissions since they don’t manufacture anything. Nor do they worry much about labor laws, because their own employees tend to be young, well-educated and well-compensated. This makes it easier to curry favor with enviro-friendly, left-leaning politicians like former Vice President Al Gore.

Perhaps most important of all have been the changes on Wall Street, whose power extends deeply into both Hollywood and Silicon Valley and which now stands as one of the predominant sources of funds for federal office-seekers and related political action committees. Long the bastion of the old Republican establishment and a backer of Bush in his two presidential runs, Wall Street in 2006 gave more money to the Democrats, and that trend seems to be accelerating along with the implosion of the Republicans.

(snip)

How did this corporate power shift occur so quickly and dramatically? To a large extent, the answer lies in the utter failure of George W. Bush and his administration. Bush came to office with the support of a Sun Belt elite that drew its wealth and power from the great economic surge west and south after World War II and for nearly a quarter-century dominated American political life

Donors from this group of businesses propelled the careers of such substantial figures as Arizona’s Barry Goldwater, and California’s Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan. Arguably, their final triumph, helped by the demographic shift to the South and West, lay with Newt Gingrich’s 1994 congressional takeover.

Back in the late 1970s, founding fathers of the Sun Belt power grab, such as oilman Henry Salvatori and Litton Industries founder Tex Thornton, shared with me their conviction that the old Eastern establishment lacked the power and conviction to lead the country. They felt America needed to be guided by more vital, more clear-headed leaders. Economic malaise of the Jimmy Carter years, as well as the perception of America’s weakness both against the Soviet Union and terrorist states such as Iran, lent credibility to these beliefs among a large part of the public.

Like most successful elites, these leaders possessed a relatively coherent agenda. It centered on gaining a free hand over the nation’s natural resources, a low-tax economic policy and support for a strong national defense. The divisive moral agenda, particularly helpful in wooing working-class and Southern voters, was grafted on later but was never widely embraced by the right’s corporate funders.

Bush’s disastrous tenure has pretty much destroyed his backers’ credibility on all three issues. High energy prices and shifting climate-change politics have decimated the traditional agenda of oil and gas companies. An uneven and poorly shared economic expansion has convinced many middle-class erstwhile conservatives that Bush’s low tax, pro-business policies do not really work for them. Finally, the catastrophe in Iraq has undermined support for the overt, aggressive national defense policy long supported by Sun Belt conservatives and their defense industry allies.

(snip)

Once they recover from their post-Bush euphoria, however, traditional liberals should realize that the ongoing power shift does not necessarily signify the rise of a populist agenda. The wealthiest fifth of Americans are now equally likely to be Democrats or Republicans, a shocking shift from the nearly 70 percent Republican cast of this same quintile just two decades ago. The “party of the people” increasingly now must appeal as much to the affluent as the working-class voter.

I’ve been struggling for a “big picture” that explains the changes in politics in the past couple of years that goes beyond the tactical novelties like the netroots and YouTube.  Kotkin’s is pretty coherent. 

A possible flaw, however, is that his analysis completely omits 9/11, the jihad against the West, the “war on terror.”  Or, is he implying that 9/11 is no longer pertinent, the war on terror is quiescent, and that whole policy arena doesn’t cut politically anymore?  That would come as a huge, rude surprise to the blogospheric right, who think the war on terror is the only issue.  But maybe that’s the case.

The Battle of Britain, 2006

It’s pretty clear (to me anyway) that the war in Iraq has not mutated into a civil war, as some say, but into the first major U.S. engagement with Islamism, a complicated battlefield in which we and the civil authorities of Iraq are fighting on multiple fronts against an array of different insurgent terrorist groups that, once we leave, would proceed to killing each other.  The goal is to foment a real civil war, which it’s my belief most Iraqis do not seek.  It is unclear if we can prevent this.

But Iraq is just one front in what to me is rapidly becoming World War III.  Another major front is the United Kingdom.  You have probably already heard this news:

British intelligence and law enforcement officials have passed on a grim assessment to their U.S. counterparts, “It will be a miracle if there isn’t a terror attack over the holidays in London,” a senior American law enforcement official tells ABCNews.com.

British police have been quietly carrying out a series of key arrests as they continue to track at least six active “plots” tied to what they call “al Qaeda of England.”

Officials said they could not cite any specific date or target but said al Qaeda had planned previous operations during the Christmas holidays that had been disrupted.

“It is not a matter of if there will be an attack, but how bad the attack will be,” an intelligence official told ABCNews.com.

Authorities say they are seeking at least 18 suspected suicide bombers.

The British government’s awareness of this unending threat probably explains why Prime Minister Tony Blair declines the many engraved invitations to turn against George W. Bush.  I’m sure he knows he would be better off politically if he could cut the cord that attaches him to our widely-derided president.  But Blair sees a bigger picture for his country, and knows he can’t casually discard his nation’s most important ally for short-term political advantage.  Here’s part of what Blair said to Parliament a few days ago:

The basic point I come back to, again and again and which I have made many times here – is that whether in Iraq, or Afghanistan or indeed combating terrorism here, these battles are inextricably bound together. It is a global issue.  It needs a global response.

Which brings me to the principal consideration of Britain’s foreign policy over the past 10 years.  Global challenges can only be met by global alliances.  A nation like Britain has no prospect – none – in the world as it is developing today, of pursuing its national interest except in close concert with others.  That is why, no matter how tough the test, and these past years since 9/11 have shown how tough it can be – the alliances Britain has with America and within Europe, must remain the cornerstones of our policy. 

Do not misunderstand me.  I support the US willingly.  I believe in the EU for reasons of principle.  I supported the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq because I believed them right.  I have put Britain at the centre of Europe because I am proud that we are part of the largest political union and biggest economic market in the world.  For me these alliances have never been a struggle between individual conscience and duty to my country.  It is a happy marriage of conviction and realpolitik. 

But just for a moment, leave aside the obvious and deep-rooted ties of history with America.  Leave aside the fact that only, together, when the US finally entered WWII, were we able to succeed.  Leave aside the prospect of Britain facing the Cold War for half a century without the transatlantic alliance, an absurd thought.  Leave it all aside and focus on today and the future.

Take any problem Britain wants solving:  global terrorism – (assuming you don’t believe that but for George Bush it wouldn’t exist); climate change; Israel/Palestine; Iran and North Korea’s nuclear programme; world trade; Africa in general, right now Sudan in particular; global poverty.  We may agree or disagree with the US position on some or all of these issues.  But none of these vital British concerns can be addressed, let alone solved, without America.  Without America, Kosovo could not have been attempted.  Without Kosovo, Milosevic might still be running Serbia; and the Balkans rather than stabilising with a potential future in Europe, would have remained the destabilising force it was for most of the 20th Century.   We need America.  That is a fact.

All that, in a sense, is obvious.  But – runs the more sophisticated argument -:  America we like, this American President we don’t.  This is a comforting argument.  It separates anti-America from anti-Bush.  However it is also a cop-out.  Let us not kid ourselves.  9/11 would have changed any American President’s foreign policy.  3000 innocent people dead in the streets of New York; the Al Qaida operatives who did it, trained out of Afghanistan.  Following 9/11, American policy was going to shift.  It was going to get out after the terrorists with all America’s might and any President who didn’t do it, wasn’t going to be President for long.

When I said, after 9/11 that we should stand shoulder to shoulder with America, I said it because I believed it.  But I also thought it was profoundly in Britain’s interests.  I knew this attack wasn’t aimed at America per se; but at America as the leading representative of our values.  Look round the world today; look even just within Europe.  Britain is not the only country that faces a terrorist threat.  We all do, allies and non-allies, anyone in fact that isn’t “them”.  I thought then and I think now that defeating this threat – whose roots are deep and have been a long time growing – was going to take a generation; and I knew then and know now that defeating it, was never going to be done without an America prepared to lead as America, to its credit, has.

And the truth is, for Britain, it is always right for us to keep our partnership with America strong. 

Post 9/11, there were no half-hearted allies of America.  There were allies and others.  We were allies then and that’s how we should stay; and the test of any alliance, I’m afraid, is not when it’s easy but when it’s tough.

I rooted for a Democratic victory in 2006 and, depending on who’s nominated, will root for a Democratic victory in 2008 in part because, for a variety of reasons, a huge and important faction within our own nation — the left — does not recognize or will not acknowledge the threat Blair articulates so clearly (and Bush in-articulates so unclearly).  Perhaps as more of their own people assume positions of responsibility, the acknowledgement will come, and our nation can unite for this long struggle.

There is simply no getting around it, because every value the left holds dear — not to mention the broader American values — will be ground into dust everywhere the Islamists gain control.  To recall a long-forgotten political slogan of Richard Gephardt’s, “It’s Your Fight, Too.”  And that means you: environmentalists, labor organizers, gay activists, fighters for economic equality, multilateralist proponents of the UN, church-and-state separatists, extreme civil libertarians, “living and breathing” constitutionalists, TV and movie producers, sexually frank pop singers — all of you.  All of us.

They’re Not Taking it Well

Most of the conservative websites I look at seem relieved they no longer have to defend the Denny Hastert/Bill Frist boodlefest of a Republican Congressional majority; and sadder but wiser with regard to Donald Rumsfeld, who they reluctantly now admit made a mess of Iraq — to the point where it’s pretty clear the next group of “deciders” is going to focus mostly on the famed “exit strategy” of yore. The conservative websites seem resigned to the election’s outcome, and surprisingly cheerful about it. The left-wing bloggers seem a little disappointed in this reaction — or worried. Nothing brings out the paranoia of the left more than cheerful right-wingers. “What are they smiling about?”

But if you were hoping to kick it with some old school, right-wing red meat, I found it! It’s in the Los Angeles-based financial newspaper Investor’s Business Daily. The paper itself is only for subscribers, but Editor & Publisher has a story about a recent editorial:

NEW YORK The conservative business publication, Investor’s Business Daily, isn’t taking this week’s elections results in stride. In a blistering editorial, the newspaper charges that Rep. John Conyers, soon to chair the House Judiciary Committee, is “leading a Democrat jihad to deny law enforcement key terror-fighting tools” and “is in the pocket of Islamists.”

Proof for this? Conyers, whose district in Michigan holds a large Arab-Amercian population, has a version of his Web site in Arabic and allegedly “does the bidding of these new constituents and the militant Islamist activists who feed off them.” More “evidence”: Conyers opposes the Patriot Act and has called for the president’s impeachment.

In addition he “is one of the top recipients of donations from the Arab-American Leadership PAC. And not surprisingly, he has a long history of pandering to Arab and Muslim voters….Today, Hamas, Hezbollah and the al-Qaida-tied Muslim Brotherhood are all active in the area…..

“Expect Conyers and Pelosi to kick open the doors of Congress to Islamists from the Council on American-Islamic Relations and other militant groups. They will have unfettered access, even though many of their leaders have been tied to terrorism (some CAIR officials have landed in the big house)…

“Conyers led the defense of Bill Clinton in last decade’s impeachment hearings and is clearly out for blood. So are many of the constituents he serves.”

At the same time, IBD went after George McGovern, who spoke out against the Iraq war this week: “The Democrats seem to have a fondness for party leaders and presidents whose policies and positions, when followed, result in the expansion of tyranny, the subjugation and even death of millions, and added threats to U.S. safety and security.”

Donald Rumsfeld, on the other hand, is “a great defense chief and a great man, and deserves a lot better,” a Friday editorial noted. He couldn’t help it if “chaos is endemic to the Arabic culture, of which Iraq is a part.” Rumsfeld’s approval rating in a Newsweek poll released Saturday stands at 24% — seven points less than the president’s.

And as for recently defeated Republican Senator Lincoln Chafee: According to IBD, he “thinks defeat at the polls gives him license to spend his remaining weeks in office wrecking U.S. foreign policy. It’s a final outrage from a traitor to party and president.”

*Update 11/12/06:  I should add that most right wing websites are in revolt against the James Baker/Lee Hamilton study group’s recommendations, with Powerline’s John Hinderaker saying about the reported plan to engage Iran and Syria in a multi-lateral effort to stabilize Iraq:

I sincerely hope I’m wrong, but this sounds like the kind of harebrained scheme that only a team of foreign policy “realists” could come up with. Why on God’s green earth would Iran and Syria, individually or in tandem, help us to pacify Iraq? Both have been doing everything in their power to create disorder in Iraq for the last three years, presumably because they think it is in their interest to do so. How, exactly, do the “realists” expect to change those countries’ assessments of their interests?

About the idea that concessions from Israel on the Golan Heights might induce Syria to help:

What does Israel have to do with the fact that Shia and Sunni Muslims want to tear each other to pieces? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. I’ll say it again: the idea that pressuring Israel to compromise its security will somehow, magically, solve the Iraqis’ problems is delusional. Maybe Baker et al., know something I don’t, but the idea that Iran and Syria will cooperate to bring peace to that region appears equally far-fetched.

So, under the Baker Commission’s recommendations, what will become of the 12 million Iraqis who voted for freedom and for a normal life? President Bush has said more times than I can count, in speeches spanning the last four years, that all people want to be free, and that freedom is God’s gift to all mankind. If he doesn’t believe that, then what does he believe?

If the Iraqis are to be sold out, at least let them be sold out by the Democrats. No one expected anything better from them.

Maybe this is a clue to why the conservatives aren’t so unhappy about the Democrats’ rise.

Legacy Fever: Predicting the Next Two Years

George W. Bush is going to be focused on his legacy for the next two years. He doesn’t want his legacy to be 9/11 or the war in Iraq. Merely coping with a crisis does not give a president a prominent place in history. Certainly the Iraq war will leave a mixed legacy at best — toppling Hussein was good, but the handling of the insurgency was terrible. Anyway, the war’s final reckoning we won’t know for a long time, if ever. The nature of what the neocons were thinking when they decided to invade Iraq ironically cancels out the potential for historical credit.

For example:  If Britain had invaded Germany when Hitler marched his armies into the Rhineland in 1936 in violation of the treaty of Locarno, the Nazis would have been defeated, Hitler likely deposed and, we know now, perhaps 50 million lives would have been saved. But no one would know about that now, because history only runs forward, not backward. Such a move by Britain might have been seen as unwarranted aggression at the time, and infamous for the rest of history. That’s why the British government didn’t do it, even though they had a right to, and the dead from WWII would wish for it.

I think the neocons around Bush were determined to jump ahead of the curve of history. We’ll never really know if what they did saved any lives from, say, a nuclear Hussein. Right now, it mostly looks like a bloody mess, and the neocons are finished.  The dismissal of Rumsfeld closes that chapter, even though the war grinds on.

So where will Bush turn to build a legacy? Every president of my lifetime has left at least one positive thing for which history will remember them. In some cases the fulfillment of their legacy occurred after they left office.

Eisenhower — The Interstate Highway system.

Kennedy — The Apollo program.

Johnson — the Civil Rights bill, Voting Rights Act and similar measures to fulfill the promise of equal rights for all Americans.

Nixon — Opening up China

Ford — Pardoning Nixon, which wrapped up the Watergate episode.

Carter — Arab/Israeli peace accords

Reagan — Taming inflation for a generation; peacefully ending the Cold War.

Bush 41 — Winning the first Gulf War (which inspired the Coen Brothers classic “The Big Lebowski.”)

Clinton — Welfare reform, NAFTA.

Bush 43 has done nothing comparable.  If his presidency ended today, he’d be seen as the president who was on duty on 9/11, and rallied the nation.  But that’s not a legacy, and in fact one could argue that he has failed to persuade the entire country that we are really at war with Islamic fundamentalists. Bush turned it into a divisive political issue — although I can’t put all the blame for that on him.  He’d also be seen as the president who topped Hussein, but at this point, that looks like an outrageously costly accomplishment — although maybe history will judge it differently.

I don’t think Bush will be satisfied to leave things that way.  Oh, it’s possible.  He might already be doing the Crawford Countdown.  There was always an element of truth in Will Farrell’s Bush parodies in 2000, in which Bush seemed ambivalent about being president, seeing as how it was such a hard job.  But I tend to think by now, he hungers for respect and validation from future historians.  So what will he do?

Given the current makeup of Congress, it will have to be bipartisan.  I’m going to guess that he’s going to take another run at Social Security.  Saving that program from the baby-boom bulge would be something to point to. My guess is that’s what he’ll try.

I know what he’d really like.  The liberal side of W has to do with immigration.  He sincerely believes that the illegal aliens working in this country now should become citizens, in some way. It’s good for business, and it’s humanitarian; that’s how he sees it.  Maybe he’ll go in that direction, but if he did, I think the politics would be explosive.  Not only would the Republican party fall apart, but significant parts of the Democratic party might be tempted to redefine itself as a nationalist party, the party of Lou Dobbs, as Slate’s Jacob Weisberg puts it today.

Most of those (Democrats) who reclaimed Republican seats ran hard against free trade, globalization, and any sort of moderate immigration policy. That these Democrats won makes it likely that others will take up their reactionary call. Some of the newcomers may even be foolish enough to try to govern on the basis of their misguided theory.

Until we know where Bush is going to take his legacy fever — and until we know if he even has one — it’s impossible to really predict the 2008 election.   The next two years will set it up, just as Clinton’s last two years set up the trainwreck of 2000.

Democracy in Action

As enjoyable as last night’s election results turned out to be, the news this morning that Donald Rumsfeld is resigning gave me a bigger jolt of joyful adrenalin. It’s awe-inspiring, folks. Yesterday we voted. Today, the world changed because of our votes.

As of this moment, there’s nothing to link to, just news flashes all over the web, like this site, which is where I first saw it:

This means democracy works! The president was forced to listen to the public, and took this hugely significant step.

We’ve got more than 100,000 troops in Iraq, and millions of Iraqis who are depending on our country to make some useful contribution to end a bloody terrorist insurgency and avert a looming civil war. We’ve got Iran to deal with — and North Korea. So long as Rumsfeld was in charge, a huge and growing percentage of the population — including many who had supported the idea of military action to topple Hussein — no longer believed the Administration was credible or effective, and thus would withhold their support, even from measures that were necessary.

In a perverse way, President Bush did a good thing when he announced, a few days before the election, that Rumsfeld would stay. He made this election an even clearer choice. He obviously underestimated the public’s fury — no big surprise there. But now that Bush’s party has lost, no question about it, Rumsfeld had to go. And so he will.

What other messages is Bush hearing from the electorate? What kind of mandate is the likely Speaker Pelosi taking from all this? What will it do to the Democratic Party to gain a decisive voice in government for the first time in six years? How does this election remake the landscape for 2008 — the first truly wide-open presidential election since 1952? I don’t know. But it’s going to be fun to find out.

Sometimes I wonder why I spent so much of my life involved with politics. It hadn’t been fun for a long time. Days like today remind me why I was attracted to this game. It doesn’t mean I’m going back into it — I never will. But I hope some young people are getting a kick out of this epochal moment. From my seat on the sidelines, I sure am.

Stolen Election Freak-out Blues

It’s in my constitution (small “c”). I am not a conspiracy theorist. I don’t believe hidden forces, either from this world or the unseen one, control our lives. It’s also my experience — too many alleged conspiracies get debunked. Plus, it’s my sense of human nature. Nobody can keep a secret. An effective conspiracy depends on dozens, sometimes hundreds of people doing so without exception. Can’t happen.

(It’s what happens out in the open but nobody pays attention to — that’s what I think we should worry about.)

Therefore, I have tended not to buy into stories from either party that foreshadow an illegitimate vote today. Yes, on the margins, there will be fraudulent votes cast. Yes, on the margins, the ID requirements that some states have passed will turn away qualified voters. Yes, some electronic voting machines will burp and votes thus will be miscounted. But not enough of any of that will happen to change outcomes. Close votes will be recounted — they always have been. It’s interesting how, when there is a recount, the totals always change, but the result usually does not. Obviously, no matter what system we use, vote-counting is imperfect — but gets it right, usually.

Here is a piece with the opposite view. It was e-mailed to me in a version that ran on the Guardian UK, which I can’t find; but I found it here. Author Greg Palast says it’s already in the bag. The Republicans have already stolen the 2006 election by systematically disenfranchising 4.5 million mostly black and Hispanic, mostly Democratic, votes.

I invite you to read the whole thing. I’ll post one section of it here that I found particularly intriguing — especially the part I’ve put in bold letters:

On January 1, 2006, while America slept off New Year’s Eve hangovers, a new federal law crept out of the swamps that has devoured 1.9 million votes, overwhelmingly those of African-Americans and Hispanics. The vote-snatching statute is a cankerous codicil slipped into the 2002 Help America Vote Act — strategically timed to go into effect in this mid-term year. It requires every state to reject new would-be voters whose identity can’t be verified against a state verification database.

Sounds arcane and not too threatening. But look at the numbers and you won’t feel so fine. About 24.3 million Americans attempt to register or re-register each year. The New York University Law School’s Brennan Center told me that, under the new law, Republican Secretaries of State began the year by blocking about one in three new voters.

How? To begin with, Mr. Bush’s Social Security Administration has failed to verify 47% of registrants. After appeals and new attempts to register, US Elections Assistance Agency statistics indicate 1.9 million would-be voters will still find themselves barred from the ballot on Tuesday.

But don’t worry: those holding passports from their ski vacations to Switzerland are doing just fine. And that’s the point. It’s not the number of voters rejected, it’s their color. For example, California’s Republican Secretary of State Bruce McPherson figured out how to block 40% of registrants, mostly Hispanics. In a rare counter-move, Los Angeles, with a Hispanic mayor, contacted these citizens, “verified” them and got almost every single one back on the rolls. But throughout the rest of the West, new Hispanics remain victims of the “José Crow” treatment.

I cannot find any reference to this story of McPherson blocking new registrants and “Los Angeles, with a Hispanic mayor” undoing his handiwork. Palast is far away from here and is probably, and forgivably, unaware of the diffusion of responsibility in Los Angeles. The Registrar is a county, not a city office, so it’s unclear whether Villaraigosa intervened, as Palast’s wording suggests.

If you have some independent awareness of this story, or can send me a link, I would appreciate it. If this story is true and went unreported — that’s quite an indictment of the California political press. If Palast has made it up, that would be interesting too. He’s a widely-read author and commentator — and the article I’ve excerpted above is making the viral rounds today.

P.S. If you want to watch the more conventional reports of voting problems — from the media, the campaigns, the parties — the political website Hotline’s blog is issuing regular reports.   I just went there and found a link to a YouTube video about a congressional candidate in Ohio — a Republican no less — who couldn’t get her vote read by an optical scanning machine.  The story’s kicker — “the votes will be scanned later” — is not reassuring.

A Democrat from Iraq Observes Democracy in America

“24 Steps to Liberty” is a blog written by an anonymous 28-year-old Baghdad man. At various points during the war, I’ve checked in on his observations about the fighting and the politics in Iraq–and I would recommend his archives to you.   Recently, “24″ moved to California to attend journalism school — I haven’t found the post where he says where he’s going, but he might be keeping that a secret, too.  For a class assignment he wrote a report on “America’s Midterm Elections.” It’s more than a little sour, but I thought it was a good reflection of how politics feels to a lot of Americans now, in ways we probably don’t even register emotionally.

A few months after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, rumors suggested that Iraqis would soon vote “democratically and freely” for the first time in decades. We were confused. The only experience we had in voting was in two referendums to decide whether Saddam Hussein should stay the “only leader and the hero of the Arab nation” in Iraq. That, of course, was more of a joke_ and a day-off_ than a true political experiment.

In the months leading to the January 2005 elections in Iraq, political campaigns flooded our country. Politicians rallied to sell themselves and we, Iraqis, listened carefully, spending hours analyzing their positions. When many risked their lives to vote on Election Day, we were at least informed.

Democracy is exhausting, but twice more, Iraqis have taken it seriously—for the constitutional referendum in October 2005 and the parliamentary elections in mid-December.

And, this is where our two democracies differ sharply. Here, in the full democracy of the United States, where Americans have lost thousands of men and women to violence around the world and the “war on terrorism,” it’s shocking how few citizens make use of freedom of speech and “democracy.”

A few weeks ago, I attended a forum in Tracy, California in which Democrat Jerry McNerney, and the incumbent, Republican Congressman Richard Pombo presented their platforms. During the session, people applauded their candidates, booed each other and showed nothing but stubbornness. No one demonstrated any willingness to listen and to think about the other side. At the end of the session, I failed to understand the point of having the debate-like session.

I understand that the polls suggest the Democrats will take control of the House of Representatives, but I find it hard to believe and don’t.

If the forum in Tracy was any indicator, democrats will always vote democrat, and republicans will remain with their party. The only chance for a change remains with the few who are open to voting for the other party and in my judgment, it’s too few to make a difference.

( snip)

The political debates and discussions we see now, I believe, will change nothing.

People have already made up their minds. They already know who they will support. No matter what mistakes were made by the republicans, very few of their supporters, if any, are going to the polls on November 7 to demonstrate their anger and vote for a democrat.

The nearing midterm election in Nov. 7 is nothing but a “democratic” practice people will enjoy, especially those who just turned 18 _ because it is there first time to toss the paper into the box or press the screen.

Even if the democrats won the mid term elections this year, those hoping for a political change in the United States have to wait until the next presidential elections. It is then when the average American will have another chance to make a difference. Another chance to be a decision maker.

That last point is basically right. As Mickey Kaus has pointed out, the results of tomorrow’s election will have a number of perverse effects. It is Bush Administration’s mismanagement of the war that will cost them one or two houses of Congress, but after the vote, Bush will still be in charge of Iraq policy.

A Democratic win is difficult to associate with a specific policy change — because the party hasn’t recommended one. Check out this ad from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. All it calls for is “to ask the hard questions about Iraq.” Believe me, that’s more than enough reason to justify a change in party control — in order to hold the Administration’s feet to the fire. But the demand is so painfully modest — a seat at the table for the opposition party. The ad’s visual atmosphere says “we should pull out,” but the text does not say or imply that.

I don’t think either party knows what to do now.  And yet, this election is being billed as “a watershed.”  Perhaps history will show it to be one.  But who can possibly say now?

____________________________

“24″ has good things to say about America. He’s clearly glad to be here. You might want to check out another post of his: “Ten Things I Hate and Twelve I Love About America.” That’s a net plus of two! First, though, from the “hate” side of the ledger:

* People don’t cover their mouths when they yawn.
* They don’t give their seats to elderly or women in buses and underground trains.
* When they hear about people hit or abused in Iraq, they call it torture. But when the American armed forces and the CIA do the same thing, they call it “abuse!”
* Newspapers call those who killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis “insurgents.” But when someone plans an attack inside the U.S., even if only planned and was failed, he/she is a “terrorist.”
* They burp loud in public.
* They send their parents to the elderly houses or leave them to live alone when they are old and incapable of taking care of themselves.
* They don’t have or tell jokes.
* A husband and a wife are not one. They are separate entities and children are taught to grow into the same thing.

And now for some “love.”

* People are nice and helpful.
* I am free to do, eat and wear whatever I want as long as I don’t offend others.
* I can walk freely in the streets as late as I want [I hear about crimes and shootings, but I don’t care]
* People listen to you and always try to advise.
* Transportation inside the cities is really good. It makes my life so much easier.
* People love and cherish their feel of belongingness to their soil and they are proud of their flag.

* Education system is great, for those who can afford it.
* They call their political leaders “stupid” and keep reelecting them!
* I don’t hear explosions and don’t wake up on the IED-alarm-clock everyday like I used to in Baghdad.

Don’t forget to vote!

Okay. I Believe John Kerry Meant it as a Joke. So Why Didn’t He Apologize? *(updated)

I don’t get John Kerry — and even though I voted for the guy, I never really did get him. My theory on Kerry, which always riled my mother to no end, was that he was burdened by the appearance of being a highly intelligent man, when in fact he is just average. If he looked like, say, me, for example, he would have gone into a line of work more commensurate with his abilities. That world-bearing gravitas…isn’t that the kind of wise leader we need for our troubled times? So his face seems to say.

His face lies. With the best chance of beating an incumbent president since 1968 (I think Clinton bucked the odds in ‘92 by beating Bush, aided heavily by the presence of Ross Perot on the ballot), Kerry managed to blow the 2004 presidential election. I don’t think it was a sudden outbreak of love for W. I think a lot of fence-sitters at the end were turned off by Kerry, and stuck with the devil they knew. He just didn’t seem very smart, after all.

So last night in Pasadena, Kerry made his famous comment to the students at the City College, saying, “We’re here to talk about education, but I want to say something before, you know education, if you make the most of it, you study hard, you do your homework, and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don’t, you get stuck in Iraq.”

Unbelievable. Even if this was how he really felt — and the sentiment did seem to fit what we know about this pompous preppy — it seemed impossible that he would actually say it.

So — it was a gaffe, right? He meant to make a joke about the “dumb” Bush getting us stuck in Iraq, and it came out wrong. To stop the bleeding, here’s the PR 101: Apologize. Right away. Say he realizes what he said might have been taken as an insult by our servicemen and women in Iraq. He didn’t mean to suggest they all got there because they screwed up in school. Mea culpa.

But no. Here’s what he actually said today about the mess he made:

Let me make it crystal clear, as crystal clear as I know how. I apologize to no one for my criticism of the president and of his broken policy. If anyone owes our troops in the fields an apology, it is the president and his failed team and a Republican majority in the Congress that has been willing to stamp — rubberstamp policies that have done injury to our troops and to their families.

My statement yesterday — and the White House knows this full well — was a botched joke about the president and the president’s people, not about the troops. The White House’s attempt to distort my true statement is a remarkable testament to their abject failure in making America safe. It’s a stunning statement about their willingness to reduce anything America, the raw politics. It’s their willingness to distort, their willingness to mislead Americans, their willingness to exploit the troops as they have so many times at backdrops, at so many speeches in which they have not told the American people the truth.

I’m not going to stand for it. What our troops deserve is a winning strategy, and what they deserve is leadership that is up to the sacrifice that they’re making. Sadly, this is the best that this administration can do in a month when we have lost 100 young men and women who have given their lives for a failed policy. Over half the names on the Vietnam wall were put there after our leaders knew that our policy was wrong, and it was wrong that leaders were quiet then, and I’m not going to be quiet now. This is a textbook Republican campaign strategy: try to change the topic, try to make someone else the issue, try to make something else said the issue, not the policy, not their responsibility.

Well, everybody knows it’s not working this time, and I’m not going to stand around and let it work.

If anyone thinks that a veteran, someone like me, who’s been fighting my entire career to provide for veterans, to fight for their benefits, to help honor what their service is — if anybody thinks that a veteran would somehow criticize more than 140,000 troops serving in Iraq, and not the president and his people who put them there, they’re crazy. It’s just wrong.

This is a classic GOP textbook Republican campaign tactic. I’m sick and tired of a bunch of despicable Republicans who will not debate real policy, who won’t take responsibility for their own mistakes, standing up and trying to make other people the butt of those mistakes.

I’m sick and tired of a whole bunch of Republican attacks, the most of which come from people who never wore the uniform and never had the courage to stand up and go to war themselves.

Enough is enough. We’re not going to stand for this.

This policy is broken, and this president and his administration didn’t do their homework. They didn’t study what would happen in Iraq. They didn’t study and listen to the people who were the experts and would have told them. And they know that’s what I was talking about yesterday. I’m not going to be lectured by a White House or by the likes of Rush Limbaugh, who’s taking a day off from mimicking and attacking Michael J. Fox, who’s now going to try to attack me and lie about me and distort me. No way. It disgusts me that a bunch of these Republican hacks, who have never worn the uniform of our country, are willing to lie about those who did. It’s over.

This administration has given us a Katrina foreign policy: mistake upon mistake upon mistake, unwilling to give our troops the armor that they need, unwilling to have enough troops in place, unwilling to give them the humvees that they deserve to protect them, unwilling to have a coalition that is adequate to be able to defend our interests.

Our own intelligence agency has told us they’re creating more terrorists, not less; they’re making us less safe, not more. I think Americans are sick and tired of this game.

These Republicans are afraid to stand up and debate a real veteran on this topic, and they’re afraid to debate — you know, they want to debate straw men because they’re afraid to debate real men.

Well, we’re going to have a real debate in this country about this policy. The bottom line is, these Republicans want to distort this policy. And this time it won’t work, because we are going to stay in their face with the truth. And no Democrat is going to be bullied by these people, by these kinds of attacks that have no place in American politics. It’s time to set our policy correct.

They have a stand still and lose policy in Iraq, and they have a cut and run policy in Afghanistan. And the fact is our troops, who have served heroically, who deserve better, deserve leadership that is up to their sacrifice, period.

Q Senator, John McCain said that you owe an apology to many thousands of Americans serving in Iraq who answered their country’s call because they are patriots. Should those people who didn’t get your joke, who may have misinterpreted you as saying the undereducated are cannon fodder — what do you say to them?

KERRY: Never said that. And John McCain knows I’ve never said that, and John McCain knows I wouldn’t say that. And John McCain ought to ask for an apology from Donald Rumsfeld for making the mistakes he’s made. John McCain ought to ask for an apology from this administration for not sending in enough troops. He ought to ask for an apology for putting our troops on the line with a policy that doesn’t have an adequate coalition, that doesn’t have adequate diplomacy, where we don’t have a strategy to win.

And what we need is to debate the real issues, not these phony, sideline issues that are part of the politics. Americans are tired — sick and tired of this kind of politics. They know my true feelings. They know I fought to provide additional money for veterans. They know I fought to provide money for combat — for veterans. They know I fought to put money for VA. They know I’ve honored those veterans. They know that this is the finest military — and I’ve said it a hundred thousand times — that we’ve ever had. They know precisely what I was saying, and they’re trying to turn this, because they have a bankrupt policy and they can’t defend it to the nation and they can’t defend it to the world, and I’m not going to stand for this anymore, period. That’s the apology that people ought to get.

Q Do you need to go to joke school?

KERRY: Sure. Q It sounds like you regret saying those remarks. And what were you trying to say?

KERRY: Very simple, that they — that those who didn’t study it properly, those who made the decisions, they got us into Iraq, very simple. And the fact is they know that. The administration knows that. And they’re simply trying to distort this. They’re trying to play a game, and again, I’m not going to stand for it. This is the kind of thing that makes Americans sick. People know.

And there ought to be some level of honor and trust in this process. You know, I have fought a lifetime on behalf of veterans, and we have the finest young men and women serving us in the United States military that we’ve ever had. And I’m proud of that. But this administration has let them down, and that was clearly in a remark directed at this administration. They understand it, they want to distort it. It’s a classic Republican playbook. They want to change the topic. We’re not going to let them change the topic. The topic is their failed policy in Iraq. The topic is that they don’t have a strategy; they don’t have a way to be able to win.

You got Dick Cheney saying everything’s just terrific in Iraq only a week ago. John McCain ought to ask for an apology from Dick Cheney for misleading America. He ought to ask for an apology from the president for lying about the nuclear program in Africa. He ought to ask for an apology for once again a week ago referring to al Qaeda as being the central problem in Iraq when al Qaeda is not the central problem.

Enough is enough! I’m not going to stand for these people trying to shift the topic and make it politics. America deserves a real discussion about real policy, and that’s what this election is going to be about next Tuesday.

Q Senator –

KERRY: One more question, and then, I got to run.

Q (Off mike) –

KERRY: Let me tell you something, I’m not going to give them one ounce of daylight to spread one of their lies and to play this game ever, ever again. That is a lesson I learned deep and hard, and I’ll tell you, I will stand up anywhere across this country and take these guys on. This is dishonoring not just the troops themselves by pointing the finger at the troops, it’s abusing the troops. They’re using the troops. They’re trying to make the troops into the target here. I didn’t do that, and they know that. And for them to suggest that somebody who served their country as I did and has a record like I have in the United States Congress of standing up and fighting for the troops would ever, every insult the troops is an insult in and of itself. And they owe us an apology for even daring to use the White House to stand up and make this an issue again. Shame on them. Shame on them. And may the American people take that shame to the polls with them next Tuesday.

Thank you, all.

Wow. Just terrible. He thinks it’s 2004, and the Swift Boat guys are after him again. Only this time, he’s going to man up, and confront those bastards. Isn’t that what he’s thinking? Sure seems like it. Except the hard-nose, not-backin’-down rhetoric is all wrong for the event that prompted it. Everyone knows he hates Bush, disagrees with the Republicans — nothing new there. But it’s the soldiers in Iraq who needed to hear from him, not political reporters! Bush wasn’t offended — the troops and their families were (presumably).

Now he’s guaranteed a fire-storm. Democratic candidates will get drawn into it, their GOP opponents “demanding” they renounce the party’s 2004 standard-bearer. Commercials are being cut now. The Democrats don’t get it, the Democrats disrespect the troops, the Vietnam syndrome lives. Blah blah blah. Count on it.

I was thinking this weekend that the Democrats had finally gotten it together, and were about to win this mid-term election with a margin to spare in the House, and perhaps squeak by in the Senate, developments I welcomed as exceedingly healthy for both the nation and the party. But now, this colossal narcissist John Kerry, who shouldn’t even be out in public… Well, we’ll see how it turns out.

My stomach’s in knots. We did not need this.

*Update, 11/1/06:  As expected, Kerry has retracted his pledge to “apologize to no one.”  He has apologized to anyone who “misinterpreted” his remarks:

WASHINGTON (CNN) — Sen. John Kerry apologized Wednesday for a “poorly stated joke,” which the Massachusetts senator says was aimed at the president but was widely perceived as a slam on U.S. troops.

“I sincerely regret that my words were misinterpreted to wrongly imply anything negative about those in uniform, and I personally apologize to any service member, family member, or American who was offended,” he said in a written statement.

“As a combat veteran, I want to make it clear to anyone in uniform and to their loved ones: My poorly stated joke at a rally was not about, and [was] never intended to refer to any troop,” he said.

Not to be a grammar Bushitler, but:

Coming from such a highly educated man, I’m surprised this statement’s double-negative got through.  If Kerry’s words were “misinterpreted to wrongly imply” something, doesn’t that mean the opposite of “interpreted to wrongly imply,” and also the opposite of “misinterpreted to imply?”  If you misintepret something to wrongly imply something else, the two negatives cancel each other out, so you’re left with a statement correctly “interpreted to imply….” Which is what we were saying all along — he insulted the troops.

Maybe Kerry didn’t study hard enough.

Don’t NOT Vote…

I’m back in Orange County today while my son attends another play at Cal State Fullerton, which, from hearing him talk, might be what you’d get if Stratford-on-Avon mated with Broadway. Uh, okay. Sitting and waiting in Starbucks, I pick up a discarded OC Register Sunday Commentary Section, and see a friendly face on the front page, Jill Stewart, who I just mentioned the other day. She has a great column today that begins this way:

Have you noticed how, the more money the union and corporate special interests spend to promote their particular candidate, bond measure, or tax, the less interested and less aware of these issues we voters seem to be?

Although record amounts are being spent in California to drag us out away from our plasma TVs and our favorite blogs, we, the electorate, are deeply uninvolved. We are stuck in our comfy chairs.

How true. I’m going to vote Tuesday, but I expect to have to spend a lot of time in the voting booth reading over some of the propositions, because with one or two exceptions (the oil tax and the cigarette tax), I don’t understand what most of them are. Which are the ones that were Gov. Schwarzenegger’s grand deal with the legislature, the infrastructure bonds that are supposed to prepare California for the wave of population that, er, actually started arriving 20 years ago? I have no idea.

The advertising has been more unhelpful than usual. There’s one proposition that has been called a “taxpayer trap.” That’s all they say: Vote no on the “taxpayer trap.” To make sure I get the point, there’s a huge graphic of an old-fashioned mousetrap with what looks like a house from Monopoly being used as bait. So, does that mean if I give into temptation and try to take that nice little house, I’ll be caught in the taxpayer trap? The ad gives no further information. Then there’s another one that, if I recall correctly, implores me not to be fooled: Such-and-such proposition is bad for the environment. Since I had not heard of this proposition, listed only by number, I figure it’s unlikely that I’ve been fooled — but maybe, subliminally, I have.

I vote in every election, so in fact I will do my homework. But, as Jill Stewart suggests, most voters see these ads and figure the safest place to weather the election is from that comfy chair. So many traps out there, so many people trying to fool you! And if you’re just going to vote no, why bother showing up at all?

And that’s the special-interest strategy, Stewart suggests: To keep turnout “horrifically low.”

Little wonder why voters will stay away Nov. 7, and why record monies spent will be inversely related to votes cast. I figure a cost of $52 per vote.

The sharp pollster Mark Baldassare, director of research at Public Policy Institute of California, tells me, “What is going on is that a lot of money is spent on directing relatively few people to vote, and telling the rest of them to stay home. Campaign consultants … buy a list telling them who the voters are, they winnow it down to the 50 percent they need, and they try to get as many of the other people not to vote. And it works. This is no accident, that we are spending more money and getting less voters.”

The special interests get a bonus from this system, too, Stewart says. For an initiative to qualify in the next election, it must collect signatures equaling 5 percent of the total votes cast for governor. With the 2006 gubernatorial race pretty much a wipeout, and an initiative ballot full of obscure traps and tricks, turnout will be low, and so the 5 percent threshold in 2007-10 will be easier to meet, leading to “an onslaught of ballot measures.”

Who benefits from these ballot measures? They aren’t serious attempts to change the law, for the most part, are they? Given the overwhelmingly persuasive influence of the “vote no, it’s a trap!” advertising, I figure that the odds are against almost any ballot measure now–the good, the bad or the ugly. So who benefits? The election industry, that’s who — TV and radio stations who get to sell lots of advertising, the media buyers and other consultants. A full slate of initiatives, no matter how doomed, means full employment in the campaign and elections industry.

Back in my Berkeley days, I used to stop many late nights at Top Dog, which was run by some hard-core libertarians. The inside of Top Dog was decorated with libertarian bumper stickers. One of them was, “Don’t Vote. It Only Encourages Them.” But after reading Jill’s column, I think that slogan is due for an update. Voting is the last thing “they” want you to do. Don’t NOT vote. It Only Empowers Them.

It Won’t Be Jane Harman? (Updated)*

Until the post-2000 redistricting, Jane Harman was my congresswoman, and I was always pleased to vote for her. My part of the South Bay used to be one of the few real, bona-fide “swing” districts for both congressional and state legislative races, thus the political debate was sharper and the candidates, on both sides, more solid. The ideal candidate for this district was a pro-environment, pro-strong defense, pro-choice, fiscally responsible Democrat and that’s what Jane Harman is.

However, she now serves a district where anybody with a -D. after their name would win — where she faced a primary challenge from the left — and I’m now in a “safe” Republican district, represented by my fellow former Palos Verdes High School graduate Dana Rohrabacher, who was once a self-described “anarcho-capitalist,” and still pretty much votes like one. When I was working with the Port of LA, I heard him propose that the answer to increased post-9/11 port security was for the ports to charge shippers more, with each port free to make its own decision on whether to do this and by how much. He seemed completely unaware that the west coast ports all compete for business; that there was already a long-standing “race to the bottom” on port enviromental mitigations, and the last thing we needed was a similar competition on security.

But I digress.

To reset, Jane Harman is a good congressional representative. She is smart, prepared, and has an independent mind. She has been the ranking Democratic member on the House Intelligence Committee, and in that role has gained national prominence. She has been a good face for the Democratic party when the war against the jihad is being discussed, and would be even better in the role of chair heading into the 2008 presidential campaign.

I didn’t know until today, however, that if the Democrats win a majority in the House of Representatives in next month’s election, Harman will not become the chair. From the NY Times:

Ms. Harman, a moderate from Southern California, has been one of the party’s most outspoken voices on national security matters since the Sept. 11 attacks. But she has also drawn sharp criticism from more liberal Democrats, including Ms. (Nancy) Pelosi, who have privately said that she has not sufficiently used her position to attack the Bush administration for its prewar intelligence failures on Iraq and for its use of secret programs like the domestic eavesdropping carried out without warrants by the National Security Agency.

Losing Harman’s leadership is unfortunate. But get this:

Two candidates whom Ms. Pelosi is said to be considering for Intelligence Committee chairman are Representatives Alcee L. Hastings of Florida and Silvestre Reyes of Texas, both of whom currently serve on the panel.

The selection of Mr. Hastings, who is black, would help Ms. Pelosi shore up support from the powerful Congressional Black Caucus. But he has a checkered past, having been impeached and removed from a federal judgeship in 1989 on a bribery charge. Some Democrats fear that installing him in so sensitive a position would only invite Republican charges of weak Democratic leadership on national security matters.

Umm…ya think? What kind of House Speaker would pull an experienced intelligence expert like Harman for a former judge found to have taken a $150,000 bribe in exchange for a lenient sentence? This is a position with access to highly classified information!  I’m not sure but I believe that among intelligence experts, the term for people who take bribes is “security risk.”

The Times story reports that Harman has been lobbying for the job, and the lobbying has gotten her into trouble — both alienating Pelosi and reportedly (in Time) prompting an investigation into whether Harman “had made improper promises” to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac) in exchange for its support of her candidacy. According to Harman’s attorney, former Bush solicitor general Theodore Olsen, Harman is not under investigation, “and the idea that she should be investigated for being a supporter of Aipac is frightening.”

The idea that a Speaker Pelosi would toss Harman aside is frightening. The idea that the Democratic Party, with a real chance to win a majority in an election two weeks from now, would publicize Pelosi’s preference for someone so compromised as Hastings to head up the Intelligence Committee is ridiculous. Karl Rove does not deserve such a gift.

*Update:  Newsweek’s Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball have a story up today that fails to resolve whether or not Harman is being investigated for her Aipac ties, but gives a lot more detail on the overlapping agendas of Harman, Pelosi, current Republican chair Peter Hoekstra and the issue of whether the committee was vigilant enough in watching the bribe-fueled lobbying activities of disgraced Rep. Duke Cunningham.

If Harman isn’t being investigated by the FBI, someone is sure making a big effort to make it appear like she is.

Invested in Angelides

So, according to the LA Times and the San Jose Mercury News, the California Democratic Party has figured out recently that this gentleman Democrats nominated for governor, state Treasurer Phil Angelides, is encountering unexpected trouble and might lose the election.

It’s hard to figure out how a campaign that started with such seemingly unstoppable momentum could run into a rocky patch, but in politics, like in life, sometimes the unexpected happens. It’s starting to look like the Republican incumbent, Arnold Schwarzenegger, might just eke out a victory — a development few party activists could have foreseen back in March, when Angelides seized the nomination.

Moreover, if Angelides is somehow defeated, it might have an impact on the fortunes of other Democratic statewide candidates. Imagine!

Worried Democrats said Sunday that Phil Angelides failed to achieve the breakthrough he needed in the sole gubernatorial debate and expressed fear that his campaign’s trajectory threatened others on the statewide ticket.

Fellow Democrat John Garamendi, in a tight race for lieutenant governor against Republican state Sen. Tom McClintock, has started to distance himself from Angelides. He said in a television interview aired Sunday that he disagreed with an Angelides plan to raise taxes on corporations and the well-to-do.

“I don’t think it’s necessary,” Garamendi, now insurance commissioner, said on KNBC’s “News Conference.”

Though few thought Angelides did poorly in the debate, there was wide agreement that Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger benefited the most from Saturday night’s allotted 55-minute session, largely because nothing occurred to change the essential dynamic of the race.

Angelides, the state treasurer, entered the evening desperately needing to redefine a contest that by all measures — polling, fundraising, party morale — was going badly for him. And he needed the lift not just for himself, but for fellow Democratic candidates counting on him to spur a strong turnout Nov. 7.

Okay, with my tongue now excavated from my cheek, I just want to know one thing. Angelides won the nomination from a moderate, pro-business candidate, Steve Westly, because a group of labor leaders and other party regulars organized an independent campaign on Angelides’ behalf. They spent a lot on it, and made a heroic effort. Their hard work paid off.

Why did they do this?

Angelides is the same guy in October 2006 that he’s been his entire public life. The Dems always do opposition research on their own candidates, so they knew he was vulnerable on the issue of tax hikes. The positions the Schwarzenegger campaign is throwing in his face were promulgated over the course of his career.

In fact, that’s Angelides’ defense, essentially to say, “I didn’t support those tax increases all at the same time.” But he’s not making much of a case for what he’d spend that money on. He’s running basically for the status quo — for letting lots of busy government employees keep doing things Democrats have faith are worthwhile. He’s misread the public mood. The public doesn’t think all of what state employees are doing is worthwhile — and hasn’t felt that way since the Gray Davis years.

In this story, the Times says California has “a left-moderate tilt.” I agree. But the left side is mostly about social issues, specific policy issues like the environment, and national issues like the war in Iraq. The moderate side of California’s political persona still leans right on the issues of taxes and government expenditures: Lower taxes, no deficits, keep spending under control, don’t touch Proposition 13. The sky-high cost of living is a factor that dominates most Californians’ daily lives. Few believe they aren’t being taxed enough. Even relatively painless bond issues lately have failed, unless they are for schools.

It is on taxes and spending where Angelides is weakest — and yet, many in the party’s leadership decided he was the candidate they wanted to see at the top of the ticket.

Now, some Democrats talk about a “triage,” not throwing good money after bad, focusing resources on down-ticket Democrats who Angelides is hurting. But when was it good money? When did this candidate look like a worthy challenger to a superstar incumbent, and to whom? Would they care to explain now what they were thinking back then?

What’s the Point of Electing Republicans?

“What’s the point of electing Republicans?” the party’s base voters must be asking in the wake of the Foley scandal.   Family-values voters, who think gays are a bigger threat than Al Queda, now learn that the GOP leadership was, at minimum, aware that one of its caucus’ members was writing inappropriate notes with a romantic subtext to a youth of the same sex.

Whatever fog is coming from Hastert and Boehner to explain their actions, the signals should have been sufficient to prompt action to protect the other pages.  The fact that these leaders were so uncurious should outrage every American, but will have a particular effect on the homophobic “base” that Karl Rove has worked so hard to bring to the polls.

I would think the leadership’s lassitude would also upset the kind of GOP voters who see Republicans as more business-like managers.  It sounds like Hastert and Boehner were just hoping the problem would go away — the kind of magical thinking that CEOs and military commanders cannot afford to indulge in.

However, the Democrats are not in a strong position to exploit this mess. Sexually predatory behavior focused on the young on the part of Democratic leaders has not exactly caused party leadership to leap into action in the past.  The one Democrat who was willing to condemn President Clinton for having his way with a 21-year-old intern, Sen. Joe Lieberman, had his 1998 speech criticizing Clinton thrown back in his face as an act of party disloyalty during his recent primary campaign against Ned Lamont.  If the Democrats try to make this into an issue, there are undoubtedly lots of quotes about “private behavior” that the Republican opposition-researchers can inject into the debate via friendly bloggers and talk-radio hosts.

But it’s outrageous that Hastert and Boehner did so little to protect the other pages.  Is pederasty now tolerated in Washington?  Are congressmembers so impressed with themselves and the power they wield, they now think they can behave like Roman emperors?  Perhaps the tradition of youthful pages and interns needs to be suspended until we can start electing less grandiose leaders.

Dear Fellow Sea King…

I’m trying to figure out what’s going through Senator George Allen, Jr.’s mind — the Republican senator battling for re-election. 

What’s he trying to pull, denying he used racial epithets?  He knows he did it.  He’d be better off admitting it. He’ll have to eventually — but by then all his supporters who are working overtime claiming Allen is being “smeared” will realize he’s been hanging them out to dry.   

Do his campaign people really think they can convince voters this woman is lying?

Just six weeks before the congressional elections, Virginia’s incumbent senator, George Allen, is now facing more charges that he used racial slurs.

Pat Waring, 75, of Chesterton, Md., first brought her story to MSNBC when she contacted us in a direct phone call.  We then conducted a series of interviews.   Waring says that at a sports match in the late 1970’s, Allen repeatedly use the ‘n’ word to describe blacks.

“I just didn’t think in the late 70’s people would be so ugly and so overt about it and so public,” Waring said.

Waring says that in 1978, she and her then-husband, Robert Michael Schwartz, had just moved to Charlottesville, Va.  Friends from the time confirm that Schwartz was a Ph.d. candidate at the University of Virginia, an avid rugby player and the volunteer coach of the school’s rugby club team.

MSNBC has also confirmed Pat Waring worked in a doctor’s office and came to some of the rugby games.  Waring says there is one game, from either the fall of 1978 or the spring of 1979 that she will never forget.

“I heard to my left, the ‘n’ word, and I heard it again, and I looked around and heard it again,” she said.  “And there was this fellow sitting on the ground.  He was putting on red rugby shoes, it is seared in my brain, believe me. And he was kind of showing off I guess, but he was telling a story about something or other and in the story was a lot of ‘n’ words.  So, I got out of the bleacher and I went over and I said young man, I am the coach’s wife and if you don’t mind, would you please not use that word.  And he in essence told me to buzz off.”

Waring said when she learned the man using the slurs was George Allen, son of the Washington Redskins coach, she was “crestfallen.”

Republican cheerleaders are reacting to stories like this by calling them smears and throwing fits.  They raise questions about the timing of these accusations.  They claim his use of a Tunisian racial slur against a dark-skinned opposing campaign worker was purely coincidental, even though his mother was raised … in Tunisia!

Allen is doing them no favors by letting them defend him like this.  It happens to be true that, at least when he was young, George Allen, Jr. was a racist.  Or, to be extremely charitable, beyond what’s really reasonable, he was perfectly happy to stir up hatred for blacks by whites, and damn the consequences.

My story has been reported before, I think.  In 1969, I was 13 years old and a freshman at Palos Verdes High School.   One Friday morning in autumn, I arrived at school where the buses drop you off, and walked to my locker, a path that took me past the Multi-Purpose Room and then Senior Park, which has a bandstand at its western end. 

The walls of these structures and the rows of classrooms were white stucco.  Every wall was covered with black spray painted graffiti, well-known racial epithets blacks supposedly used to inflame whites back then, along with phrases like “Black Power,” and threats that “Whitey Will Die,” or words to that effect. 

As it happened, the PV Sea Kings varsity football team was in a conference with several teams from predominantly African-American schools, including Centenniel and Morningside.  I forget which one we were playing.  And as it happened, George Allen, Jr., the son of the popular, eccentric and hugely successful coach of the Los Angeles Rams, was our team’s quarterback.

The buzz around the school was that kids from the opposing school must’ve come onto campus overnight and sprayed this foul graffiti.  There was so much of it, it was overwhelming.  But I have to say, there was something bogus about the graffiti.  This was just a few months after the Manson family attacks, where the killers also left behind graffiti, in blood, that was supposed to suggest that blacks were responsible — which Manson hoped would trigger a race war.  But Manson’s graffiti seemed weirdly inauthentic — a white guy’s idea of what a black revolutionary would write.  So did this stuff.

So I was not terribly surprised when my first period class was interrupted by the principal with a special announcement that the other high school had nothing to do with the vandalism — our own students did it in a twisted attempt to inspire “school spirit.” The next voice we heard was George Allen Jr.’s, confessing that he was the guilty party. I think Allen was suspended for one game, and his family had to pay to clean up the spray paint. 

Now:  This happened.  Anyone who attended PV High in 1969, which is at least a thousand kids, witnessed it.  Allen, Jr. was the varsity quarterback.  His father was a celebrity.  This is not something you forget.  It seemed bizarre, especially because his father coached a team whose most famous players, Deacon Jones and Rosie Grier, were outspoken, politically involved African Americans.  And his son was a racist?

The stories that you’ve been reading lately about Allen, including the MSNBC story, take place only a few years after the incident at PV High.  Given what I witnessed, I think they are entirely credible.  Since Allen emerged as a political figure, I’ve been wondering whether there were other episodes like it, and apparently there were. As a public figure,  how would he deal with it, I wondered.   

And yet, here’s his campaign, in full denial mode:

Senator Allen’s campaign manager says this is all just another false accusation, and that it’s not true.

When asked how he knows it’s not true, the campaign manager simply said, “It’s not true.”

Hello? Hello?  

The Misguided “Electoral Compact”

Did this really happen while I was on vacation?

The California State Legislature voted to hand over our state’s electoral votes to whoever wins the national popular vote for president — even if that candidate was rejected by Californians!? Apparently so.

Under the legislation, California would grant its electoral votes to the nominee who gets the most votes nationwide — not the most votes in California. Get enough other states to do the same, backers of the bill say, and soon presidential candidates will have to campaign across the nation, not just in a few key “battleground” states such as Ohio and Michigan that can sway the Electoral College vote.

How does it benefit the Democrats in California — struggling to win a governor’s race — to say “We stand for disenfranchising California voters.” That’s who voted for this thing — Democratic legislators.

The disputed Bush victory in 2000 has deranged the entire political system: the Democratic Party, the Republican Party, the good-government reformers…all of them! The political system is no longer a place for ideas; it’s all about tactical warfare at the elite level. The reformers who proposed this half-baked idea have fallen out of touch with any notion of what voters think is fair. The politicians who have attached their names to it have fallen out of touch with basic common sense.

“But,” a supporter of this legislation might say, “no one’s disenfranchising California voters. Their votes are included in the popular vote that determines where our electoral votes will be directed.” And that’s true in a literal sense.

Nonetheless, this measure — and its underlying goal, the abolition of the Electoral College — reduces the state’s influence on the presidential election. The theory that only the “battleground” states get the focus of presidential politics depends on where the “battleground” states happen to be in any given year. In my lifetime, California has been a “battleground” state many times: 1960, 1968, 1976, 1980, 1988, 1992. Moreover, one or both parties have to consider California’s political composition when selecting their nominees. The size of our state exerts a gravitational influence on all the decisions that lead up to the selection of a nominee, including which candidates fundraisers will back.

Why would Californians listen to any reformer who wanted us to surrender the power our size gives us? We need a bigger voice in the process because as the nation’s largest state we have bigger issues, bigger problems, and make a bigger contribution to the nation’s welfare.

But what’s really stupid about so-called “electoral compact” measure is this: The reformers assume everything else remains static — that the 2000 election will be re-run endlessly, pitting a smart Democrat against a dumb Republican in a contest the smart Democrat will win, just barely, because there are just enough smart people to overcome all the dumb ones. (This is how professional Democrats see the blue vs. red divide.)

It is true that only the flukish nature of the Electoral College kept Gore out the White House. But it is not true that if the 2000 election were re-run without the Electoral College, Gore would have won. Because a USA without an Electoral College would not be a nation of two, large, national parties that aggregate various interests — parties of the size and scope necessary to wage campaigns that will win state-by-state elections. If all you have to do to win an election is gather votes where you can find them, we would see a splintered array of no-compromise parties representing regions, ideologies and countless special interests that can go it alone to muster up blocs of voters.

The “electoral compact” contains no provision for a scenario in which there are, say, five presidential candidates who each get around 20 percent of the popular vote. The candidate who gets a plurality — say 26 percent — might only get 5 percent in California. But under the new state law, California’s electoral votes would all go to that candidate.

(And I think five candidates is conservative. If you could run and conceivably win without the backing of a party, a ballot with 25 names on it is easily imaginable.)

I would consider supporting presidential election reforms that included abolishing the Electoral College; but such reform would have to include a run-off between the two top vote-getters. That can’t happen if the “electoral compact” succeeds, because all the compact proposes to do is end-around the Constitution, not amend it. Absent a Constitutional amendment, there is no way to add a run-off provision. And without a run-off provision, any attempt to nullify the Electoral College would be an extremely dangerous gamble. (Unless you are comfortable with the idea of a candidate who wins 20 percent of the vote becoming president.)

I don’t even see the short-term gain for Democrats in this. What made them think it was a political plus to embrace it? I guess the party pros who instruct our legislators on details like how to vote see 2008 as 2000 all over again. If so — wow. What a lack of confidence in a candidate that hasn’t even been chosen yet.

Wal-Mart Day at the LA Times

Two pages of the LA Times, two constrasting views of the Wal-Mart issue that, together, illustrate tremendous confusion in the Democratic Party over an issue where clarity would help them: Health care.

First, the Times’ lead editorial, which chastizes the Democratic Party for its “shameful demonization” of the discount retailer:

Most Americans do not want their politicians ganging up on one company. Wal-Mart may be a behemoth that employs 1.3 million people in this country and earned $11 billion in profit last year, but it still looks like bullying when politicians single out one business to scapegoat for larger societal ills. And when they start passing laws aimed at their scapegoat — as the Maryland Legislature did when it passed legislation forcing Wal-Mart to spend a certain amount on employee healthcare — the judiciary rightly balks. A federal judge struck down the regulation, holding that it violates laws requiring equal treatment of employers.

But there is no stopping the campaign rhetoric. At an anti-Wal-Mart rally last week in Iowa, Biden noted that the retailer pays people $10 an hour, and then asked: “How can you live a middle-class life on that?” It’s clearly the company’s fault, at least from a skewed senatorial perspective, that all Americans cannot live a comfortable middle-class life. How dare it pay prevailing retail wages? Bayh, who appeared at another rally, was quoted as saying that Wal-Mart is “emblematic of the anxiety around the country.” That may be true. But if it’s the emblem he’s worried about, he should stay in Washington and work to make healthcare more affordable for working families.

The gusto with which even moderate Democrats are bashing Wal-Mart is bound to backfire. Not only does it take the party back to the pre-Clinton era, when Democrats were perceived as reflexively anti-business, it manages to make Democrats seem like out-of-touch elitists to the millions of Americans who work and shop at Wal-Mart.

But then, on the facing page, columnist Erin Aubry Kaplan performs a rather difficult pirouette: Defending former UN Ambassador Andrew Young’s racially insensitive comments to the LA Sentinel, made on behalf of Wal-Mart, while condemning him for making those comments…on behalf of Wal-Mart. Get it?

After sapping the local economies of rural and semirural America, Wal-Mart set its sights on the urban market — corporate-speak for big, diverse cities like Chicago and Los Angeles that are densely populated with middle- to low-income black and Latino consumers. It swooped into Inglewood two years ago and put an initiative on the ballot that would have allowed one of the first Wal-Mart Supercenters in the state to be built — and would have allowed Wal-Mart to do it with virtually no city oversight. Inglewood voters rightly rebuffed the measure, rejecting Wal-Mart’s pitch that $5 T-shirts and $7-an-hour jobs would be the most transformative thing to happen to downtrodden black folk since the civil rights movement.

In such a context, bringing in former civil rights hero Young to do damage control, to belatedly lend some black credibility to the “urban” effort, seemed like a bad joke. Wal-Mart obviously missed the irony. The famously suave Young didn’t blink an eye.

Then he found himself face to face with the Sentinel crowd, which tends to be deferential to any black dignitary but which also includes a few skeptics, especially on the Wal-Mart issue. Undoubtedly thinking he could speak frankly to his own — that he could keep it real, as it were — Young repeated what blacks have said for generations: that members of other ethnic groups account for a disproportionate share of the merchant class in their own community.

He said it badly, and in painting all those merchants as uncaring and unethical, he said it too broadly. But he had a point. The chronic lack of business ownership among blacks in black communities is a real problem, and it was a major factor in civil unrest in 1965 and in 1992.

Young’s comments were called racist, and I don’t entirely agree. Certainly it’s despicable to exploit racial and economic anxiety in order to convince the black media that Wal-Mart is a solution. Being racially or ethnically specific, however, is not the same as being racist.

In ‘92, people talked openly about the friction between Korean shopkeepers and their black customers in South L.A. because, well, it was there. It had consequences. That window of public discussion has closed; now, discussing racial or ethnic groups in any forum less dry than academia is considered almost vulgar. In condemning Young as racist, we also killed the messenger.

Don’t get me wrong: Young paid the appropriate price. But the real vulgarity is the dire economic picture in black and brown neighborhoods represented all too well by the overabundance of “stale bread, and bad meat and wilted vegetables” that Young cited. Loaf for loaf, a Wal-Mart Supercenter might have better food. But it — and Young — hardly have the right stuff.

Kaplan’s circular reasoning unintentionally supports the Times’ editorial position. Young was fired for making a reasonable point in an unreasonable way, using unacceptable ethnic stereotypes to illustrate a larger truth: The “Mom and Pop” stores in lower-income communities–the stores that Wal-Mart critics say they are worried will be run out of business–don’t deserve special protection if they aren’t serving their communities.

More broadly, Young was blowing the whistle on the sham aspects of the campaign against Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart Watch and WakeUpWalMart.Com are components of a “corporate campaign,” which is a term used by both labor and management to describe a labor-funded PR campaign to denigrate a company in order to force that company to agree to labor demands that can’t be won via collective bargaining or traditional organizing of workers.

In most cases, corporate campaigns are dishonest and border on blackmail. About a decade ago, I represented a health care firm that was targeted for a corporate campaign. The union running the campaign wanted the firm to waive its rights and make it extremely easy for the union to represent the firm’s workers. These workers had rejected the union up to now, but the union wasn’t willing to take no for an answer. So they started a corporate campaign against my client.

The corporate campaign never mentioned the plan to organize the workers. Instead, it accused my client of killing its patients. Since my client ran a chain of nursing homes for the elderly, it was not hard to find dead former patients to talk about. But the union figured that if it said “patients die” enough times, business would suffer, and this prospect would cause the company to change its position. The corporate campaign was damaging, but unsuccessful.

Labor has good reasons to be concerned about Wal-Mart. I don’t begrudge the labor movement getting into a fight with the retail giant. Wal-Mart poses a direct threat to union-won high wages and good benefits for workers at grocery chains like Ralph’s and Vons, as we saw with the grocery strike of a few years ago.

Wal-Mart can cut prices because they don’t pay their workers as much, and don’t lavish benefits on them. Over time, to stay in business, other retailers will have to match Wal-Mart’s wage and benefit structure — and they will find workers who are willing to take jobs that pay less. Unions want to forestall that trend because it will put yet more private sector workers out of their reach.

Wal-Mart’s policies are hastening a day of reckoning that has been looming for decades. The idea that employers should be responsible for our nation’s health care is a historical oddity; a byproduct of World War II-era wage and price controls, and political decisions that benefits should not be taxed as income in order to allow unions to win increases employee compensation without increasing their take-home pay.

Now that most Americans don’t work for big companies or belong to labor unions, this jury-rigged, inefficient and unfair model for providing health care is getting exposed — ironically, by Wal-Mart, which takes the position that consumers shouldn’t be forced to pay a premium price for a product in order to subsidize the health care of the workers who sold it to you.

So, who should?

The LA Times apparently thinks liberals have gotten off track with their attacks on Wal-Mart. They’re saying: Stop trying to force Wal-Mart to subsidize health care — and start working on a plan to get the federal government to do it. Democratic politicians fighting Wal-Mart are defending a status quo that doesn’t exist anymore. Organized labor is sending its political supporters in the Democratic Party down a primrose path to serve its own, narrower ends.

If Wal-Mart disappeared tomorrow–or if Wal-Mart suddenly decided to give all its workers health care coverage–that would still leave tens of millions of American families without anyone to subsidize their health care coverage. The Times, I think rightly, is chiding Democratic politicians for taking cheap shots at Wal-Mart as a substitute for doing anything to correct that basic injustice.

Perhaps, as Evan Bayh suggested, Wal-Mart is a symbol. But if your children get sick, symbolism can’t cure them. Developing a universal health care plan won’t be an easy thing, but if Democrats want to win in 2006 and 2008, they’d better start. Attacking Wal-Mart is a distracting indulgence in demagoguery.

Off To A Flying Start, LA-style

I guess this must be my day to pick holes in half-baked electoral strategies.

On the Los Angeles city ballot this fall will be the measure to change term limits by allowing incumbents to run for re-election not once, but twice. I wrote about the movement to let councilmembers stay in office four years longer a couple of months ago. Since then, the measure has gotten onto the ballot, despite the fact that it excluded the City Attorney, City Controller and the Mayor from being able to serve three terms, which appalled City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo and created suspense over whether Mayor Villaraigosa would allow the vote. (He finally did.)

Besides feeling left out, Delgadillo told the council that their measure would not survive a legal challenge because it contained two subjects: Extending term limits and some changes to the ethics laws for lobbyists that councilmembers say will “toughen” them.

This is a classic strategy. Whatever the public policy merits of relaxed term limits, the council figured the voters would see their ballot measure as purely self-serving. So they threw in some sugar to allow advocates to campaign for the measure as an ethics reform and downplay the part about councilmembers staying in office longer.

Except they forgot about the city’s Ethics Commission, which was never given a chance to review the ethics changes. Now, according to the Daily News (hat tip to LA Observed), when finally given a chance to review the measure yesterday, the commissioners were told they couldn’t say anything about it that might be construed as a judgment on its merits.

Vice President Bill Boyarsky kicked off the discussion by asking how the ethics reform measure on the Nov. 7 ballot would affect the city’s existing rules.

“So instead of strengthening the lobby control laws as the proponents of this measure have claimed, could it be said that it actually weakens it?” Boyarsky asked after staffers advised him that some lobbyists might be exempted from registering under the new rules.

But Deputy City Attorney Renee Stadel interrupted him to warn that, because the ethics package has already been placed on the ballot, city employees or public resources cannot be used to support or oppose it.

And that includes using “valuative adjectives” during an Ethics Commission hearing.

“I am concerned that by using words such as `strengthen’ or `weaken,’ it becomes an advocacy on either side of the issue,” Stadel said.

Effectively, if the councilmembers campaiging for the measure say it strengthens ethical standards, the Ethics Commission can’t contradict them–even if councilmembers are misrepresenting its provisions. I’m not sure how far this rule goes. I guess they can say what they want on their own time, but I don’t know if they can identify themselves as city ethics commissioners.

Seems like a clever plan, except did you notice the point Boyarsky was making? The “tougher” lobbying rules aren’t “tougher.” The sweetener designed to bait the voters turns out to be a bitter pill, if Boyarsky is correct. So LA voters get two reasons to dislike the new measure, instead of just one. Three, if you count the “silencing” of the commission, which is sure to rile the media.
Brilliant!

Off To A Flying Start

The Democratic Party’s hopes for 2006 got a huge boost last week when anti-war candidate Ned Lamont defeated “Bush love child” Sen. Joseph Lieberman for the Democratic nomination. Activists were thrilled. With the pro-war Lieberman laid low, nothing could now stand in the way of the party making the 2006 election a referendum on Bush’s unpopular Iraq quagmire.

Sure, Lieberman had said he would run as an independent candidate, but that could easily be positioned as sour grapes from the “Sore Loserman.”  The Democratic party would formally line up behind Lamont, and, at the urging of activists, Lieberman would be threatened with reprisals if he continued the race. Eventually, facing humiliation, the rejection of his colleagues and defeat at the polls, Lieberman would drop out, leaving the field open for Lamont, and allowing the true voice of the people to be heard. The Republican candidate was a non-entity involved in scandals. Lamont would win by acclamation.

So far, it’s not working out quite that way. As this NY Times story and the poll cited in this story demonstrate, Lieberman is not only still a viable candidate, he’s ahead in the polls. Suddenly, Lamont doesn’t seem so fresh as he seems inexperienced and mistake-prone. And, it could turn out that Lieberman is now free to tap into another interpretation of the true voice of the people: That they don’t like the ideologues of either party.

In a state where Republican and independent voters make up a majority of the electorate, Mr. Lieberman is still developing a message about bipartisanship, but his aides say it will involve adopting positions from both parties and being willing to criticize Democrats as well as Republicans. Meanwhile, Mr. Lamont, a Greenwich millionaire, now has to calibrate his own identity as self-described liberal.

As Lieberman starts to look like a possible winner, the chance that Democratic party pressure will be applied to get him to quit the race diminishes to zero. The party’s real goal is to take back the Senate. If they do, it will be close. They’ll have 51 or 52 seats according to the most optimistic scenario. The last thing the Democrats want to see happen is for a re-elected Lieberman to align with the Republicans in a closely-divided Senate. The Dems could lose control at the very moment they’ve gained it.

So the Democratic Party is now going to have to spend a lot of money that could be used to beat Republicans, trying to help a Democrat beat another Democrat in a Democratic state. Brilliant!

The Democratic Party’s Foul-Weather Friends

I’m a Democrat, but the persistence of intense Bush-hatred as a political force has always made me nervous.  Not just because there is something unnerving about “hate” being directed at the elected leader of our country regardless of party, but also because in my experience hatred ultimately becomes toxic to the hater. 

Hatred is like a drug; it’s a rush.  It becomes addictive.  But it wrecks the heart and soul and fogs the mind. Hatred leaves you with nothing to build on; just a spiritual hangover.

George W. Bush’s poll ratings are low right now, thus hopes are high among Democratic leaders that Bush-hatred is now so widespread, it will cost the Republicans control of Congress.  The defeat of ”Bush love child” Joe Lieberman in the Connecticut Democratic primary is seen as the first tangible sign that the Bush-hatred has finally coalesced into a mass political movement, from which the Democrats will prosper.

And yet — there’s unease among some Democrats, expressed today in reliably liberal columnist E.J. Dionne’s op-ed:

The Democratic Party has a self-image problem.

Talk to Democrats at every level about the strong position the party is in for this fall’s elections and the conversation inevitably ends with a variation of: “Yeah, if we don’t blow it.” Karl Rove’s greatest victory is how much he has spooked Democrats about themselves.

It’s not a particularly brilliant column, actually.  Dionne is so reluctant to challenge his Democratic Party sources, he always seems to be stepping quietly around the elephants in their office suites. But this section was telling:

(Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chairman Rahm) Emanuel is especially frustrated with large donors such as billionaire George Soros, who donated heavily to such organizing efforts as America Coming Together (ACT) two years ago. “These guys — where are they?” a frustrated Emanuel asked in an interview. After John Kerry’s loss, Emanuel said, “they walked off the field.”

Steve Rosenthal, who was ACT’s chief executive officer in 2004, said his organization’s financial backers were “very candid that they weren’t in it for the long haul and never said they were.” Nonetheless, Rosenthal worries about what the missing money will mean this fall.

Here’s the connection Dionne is reluctant to make:  George Soros was the ultimate Bush-hater.  He was never very interested in the Democratic party except as a vehicle to demolish the Bush administration.  In 2004, the electoral process gave Soros his best chance to take Bush down. He tried.  He spent hundreds of millions.  But it didn’t work out, so he’s moved on.  Bush isn’t on the ballot in 2006, and he won’t be on the ballot in 2008, so Democratic success in those election cycles won’t give serious Bush-haters like Soros the fix they need. 

To be sure, there are plenty of Bush-haters who are very pumped up about 2006. With Democrats in charge of Congress, who knows what hell they can wreak on The Hated One?  Bush could be impeached.  Investigations will be launched.  We’ll finally find out who Cheney met with to write his energy policy.  We’ll learn the truth about the secret deals with Halliburton, Enron, the oil companies, and K Street lobbyists.  Maybe some of Bush’s other love children will end up in jail.

But I’m dubious about this strategy.  I’m guessing most Americans don’t want a political bloodbath in the next two years.  Some voters who tell pollsters they disapprove of Bush will be content to just wait out the final 30 months of his administration.  In other words, the low approval rating Bush-haters constantly cite doesn’t necessarily equate to widespread Bush-hatred.   For some voters, it’s more like: Bush-disappointment.  Bush-weariness.  Bush-frustration. Bush-don’t-let-the-door-hit-you-on-the-way-out.

The onus is still on the Democrats to do more than just tap into the range of negative feelings Bush inspires.  The Bush-haters might turn out, like Soros, to be foul-weather friends. The key is to develop a coherent set of policies that reflect the world as it is today, which embodies the basic values of the center-left.  Why do Democrat leaders act as if that’s too much to ask?  As John Lennon might say, “Imagine there’s no Bush/It’s easy if you try.”