Over the past year, I’ve often thought of the 2004 presidential election as a model for Obama because I remembered how Bush’s approval rating hovered below 50% for most of the year, hitting 50% only in the days leading up to the election. A few weeks ago, former Bush strategist Matthew Dowd made the comparison and articles written last week by Howard Fineman and Thomas Schaller delve further into the parallels between the two elections.
As Fineman notes:
Starting with Richard Nixon in 1972, and moving on to Ronald Reagan in 1984 and George W. Bush in 2004, Republican incumbents assembled a strategic doctrine that includes the following basic plays: Stress culture, and exploit cultural and regional divisions, especially if doing so helps detract attention from a so-so (or worse) economic record. Declare one’s own strength as commander in chief and the opponent’s ignorance or weakness (or both) in military and foreign affairs. Paint the foe as out of the mainstream and/or elitist in terms of money, education or both. Highlight wedge issues to expand fissures in the other party. Where possible, speak in sweeping historical terms about the greatness and uniqueness of the country. And evoke symbols of manly recreational endeavor.
In one way or another, Barack Obama already has used all of those, and it is only May.
As Schaller notes, the comparisons to 2004 are even more apt when you consider the parallels between John Kerry and Mitt Romney. Both men are rich Massachussets blue-bloods from prominent families who have tried to run away from their past political history. Both have a penchant for squandering political advantage by sticking their foot in their mouth at inopportune moments and both have struggled to connect with everyday people.
Can’t recommend this 4 Part Series on the Financial Crisis and the aftermath enough.
It’s amazing, chilling and sickening.
As frustrating as it is to watch the crisis unfold, it’s even more frustrating to know that the Too Big To Fail conditions that necessitated the bailout still exist.
So, the Republicans win the award for chutspa this month for their implausible outrage over the politicization of the death of Osama bin Laden. To be sure, I thought that the president’s world tour to celebrate the death of bin Laden was a little overdone, but it paled in comparison to Bush and Karl Rove’s eight year politicization of the Commander in Chief position. As Jon Stewart hilariously pointed out, this is the same president who landed on an aircraft carrier wearing a giant stuffed jockstrap to early kickoff his campaign and declare victory in a war that would go on for another 8 years.
As bad as I thought Karl Rove and Co. were for the country, I had to admire how good they were at playing the dirty game of politics. They took a decorated Vietnam war veteran, running against a draft dodger whose only previous military experience was defending the coast of Texas from the Red Menace, and made the war veteran into the guy who was afraid to defend America. They kept an entire nation in a constant state of fear so that they could maintain their power. The terror alerts were ubiquitous, and even the Secretary of Homeland Security said that he felt politically pressured to issue them at points that would increase the president’s chance at re-election.
Their entire campaign in 2004 was based on “if you elect John Kerry, you and your family will die a horrible death from terrorism” During that campaign, the Vice President himself said “If we make the wrong choice, then the danger is that we’ll get hit again — that we’ll be hit in a way that will be devastating from the standpoint of the United States.”
Republicans have said that it’s allright to celebrate the death of Osama bin Laden, but that suggesting that Mitt Romney wouldn’t have made the same decision is out of bounds. A close look at the record shows that Mitt Romney’s position on this has been nuanced (he attacked Obama for saying that he would violate Pakistan’s sovereignty to go after Osama bin Laden and other high-value targets, but under questioning clarified that he would “maintain that option”), but it’s certainly within bounds to ask whether the more cautious Mitt Romney would have gone against the counsel of his top defense aides to launch the raid. More importantly, to hear the same people who attacked Vietnam War Veteran John Kerry as soft on defense in 2004 complain about this political line of attack is laughable.
Saddened by the news of the death of Adam Yauch (MCA). Coming on the heels of Junior Seau’s death, it makes for a particularly rough week for my junior high and high school icons.
I was in 8th grade when Licensed to Ill came out and, like most suburban white kids in the late 80′s, it featured prominently in the soundtrack of my life for a few years.
I was a latecomer to Paul’s Boutique, but the release of Check Your Head in 1992 blew me away. It still ranks as one of my top 5 albums of all time and, along with Tribe Called Quest and Lenny Kravitz, Check Your Head and Ill Communication were in heavy rotation in my college CD player.
The progression that occured from Licensed to Ill to Check Your Head was dramatic. The Led Zeppelin samples of Licensed to Ill were replaced by more soulful rythms which often featured the Beasties playing their own instruments. On my junior high school trip to Washington DC, the older kids delighted in playing “Girls” (Should clean up my room, should do the dishes…) to annoy the two teachers who wore their feminism on their sleeves, but by Check Your Head’s “Sure Shot,” MCA was offering:
It’s that time again, and both NBC and Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball came out with their updated 2012 electoral map this week.
It’s still early on, but in a sign of just how uphill Romney’s battle is, if you start with Obama’s 2008 map, take away Florida, North Carolina, Virginia, Ohio, Indiana and the one electoral vote Obama picked up in Nebraska, Obama would still win the election.
This seems like the easiest route to 270 for Obama: hold Nevada, Colorado and New Mexico in the West, New Hampshire in the East and the Al Gore 2000 Rust Belt states.
Of course all of the usual caveats apply: Obama would have to maintain Iowa, which (somewhat surprisingly) NBC rates as “Lean Republican,” as well as hold New Hampshire (one of Mitt Romney’s many “home” states). Plus, it’s very early in the campaign; the states have a tendency to move in a block and changes at the national level move polls at the state level accordingly. Still, Obama looks pretty good right now.
Here’s Ezra Klein and Sarah Kliff with everything you need to know about health care reform’s Supreme Court debut.
They provide some good links to analysis of the case. It looks as though most scholars seem to agree that, whether you like the individual mandate or not, there is a ton of Supreme Court precedent that supports the ability of Congress to enact a law like this. The Commerce Clause in the Constitution gives Congress the ability to regulate interstate commerce, and as Bloomberg View puts it
The question is what qualifies as interstate commerce. For most of the second half of the 20th century, the answer has been clear…pretty much anything.
Is a farmer growing wheat for his own consumption engaging in interstate commerce? Yes. A small restaurant in Alabama refusing to seat blacks? Yes. A sick Californian growing her own medicinal marijuana, as allowed by state law? Yes. And so on.
and if these cases are considered appropriate use of the Interstate Commerce Clause, then certainly a requirement that is central to controlling the cost of an industry that accounts for 18% of the economy qualifies as well.
I heard about this a few months ago from a friend, but didn’t understand it until I saw the video and read this article from Mother Jones. This is like something from a sci-fi movie about a dystopian future, but it’s very real and the chances are you’ve been eating it, since it’s in most burgers in the United States. Meanwhile, as public disgust forces coroprations to remove it from their meat products, the USDA continues to purchase it to feed to our schoolchildren.
Don’t get me wrong, just like Jamie Oliver, I love a good burger, and in fact, my family’s business was built on beef. But if you’re selling me beef, sell me beef. And if the beef you’re selling me is actually connective tissue processed with ammonia, you’d better tell me that too. Dumping a bunch of chemicals on meat makes those ingredients, not just a process.
Just a particularly sickening example of how bought off US regulatory agencies are by the industries they are supposed to be policing.
Great interview with John McCain’s 2008 campaign manager, Steve Schmidt, regarding HBO’s Game Change.
Caught the movie last Sunday. Highly Recommended.
I invited a few people over to watch it and one friend skeptically asked: “It’s a movie about Sarah Palin? Is it a comedy?”
I said “No, but it’s about Sarah Palin, so it’s probably funny as hell.”
I actually thought the movie was a sympathetic portrayal of Palin, but sympathetic is not the same as positive. Sarah Palin was a reckless choice, motivated by the imperative to win and the knowledge that winning was impossible with the usual suspects as candidates. Throughout the movie, Palin consistently demonstrates a shocking ignorance of American government, history and foreign affairs. She doesn’t understand how the Federal Reserve works, doesn’t know the difference between North Korea and South Korea, thinks that Saddam Hussein attacked America on 9-11, and believes that the Queen of England directs British foreign policy. Obviously, this is not a portrayal of a woman that would be qualified to become commander in Chief were President John McCain to die in office.
In awful news for Republicans, things are getting better in this country.
Courtesy of Steve Benen, here’s a color coded chart of private sector job growth since the beginning of the Great Recession.
That makes 24 straight months of private sector growth and this month’s report was extremely positive.
While the employer survey shows that the economy created 227,000 new jobs last month, the household survey shows an increase of 428,000 jobs. The unemployment remained at 8.3%, but that’s only because almost a half a million more people started looking for work last month. Being able to maintain the same unemployment rate while absorbing another half a million people is a very encouraging sign.
This is a little dated, but important. This week, the watered down ultrasound bill in Virginia passed. In what apparently passes as a concession, it no longer includes a provision that a woman in early stages of pregnancy will be forced to be penetrated against her will for an unnecessary ultrasound, but it still requires her to submit to an unnecessary (though slightly less invasive) procedure.
would require the ultrasound screen to face the woman while the doctor narrates the images, although the law states that it should not be ‘construed to prevent a pregnant woman from averting her eyes,’
