The Lost Arts of Empathy and Conversation. We need to revive them, and not let the extremists among us dominate our political conversation.

From The Atlantic monthly:

How We Got Trump Voters to Change Their Mind

[...] Typically, when volunteers engage in a canvassing campaign, the effort basically amounts to verbal leafleting. They make a one- to two-minute targeted pitch for a candidate or a ballot initiative, and then they leave or hang up the phone.

[...]

In a deep canvass, we want to have a real conversation. To get people to open up, we start by asking the basics: How are you doing? How are you holding up in this global pandemic? We respond not with canned answers, but with more questions: Oh, you’re watching football? Who is your team? How is your family doing? We’re really asking, and we really listen. Eventually, a true back-and-forth begins, one where we exchange stories about our lives and what is at stake for ourselves and for our communities in this election. Usually, by the end, what emerges is some kind of internal conflict—why the person is frustrated, why she can’t decide who to vote for, or why she is skeptical of Biden.

[...]

Research has shown time and again that people vote from an emotional place. It’s not so much that facts don’t matter. It’s that facts and talking points do not change minds. And arguing opinions at the start of a conversation about politics causes the interview subject to keep his defensive, partisan walls up and prevents him from connecting with the canvasser.

We don't try to directly persuade people to change their minds on a candidate or an issue. Rather, we create intimacy, in the faith that people have an ability to reexamine their politics, and their long-term worldview, if given the right context. We’ve found that when people start to see the dissonance between what they believe and what they actually want, their views change—many of them come around to a more progressive perspective. For example, if a woman says she believes that immigrants are the main problem in our society, but reveals that her top personal concern is health care, then we talk about whether immigrants have anything to do with that worry. When a man says he wants to feel safe, we ask questions about what, in particular, makes him feel unsafe. If he answers COVID-19, then we talk about which candidate might be better suited to handle the pandemic.

Throughout our effort, I’ve been struck by how willing people are to be vulnerable with our canvassers. Amazingly, more than 85 percent of those we engage in an actual conversation have shared something with which they are deeply struggling. In these personal exchanges, we are embracing empathy for people who are sometimes wildly different from ourselves, and empathy, it turns out, is an extremely effective conversion tool.

[...]

Such discussions are not transformative just for the people on whose doors we’re knocking (or whose phones we’re on the other end of)—they are also transformative for the canvassers. In our podcast, To See Each Other, about rural communities that are often described as Trump country, our organizer Caitlin Homrich-Knieling shared her experience of having deep-canvass conversations about immigration in rural Michigan. We’re strangers, she said, “starting out with a blank slate, and in that conversation, we’re showing them so much care and empathy about their own hard times and asking so many questions about their own life. We really honor their story and their wisdom and their dignity.”

The connections she made while knocking on doors made her see that she was not bringing that same spirit—of listening and radical empathy—to her relationships back home, in the state’s upper peninsula, where she and family and friends didn’t always see eye to eye. That realization has changed her relationship with her mother, her aunt, and her childhood best friend. Now, when they talk about politics, race in America, or immigration, they approach their talks with a willingness to learn and listen.

Overall, our conversations have not modeled the broader narrative of division that this election tells. They show that on the individual level, we all want to understand one another—how we have come to see the world, what we are up against—and we all want to be heard. [...]

I really liked the part where the canvasser realized that if she can find empathy with strangers she disagrees with politically, then why can't she, why isn't she doing that, with friends and family? Can't we ALL be doing that more?

The art of conversation requires the ability to listen. It seems to be a lost art. Perhaps it's time to revive it? The full article gives examples of what it's talking about, and has embedded links. It's worth reading the whole thing.

I don't strictly belive in either the Republican Party or the Democrat Party; they are both flawed and imperfect, and anyway are supposed to be political vehicles for people to use to form alliances around, not ideologies in and of themselves. I do believe in our two-party system, and the balance of power. When either party becomes too powerful, we tend to get their lunatic fringe and worst ideas trying to rule everything.

The current polarity in our politics, has eliminated conversation. Too often, it's like one side is wanting to destroy the other. It's insane, to vilify one half of the country's population. I live in a rural area that is very conservative, and have a business in town, where the politics are more liberal. Politically they are worlds apart. But I live in both of them. I have friends in both, and have to function in both. I don't attack people in either, and I don't want to see one destroying the other.

In a civilized world, people can agree to disagree, and work together to find compromises based on concensus. If we can't get back to that, I fear we will not survive. Nor will we deserve to.

A house divided against itself cannot stand. Nature does not favor the weak. We have enemies, who would like to see BOTH sides destroyed. What is it going to take, to wake us up, before it's too late?

     

Death of the working class... and of Capitalism, as we knew it?

How fighting one pandemic can deepen another Review of “Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism” by Anne Case and Angus Deaton

By Carlos Lozada, Book critic
May 1, 2020 at 5:00 a.m. PDT
DEATHS OF DESPAIR AND THE FUTURE OF CAPITALISM
By Anne Case and Angus Deaton.
Princeton University Press. 312 pp. $27.95

Even before the coronavirus struck, America was suffering an eviscerating epidemic. Its cause was not a virus; its spread could not be blamed on foreign travelers or college kids on spring break. No masks or gloves could slow its contagion, no vaccine could prevent new cases. Its toll is clear in the rising deaths of white Americans in their mid-40s to mid-50s over the past two decades, particularly in states such as Arkansas, Kentucky, Mississippi and West Virginia.

Princeton University economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton call these “deaths of despair” — the deaths from suicide, drug overdoses and alcoholic liver disease ravaging swaths of the country. The victims, overwhelmingly, are less-educated Americans whose loss of life was preceded by a loss of jobs, community and dignity, and whose deaths, the authors argue, are inextricable from the policies and politics transforming the U.S. economy into an engine of inequality and suffering. “The American economy has shifted away from serving ordinary people and toward serving businesses, their managers, and their owners,” Case and Deaton write in their new work, “Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism.”

Although the authors completed this book before the onset of the coronavirus pandemic — it was published four days after President Trump declared a national emergency — their diagnosis is still painfully relevant. Mass unemployment and mass infection, occurring simultaneously in a nation where health insurance often depends on employment, threaten to both prove and aggravate the conditions Case and Deaton describe. The debate over how quickly to ease social distancing restrictions and get the economy moving again forces a reckoning: How do we balance the risk of increased coronavirus infections if we reopen the economy too soon against the risk of more deaths of despair if we do so too late? “Jobs are not just the source of money; they are the basis for the rituals, customs, and routines of working-class life,” Case and Deaton write. “Destroy work and, in the end, working-class life cannot survive.”

Reading this book during a pandemic, I found myself bracing for more death — from the virus or from despair, and, more likely, from both.

Many memoirs, histories and investigations have been written on America’s white working class in recent years, probably too many, but fewer purely economic studies. Case and Deaton are world-renowned practitioners of the dismal science (Case is a top expert on the links between economic and health status, while Deaton snagged a Nobel in 2015 for his work on household poverty and welfare), and their lens on the subject makes for stark reading. They estimate the magnitude of the deaths of despair in the United States by comparing the improving trend lines of recent decades — i.e., if mortality rates had continued falling as before — with what actually came to pass.

“When we add up those numbers from 1999, the critical point where the turnaround began, to 2017,” the authors report, “we get a very large total: 600,000 deaths of midlife Americans who would be alive if progress had gone on as expected.” Case and Deaton liken that number to “what we might see during the ravages of an infectious disease, like the Great Influenza Pandemic of 1918.” They also compare it to the roughly 675,000 deaths of HIV/AIDS in the United States since the early 1980s.

Case and Deaton are largely dismissive of arguments that stress the supposed individual or cultural failings of the white working class, and they focus instead on systemic shortcomings that lead to deaths of despair. Manufacturing towns and cities have seen their factories boarded up, they write, and “in the wreckage, the temptations of alcohol and drugs lured many to their deaths.” Education is another consideration, the authors argue, with “almost all” of the increase in deaths due to suicide, alcoholism and drug overdoses found among people who lack bachelor’s degrees. Deteriorating health matters as well. “Many people are experiencing pain, serious mental distress, and difficulty going about their day-to-day lives,” Case and Deaton write. These conditions make it harder for them to work, which reduces income and undercuts work as a source of “satisfaction and meaning” in their lives.

Who lives, who dies, who decides: How the virus makes us weigh the value of one life

More than 30 million Americans have sought unemployment aid since mid-March, a level of dislocation not seen since the Great Depression. In this context, the impulse to return to work is understandable. Yet the loss of earnings, Case and Deaton contend, is just part of the challenge. “Much more important for despair is the decline of family, community, and religion,” they write, a decline they regard as related to falling wages and disappearing jobs, but distinct from them. Other authors have tackled this problem recently — see, for instance, Timothy P. Carney’s insightful 2019 book, “Alienated America” — and collectively, their conclusion is clear: Long before we began social distancing, Americans had already grown far too distant from one another.

Case and Deaton focus on the white working class because it is undergoing a particularly harrowing shift, not because they believe this demographic matters more than others (they don’t) or because it is worse off in absolute terms than others (it isn’t). Black mortality rates remain persistently higher than white ones, the authors point out, even considering the increased deaths of despair among white Americans. But black mortality rates are falling faster than white rates — and the deaths of despair among white citizens are the difference. “The main reason why death rates of blacks fell more rapidly than death rates of whites at the beginning of the twenty-first century is that blacks were not suffering the epidemic of overdoses, suicide, and alcoholism,” Case and Deaton explain. [...]

It's worth reading the whole thing. While I don't consider myself an anti-capitalist at all, there have been changes in the economy, locally an globally, that have been eliminating working class jobs and incomes. It's a reality.

When Obamacare tried to force small businesses to provide health care for full time employees, the employment industry responded by making all employees part time. I worked as a tax preparer, dealing with all their W-2 forms, and was astounded at how many families were raising children, with two parents working at an assortment of part-time jobs, to pay their bills and keep thier families alive.

This article touches on many causes, and asks many questions we need to face, as it's only going to continue to get worse for the majority of people, if viable solutions are not found.

Many of these people are Trump supporters. And they will vote for Trump, no matter what anyone says, because they feel that the Democrats don't care wether they live or die, so they will vote for anyone who opposes the Democrats. You can argue about wether that perception is right or wrong. But it won't change the fact that they percieve it that way. If the Democrats are serious about winning more votes, they should be addressing this, instead of only attacking Trump non-stop. They have been doing that for the past four years, and it hasn't worked. Isn't it about time they try something that does?

I have Democrat friends who believe that all Trump supporters are racists, bigots and morons. And that if they keep repeating that mantra, it's going to win them the elections. But I think they have forgotten, what every election is about: it's the economy, stupid. Duh. It affects the most people. And the majority will vote for whoever they think, whoever they perceive, will do the better job of that.

     

Russia Gate: no "golden ticket" for clueless Democrat Leaders?

I think even most Democrats see it for what it is, even if their party leadership is clueless. A case in point:

Russia-gate Flops as Democrats’ Golden Ticket

The national Democratic Party and many liberals have bet heavily on the Russia-gate investigation as a way to oust President Trump from office and to catapult Democrats to victories this year and in 2018, but the gamble appears not to be paying off.

[...]

Indeed, the Democrats may be digging a deeper hole for themselves in terms of reaching out to white working-class voters who abandoned the party in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin to put Trump over the top in the Electoral College even though Clinton’s landslide win in California gave her almost three million more votes nationwide.

Clinton’s popular-vote plurality and the #Resistance, which manifested itself in massive protests against Trump’s presidency, gave hope to the Democrats that they didn’t need to undertake a serious self-examination into why the party is in decline across the nation’s heartland. Instead, they decided to stoke the hysteria over alleged Russian “meddling” in the election as the short-cut to bring down Trump and his populist movement.

A Party of Snobs?

From conversations that I’ve had with some Trump voters in recent weeks, I was struck by how they viewed the Democratic Party as snobbish, elitist and looking down its nose at “average Americans.” And in conversations with some Clinton voters, I found confirmation for that view in the open disdain that the Clinton backers expressed toward the stupidity of anyone who voted for Trump. In other words, the Trump voters were not wrong to feel “dissed.”

It seems the Republicans – and Trump in particular – have done a better job in presenting themselves to these Middle Americans as respecting their opinions and representing their fears, even though the policies being pushed by Trump and the GOP still favor the rich and will do little good – and significant harm – to the middle and working classes.

This article, I could argue with that last comment or any number of assumptions and assertions that the author makes throughout. But I'm not going to bother. Because far more interesting to me, is the arguments he makes about how the Dems are out of touch and really screwing things up. Read on:

By contrast, many of Hillary Clinton’s domestic proposals might well have benefited average Americans but she alienated many of them by telling a group of her supporters that half of Trump’s backers belonged in a “basket of deplorables.” Although she later reduced the percentage, she had committed a cardinal political sin: she had put the liberal disdain for millions of Americans into words – and easily remembered words at that.

By insisting that Hillary Clinton be the Democratic nominee – after leftist populist Bernie Sanders was pushed aside – the party also ignored the fact that many Americans, including many Democrats, viewed Clinton as the perfectly imperfect candidate for an anti-Establishment year with many Americans still fuming over the Wall Street bailouts and amid the growing sense that the system was rigged for the well-connected and against the average guy or gal.

In the face of those sentiments, the Democrats nominated a candidate who personified how a relatively small number of lucky Americans can play the system and make tons of money while the masses have seen their dreams crushed and their bank accounts drained. And Clinton apparently still hasn’t learned that lesson.

Citing Women’s Rights

Last month, when asked why she accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars for speaking to Goldman Sachs, Clinton rationalized her greed as a women’s rights issue, saying: “you know, men got paid for the speeches they made. I got paid for the speeches I made.”

Her excuse captured much of what has gone wrong with the Democratic Party as it moved from its working-class roots and New Deal traditions to becoming a party that places “identity politics” ahead of a duty to fight for the common men and women of America.

Demonstrating her political cluelessness, Clinton used the serious issue of women not getting fair treatment in the workplace to justify taking her turn at the Wall Street money trough, gobbling up in one half-hour speech what it would take many American families a decade to earn.

While it’s a bit unfair to personalize the Democratic Party’s problems, Hillary and Bill Clinton have come to represent how the party is viewed by many Americans. Instead of the FDR Democrats, we have the Davos Democrats, the Wall Street Democrats, the Hollywood Democrats, the Silicon Valley Democrats, and now increasingly the Military-Industrial Complex Democrats.

To many Americans struggling to make ends meet, the national Democrats seem committed to the interests of the worldwide elites: global trade, financialization of the economy, robotization of the workplace, and endless war against endless enemies.

Now, the national Democrats are clambering onto the bandwagon for a costly and dangerous New Cold War with nuclear-armed Russia. Indeed, it is hard to distinguish their foreign policy from that of neoconservatives, although these Democrats view themselves as liberal interventionists citing humanitarian impulses to justify the endless slaughter.

Earlier this year, a Washington Post/ABC News poll found only 28 percent of Americans saying that the Democrats were “in touch with the concerns of most people” – an astounding result given the Democrats’ long tradition as the party of the American working class and the party’s post-Vietnam War reputation as favoring butter over guns.

Yet rather than rethink the recent policies, the Democrats prefer to fantasize about impeaching President Trump and continuing a blame-game about who – other than Hillary Clinton, her campaign and the Democratic National Committee – is responsible for Trump’s election. Of course, it’s the Russians, Russians, Russians! [...]

He's nailed it! Read the whole thing for even more about the deep roots of the problem, and the serious errors the Democrat Party are continuing to make.
     

"Demographics tend to be political destiny"

Republicans’ 2016 math problem, explained in two charts

It's easy to overthink elections. I do it all the time. But at its most basic level, demographics tend to be political destiny. And that's why Dan Balz's column over the weekend, which details the difficult demographic realities facing the Republican Party in 2016 (and beyond), is so important. [...]

Read the whole thing for the two charts, embedded links and more. I think it explains a lot.

     

Is the nearly extinct Northeast species of Republicans being brought back from the brink?

I once did a post about the demise of New England Republicans. It seemed like they were gone for good. But could it be they are making a comeback?

Return of the Northeastern Republican

[...] Republican political operatives say the gains the GOP is set to make are due to a convergence of causes. There is the fact that in the wave election year that 2014 seems poised to become, the party could win in even the most unexpected of places. There is the fact that in many of these states Democratic legislatures are entrenched, and voters are looking for a counterweight.

And finally, there is the fact that most of the culture wars have reached a stalemate. In Massachusetts, for example, Baker is running as a pro-choice, pro same-sex marriage Republican nominee. Other Republicans are similarly downplaying these hot-button issues of old, and pollsters say most voters see them now as settled matters. And so if two candidates are a wash on matters of civil rights, why not go for the guy who is going to cut your taxes?

“Republicans have just been putting together a more coherent message of change in New England,” said Will Ritter, a Republican political operative who worked on a number of statewide races in Massachusetts. “The Democrats’ message is what—‘Hey, it is not so bad?’ People look to candidates who have a business background, or at least have conservative underpinnings, when it looks like budgets are going off the rails.”

The major question for the Republican Party going forward is what all these Yankee newcomers will mean for its direction. The GOP has been at odds with itself as it tries to decide how to appeal to a diverse and changing electorate, and some Republicans think a handful of new voices from states not necessarily of the reddest hue could help the eventual 2016 presidential nominee.

“It takes a lot of Democrats to elect a Republican in one of these places,” said John McLaughlin, a Republican pollster. “You can’t win otherwise. You broaden your base, you broaden your message, it shows that you really want to get things done. And we need do to that, not just racially but demographically.”

But will the Republican party welcome these blue-state Republicans, or will they shoot themselves in the foot (again!) by declaring them to be RHINOs and try to drum them out of the party with social issues litmus tests, insuring that the Republican Party remains small, with only limited appeal to a small minority of the vast demographic of voters? You can be sure that the latter is what the Democrats are hoping and praying for.
     

The Grace Commission: Good Advice Ignored

I've often heard the Grace Commission mentioned in various articles, so decided to look it up. From Wikipedia:

The Grace Commission

The Private Sector Survey on Cost Control (PSSCC), commonly referred to as The Grace Commission, was an investigation requested by United States President Ronald Reagan, in 1982. The focus of it was waste and inefficiency in the US Federal government. Its head, businessman J. Peter Grace,[1] asked the members of that commission to "be bold" and "work like tireless bloodhounds. Don't leave any stone unturned in your search to root out inefficiency."[2]

The report
The Grace Commission Report[3] was presented to Congress in January 1984. The report claimed that if its recommendations were followed, $424 billion could be saved in three years, rising to $1.9 trillion per year by the year 2000. It estimated that the national debt, without these reforms, would rise to $13 trillion by the year 2000, while with the reforms they projected it would rise to only $2.5 trillion.[4] Congress ignored the commission's report. The debt reached $5.8 trillion in the year 2000.[5][6] The national debt reached 13 trillion after the subprime mortgage-collateralized debt obligation crisis in 2008.

The report said that one-third of all income taxes are consumed by waste and inefficiency in the federal government, and another one-third escapes collection owing to the underground economy. “With two thirds of everyone’s personal income taxes wasted or not collected, 100 percent of what is collected is absorbed solely by interest on the federal debt and by federal government contributions to transfer payments. In other words, all individual income tax revenues are gone before one nickel is spent on the services [that] taxpayers expect from their government."[4]

Congress was warned. They had the chance to do something about it, and did nothing. We The People, let them do it. Now we are living the consequences.

Mr. Grace, a Democrat Businessman, was an interesting fellow:

J. Peter Grace

[...] In the Kennedy administration, J. Peter Grace was head of the Commerce Department Committee on the Alliance for Progress.[5] President Reagan, in announcing the selection of J. Peter Grace to lead The Grace Commission on waste and inefficiency in the Federal government, said:

We have a problem that's been 40 years in the making, and we have to find ways to solve it. And I didn't want to ruin your appetites, so I waited till now to tell you this, but during the hour we're together here eating and talking, the Government has spent $83 million. And by the way, that includes the price of your lunch. [Laughter] Milton Friedman is right. There really is no such thing as a free lunch. The interest on our debt for the last hour was about $10 million of that.

In selecting your Committee, we didn't care whether you were Democrats or Republicans. Starting with Peter Grace, we just wanted to get the very best people we could find, and I think we were successful.

I'll repeat to you today what I said a week ago when I announced Peter's appointment: Be bold. We want your team to work like tireless bloodhounds. Don't leave any stone unturned in your search to root out inefficiency.[6]

Mr. Grace, a Democrat, was asked what he would say to the campaign theme of Walter Mondale, the 1984 Democratic Presidential candidate, that higher taxes would be required to ease the deficit regardless of who wins the November election.

"I'd tell him he's nuts," Grace said. "He's wrong. He's wrong."[7] [...]

   

Why This Republican Majority will be Different

Some worry that the new Republican Majority will be trounced in confrontations with Obama next year, similar to what happened when the new majority in 1995 confronted Bill Clinton. But there are many considerable differences this time:

Congresses Compared

Next year in Washington is not going to be a replay of 1995. The analogy is on everyone’s mind in the capital. Many Republicans worry that President Obama will win the public-relations war against Speaker-to-be John Boehner as handily as Bill Clinton bested Newt Gingrich. They should relax.

The parallels are obvious. Both times, a young Democrat had succeeded George Bush in the presidency and then worked with a Democratic Congress to push a liberal agenda. In the next election Republicans ran against big government and won elections up and down the ballot, picking up governorships and seats in the Senate, the House, and state legislatures. Pollster Kristen Soltis points out that much of the data from the 2010 election looks nearly identical to the numbers from 1994. In both elections, for example, roughly 55 percent of independents chose Republican congressional candidates.

Republicans don’t want what happened after the last Republican takeover to recur. During the winter of 1995–96, the new Republican Congress battled with Clinton over the budget — a battle that reached its climax in partial shutdowns of the government. The public sided with Clinton. His approval ratings rose while Gingrich’s plummeted.

The conservative campaign to limit the size and scope of the federal government never really recovered from this defeat. Within a few years congressional Republicans were beginning to run for reelection on pork and incumbency rather than reform, and George W. Bush was advancing a “compassionate conservatism” as a way of distinguishing himself from the Gingrichites.

But there are several differences between 2011 and 1995 that should work in favor of Republicans.

First, Republicans won a larger House majority. In 1995, Republicans had the smallest majority of any Congress since the 1950s. Conservatives were a majority of the majority, but not a majority of the House. Holding the conference together on votes was a constant challenge: Budgets would be too tight for party moderates and too loose for conservative firebrands.

Boehner’s task will be easier. Republicans have the largest majority they have had since the 1940s. For the first time in the modern history of conservatism, the House has an outright conservative majority. Michael Barone says that House Republicans are in the sweet spot: They have enough members that Boehner can let some Republicans out of tough votes, but not so many that they have no cohesion.

Second, Republicans did not take the Senate, as they did in 1995. As a result, the public will be less likely to hold them responsible for governing the country. When House Republicans passed legislation that could not pass a Republican Senate, conservatives were demoralized and the party looked incompetent. Neither effect will be as pronounced if a Democratic Senate kills House-passed conservative legislation.

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, meanwhile, will have an easier time keeping his conference together in the minority. Getting Rand Paul to sign off on a McConnell agenda would be a lot harder than getting him to agree to oppose Harry Reid’s. Finally, if there are veto fights with President Obama, they will necessarily involve legislation that had significant Democratic support.

Third, the fact that Republicans came up short in the Senate elections will probably temper their triumphalism. At the start of 1995, a lot of conservatives believed that history was on their side and would roll over anyone standing in their way. They thought Clinton was a sure loser. The Republican takeover was widely described as a “revolution.” This time Republicans are well aware that Obama could win reelection and that Republicans could lose House seats in 2012. [...]

Ramesh Ponnuru goes on to give a total of eleven reasons why things are going to be substantially different this time. Read the whole thing; there are so many reasons! The way he explains it is very well thought out.

At last, some hope for optimism. If the Republicans screw up this time, it will have to be for very different reasons than last time. Lets keep their feet to the fire, and say our prayers that they do good this time.

Also see:

Obama Can't Play Center

Should Obama pull a Clinton? This has been a burning question inside the Beltway ever since the polls showed the Great Shellacking bearing down on the White House.

As most know by now, pulling a Clinton isn't anything kinky; it simply means moving to the center, or "triangulating" between the unpopular left and the unpopular right. That's what President Clinton did after the Democrats' historic drubbing at the polls in 1994, and it's what a lot of would-be sages argue President Obama must do now after the rout of 2010.

But the argument is deeply flawed for a few simple reasons: 2011 will be very different than 1995; the Republicans and the Democrats are different than they were then; and Obama is very, very different than Clinton.

Other than that, the analogy is perfect.

Even outgoing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi concedes the political importance of the economy. In 1995, the economy was poised to take off like a rocket. Today, no one thinks the economy is about to perform in a way that would provide a glide path to re-election for Obama. If at the end of Obama's first term, near 10 percent unemployment is the "new normal," as Obama fretted recently on "60 Minutes," then his chances for re-election are bleak -- so long as the GOP doesn't throw him a lifeline, the way it did Clinton in 1995-96.

And the GOP is not only determined not to repeat those mistakes, it is well positioned to avoid them. With Democrats controlling the Senate, it will be much harder for Obama to run against a do-nothing Congress. [...]

Yep. It will indeed be different this time. It goes on to point out that Clinton's road map wouldn't help Obama, even if he were inclined to use it. The terrain is too different. It will be up to Obama to find his own way through it, and make it work. If he can.
     

P. J. O'Rourke: "This is not an election on November 2. This is a restraining order."

They Hate Our Guts And they’re drunk on power.

Perhaps you’re having a tiny last minute qualm about voting Republican. Take heart. And take the House and the Senate. Yes, there are a few flakes of dander in the fair tresses of the GOP’s crowning glory—an isolated isolationist or two, a hint of gold buggery, and Christine O’Donnell announcing that she’s not a witch. (I ask you, has Hillary Clinton ever cleared this up?) Fret not over Republican peccadilloes such as the Tea Party finding the single, solitary person in Nevada who couldn’t poll ten to one against Harry Reid. Better to have a few cockeyed mutts running the dog pound than Michael Vick. [...]

Read the whole thing. It's true to my experience of the Democrat party, which is why I stopped being one long ago.

Remember in November.
     

Message from the Summit: A bipartisan health care reform agreement can only be achieved when the Republicans sign on to Democrat ideas

That would seem to be the Democrats definition of "bipartisan".

From Neal Boortz:
THINGS WE LEARNED FROM THE HEALTHCARE SUMMIT

So yesterday's summit on healthcare was a big snoozer. I'm sorry, it was. For those of you who took the time to watch it, I commend you for being engaged. What was being discussed in that room will affect you life far more than American Idol or Entertainment Tonight. But we did come away from this summit with a clearer understand of a few things. So here we go with a list of things we learned from yesterday's healthcare summit.

* Barack Obama is the president. Got it?

* John McCain is NOT the president (and he may be very bitter about that)

* The GOP was worried that it would look like Obama was "standing up there like God" over them. Well the guy is "sort of a God" .. isn't he?

* Nancy Pelosi says their healthcare bill will create 4 million jobs

* Nancy Pelosi is worried about your health "security"

* The Republicans want to start over. The Democrats don't.

* CBO results can be skewed to support whatever you want them to support

* Obama doesn't appreciate it when Republicans bring the Democrat healthcare bill to a summit on healthcare reform

* Now what?

* Any ideas that the Republicans bring to the health care debate were essentially out of order because they aren't part of the Democrat plan and, thus, aren't really on the discussion agenda.

* A bipartisan health care reform agreement can only be achieved when the Republicans sign on to Democrat ideas.

* I would have loved to hear Lamar Alexander say "Excuse me, Mr. President, but you're the one who called this summit. Did you call us here to listen to you say the same things you've been saying for a year, or did you call us here to listen to and give some consideration to different ideas?"

THE TALK CLOCK

Here's the minute-by-minute talking time count of the health care summit yesterday.

DEMOCRATS (including President Obama) 233 minutes.

REPUBLICANS 110 minutes.

OBAMA solo 119 minutes

Someone out there really loves the sound of his own voice. But then I wasn't at the summit.

WHAT DID THE VOTERS THINK?

For this we go to Frank Luntz.

Watching Luntz this morning discussing the summit with a panel in Philadelphia. The overwhelming majority felt that the Republicans looked better and made better points at the summit. One detractor said the Republicans came with props. Well .. that certainly put the Republicans in their place, didn't it?

Another panel member says that the Democrats were totally condescending to the Republicans.

Here's the amazing part. After the Republicans discussed ideas such as tort reform, selling health insurance across state lines and creating insurance pools, there were still a few members of this panel who stated that the Republicans had no ideas, only objections.

Can we get a big WTF out there?

No ideas? It would seem that some of the Democrats are following the adage that, if you repeat a lie often enough, people will start to believe it's true.

Just for the record, the actual definition of bipartisan is:

Representing, characterized by, or including members from two parties or factions.

Unless Republican ideas are also included in any healthcare reform legislation, it won't be bipartisan. Duh.
     

The Democrats New Power Base: Industry

The Democratic-Industrial Complex

Over the past few weeks, President Obama and Congressional Democrats have reached a series of high-profile agreements with key industries that have usually aligned with the GOP. Automobile manufacturers, the health insurance industry, medical professionals, pharmaceutical executives, and electric utilities - not traditional Democratic allies - all have joined, to varying extent, in the big policy initiatives of Obama's second hundred days.

[...]

As Democratic lobbyist Steve Elmendorf put it, a closer alliance between Democrats and these industries "means potentially that [the Republicans'] time in the wilderness will be longer because these groups will not help them to get back into the majority."

[...]

A similar trajectory is evident at the presidential level. In 2004, Democratic nominee John Kerry received less than 40 percent of the health care industry's contributions to the party nominees; in 2008, Barack Obama collected 72 percent of the industry's donations. Kerry took in less than a quarter of the auto manufacturers' donations; Obama received 62 percent. And Kerry's campaign received only 17 percent of contributions from electric utilities; Obama captured 56 percent of their donations last year.

Though they have started to neutralize the GOP's financial advantage among these groups, Democrats may still have room to grow. The yardstick might be highs that Republican fundraisers enjoyed during their time in the majority. In 1996, the Republicans' first election with House and Senate majorities since 1954, they collected almost 63 percent of health care's total donations. Pharmaceutical interests directed more than two-thirds of their contributions to Republicans that year. The same story played out in the auto and energy sectors. Auto manufacturers gave 68 percent of their money to the GOP in 1996. And Republicans received 69 percent of utilities' donations en route to collecting 76 percent of the energy sector's total contributions.

Early numbers from 2010 election fundraising posted by the Center suggest that Congressional Democrats are approaching and even exceeding the donation shares that Republicans once experienced. So far in this cycle, Democrats are receiving about 66 percent of both the $3.5 million donated by health care companies and the $1.1 million donated by utilities. (Automakers have made negligible contributions to the 2010 race.) Democrats have even pulled ahead of Republican candidates in donations from the overall energy sector, defying conventional wisdom by raising $1.2 million from big energy so far, compared to $850,000 for Republicans. Even the oil and gas industry is hedging its bets, directing 43 per cent of its contributions so far toward Democrats.

With industry, Democrats are making the argument that they are better off working with the majority to shape legislation than joining Republicans in adamant opposition to Obama's plans. The message to business from Congressional Democrats, Elmendorf says, is that if they don't work with the party "it is going to be a vastly different bill; if you stay in the tent, we are going to get a more moderate bill." [...]

These groups are favoring Democrats for the moment, because they saw this sweeping change coming, and they are trying to protect themselves and their interests by co-operating. If the Dems squeeze them too hard though, they could easily switch to the Republicans again. The industries have always tried to play the two sides off against each other, to create the best business climate for themselves. It's the ebb and flow of politics. The Dems have the advantage for the time being. Will they be able to hold it, and for how long, is the question.

Speaking of complexes, did you know that congress was included in Ike's original speech about the military-industrial complex? It makes sense:

Ike's “military-industrial-congressional complex"

And now congress is controlled by Democrats. Neither party seems to do particularly well when they have so much control. We need more balance. It's the point of having two major parties; to balance each others extremes so we don't go off the rails.
     

Our Tax Cheat Treasurer has No Plan

Isn't that special? From Neal Boortz:

SO WHERE WAS THE PART WHERE WE GET A PLAN?

Yesterday we were supposed to get the grand financial plan from Obama's tax-cheating whiz-kid Tim Geithner. And what we got was a bunch of grandstanding, but not a lot of details. Here's one good line: "We're will have to try things we've never tried before." Wait! Isn't that what brung us to this hideous dance with all these ugly partners in the first place?

Let's see ... we'll start out by making millions of home loans to people who have no credit, no steady job history, and certainly not enough income to pay the loan back. We'll make these loans to people who should be renters. We've never tried that before on such a large scale .. let's see how that works out for us.

Here's something else we haven't tried before. Let's pass a law - we'll call it the Community Reinvestment Act. This will be a really nifty way for the government to interfere in the free marketplace. We'll set up some urban gangs who can make sure local banks make bad loans to favored minority groups .. or they'll get spanked by the federal government. Let's see how THAT one works out for us.

Once we have those two programs we haven't tried before in place, we'll keep interest rates artificially and illogically low for far too long. Yeah, let's follow this monetary policy that virtually every sane economist not working for the government thinks is a grave mistake because voters like low interest rates. That ought to work out really well.

So now our tax-cheat Treasury secretary wants to try some more things we haven't tried before? Well, you may think that this message brings great hope, but it would seem that the stock market didn't like that one bit.

If you want to see just how this gang of leftist statists want to change this country some new details can be found here.

The reason we don't have more details has to be because they really don't know how the hell they're going to pull this off. It's just going to be stuff we haven't tried before. No chance for letting people work, thrive and then spend their own money.

Bold emphasis mine. After the Berlin Wall fell, Leftists around the world had to face the fact that prosperous and free people would never willingly vote for a hardcore Leftist agenda. Their solution? Make the current system of government unworkable, so it can be replaced with... "something else". I've been hearing people on the far Left saying this for many years. And the parts I've highlighted in Neal's text above shows the ways in which they are doing this.

I don't claim that Obama or even most of the Democrats are consciously doing this, that sabotaging our government is their deliberate agenda. But I believe it is the deliberate agenda of the movers and shakers in the Democrat party, like George Soros. They pull the stings, and they get people elected who will advance their agenda, whether those people deliberately mean to or not.

The financial crisis we are in could have been avoided, by being more conservative with our taxpayer's money, and using traditional common sense in financial matters. Yet overspending Republican's like George Bush also have their share of blame in this too.

I heard Democrat Senator Barbara Boxer on NPR the other day. She was complaining about Republicans opposing the stimulus bill. She said something to the effect of, "Where were they when George Bush was putting us 7 Trillion Dollars over budget?".

Of course she has a point. Yet the fact is, many Republicans DID complain, were very put off by that, and the Republican base has shrunk as a result.

I could be more sympathetic to Senator Boxer if she was truly upset by Bush's overspending. But her attitude seems more along the lines of, "Bush overspent by Trillions, now it's OUR turn to do the same".

I remember when I lived in California, and Boxer was my senator. She couldn't even balance her own checkbook, she was overdrawn HUNDREDS of times.

Where is the Change We Can Believe In? Where is the accountability for our tax dollars? This is Change? I just see the same old Democrat overspending crap, compounding Bush's Republican overspending crap. Our government is SPENDING MONEY WE DO NOT HAVE. Further more, we are having to pay interest on this growing debt.

Just look a California, teetering on the verge of financial collapse. That is the nations future. California is hoping the Feds will bail them out. Who is going to bail the United States of America out? No One, that's who.

I see a major tax payer's revolt in our future. It can't happen soon enough, IMO.
     

Obama Cults, Shrillness & the Fairness Doctrine

I've been busy with farm work this week, so here's my Sunday morning ramble about several things I've been too busy to post about.


I find this desecration of the Flag disturbing, for it's lack of respect. It's quite possible the people who did it have no concept of what I'm talking about. It's all too easy to show disrespect to something you don't understand, and therefore don't value. Unfortunately I wouldn't be surprised if the flag re-designers also have no idea of what the Constitution of the United States is about, either.

Pat did a post today, about some Democrats who are pushing to have term limits removed via a constitutional amendment:

Enough with the amendments already!

It seems that some Democrats only want term limits for Republicans. I commented on the post:

Too many of the Dems just want to GRAB power, and keep it by any means possible. They always try to enforce rules on Republicans, but when it comes to themselves they don't want rules to apply. Just look how they criticized the spending for Republican inaugurations. Now they are themselves breaking all spending records, and no one is supposed to mind, or even notice.

The Dems are also more vulnerable to personality cults. I can understand that lots of people are happy that Obama got in, and I can deal with it, that's just politics. But the way so many are insisting that we start naming things after him, and building monuments to him, and he isn't even president yet! I find it creepy. Monuments and dedications are supposed to happen AFTER a president's term, and only if he achieved something great, and even then usually only after he has passed on.

Now they want to repeal term limits, even though Obama hasn't even served a term yet. Talk about counting your chickens before they are hatched! Actually, doesn't it just show that they don't care how he does, as long as the Dems hold power? Why not just scrap the Constitution and make him King, and do away with those pesky elections altogether? Sheesh.

I really don't want to rain on their inauguration parade, but really. Some people need to keep it in proportion.

It's perfectly understandable that Obama supporters are happy that their guy got in, and they want to celebrate that fact. Good for them. But is seems that when the Dems get their way, many of them don't know when to put on the brakes, and always go too far.

All this worship nonsense can backfire. If his supporters really value him, they ought to consider that the higher up they raise him on a pedestal, the further he has to fall and the harder he would land.

Ok, now lest you think that's just sour grapes on my part, let me say something about the "conservative" side's reaction to this.

Michelle Malkin is also criticizing the Obama Worship:

Not all conservatives are singing O-Kumbaya

While she makes some good points, I can't go along with all the criticism. She quotes someone from Politico, who quotes Rush Limbaugh:

[...] While most Republicans now in office are saying all the right things about Tuesday’s proceedings — roll tape on “peaceful transfer of power” and “historic moment for the country” sound bites — some conservatives can’t quite get themselves in the “We Are One” mood.

Not even for a day.

On his radio show last week, Rush Limbaugh railed against “people on our side of the aisle who have caved and who say, ‘Well, I hope he succeeds. We have to give him a chance.’”

“Why?” Limbaugh demanded. “They didn’t give Bush a chance in 2000. Before he was inaugurated, the search-and-destroy mission had begun. I’m not talking about search-and-destroy, but I’ve been listening to Barack Obama for a year and a half. I know what his politics are. I know what his plans are, as he has stated them. I don’t want them to succeed.” [...]

Obviously I don't want to see Obama succeed with ALL his plans. But I can face facts, and I believe we all should. Republicans lost this election. We are facing economic collapse and hardship, and myriad dangers from abroad. Obama and the Democrats MUST succeed on many key issues; to fail would be catastrophic for us, all of us.

There is a point where constantly accentuating only our differences with Democrats does not serve us well. A house divided against itself cannot stand, and neither can a country. That doesn't mean we all have to agree on everything, but it does mean we NEED to have common ground on which to stand.

I'm not religious, but one of my favorite scriptures is Matthew 5:25, "Agree with thine adversary quickly". There is great wisdom in that. Democrats may be our adversaries politically, but they are NOT our deadly enemies. And thankfully, not all Democrats are insane. We need to find agreement with them when and where we can. Obama has thus far shown some signs of reaching across the isle, and I am truly thankful for that, and hope it continues.

I'm a Republican, but I'm an American first. The Republicans, as the minority party, have to exert what influence we can and work with the Democrats on many issues that are going to effect all of us. We have to cooperate and find common ground on some things, even as we regroup to battle them on other things. It's a balancing act, which will require a certain amount of sophistication, maturity and flexibility, not ridged ideology. Conservatives need to cut the whining, grow up, and deal with it. We can't afford not to.

Before the election, I was worried that if the Dems got in, they would re-instate the fairness doctrine. The Dems won, and now they are already replacing the Republican members of the FCC, paving the way for the return of the Fairness Doctrine, which was an FCC regulation. It can be easily reinstated by the Democrat majority of the commission members. But I've decided not to worry about it. Why?

Reagan got elected during the Fairness Doctrine years. He only scrapped it near the end of his last term. Perhaps the limitation it enforced brought out the best in conservatives.

I sometimes wonder if we weren't better off without conservative talk radio. It seems to have encouraged more shrillness and ideology, which appeals to the ideologically shrill, but repels everyone else.

I resent the Fairness doctrine as government interference; I hate restrictions on free speech. But it's also a two-edged sword, it cuts both ways. Many Dems don't like it, because it requires conservative views to be put forth in the mainstream media. When conservative commentary is put forth as a rebuttal to it's liberal counterpart, it's given a context which lends it greater meaning. It's also aimed at a less ideological audience, and therefore has to have a broader appeal. That could serve us better in the long run.