The 2010 Congress Must Pass a Second, Sweeping Stimulus Package During Its Lame-Duck Session

One might say it's political suicide for the Democratic Party. But consider:

• There is no chance that the GOP-controlled house will authorize stimulus dollars next year.
• Without more stimulus, we will face close to 10 percent unemployment in November, 2012. 
• With 10 percent unemployment, Obama will lose in 2012 and we will all wake up to this man as president.

I am not kidding. Rick Perry is like a Sarah Palin who can talk to you about what magazines he reads. He's really, really dangerous. 

So, Congressional Democrats, what's it going to be?

“I’m so depressed. It’s happening again. It’s a nightmare.”

Via Ben Smith, 

A major Democratic fundraiser described it a good bit more starkly after digesting the polls of recent days: “I’m so depressed. It’s happening again. It’s a nightmare.”

I'm hearing the same from a lot of friends, especially those who backed Hillary. There's a widespread feeling that Obama is getting rolled, and that he doesn't know how to push back, or isn't willing to do what it takes.

But my question is, what would it take? I hear Obama trying to reframe the debate, and push back on some of the bullshit, but it doesn't seem to penetrate the way McCain's messages do. And I don't think it's because he's not trying hard enough. Steve Benen agrees (emphasis mine):

MATTHEWS: ... I want to ask you, what will we talk about two days from now?

SCARBOROUGH: Whatever the McCain campaign wants us to talk about, because the McCain campaign is assertive.

I suppose the most obvious question that comes to mind is why the Obama campaign isn't equally assertive. But the truth is, it's quite assertive. Like D-Day, I've seen plenty of the campaign's blast faxes, emails, "In Case You Missed It" memos, etc. Obama's team is pushing plenty newsworthy stories at media personalities on a nearly constant basis.

But news outlets seem kind of picky about what kind of nonsense goes into heavy rotation. As far as I can tell, the story has to a) have video; b) be exceedingly simple and easy to summarize in a few seconds; and c) be good for John McCain.

And that is where much of the frustration comes in. We saw Gore and Kerry go down under a landslide of unfair media coverage, and ascribed a lot of the blame to the candidates. And they do deserve some of the blame. And if Obama loses, we'll find plenty to not like about the way he (and Biden!) did or did not conduct himself during the last 80 days before the election.

But we need to recognize that we live in the house that Rush and Newt built, and until we build a new house, it's going to be very hard to win national elections. And yet, I am not worried as some, and here are four reasons why:

1. The press are (slowly) turning on McCain.

Well documented at Talking Points Memo are the series of journalists who are disillusioned with McCain. This may not happen fast enough, but I'm hoping that October's press narratives are substantially different in character than September and August's.

2. Palin's star may fade.

Let's be honest. She would never have survived the Republican primary. Whether two months is long enough for her dirty laundry to be internalized by the voting public, I don't know. But it is possible. 

3. Palin scares some Jewish voters.

Witness Ed Koch. 

4. Obama has an ace in the hole

And that ace is Obama. Recall how he handed the Reverend Wright issue. He didn't push back hard, right away (as everyone wants him to be doing right now). He let the issue simmer, perhaps permanently damaging his image with a few voters. But it built anticipation. And when he finally responded with his speech on race, the press was slavering for it. It defined the news narrative for days. 

And Obama is no Kerry or Gore. Once he has everyone watching, he has the ability to package his message in such a way that it is actually received. 

You may not be convinced! But if you are despairing about the state of the Obama campaign, let us know in the comments what, specifically, you would like like to see them do. I'll start it off with something Henderson asked me:

Where are Obama's surrogates? Any surrogates?

I don't know. For example, why isn't Biden on the primetime cable news shows every night, tearing shit up?

And no, Matt Damon doesn't count as a surrogate, but he makes some good points:

John Sidney McCain III and the Republican Party are Bad for America

I think many have been distracted by the polarizing figure of Sarah Palin. Please recall:

George W. Bush and the Republican party started an unjust war with Iraq based on fabricated evidence. John Sidney McCain III has been a vocal proponent of continuing the war. Barack Obama opposed the war from the start.

George W. Bush and the Republican party have made kidnapping, torture, and indefinite imprisonment without habeus corpus "business as usual". John Sidney McCain III, a former POW, opposed legislation that would ban specific torture practices. Barack Obama opposes torture and supports the Unites States Constitution.

George W. Bush and the Republican party took over a country with record budget surpluses and economic growth and created staggering debt, unemployment, and recession. John Sidney McCain III supports the current economic policy. Barack Obama supports windfall taxes on oil company profiteering, creating new jobs by developing green technology, supporting small business, fair trade, workers' rights, and other measures.

George W. Bush and the Republican party have enacted an energy policy written by oil company executives. The current energy policy has driven rapid increases in energy prices, increased reliance on foreign oil, and record profits for oil companies. John Sidney McCain III supports the current energy policy and supports increased domestic drilling for oil. Barack Obama supports rapid development of alternative energy sources.

John Sidney McCain III is inextricably linked with the current Republican administration's failures. He plans to continue these failed policies, and so would his vice president. 

What other failed policies do you want to see stopped? Post them in the comments.

Misrepresentatives

Via Marc Cooper's math, I see that the average Republican voter is to the left of the average congressional Democrat regarding the Iraq war.

I don't know jack about Mike Huckabee

I titled the post this way to deter anyone from thinking that I'm about to become a "Huckabee Democrat." It's a sad state of affairs, but my starting assumption about any politician is that she will say anything, anything, to get elected. It is, in fact, his job to do so.

Policy does matter, however, and the rhetoric that politicians use to get elected ends up shaping the policy, often more than the politicians might have hoped.

Firstly, the rhetoric constrains the winner of the political contest, at least a little, as the winner may have future contests and needs to avoid flagrant hypocrisy to win down the road.

Second, and probably more significantly, the rhetoric can take on a life of its own and move the center of the debate in one direction or another. This latter effect can immediately undercut a politician's favoured course (example: Bush and the Dubai ports deal), but can also ripple down through the years, shaping entire political platforms (example: Barry Goldwater).

Thus, it is heartening to see a Republican candidate for president staking out these sorts of positions, no matter what his motivations may be:

Here is a piece of Salon's profile, as quoted by Yglesias (with our patent-pending Bellman bolding):

"If I really know what it means to follow Jesus, it means no kid goes hungry tonight," he said, at one stop in Iowa. "It means no wife gets the daylights beat out of her by some alcoholic abusive husband. It means no kid lives in a neighborhood where he is scared to death of some child predator that is going to pick him up and carry him off. It means not one single elderly person has to make the choice between food or medicine." Unlike former Sen. Rick Santorum or Sen. Sam Brownback, Huckabee does not spend time pounding the pulpit over baby murder and sodomy. He's a self-styled "compassionate conservative," a poll-tested concept that worked once before. But while President Bush discarded the slogan like a prom queen's sash, Huckabee wants to convince America that he is the real deal.

Leading off with poverty? That's the starting position of the so-called "Religious Left." Taken seriously, it implies all sorts of positions that are far closer to my left-wing nutjob socialism than the policies pursued by any Republicans in my lifetime.

Here is another bit of the Salon profile, as quoted by Ezra Klein:

[Huckabee] has refused to take the predictable path by talking tough on crime to deflect the DuMond criticism. Instead, he campaigns on a compassionate approach to wrongdoers, especially those whose crimes are the result of drug or alcohol addiction. At Philly's Finest, he condemned the "revenge-based corrections system," sounding every bit the sort of squishy liberal that the Bill O'Reillys of the world long ago scared into the shadows. "We lock up a lot of people we are mad at rather than the ones we are really afraid of," he said. "We incarcerate more people than anybody on earth." As governor, Huckabee pushed for drug treatment instead of incarceration for non-violent offenders. He pushed for faith-based prison programs, and was critical of governors who "gladly pull the switch" on death penalty cases, an apparent knock on President Bush, who was criticized as governor of Texas for being cavalier about capital punishment.

This is the exactly the kind of position, written into platform after platform of the Democratic party, that makes me a Democrat. However, our Dem Congressfolk and Presidents haven't acted on this position--or even tried very hard to shape the debate--for some time. Our highly-paid inside-the-beltway consultants tell us that hammering on this sort of thing will lose us votes rather than gain them.

And they might be right. But at some point somebody has to actually fight to fix the clusterfrak that is our prison-industrial complex. And if that person turns out to be a Republican, that person might just gain more votes than he loses for doing so. He might just get mine.

At the very least, I'm happy to see anyone out there pushing on my side of the envelope.

On the "mistake" and other nonsense

Nothing has changed for Hillary, and John Edwards is seizing on that to try to get a little traction:

When Edwards spoke a few minutes later, he seemed to aim his rhetorical barrels right at Clinton, emphasizing repeatedly how he was, indeed, wrong to have voted for authorization of the war. “I should have never given George Bush authorization,” he said. Arguing that America needs a president who can is “honest, open, and moral” he said that after 6 years of Bush not taking responsibility for the war, it was no longer acceptable to dance around the issue as he implied Hillary was doing.

Meanwhile, Matthew Yglesias--who claims he is saying something nice about Hillary--says that Hillary isn't avoiding admitting a mistake. Instead, she just thinks it wasn't a mistake. Is that really being nice, or is he actually being a dick?

Lastly, one of my favorite politicians weighs in on Iraq:

Dennis Kucinich got his licks in, trashing all the other candidates. “It must be hard for these politicians to say they were misled, tricked and deceived by George w. Bush,” referring to their positions on the war in Iraq. “Here’s one who wasn’t. I organized 125 Democrats in Congress to oppose the war and I saw all the same information these other candidates did.”

Lest the "realists" amongst us get bent out of shape, I don't think Kucinich can win, but I don't think his candidacy hurts anybody either. He's one of my favorites not only because of his honorable positions, but also for stuff like this:

He then ended his talk by saying he was the only candidate who had no strings attached to him. Then he lifted his arms up to his shoulders and slowly twirled around on stage repeating: “No strings. No strings. No strings.”