This page contains links to recent blogs by Lincoln Mitchell
Posted in: US Politics
The Democratic Party in New York, because it really is almost everything to almost everybody, has no ability to enforce party discipline in the senate, or to defeat candidates who do not represent the views of the party. Excessive ideological rigidity is not a great situation either, but without some discipline, parties are almost meaningless.
Now that the Democratic Primary is finally and definitively over, we will probably begin to hear even more about Barack Obama's relationship, even his problem, with Jewish voters. Barack does have a problem with Jewish voters--there aren't enough of them. Lost in all the noise about Obama's supposed problems winning Jewish support, is that the latest polls show him winning this group by a margin of almost 2-1. If this constitutes a problem, Obama should wish for such problems with Christian and other voters as well.
While the decision by the California Supreme Court upheld a discriminatory ballot initiative, it should not have been a surprise. The vote by the California Supreme Court was not even close as Proposition 8 was upheld by a 6-1 majority. The lone dissenter was Justice Carlos Moreno. Much of the coverage of the decision overlooked the important point that the vote was on, excuse the pun, straight party lines. All six judges who voted in the affirmative had been initially appointed by Republican governors. Moreno is the only Supreme Court justice in California appointed by a Democrat.
Cheney's presence on the current political scene seamlessly blends unpopular and unsuccessful policy approaches with an unpleasant demeanor in a way that amounts to an enormous political gift to an already extremely popular president. Every smirk and hostile aside from the former Vice-President makes President Obama's job just a little bit easier. As long as Cheney continues to loudly, and bellicosely defend the previous administration, the American people will not forget just how bad things were when Bush was in office. The belligerence, accusations that any disagreement over any aspect of the Global War on Terror was at best undermining our safety and at worst close to treason, unwillingness to question the efficacy of any of Bush policy and overall hostility towards questioning and debate which continue to characterize Cheney's public statements serve as almost daily reminders to the American people of why they were so ready for a change last November.
As President Obama prepares to make his first Supreme Court appointment, the religious right appears to be shifting gears away from focusing on abortion rights and turning their attention more to the question of gay marriage. This reflects a broader strategy on the part of the Christian Right to make fighting against marriage equality the top issue on their agenda.
Arlen Specter's recent decision to switch parties was viewed by many Democrats as a great victory. It moved the Democratic Party closer to the magic number of 60 Democratic senators which would mean a filibuster proof majority. It also further demonstrated that the Republicans have not yet finished the downward spiral which really began with the 2006 midterm elections. If a center right Republican like Arlen Specter feels compelled to leave the party because he believes it has been taken over by the extremists, then the Republicans still have a ways to go before becoming relevant again.
The quandary in which the Republican Party now finds itself is not due to a public relations problem, but stems from being strongly identified, and not without good reason, with the Bush administration. The Bush administration is broadly viewed as a failure, not because it didn't present itself well, but because it mishandled both the economy and foreign policy to disastrous effect. Additionally, some of the ideas which have been foundation of the Republican Party have, in the cases of radical social conservatism and unregulated financial sectors, become the views of an increasingly small minority of Americans. Other bedrock Republican views, such as fiscal conservatism and a realist based foreign policy, were abandoned altogether by the Bush administration and the Republican Party in the last decade. These are problems are profound and go to the core not just of the party's image, but to its vision, message and raison d'etre.
Placing Obama's first 100 days in context is important because for the first 100 days, at least, the whole outweighs the sum of its parts. Not only have Obama's first 100 days been by far the best of any president of my lifetime, but they began not a day too soon. The country was reeling economically, directionless in foreign policy, losing credibility and support abroad and suffering a crisis of confidence at home when Obama became president. Obama has begun to turn all of this around. Moreover, even though Obama has not been a constant optimist in the White House he has restored confidence both abroad and domestically as most Americans believe our new president is, for the most part, leading us in the right directions. There have also been a range of less high profile issues including stem cell research, national service, allowing science back into policy and, frankly, bringing a sense of normalcy back to Washington, for which Obama also deserves credit. Ultimately, what stops Obama from getting an A is his approach to addressing finance and banking issues, so his final grade is A-.
The information that is being released now regarding interrogations of suspected terrorists conducted by the US during the last several years makes it clear, for those who did not yet understand, that America does not torture, except of course when it does. The treatment of prisoners during the Bush years is a stain on the moral standing of the US which the rest of the world will not easily forget. These policies have undermined our credibility and ethical position while doing little to ensure our safety.
The mayoral election of 2009 does not look like it will be as exciting as any of those great campaigns. Instead incumbent mayor Michael Bloomberg will likely get reelected for a third term without much difficulty. While we New Yorkers can lament that we are not getting the great drama we like to see in our mayoral election, there might be a broader message in this election for both major parties. Bloomberg, while registered as an independent, has been an on and off Republican since he first ran for mayor in 2001, and will be that party's nominee again this year. New York is, of course, a heavily Democratic city, but if Bloomberg wins, for the first time in our history, we will have five consecutive terms of Republican mayors. To look at it another way, the last time the city elected a Democratic mayor was 1989 a year when Barack Obama was a law student; the Soviet Union still existed; and a blackberry was a fruit. Further, there have been not one, but two terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center since a Democrat was last elected mayor of New York.
Why then are Republicans willing to talk about revolution, secession and other ideas that would destabilize our country and our democracy. One hopes that most of this can be simply chalked up to a party that is weak, defeated, directionless and out of ideas, but it may not be that simple. Perhaps the demonstrators and, more significantly their leaders, feel that for some existential, and undoubtedly irrational, reason the Obama presidency is a profound threat to their worldview, values and vision of the US. If that is the case we can only hope that these people remain on the margins. This is likely to occur as Obama's worldview, values and vision not only reflect those of a huge plurality of Americans, but will likely to continue to become more, not less, accepted over time.
Rudy Giuliani seems to have joined Dick Cheney among the ranks of political has beens who still think President Obama will make us more vulnerable to a terrorist attack because he prefers a more thoughtful approach to the bluster and fear tactics upon which the previous administration relied. While Giuliani's comments, specifically his arguments that, based on Obama's address to the Iranian people, "terrorists will say, we can take advantage of the guy (Obama)," and attack the US, should not be taken too seriously, they offer an interesting insight not just into a man whose moment has come and gone, but into how political epochs come and go. The ridicule which greeted Cheney's comments and the comparative silence that greeted Giuliani's indicate that the War on Terror is over. President Obama's decision to abandon the term only underscores this.
The story is not, for many reasons, quite as simple as this. The G20 Summit is occurring in the midst of a global economic crisis of historic proportions, one which raises important, although far from identical, problems for all of the countries participating in the summit. Due to the impact of the downturn in the US and the effect on the rest of the world of the American bubble bursting, Obama is forced into a very strange position, one that is part rock star and part Dr. Doom. The American president whose personal story and style exudes optimism will be, to a substantial extent, playing the role of pessimist, or realist, at the summit, as he must not seek to minimize the seriousness of the economic problems we all face.
Unfortunately, Romney's expensive failure in the 2008 presidential campaign was not the last we have heard from the former liberal Republican governor of Massachusetts turned standard bearer for the far right. In the last few weeks, Romney has resurfaced helping to lead the Republican charge against President Obama's effort to pass a stimulus bill and help point the American economy towards recovery. Romney's reasons for opposing the stimulus are not that different from what we have heard from most Republicans: government spending is bad, tax cuts are the answer to everything, helping poor people is socialism and the usual nonsense that passes for economic policy from the party that essentially created this mess.
A direct confrontation with Limbaugh would be bad for Obama and almost certainly will not happen, but the elevation of Limbaugh is good for Obama and the Democrats. As Limbaugh, who combines a discredited right wing ideology with a demographic profile that makes it difficult for the party to expand beyond its insufficient base, increasingly becomes understood as the real leader of the Republican Party, the party will slink increasingly further away from mainstream America and political relevance. Moreover, Limbaugh's proudly repeated boast that he is rooting for Obama to fail, while red meat to the Republican base, cannot be playing well with the millions of Americans of all political views who are hoping for the president to succeed in his efforts to right our economy. Limbaugh's angry and blustery style is emblematic of the past in American politics and precisely the kind of style against which the people voted in November.
In recent decades, hundreds of millions of dollars have been invested by conservatives in convincing the American people that the Democrats are the party of tax and spend and that government is part of the problem. Although any reasonably serious observer of politics over the last decade can see that the Democratic Party certainly has no monopoly on taxing and spending, Jindal's narrative about the Democratic Party is still powerful. The Bush administration, as we all know, took fiscal irresponsibility and deficit spending to levels unprecedented in American history, but for many voters, the Democratic Party still remains the party of tax and spend. Thus, while Jindal's critique is not precisely true, it is believable, and in politics the latter is at least as important as the former.
For Obama the question of whether he should be more optimistic is somewhat different, and not just because the current economic situation is uniquely dire. To some extent this is a matter of style. Obama doesn't need to be more optimistic because he already is so essentially forward-looking and hopeful. In addition to being a young president with a young, happy family and confident, unflappable disposition, Obama's election, in the midst of this economic crisis, was itself a major triumph of optimism, for many the first such triumph during a particularly gloomy period in our history. Accordingly, Obama has an enormous reservoir of optimism on which he can draw. His presidency is based around the notion of hope. If he was more explicit about this feeling, constantly making upbeat predictions about the economy, or other overt statements of optimism, he would risk sounding foolish and lacking in seriousness and gravitas.
The Obama administration's successful passage of the stimulus package, although not the exact one they wanted, is a significant and telling victory for the new administration as it has been decades since a Democratic president has begun his term with a comparable legislative accomplishment. Although, the stimulus package had its detractors, and its passage was not exactly an easy process, it was a victory for the new administration and should put to rest concerns regarding the ability of this administration to get things done.
Tom Daschle's withdrawal from his nomination as Secretary of Health and Human Services due to his failure to pay taxes on, among other things, the car and driver which a wealthy friend let him use while in Washington, while appropriate, is troubling not only because Daschle may well have been a good HHS Secretary, but also, for those of us who support our new president and his agenda, it is not a helpful development. The details of the circumstances which forced Daschle to withdraw are particularly unfortunate because they simply reek of elite, affluent, Washington insider. For most Americans, failure to pay thousands of dollars of taxes on the limousine lent to you by your friend is even more difficult to understand or relate to than the more common affluent foible of failing to pay taxes on housekeepers, gardeners and the like.
It is possible that the job facing Michael Steele, the newly elected chair of the Republican Party, is even more difficult, albeit far less important, than the one facing Barack Obama. Moving the Republican Party forward after two successive drubbings in national elections would be challenging under any circumstances, but Steele's task has not been made any easier by the inability of the Republican Party, and its supporters in the media, to adapt to the new political context.