Lincoln Mitchell

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This page contains links to recent blogs by Lincoln Mitchell

Posted in: US Politics

Bill Clinton, Blanche Lincoln and Democracy in Arkansas →

In an election like Lincoln's the general disdain for primary challengers which is held almost universally by political elites is also probably a factor which pushes people like Bill Clinton to support her. This demonstrates the enduring strength and allure of the insider political culture and the deep fear of a primary challenge which many elected officials fear. After all, if people like Lincoln lose primaries simply because they lose touch with voters, than almost anybody would be vulnerable to a primary challenge. The word for that is democracy; and it is disturbing to again see how many politicians are afraid of it.

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Why Rand Paul's Victory Matters for Republican Foreign Policy

If Paul’s primary victory is truly a sign of the direction in which the Republican Party is moving, it creates problems not just for moderate Republicans generally, but for the party’s foreign policy more specifically. The Republican critique of Obama’s foreign policy has been consistent, reasonable and predictable. This critique which, has also frequently been wrong, has generally asserted that Obama has given in too much to powers like Russia and China, failed to stand up to threats like that posed by Iran, shirked America’s responsibility as the world’s moral and political leader and gone too far in his efforts to rebuild U.S. relations with parts of the world where Bush administration policies had contributed to widespread anti-American sentiments.

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Rand Paul's Enablers →

This sense of shock is particularly shameless coming from conservatives who sat quietly during the last 18 months, rarely even pushing back against the most bizarre right wing canards, such as those regarding President Obama's place of birth. Conservative responses to this controversy have ducked the serious issues and focused more on Paul's flaws. Senator Jim DeMint (R-SC), one of Paul's most prominent supporters, made comments indicating that DeMint was either unaware of Paul's basic views or thought that Paul needed better media training. Ross Douthat's New York Times piece on the topic was a somewhat tortured attempt to dismiss Paul as somebody too beholden to ideological rigidity. Both seem bizarrely unaware that Paul's victory is a product of months of ideological hyperbole of the kind that characterizes President Obama as a dangerous socialist. Both DeMint and Douthat conveniently, and wrongly, absolve mainstream conservatives from any blame in the matter.

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The Republican Midterm Dilemma →

Ironically, the Republican Party, by portraying President Obama as seeking to bring about the socialist apocalypse, and by stressing the strength of anti-Obama among voters, has spun itself into a similar corner today. Raising expectations is never wise in politics, but the Republicans have done just that in the last eighteen months. They have made this more of a problem by overstating the danger represented by the Obama presidency.

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Rekers, Jindal and the Impressive Hypocrisy of the Far Right →

Years ago Phil Ochs, the great folk singer, defined a liberal as somebody who is "ten degrees to the left of center during good times; and ten degrees to the right of center when it effects them personally." If Phil Ochs were alive today he might look at the far right in America and describe them as 40 degrees to the right of center when things are going well and 40 degrees to the left of center when it effects them personally

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Fighting Terrorism and Protecting Our Freedoms in Times Square

While Orton’s story is one of personal heroism and vigilance, it is also a reflection of the often overlooked resources that can help America combat terrorism at home. Most critically, Orton’s actions are possible because of, not in spite of, the freedoms that Americans still enjoy. Times Square is not what it used to be, but there is still enough activity on the street that somebody like Orton can sell t-shirts. Moreover, even though police abuses and abuses of civil liberties connected to fighting terrorism are serious problems in the U.S., people like Orton still feel comfortable enough to call the police when they notice something of concern. This is no small thing because in less free countries, contact with police is something to be avoided at all costs, even if failing to do so could cause others harm.

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Are More Oil Spills Inevitable? →

The question of whether or not to drill offshore is something of a false construct anyway, because it is meaningless in the absence of other options. There are, of course, other options. We don't have to get our oil by drilling offshore. We can get it by tapping into our reserves or by buying it from somewhere else. If we decide to tap our reserves, we are doing little more than postponing the question about whether or not to drill offshore. Getting our oil from somewhere else, in addition to deeply complicating US foreign policy, is obviously not without an environmental impact. Carbon released by driving a car powered by oil from the Middle East, Central Asia or elsewhere, for example, still contributes to climate change.

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Health Care, Financial Reform and Democratic Momentum →

In the likely event that this bill passes, President Obama will be able to point to another major piece of domestic legislation almost immediately following the health care bill. The charges of socialism against Obama will not die down after this bill is passed; they may in fact get stronger. These cries, however, will become increasingly irrelevant. Some significant minority of the American people will continue to call Obama socialist almost no matter what, but this is beginning to look less like a problem for Obama and more like one for the Republican's, as they find themselves controlled by a radical and angry, right wing base.

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Another Battle for the Soul of the Democratic Party →

Rendell's decision to make these comments now, at a time when the sitting Democratic president is attacked almost daily as a socialist, might seem strange, but it is not. President Obama, like every Democratic president, has veered to the center and upset the party's progressive base, so in that regard Rendell's comments are not entirely apropos of nothing. Rendell, however, is something of a strange messenger for this sentiment. As a governor and former chair of the DNC, Rendell is, as much as anybody, a Democratic Party insider, not a firebrand outsider trying to shake up the party. If Rendell really believed that the party was losing its soul, he might have said or done something about it at some point in the last several years.

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The Nomination Fight and the Republican Quandary →

The confirmation narrative will likely not look too different from the one surrounding Justice Sonia Sotomayor. President Obama will nominate a judge with a strong resume including a degree from an elite university. The judge will have a moderately liberal voting record and perhaps be a person of color, a woman or both. Liberal interest groups will support the nominee, but some more progressive groups will be critical of the candidate's pro-business history. The right wing will attack the nominee as yet another sign of the imminent socialist apocalypse and identify minor scandals and gaffes which they will seek to make into bigger issues. The nomination fight will end with the nominee being confirmed with almost unanimous Democratic support and perhaps the support of a small handful of Republican senators as well.

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The Founders and the Creation of the American State →

The Tea Partiers and other anti-state radicals are not entirely wrong to warn about the potential of the state to repress freedom or to slow down or subvert economic growth. Clearly, for example, there are times when the best thing the state can do to help an economy is to get out of the way. However, by overlooking the role of the state in ensuring these freedoms and facilitating economic development these radicals doom themselves to a sophomoric understanding of political and economic realities and to half-baked ideas about political and economic solutions. Moreover by claiming the mantle of the founding fathers in their anti-government crusade they badly and foolishly misread history and some of the most basic lessons from the early years of our country.

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Libya and the Strength of the American Foreign Policy Establishment

The NATO involvement in Libya continues characterized by an anticipated ambiguity about next steps, overall goals and methods of reaching those goals as well as the real possibility that this timely intervention may, in fact, have saved thousands of lives. The decision to intervene in Libya, while first resisted by the Obama administration has been generally accepted by both Democrats and Republicans in Washington who have disagreed about the timing and methods, but less about the decision itself. While there has been some dissent and criticism of the Obama administration for this decision, most of that has come from the ideological extremes or from ordinary citizens.

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The Impact of the Health Care Bill on Foreign Policy

Passage of the health care bill is obviously of primary import inside the U.S., but it will also have an impact on U.S. foreign policy. The stakes in the health care debate were extremely high and clearly out of proportion for a bill that was somodest and moderate in nature. Nonetheless, Obama all but wagered his presidency on passage of the bill. Had the bill failed, which seemed very likely in January, Obama’s presidency would have been reeling. He would have been viewed as ineffective, even a failure, before his first term was halfway over. The bill, of course, passed, reinvigorating and strengthening the president.

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What the Health Care Bill Might Mean →

The health care bill has finally passed, but its meaning is still unclear. The process and debate around the health care bill has been extraordinary beginning with attempts at bipartisanship, swiftly moving to accusations of socialism and talk of death panels and culminating with bigotry and hate. It is likely that the lasting images of the Tea Party protests will be of protesters calling Barney Frank a f*gg#t and calling John Lewis, one of the last living icons of the Civil Rights Movement, the n-word. These images will help define the Tea Party movement as one of backwards looking reaction, rather than some kind of patriotic post-partisan movement as some Tea Party apologists have described it.

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The Politics of Passing Health Care →

The meaning of the approaching final vote on health care has changed since the halcyon early days of the Obama presidency when progressives experienced a hope and optimism unheard of in recent decades. The final vote on health care was supposed to be a cause for celebration as a progressive goal going back at least half a century was finally to be realized. It was supposed to be the most significant piece of progressive domestic legislation in many of our lifetimes. All of that changed late last year when Obama compromised away the public option and the expanded Medicare proposal. The last minute efforts to reinsert the public option felt more like death spasms for that possibility, rather than a serious chance of reinvigorating the bill.

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Sarah Palin's Canadian Health Care →

Sarah Palin's recent statement that, presumably during her childhood, she and her family used to cross the border from Alaska to take advantage of Canada's health care system is not really a gaffe or a verbal slipup, but offers an interesting insight into Palin. It is not exactly surprising, or even"ironic," to use Palin's words, that somebody who has made a name, and a great deal of money, for herself by linking health care reform to some kind of socialist bogeyman, used to take advantage of socialized medicine.

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What Progressives Can Learn from the Tea Partiers →

As a political phenomenon, the Tea Partiers are more colorful than mysterious. They are not really a new or post-party phenomenon, but are the latest incarnation of the populist conservative wing of the Republican Party, the political descendants of Richard Nixon's Silent Majority or the angry white men who catapulted Newt Gingrich and the Republican Party into control of the Congress in 1994. Tea Partiers will vote overwhelmingly for the Republican Party in November, or they will stay home. Very few will vote Democratic; and third party rumblings that have not yet died away, will do so in the next months.

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Has Rahm Emanuel Become a Liability for the White House? →

Ascribing Emanuel's failure to an inability to get his voice heard in the White House is far from the full story. At key moments, Emanuel's advice was loud, clear and wrong. Emanuel's position, in the end of 2009, that Obama needed to pass something on health care so that he could take credit for some success was wrong-headed and may well have been the moment when the presidency was most in danger of unraveling. Urging the White House to cut a deal with, of all people, Joe Lieberman so that they could get a bill was an extraordinary lapse of judgment, one that was not without serious consequences for the White House.

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Can Obama Lead Again? →

Obama's presidency has been different. While all presidencies need to set the agenda on important pieces of legislation and respond to domestic and international events, Obama has not mastered this balance. This has contributed to both the administration's lack of real legislative success since the stimulus bill as well as the ongoing political problems confronting Obama and his party. Moreover, this situation has gotten worse, not better, as Obama's presidency has progressed.

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