Lincoln Mitchell

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This page contains links to recent blogs by Lincoln Mitchell

Posted in: US Politics

A New Third Party in America? What It Would Take

There is, however, at the grassroots level strong sympathy, albeit rooted in different worldviews, from both the left and the right for the notion that perhaps the U.S. does not need to be involved in every corner of the world. On the left this grows out anti-war sentiments and a belief that other countries should be left alone. From the right, isolationism grows out of a belief in smaller government and a sense that the government should not spend American tax dollars trying to solve other people’s problems. Both sides, as well as many centrists would also add that our government should focus more attention at home and that in the current fiscal environment the U.S. cannot afford such a broad internationalist approach to the world. These views may have varying degrees of accuracy, but they represent substantial portions of the electorate.

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The Other Primary Story →

Jon Stewart hosted a panel discussion on the Daily Show on Wednesday discussing this question of potential Democratic pitfalls going into November. This is an important issue to think about because any Democrats who think winning any of these senate seats simply because the nominee seems like a wacky extremist are badly misreading the current political and media climate. The two major ways the Democrats could miss this opportunity, which were not directly addressed in Stewart's forum, are by assuming the voters all know how extreme the Republican Party candidates are in these races, and ignoring how some Democratic candidates, and thus the party more generally, will be portrayed by the Republicans.

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What New York's Voting Machines Can Tell us about Democracy Assistance

Voters in New York City yesterday were confronted with a new voting system for the first time in about a century. While I had always liked casting my vote for Barack Obama and other recent candidates on the same type of machine, and perhaps even the same machine, that my grandparents used to cast their votes for Franklin Roosevelt and Fiorello LaGuardia, not everybody shared this view. The new technology used on Tuesday generated some controversy as voters struggled to figure them out, glitches occurred and many were confused. Michael Bloomberg, the city’s mayor, referred to Election Day with the new machines as “a royal screw-up, and it’s completely unacceptable.”

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Apres L'Election →

The November election will be crucial to the future of the Barack Obama presidency and, of course, the country more generally. In some respects, the Obama presidency, still less than two years old, has been characterized by more tests of this nature than most. First there was the stimulus bill, which Obama needed to pass to prove that he could govern. Then there was the fight for the Massachusetts senate seat that had been held by the late Ted Kennedy for almost half a century. The president and his party failed that test as that seat went to a Republican for the first time in most of our memories. Obama then recovered somewhat with the passage of the health care bill, which, while a relatively moderate pro-health insurance industry bill, at least demonstrated the president's continued relevance on domestic affairs as well as his ability to go up against the Republicans and win.

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Obama's Labor Day Speech-Does It Matter? →

The speech was good and hit most of the right points, but still seemed a little bit tone deaf on the part of the president. Obama's comments were not so much wrong, or overstated -- far from it. But somehow it seemed a few months late and a few billion dollars short. It is, at least at first glance, inexplicable that Obama would wait until the election was so close before giving a speech that could, at least briefly, mobilize his party's base and generate some excitement. This is the type of speech Obama should have been giving every week since becoming president.

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Hmm. Maybe Obama Won't Change Global Opinion of the U.S. After All

Perhaps a similar dynamic will evolve globally as well. People around the world who saw Obama’s election as evidence of the real promise of America and as a reason to hope that Bush’s America was an aberration may begin to question these assumptions too. This is partially natural as American foreign policy has always been characterized by more continuity than change between administrations. U.S. interests almost never change substantially when a new president comes to office. People anywhere in the world who expected the Obama administration to abandon long standing alliances, tone down U.S. efforts to combat Jihadist terror or to seek to change the U.S. role in international relations were inevitably going to be disappointed.

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Whither the Tea Party? →

Glenn Beck's rally this past weekend will undoubtedly be remembered as a strange episode in American political history as well as perhaps the single biggest act of egotism since Ross Perot ran for president in 1992. It is possible, however, that the event will be remembered more for the outlandish claims made by participants and the eccentricities, to be generous, of its leaders than for any lasting impact on American political life.

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Republican Hypocrisy and the Proposed Islamic Center →

Fighting jihadist terror and being at war with Islam are, of course, two different things that can remain distinct from each other. The Bush and Obama administrations both went to great efforts to try to make it possible to maintain this distinction. Nonetheless, official statements that the US is not fighting against all of Islam and even the reality that Muslims enjoy more religious freedom in the US than in almost any other country in the world, something which both Presidents Bush and Obama have pointed out while in office, will be very easily overshadowed if this Islamic Center is not allowed to be built now. It has become almost a cliché to point out that the current Republican Party would have rejected Dwight Eisenhower or Ronald Reagan for being too liberal, but the debate over the Islamic Center suggests that they would reject George W. Bush on these grounds as well.

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Dr. Laura and Racism in the Age of Obama →

For many people, noting that the election of Barack Obama does not mean that racism is a thing of the past is so obvious that it borders on being pedantic. Dr. Laura's comment after her burst of using the N-Word, "we've got a black man as president and we've got more complaining about racism than ever. I think that's hilarious", indicates that this may not be so obvious for everybody. It cannot escape notice that the caller, seeking help for a difficult personal situation focused on specific incidents that have occurred in her home and the homes of her friends and family. The caller is obviously not the first person to have encountered racism of this kind. Dr. Laura, however, on two separate occasions in a brief conversation brings the discussion back to our African American president. The question the caller raised was personal, not political, but Schlessinger seemed to have a hard time keeping her distaste and resentment for the president under wraps. Given that her comments about President Obama are bracketed by liberal use of the N-Word, it is difficult to conclude that there is not a racial component to this.

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The Middle Class: How We Got One and Why We Need to Keep It →

Thousands of graduates of public universities, which made higher education available to almost everybody who could succeed academically, formed the backbone of the post-war middle class. Employment and training programs made it possible for people to advance their careers. Social security meant that old people would no longer live in poverty as often and that younger workers would not have to spend as much taking care of their elderly parents. Through collective bargaining, insured by the Wagner Act of 1935, labor unions were able to negotiate wages and benefits so that their members were able to join the middle class as well. Primarily because of America's ugly racial history, some groups were left out of these programs and the middle class as well, but it is clear that without these, and numerous other government interventions, the middle class as we know it would not have existed.

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Let the Bush Tax Cuts Expire →

The opposition to allowing these tax cuts to expire is already strong and, not surprisingly, many are asserting that the tax increases, which will occur when the Bush cuts expire, areanother brick in President Obama's socialist wall. The notion that increasing the tax rate on the richest Americans by four or five percent means that the socialist floodgates have been opened is clearly nonsensical, as the rates would return to what was normal, or even less than normal, for most of the last half century. Moreover, Americans, particularly the wealthiest Americans, have almost always been taxed less than people at similar income level in other western countries.

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On Afghanistan and Presidential Certainty

Afghanistan is a confoundingly difficult dilemma for the president. Continuing the course in Afghanistan means getting deeper and deeper into a war in which the end is only very remotely in sight as casualties and costs inevitably increase. Moreover, while the issues at stake in Afghanistan have direct bearing on our national security, it is far from apparent that the war as it stands now is doing anything to make us safer. Withdrawing from Afghanistan will also be difficult as it will not only raise a new set of security issues and require retooling a range of national security strategies, but will also make Obama vulnerable to charges of weakness, timidity and probably anti-Americanism from the far right.

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Obama's Fleeting Progressive Promise →

Frustration with the Obama administration from the left due to the failure of the administration to embrace and implement a progressive program seems to be increasing. It is now clear that while Obama is a far better president than his immediate predecessor, an extraordinarily low bar to be sure, he will not be the progressive leader for which many had hoped during the campaign. His governing style has been largely centrist with a preference for compromise over bolder, riskier decisions.

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The Obama Disappointment and Its Cost →

Barack Obama's presidency, while far from being a failure, has been something of a disappointment to many of his initial supporters. The noise from people on the far right who question the president's place of birth or believe him to be a socialist because he passed a stimulus package that many economists believe to be too small and a health care bill that will lead to millions of new customers and new revenue for the insurance companies, has overshadowed some of this. However, Obama's disappointed supporters are far more important to his political future than angry opponents who never have and never will support him.

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For Obama, Being Right is No Longer Enough →

One of the reasons Barack Obama got elected president is that to a majority of voters he was right on the major issues facing the country. Obama's views regarding the war in Iraq, the economy, the environment and the need for widespread change in our government resonated with an electorate that had grown very critical of the Bush administration's approach to these and other issues. While candidates are often judged by their views on major issues, presidents are more frequently judged on their performance. The two are not unrelated, so, for example, because Bush was perceived as a failure by 2008, Obama's positions, most of which were in direct opposition to Bush's, were more popular among voters.

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Obama Is Lucky It Was Steele Who Said It →

President Obama's tenure in the White House has not been an easy one, but he has been buoyed by a few lucky breaks. It seems like every time things look particularly bad, Dick Cheney re-emerges and does an interview to remind people just how bad things could be. When the electoral outlook has looked particularly bleak, the Republicans have helped the President by nominating unelectable candidates like Sharron Angle who make it easy for the President and his allies to portray the Republican Party as extremists.

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Elena Kagan and the Right Wing Dog that Didn't Bark →

The relative ease with which Elena Kagan is almost certain to be confirmed for the Supreme Court is a political victory for the White House and tells us a few important things about the current political environment. Kagan's imminent confirmation, particularly when paired with Justice Sonia Sotomayor's confirmation last year, demonstrates that when the White House is faced with contained and discrete political choices, they are able to make good decisions. The Obama administration has nominated two relatively uncontroversial, qualified candidates. Sotomayor raised some partisan ire, more for her "wise Latina" comment than for her record, while the Republican attacks on Kagan have focused on the activist judge fear mongering which is really little more than poorly concealed partisan politics, but these criticisms got little traction outside of the Republican base.

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After McChrystal →

Obama's actions were a necessary response to an immediate problem, but they also raise bigger questions about the future of the war in Afghanistan. The firing of McChrystal brought the effort in Afghanistan back into reasonably sharp focus. John McCain, for example, questioned the wisdom of Obama's withdrawal deadline of mid-2011. Criticisms like McCain's will likely grow stronger over the next twelve months as it becomes increasingly, and predictably, clear that the US will not meet its goals in Afghanistan before this time.

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After the Spill and the Speech →

Obama's oratorical skills served him very well during his campaign, but they have times seemed misplaced in his presidency. For a president, a great speech does not stand by itself the way it does for a candidate. Instead it occurs in a context. In December, for example, President Obama made a pretty good speech about the war in Afghanistan, but the speech is already forgotten while the wrong-headed policy lives on. Yesterday's speech on the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico was a different case, but still demonstrates that oratory, while certainly of great use to President Obama, is not going to be enough.

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Despite Appearances, California's Republican Party is Still Looking Backward →

It is not, however, Fiorina and Whitman's gender that is most important and revealing, but their backgrounds. Both are businesswomen who have worked as CEOs, Fiorina for Hewlett Packard and Whitman for Ebay. Not coincidentally, they both relied on ample personal wealth to win their primaries and will be able to draw on this wealth in their general elections campaigns as well. In this regard Fiorina and Whitman are not so unusual for a party that has nominated and elected numerous wealthy business executives to office around the country, and may well nominate Mitt Romney for President in 2012. In this regard, the outcomes of the California primaries do not demonstrate that the Republican Party there is forward looking and oriented towards the future, but that they are still stuck in the same trite and tiresome story lines.

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