Lincoln Mitchell

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This page contains links to recent blogs by Lincoln Mitchell

Posted in: US Politics

The Republican Party and the Future of the Democrats →

The Republican victory in the midterm election has once again placed that party firmly at the center of American politics. They are no longer the not-entirely-relevant, occasionally entertaining and often frightening sideshow that they were in late 2008 through much of 2009, but are again the driving force in national politics. This creates a frustrating dynamic for the Democratic Party because their ability to forge their own future is somewhat limited. Instead, to a substantial extent, their future depends on the direction taken and decisions made by the Republican Party.

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The START Treaty and Partisan Politics

For many years the notion that partisan politics ended at America’s shores contained a smattering of accuracy with a healthy overlay of propaganda. There have been too many exceptions over history for that phrase to contain more than a kernel of truth. Partisan disputes about entrance into World War II, Cold War strategy and the Vietnam War were just some of the times that the American political leadership was divided on key foreign policy questions during the time when this framework was allegedly at its strongest. Since the Vietnam War era, disputes over foreign policy from Central America to the Middle East have been a constant presence in our political life.

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Full Body Scanners, Pat-Downs and Democracy →

This is now changing in the US. The recent expanded security procedures at most airports have changed from being a time consuming inconvenience to being invasive and almost certain to make most citizens uncomfortable. Regardless of the intent, the result of these new procedures is that all travelers are now treated like suspects, with the assumption of guilt until proven otherwise. The cost of booking an airplane ticket now includes being treated like a criminal by the TSA. While Americans are still legally free to travel, they can no longer travel either at home or abroad, without confronting these invasive and offensive searches because, presumably, every traveler might be a terrorist. The act of traveling is now enough for the authorities, or semi-authorities, to be suspicious.

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After the Shellacking

The excitement, hope and sense of history which accompanied the early period of Obama's presidency now seem like distant memories even to many who counted themselves among the President's most ardent supporters. Obama's presidency has long since become just another presidency, now it is one that is struggling to stay afloat and to reassert a leadership role in American political life. Unless Obama is able to reclaim the political initiative, the new Republican leadership in the House will continue to fill political vacuum that has been created by an increasingly difficult Obama presidency.

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From the Audacity of Hope to Timid and Kvetchy

Since 2009, Obama has become a president who seems to have lost this understanding of the American people which helped make his candidacy possible. Instead of offering hope, he has offered mediocre legislation and bristled when the import of this legislation has been challenged. It is strange that a candidate who was able to read voters so well has become a president who seems to think citizens simply want legislation. Voters don't care about legislation; they care about outcomes. If the outcomes are not good, a president must offer understanding and demonstrate that he understands the worries, concerns and troubles of the American people. As president, Obama has been unable to do this.

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Will the Election Change Obama's Foreign Policy?

The election results, however, may have an effect on American foreign policy, but this will probably not be as significant as some might think. The new Republican members of congress will focus likely continue to focus their attention on domestic issues. Moreover, many of these people have very little experience on foreign policy and know very little about it. Of course, this is true regarding domestic policy as well, but lack of experience and knowledge tends to be more of a barrier in the making of foreign policy.

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What Really Happened Tuesday Night →

It is tempting, for people on both sides of the aisle, to see this election as a paradigm shift or a new development in American politics, but there is also much about this election that is not new at all and that fits neatly into patterns that have characterized our political history for at least a few decades. Every midterm election for more than half a century the president's party has lost seats in congress; the only exceptions were 1998 and 2002. This is a natural part of politics that occurs even when presidents are viewed relatively successful, even during periods of peace and prosperity.

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What Is the Democratic Party Base? →

Having a better sense of who represents the party's base is important for strategist and for the party once it is in office. In 2008, for example, the only groups who voted for Obama by a margin of 2-1 or better, a good measure of a true demographic base, were African Americans (95%), Latinos (67%), voters under 29 years old (66%), Jews (78%), gays and lesbians (70%). Interestingly, union members only voted 60% for Obama, meaning that among white union members it was probably closer to 50%.

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Get Ready for the Most Political World Series in History

It is probably the most politically polarizing World Series in history as one team’s most famous fan and former owner is former President is George W. Bush while the other team plays in the country’s most left of center major city and has long been probably the most progressive franchise in the game. The “Let Timmy Smoke” signs and t-shirts, referring to Giants’ ace Tim Lincecum’s marijuana bust would fit in as about as well at Rangers Ballpark in Arlington as prominent Republican politicians would at AT&T Park, or anywhere else in San Francisco. Somehow this is fitting for the first World Series that, should it go to six or seven games, will be the first to be concluded after Election Day.

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The Tea Party and the Republican Party Are the Same →

As the election approaches there is growing reason to believe that the Tea Party is neither distinct from, or even a part of, the Republican Party. Instead the two have, to a large extent, become the same. Some within the Republican Party may differ in style and presentation from Tea Party Republicans, but that is where the distinction ends. Few Republicans have spoken out about rhetorical excesses of the Tea Party, and when they have, they have turned their attention to individual actions or gaffes -- Rich Iott's Nazi outfits and the like -- rather than to positions or views on major issues. Even the most bizarre claims that have gotten good traction in the Tea Party movement, such as those asserting that President Obama is not a citizen, have rarely been soundly refuted by others in the Republican Party.

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Looking Back at the Arkansas Senate Race →

Nominating a more conservative candidate because she or he is the more electable Democrat is sometimes necessary, but nominating more conservative Democrats who can't win anyway is pointless. This is not just an abstract point, because candidates like Blanche Lincoln, even if she were to win, often stand in the way of successfully passing legislation once they are elected. Therefore, if they are not more electable in November, there is very little strategic reason to nominate these types of candidates in primaries.

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The Republican Party After the Election →

Being the party of voter anger has proven to be a surprisingly effective short term political strategy, but it is a terrible governing strategy. What was left of the more thoughtful, if still conservative, leadership of the Republican Party after the Bush years has been completely defeated in the almost two years since Obama took office. The checks on the party's fringes are no longer there, so people who like to dress up as Nazis, advocate abolishing all public education, want to end Social Security and believe that any economic policy to the left of Ayn Rand is synonymous with Stalinism have emerged as the new face of the Republican Party.

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Rahm Emanuel's Legacy

This interpretation, however, would be wrong. Emanuel, to the extent he has been tough at all, has been tough on Obama's most natural and important allies, the liberal Democratic leadership of congress. These people were more often the targets of Emanuel's hostility and contempt than the Republicans who were in most cases responsible for stalling or stopping the president's agenda. The toughness of Rahm Emanuel was always something of a myth embraced by a somewhat unquestioning media who happily mistook bluster and machismo for toughness and strength, and mistook a proclivity for colorful profanity for dedication and brilliance.

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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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