Centerfield

Teachin' Evolution

The school board in the town of Dover, Pennsylvania has voted to require the teaching of Intelligent Design in place of the standard scientific curriculum on evolution.

Bicoastal city slickers are likely to take this as evidence of the low intelligence of middle America (though this town near Gettysburg, is in a blue state). As a matter of fact, however, I am somewhat sympathetic to their views.

The truth is that evolution is a FACT, not a theory. It is confirmed by many independent fields of science, with the addition of evidence from molecular biology in the last half-century being the capstone. My pappy, way back, was an ape.

However, the means by which nature produced evolution are not well-understood, and are often overtaught in science curriculula. In the 1970's, I was taught that the accumulation of slow changes over eons of time was sufficient to explain evolution. Nowadays, this is no longer considered sufficient. An inportant new theory is punctuated equilibrium, whereby long periods of stability are punctuated by rapid changes which occur in response to catastrophic changes in the environment, such as the collision of the Earth with a comet which some believe brought about the end of the dinosaurs. The proposed mechanisms by which the fact of evolution occurred are indeed theories.

I'm not yet persuaded that Intelligent Design will contribute anything positive to science. I doubt scientists will ever get to the point of being stumped, and say, "Yep, God needed to come in with some supernatural magic to give us those trilobites." Whatever did happen will, by definition, have been natural. But ID is right when it tries to make scientists more humble, pointing out problems in current explanations of evolution.

The literal Biblical account has no factual basis and belief in it is purely a matter of faith. It cannot be taught in schools without violating the prohibition on the establishment of religion. For the Biblical account to have occurred, God would have to have created dinosaur fossils in the ground 6000 years ago, and carefullly designed the DNA of various species to that it looked like they had diverged over time. Such a God would have the heart of a forger.

But the intelligence and beauty displayed by nature as it has evolved is such that it remains an open question whether some element of design may be behind it.

Busting The Filibuster

Joe Gandleman has an in-depth post on the prospect of dispending with the filibuster over at The Moderate Voice. The issue can be argued either way. In terms of what may be motivating the GOP to dispense with a rule so formerly beloved by conservatives, it may be that the desire to get anti-Roe judges onto the Supreme Court is seen as a moral imperative.

Pandora's Box: A Teaching Tale

Regarding nuclear proliferation, my simple thesis is that nuclear technology, whether for energy generation or for weapons, is revealingly (although not exclusively)understood through the Pandora's box analogy. The threat of terrorism has led our country to pursue a policy towards nuclear proliferation that relies on controlling some sort of exclusive nuclear club. While this may be wise and necessary over the short term, it strikes me as unrealistic to expect this to be successful over the long term.

If one acknowledges this (that other nations are likely to be able to develop nukes eventually despite our efforts to stop them), it follows that our foreign policy going forward has to begin making the transition from "all stick," and start working in more carrot.

A good friend sent me this story about some kid in Michigan who got pretty close to irradiating his neighborhood, even without malevolent intent.

David learned that a tiny amount of the radioactive isotope americium-241 could be found in smoke detectors. he contacted smoke-detector companies and claimed that he needed a large number for a school project. One company sold him about a hundred broken detectors for a dollar apiece.

Not sure where the americium was located, he wrote to an electronics firm in Illinois. A customer-service representative wrote back to say she'd be happy to help out with "your report." Thanks to her help, David extracted the material. He put the americium inside a hollow block of lead with a tiny hole pricked in one side so that alpha rays would stream out. In front of the block he placed a sheet of aluminum, its atoms absorb alpha rays and kick out neutrons. His neutron gun was ready.

The mantle in gas lanterns, the small cloth pouch over the flame, is coated with a compound containing thorium-232. When bombarded with neutrons it produces uranium-233, which is fissionable. David bought thousands of lantern mantles from surplus stores and blowtorched them into a pile of ash.

I know it's not a new story, but when you look at the details of it, it sure screams Pandora's Box.

Electoral College Stupidity

Digby rebuts Polipundit's mockery of Democratic Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren's proposal to abolish the Electoral College.

I say they're both right. The electoral college is totally stupid, and any intelligent, unbiased person would want to abolish it. However, the Electoral College also gives an approximately 20 electoral vote bonus to the Republican Party, so any biased intelligent person would want to keep it or abolish it depending on their partisan loyalty.

Here's how I get the 20 EV estimate, and correct me if I'm wrong. Kerry won 19 states and DC. Gore won 20 states and DC. So roughly, 20 blue states and 30 red states produce an electoral balance. There are two problematic aspects of the electoral college.

1. The winner take all aspect at the state level can produce results in which the loser in the total votes gains more electoral votes. This is a random effect, but as far as I can tell, it does not favor Republicans or Democrats.

2. There is a bias where states get two electoral votes based on their Senate seats, which are not population related. If the electoral votes based on Senate seats were removed, Democrats would lose 40 EV from the 20 blue states, while Republicans would lose 60EV from the red states. This is the basis of my calculation of a 20 vote bias in favor of the GOP in the electoral college.

Apologists for the electoral college present arguments such as the supposition that rural states would be ignored if it were abolished. In fact, in the 2004 election, we found that the Republicans won because of the close attention they paid to non-urban voters. Swing voters would not be ignored if the electoral college were abolished. Only those areas where the vote was entirely predictable would be ignored--cities like Boston, for instance.

Nonetheless, the Electoral College will not be abolished as long as it provides a 20 point boost to the governing party. The Democrats need to learn how to win within the limits of the Electoral College. If they can reliably win 25 states, the GOP-bias will be neutralized, and both parties might be able to agree to eliminate it.

Mass. Supreme Judicial Court is Republican

By way of updating this post, the Supreme Court of the United States today denied certiorari in--declined to review--the Goodridge decision (establishing a right to same-sex marriage in Massachusetts based on the state constitution) on Guarantee Clause grounds. The order for Largess v. Supreme Judicial Court, No. 04-420, can be found here under Certiorari Denied, in case number order.

Merry, er, Holidays

The New York Post had an opinion piece on a controversy that has arisen in my old high school, which has banned Christmas and Hanukah music from the annual Holiday Concert.

The school district's fine-arts chairman, Nicholas Santoro — claiming to have received complaints over religious music in the schools — has banned true holiday music. Out are Handel, the Jewish hymn "Ma'oz Tzur" and "Joy to the World." In are generic seasonal tunes like "Winter Wonderland" and "Frosty the Snowman." From the sublime to the mediocre.

But presuming that the choir in the Holiday Concert referred to above will sing more than one song (based on my former membership in the Glee Club, I think it's likely) there is an opportunity to celebrate diversity by recognizing everyone. If the atheists feel unrepresented, let them write a catchy tune, or perhaps request the inclusion of Joe Hill's Pie In The Sky When You Die

The attempt to scrub the public square clean of any religious sentiment is precisely what has inspired the conservative backlash and increased political involvement of the religious right. It is also one of the factors in public hostility to government and the push for privatization. I don't believe the school district's action is required under the First Amendment prohibition of the establishment of religion. If it's not, the district should be sensitive to the entire community, including religious people, and balance community interests instead of coming down on one side.

The Hastert Maxim: 'a majority of the majority'

From the Washington Post:

In scuttling major intelligence legislation that he, the president and most lawmakers supported, Speaker J. Dennis Hastert last week enunciated a policy in which Congress will pass bills only if most House Republicans back them, regardless of how many Democrats favor them.

Hastert's position, which is drawing fire from Democrats and some outside groups, is the latest step in a decade-long process of limiting Democrats' influence and running the House virtually as a one-party institution.
...

In a little-noticed speech in the Capitol a year ago, Hastert said one of his principles as speaker is "to please the majority of the majority."

"On occasion, a particular issue might excite a majority made up mostly of the minority," he continued. "Campaign finance is a particularly good example of this phenomenon. The job of speaker is not to expedite legislation that runs counter to the wishes of the majority of his majority."
...
Hastert spokesman John Feehery defended the decision in a recent interview. "He wants to pass bills with his majority," Feehery said. "That's the hallmark of this [Republican] majority. . . . If you pass major bills without the majority of the majority, then you tend not to be a long-term speaker. . . . I think he was prudent to listen to his members."

Some congressional scholars say Hastert is emphasizing one element of his job to the detriment of another. As speaker, said Norman Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute, "you are the party leader, but you are ratified by the whole House. You are a constitutional officer," in line for the presidency after the vice president. At crucial times, he said, a speaker must put the House ahead of his party.
...
Hastert's "majority of the majority" maxim, Ornstein said, "is a disastrous recipe for tackling domestic issues such as entitlement programs, the deficit and things like that."

The framers of the Constitution did not anticipate the rise of political parties on the national scene, but even if they did, does anyone think they would approve this practice?

(also posted to CivcDialogues.org)

Bringing Home the Bacon

This might be the season for “gobble gobble,” but the Council for Citizens Against Government Waste are crying “Oink Oink!” According to the CCAGW, “While lawmakers and President Bush lauded the omnibus for holding domestic spending, excluding defense and foreign aid, members of Congress showed no restraint in their hunger for pork-barrel projects.” Funded projects cited include:

$3.5 million for bus acquisition in Atlanta, Ga.; $2 million for kitchen relocation in Fairbanks North Star Borough in Fairbanks, Alaska; $1.5 million for a demonstration project to transport naturally chilled water from Lake Ontario to Lake Onondaga; $500,000 for the Kincaid Park Soccer and Nordic Ski Center in Anchorage, Alaska; $250,000 for the Country Music Hall of Fame in Nashville, Tenn.; $200,000 for Fenton Street Village pedestrian linkages in Montgomery Co., Md.; $100,000 for a municipal swimming pool in Ottawa, Kan.; $80,000 for the San Diego Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Community Center; $75,000 for the Paper Industry International Hall of Fame in Appleton, Wis.; $35,000 for the Alabama Sports Hall of Fame; and $25,000 for fitness equipment for the YMCA in Bradford County, Pa.

It's certainly true that our Congress Critters prefer that “other white meat,” but a quick look at this list begs the question: Why aren't these projects funded at the state and/or local level?

One good reason could be that pork is usually considered by voters to be any federal spending on local projects for a locality that isn't your own. If it's in your locality, it isn't pork, it's necessary funding. YourCongress.com lists as the number one reason why pork persists “Far more people love it than hate it.”

Members of Congress will support projects that are popular because they want to get re-elected. After securing a project, members are usually showered with thanks from local people, increasing their desire to secure another project. Giving people what they want is usually a good thing, and Members of Congress intrinsically know when something has produced votes.

Bottom line: There are far more votes in securing projects than there are people who oppose it. The same guy who says he hates pork barrel spending will be happy as a clam when the bridge that he drives on everyday is fixed. To him, it's not pork - it's about time.

Many communities, particularly in rural areas, have to depend on their governor to help get projects funded. Many governors relish playing hardball politics - often moreso than federal politicians. Why should a small community go without just because the governor doesn't like their mayor?
…
In many cases, the state department of transportation is a tougher nut to crack than any politician. Many communities have to depend on their state transportation bureaucrats to get projects completed. Any unelected bureaucracy is much more likely to be less responsive than one that has to answer to an election.

President Bush, when asked about the pork embedded in the omnibus appropriations bill he is scheduled to sign, responded with

…obviously, there's going to be things in these big bills that I don't particularly care for, and that's why I've asked Congress to give me a line-item veto. And the only way a President can affect that which is inside the bill, other than vetoing the entire bill, is to be able to pick out parts of a bill and express displeasure about it through a line-item veto. I hope the Congress will give me a line-item veto.

Bush To Paisley

For the first time since the election, President Bush has done something which earns my praise, and that is intervening personally to keep the Northern Ireland peace process on track.

Centrist Searches Added

If you look at the second box in the left column, you'll see some one-click searches. I've added a new one to search Feedster for blogs which mention the word "centrist." I just clicked it, and found this sick weirdo who writes:

It’s no secret I’m a big fan of Senator Liberman’s. I sometimes wish all the Centrists would get together and form their own damn party. I know I’d sign up. Glad to see Senator Snowe is in there as well. She’s pretty awesome, too.

Open Thread

What's on your mind? Nothing is off-topic.

Knowing the Enemy

James Dao has this article in this morning's New York Times, detailing the organizational brilliance of Mr. Phil Burress of Cincinatti, Ohio. Some excerpts:

Mr. Burress's organization gathered 575,000 signatures to put the Ohio measure [banning same-sex marriage] on the ballot in fewer than 90 days, then helped turn out thousands of conservative voters on Election Day. Their support is widely viewed as having been crucial to President Bush's narrow victory in that swing state.

Just days after their thundering victories in the fall elections, Mr. Burress and other Christian conservative leaders met in Washington to discuss next year's constitutional amendment battles, which will focus on about 10 states, including Arizona, Florida and Kansas. They hope those fights will be the prelude to their real goal: amending the United States Constitution to prohibit same-sex marriage, which could take years.

Beyond that, Mr. Burress plans to take his grass-roots movement in Ohio to a new level, using a computer database of 1.5 million voters to build a network of Christian conservative officials, candidates and political advocates.

He envisions holding town-hall-style meetings early next year in Ohio's 88 counties to identify issues, recruit organizers and train volunteers. With a cadre of 15 to 20 leaders in each county, he says he believes religious conservatives can be running school boards, town councils and county prosecutors' offices across the state within a few years.

"I'm building an army," Mr. Burress said. "We can't just let people go back to the pews and go to sleep."

Poverty Distribution Across The USA

There are some interesting maps at Hear The Issues. One that catches my eye is the map showing the percent of a couty's population living in poverty. From the map, it appears that the higher poverty areas are almost all in the red states. Is this an artifact of varying levels of purchasing power in different parts of the country? Or it is a real phenomenon? If the latter, why is it that the candidates from the wealthier states talk more about alleviating poverty, while there is less interest in such programs where actual poverty exists? Perhaps it's also a matter of urban poverty being more visible than rural poverty.

Once again, though, I'm questioning the way the Democratic Party puts together its political platform. There seems to be a disconnect between its self-image as the party of the poor and working class and the actual sources of where it gets its support. The Republican Party has been transformed in the last 30 years, and knows it. The Democrats have been transformed too, but they have yet to figure out who they are.

Multinationalism: Something Else the Civil War Did

It recently occurred to me that one effect of the Civil War was the creation of a new thing here in the US, the multinational republic (there was a source of inspiration involving a civ-style game with a novel government type, the Multinational Republic, and I realized that that's what we have now).

Most historians agree that the U.S. self-view changed after the Civil War. Before, people regarded themselves primarly as Virginians, Marylanders, New Yorkers, Texans, etc., people living in states making up a Union. Sympathies rested with residents of one's own state before residents of the rest of the United States. Afterwards, as now, people started to regard themselves as being "Americans."

So what new mental magic does this represent? Well, it allows people to act as though they lived both in different nationalities and in the same nation. One of several reasons for the Civil War was the tension between Northern and Southern cultures, rather reminiscent of tension between other nations, as it included differences between morals (slavery!) and ways of life, mutual distrust of the other guys' leaders, recriminations on editorial pages, violence, even different dialects. The Civil War decided the answer to how differences between nationalities would be played out. The South's answer was, by calling it splits. Lincoln's winning answer was, along the federalized lines of political and legal conflict laid down by the Constitution and the Federal Government.

Today, anybody who has spent much time in both New York and Texas will see that the U.S. remains a country of vastly different cultures. Surely the differences are about as profound as those between, say France and Belgium. Nobody argues that France and Belgium are really the same nationality. But NY and TX are both part of the same nation. Some magic is present here to reconcile this contradiction (and increasingly similarly present in the EU with respect to France and Belgium).

So what is this magic? Well, we have mentally separated usual nationality and cultural identity ideas from actual nationhood. It was implicit in the Constitution that differences between states and sections will usually be settled through the ballot-box, the courts, and lots of hollering. Custom has long ratified this. But the writers of the Constitution knew rebellions happened, and took that into account in their plans. What has happened since the Civil War is that armed rebellion is out of the plan. A large majority of American citizens have accepted that cultural and ideological conflicts shall not be settled by violence, but by governmental mechanisms and the institutionalized revolution of the ballot box.

Each U.S. culture - what might be a nationality elsewhere - has, by and large, accepted this idea. BBQ vs. a sub sammich ain't worth fightin' over. Unless it's damned fine BBQ, of course.

In fact, with the accession of Puerto Rico to self-government and the huge Latino immigration wave that started in the 50s, the United States is now no longer linguistically united even in the cross-dialect sense that obtains between New York and Texas. This has been only a minor challenge to U.S. self-identity or operation, since the mental structure needed to integrate Latino cultures (or Chinese or Thai or Japanese or...) was laid down back in the Late Southern Nastiness.

Of course, the multinational republic wasn't a complete innovation. The Roman Empire and Ottoman Empires both incorporated subject nationalities with full citizenship (but in empires lacking the vote, so their power was limited to being in the Imperial elites) (in an odd sense, the Greeks won over the Romans in the end). The big novelty was that it was spinning out in a democracy, where citizens of multiple cultures can vote and eventually outvote the original power (like the Southern part of President Bush' coalition).

The Austria-Hungarian Empire is another famous example of an explicitly multinational government. Austria and Hungary were, in the nineteenth century, formally coequals governing over several nationalities, although Austria was more equal than Hungary.

It's probably no coincidence that slavery acquired such burning dimensions just when the telegraph and railroad brought much tighter connectivity. The telegraph brought nationwide next-day distribution of news stories stories by the 1840s, probably making feasible dueling editorials and pamphlets between North and South (See Gotham, by Burrows and Wallace, Ch 39, "Manhattan, Ink."). When the country was founded, getting out of your home state and especially region was difficult and probably relatively rare. News went no faster than people. Northerners heard and saw much less about goings-on down South, and vice versa.

As U.S. Grant said:

The civilized nations of Europe have been stimulated into unusual activity, so that commerce, trade, travel, and thorough acquaintance among people of different nationalities, have become common; whereas, before, it was but the few who had ever had the privilege of going beyond the limits of their own country or who knew anything about other people.

Many nations part of empires acquired their first newspapers around this time as well, allowing a 'native' voice for the first time. This was the seed of multiethnic trouble, explicit multiethnicism in the underlying theories of imperial rule, and eventual widespread rebellion.

So maybe it really is a red nation and a blue nation.... Well, just temporarily - soon it'll settle back down into the more usual quasi-regionalisms. Although, with modern mobility rates and the spread of culture through the Internet, just who belongs to which culture is less and less decided by geography, and more and more by personal experience.

Thanksgiving Thoughts

On this day before Thanksgiving, I want to express my unconditional gratitude to the military men and women serving this country. Afghanistan, Iraq, and everywhere else.

This is not intended as a "you either support the troops or you don't" thread. Everyone supports the troops, and we each attempt to do so in our own imperfect ways.

I offer this as a "Thanksgiving Thoughts" open thread.

Where Voters Grow

According to an article by Ronald Brownstein and Richard Rainey in the LA Times,

President Bush carried 97 of the nation's 100 fastest-growing counties, most of them "exurban" communities that are rapidly transforming farmland into subdivisions and shopping malls on the periphery of major metropolitan areas.

Personally, I love to live near the coffeehouses and bookstores of major academic centers. I would not want to live in the exurbs. I also like my car, which is why I live in an inner-ring suburb. Where do you live--in the city, suburbs, exurbs, or the country? What do you like about it?

Balancing Principles With Winning

If the article cited by MWS below will warm Carla's heart, this one might cool it off (Carla, I like you. We just disagree on strategy).

Paul Starr in the liberal The American Prospect argues that Democrats have stood on principle for too long, and need to focus on winning.

Most liberals don’t want to hear the message that these voters and others in the red states are sending. But in a democracy, you can only make so many enemies until you can no longer do any good for the people who depend on you. Liberals need to decide what is central to the great moral achievements of the past half-century—and what isn’t. Going down to perpetual defeat isn’t a moral choice.

During the fall campaign, many people said that this election was “the most important of our lives.” It was, and when the Democrats lost it, an era came to a close. George W. Bush’s 51 percent of the vote may seem too slim a margin to produce conservative hegemony, and ordinarily it wouldn’t have that effect -- except that Republicans have now consolidated control of the government. The Democrats’ prospects for regaining a congressional majority are dismal. The party has lost not just the Deep South but also such border states as Tennessee and West Virginia, not to mention the Mountain States and the Plains. And, as the Texas redistricting showed, domination is self-reinforcing.

Kerry Should Have Won?

This article in the New York Times is likely to warm Carla's heart.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/23/national/23poll.html?oref=login

The gist is that, according to the NYT poll (yes, I know, can't be trusted) Americans have doubts about Bush's agenda and continue to be unhappy with his handling of Iraq and the economy.

Yet people are still optimistic about the next four years under Bush.

What is interesting in light of the stories I posted last night is the part about moral values:

The poll also found pervasive concern about what Americans view as the corrosive effect Hollywood and popular culture have on the nation's values and moral standards. Seventy percent said they were very or somewhat concerned that television, movies and popular music were lowering moral standards in this country.

So at the same time that people say they don't like what is on TV or in the movies, the studios continue to pour out sex and violence because this is what sells. Is there some cognitive dissonance here?

The poll was also interesting in what it said about polarization in the country:

While this sentiment was voiced by supporters of Mr. Bush and of Mr. Kerry, it appears that the concern about a decline in values is becoming another point of polarization in American politics. Mr. Bush's supporters were more likely to cite it than were Mr. Kerry's voters, and it was an issue that had particular resonance in the South and among weekly churchgoers, rural voters and women.

In addition, 70 percent of Mr. Kerry's supporters said they were more worried about candidates who "are too close to religion and religious leaders" than about political leaders who "don't pay enough attention" to religion, after a campaign in which Mr. Bush repeatedly spoke of God and his faith. By contrast, 52 percent of Mr. Bush's supporters said they were more worried about public officials who "don't pay enough attention to religion and religious leaders."

I suspect a lot of this divergence is more about perception than reality. People assume that those supporting the other candidate don't share their values. Even though this is probably not true, I find it disturbing that people hold such sterotypical views about their fellow countrymen.

The poll suggests that people are not particularly supportive of tax cuts and social security privatization, are against amending the Constitution to prohibit same-sex marriage and are largely in favor of the graduated income tax.

Here is the key:

"Across the board, the poll suggested that the outcome of the election reflected a determination by Americans that they trusted Mr. Bush more to protect them against future terrorist attacks - and that they liked him more than Mr. Kerry - rather than any kind of broad affirmation of his policies. As such, the result was reminiscent of the state of play Ronald Reagan found in 1980, when he defeated President Jimmy Carter."

So it seems that people simply did not trust Kerry on foreign policy. And that is always going to be a problem for the Democrats as long as foreign policy is an important issue.

It appears that the campaign actually helped the Democrats in the long run even though they lost the election:

Finally, in one bit of presumably good news for a party that is looking for it, Americans now have a better opinion of the Democratic Party than of the Republican Party: 54 percent said they had a favorable view of Democrats, compared with 39 percent with an unfavorable view. By contrast, 49 percent have a favorable view of Republicans, compared with 46 percent holding an unfavorable one.

It's not that unusual that Bush is more popular than his policies. This has been true of a number of presidents, including FDR, who were able to connect personally with the electorate even though their policies weren't that popular.

Conservatives like courtrooms too

Although Rick pointed out in his post here the damage done to Democrats by constitutional litigation attributed to them (rightly or not), liberal-side litigation isn't the only litigation out there.

By way of example, James J. Kilpatrick mentions here that conservatives are challenging the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruling in Goodridge v. Dep't of Public Health (a/k/a "the gay marriage case") before the Supreme Court of the United States. "But wait!" you cry. "Goodridge was decided on state law! Surely there's no federal question!" Well, that would be a well-grounded assumption, but the conservatives are re-opening the Guarantee Clause door.

For those fortunate enough to have escaped law school and Constitutional Law, the Guarantee Clause is housed in Article IV, Sec. 4: "The United States shall guarantee to every state in this Union a republican form of government. . . ." Now, long, long ago, in a place far, far away, the Supreme Court of the United States determined in Luther v. Borden, 48 U.S. (7 How.) 1 (1849) that the Guarantee Clause is largely non-justiciable--that the political branches of government are obliged to enforce it, not the courts. Nevertheless, conservatives would like the Court to find that the Supreme Judicial Court usurped the role of the Mass. General Assembly, thereby unconstitutionally undermining republican government.

This is not an isolated incident--well, at least it may not be soon. Adam Liptak at the NY Times suggests in this article about the new law school at Jerry Falwell's Liberty University that newly minted socially conservative lawyers may be coached into challenging Erie R.R. Co. v. Tompkins, 304 U.S. 64 (1938). Without turning this into an inside joke for lawyers, Erie, another bedrock case, generally established that federal courts have to use state law in diversity jurisdiction cases. I bring this up only to point out the conflict between federalist conservatives and social conservatives--the former would prefer reliance on state law.

For those of us who take great comfort in the legal principle of stare decisis and the reliability and stability of law in our country, this emerging trend would not be overly troubling if not for the disregard some of the president's potential SCOTUS picks have for stare decisis. For more, check Jeffrey Rosen's piece in The New Republic on strict constructionism here

The Italians Look for the Exit

Italy's Berlusconi says euro strangling economy

Berlusconi said the [tax] cuts were needed to revive a lethargic economy, but stressed the strength of the euro currency was also weighing heavily and called on his EU partners to revise the Maastricht Treaty on which the stability pact is based.

"The blessed introduction of the single European currency has thus far produced the exact opposite result of what the euro was created for -- an asphyxiated economy and hobbled growth under the burden of 'stupid' ties," Berlusconi wrote.

"In Europe there is an extremely strong drive to review aspects of the rigid ties of the Maastricht Treaty, those perverse factors that have increased the value of our currency above what is necessary and artificially penalised the competitiveness of our industries and our services," he added.

Berlusconi has broken ranks with Chirac and Schroeder and is saying in public what the French and the Germans are loathe to admit--that the tight money policies of the EU combined with the social welfare state of some member nations are strangling the European economies, and that reform is desperately needed. The Euro has brought intra-European economic "stability," but at the cost of zero economic growth and high unemployment. The result is that some nations are effectively subsidizing the socialist welfare structures of wealthier nations, all are paying with endemic borderline recession, and Italy wants out.

MoveOn's Next Move

You got to hand it to MoveOn.org. Despite a record of electoral losses, they run an efficient ship. They've already held a round of post-election house parties to identify new priorities.

In the preliminary results of the instant polling, some 200 house parties voted for election reform, with the war in Iraq coming in a close second at 170 votes. This pleased the organizers, since they're already circulating a petition calling on Congress to "investigate the integrity of the voting process in the 2004 election." I can't help wondering if "election reform" qualifies as one of those "few issues we can easily sell to voters in the Midwest" that one participant called for earlier. The house parties voted, with an overwhelming 428 votes, for "crafting a clear progressive message," as the best strategy for achieving MoveOn's goal. (Apparently, almost no one thinks a "move to the center" would be a good idea.)

Are Religious Conservatives Overreaching?

Here are a couple of stories that, taken together, I think reflect, first, how difficult it is to get a handle on this country politically and, second, how easy it is for partisans to overestimate their power. The first article, in the New York Times,
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/22/business/media/22tube.html notes that, despite the supposed "values voting" in the election, the shows that draw the highest ratings are the steamiest, most violent (e.g. "Desperate Housewives"). And it's not even really related to geography:

In interviews, representatives of the four big broadcast networks as well as Hollywood production studios said the nightly television ratings bore little relation to the message apparently sent by a significant percentage of voters.

The choices of viewers, whether in Los Angeles or Salt Lake City, New York or Birmingham, Ala., are remarkably similar. And that means the election will have little impact on which shows they decide to put on television, these executives say.

However, the article does note that some shows do better in different areas and that seems to be related to how conservative or liberal the areas are. Still, the difference is not as great as one my expect.

The other article is a Washington Post piece, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A2472-2004Nov21.html that discusses the reaction of conservative Christian groups to the recent movie "Kinsey" about the life of the sex researcher. These groups are up in arms, all but calling Kinsey a pedophile.

Here is what I find amusing in a way and yet disturbing at the same time:

Robert Knight, director of the conservative Culture and Family Institute in Washington, said evangelical Christian and Roman Catholic groups also want to bring to bear the political clout they demonstrated in the presidential election.

"Just as Reagan was not content to contain communism but announced a rollback, pro-family organizations are not content to protest the latest outrage anymore, but will seek legislation and will punish sponsors of lewd entertainment," he said.

It's disturbing, first that conservatives decrying the intrusion of government into our lives are quite willing, apparently, to have government decide what adults can pay to watch. Of course, Christian conservatives are not libertarians and I suspect (and hope) that a lot of conservatives would not agree with what seems to be a call for censorship.

But it's also amusing in a way in light of the recent setbacks that conservative Christians have suffered in recent days (Specter receiving Judiciary chair--albeit after he made proper obeisance to the right), Alberto Gonzales (not a favorite of conservatives) as AG, and Margaret Spelling (also not a favorite of conservatives) to Education. Yet, these conservative Christians seem to thing they can call the shots. I suspect that (or at least hope) that, like a lot of groups that like to claim credit for winning an election, they are going to find that, at least for things like this, the message will be "thanks for your help, don't let the door hit you on the way out." Maybe that's wishful thinking, but I suspect that there is some overreaching going on. The country is much too diverse and complicated to reduce it to slogans, such as "it voted for values." In reality, who really knows what the election meant? Obviously, a significant number of people are concerned about some social issues, but does this extend to taking away their right to watch steamy TV shows or, especially, movies?

My guess is that if the religious conservatives think they have things in the bag, they are in for a rude awakening.

Good News From Iraq

Once again, Chrenkoff fills in the blanks.

Beyond Fallujah: A roundup of the past two weeks' good news from Iraq.

Court-Driven Activism Backfires

I found wisdom in this op-ed by David von Drehle

Half a century after the triumph of Brown v. Board of Education, the landmark desegregation case, reliance on constitutional lawsuits to achieve policy goals has become a wasting addiction among American progressives. The recent battle over gay marriage, in courts and at the ballot box, demonstrates that liberals today are more adept at persuading like-minded judges than they are at persuading undecided voters. Over the past 40 years, while progressives were winning dozens of controversial court cases on issues ranging from abortion to school prayer, the Democratic Party failed nine times out of 10 to win a majority of the votes for president. Over time, though, voters matter -- just as they mattered on Nov. 2, when liberalism took another beating -- and gay marriage was rejected in 11 out of 11 state elections.

House Republicans Snub Bush

Coming less than three weeks after Bush's reelection, I find this particularly remarkable.

House Republican leaders blocked and appeared to kill a bill Saturday that would have enacted the major recommendations of the Sept. 11 commission, refusing to allow a vote on the legislation despite last-minute pleas from both President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney to Republican lawmakers for a compromise before Congress adjourned for the year.

Kerry in 2008

It appears to me that Kerry has all but declared himself a candidate for president in 2008. Within a week of the election, he sent his brother out to raise the possibility. Just two days ago Kerry himself said "I’m not shutting any doors” and “If there’s a next time, we’ll do a better job".

Now this. One of the major attacks on Kerry during the campaign was that, in 20 years, he did not put his personal stamp on the Senate or any legislation. It appears that he may look to address that issue immediately. Here is an excerpt from a leaked draft of a statement from Kerry.

And we must fight not only against George Bush's extreme policies -- we must also uphold our own values. This is why on the first day Congress is in session next year, I will introduce a bill to provide every child in America with health insurance. And, with your help, that legislation will be accompanied by the support of hundreds of thousands of Americans.

Personally, I like all of this. Kerry is not pouting. He is picking himself up, dusting himself off, and saying "I'm back in the game."

The Decline Of The Left

A British Guardian writer traces the decline of the left to the withering of working class movements.

The collapse of the labour movement is not just a British phenomenon, but one shared with much of Europe. There are two underlying reasons for its demise. The first is the loss of agency, the decline of the industrial working class and its consequent erosion as a meaningful and effective political force. It was the working class - in terms of workplace, community, unions and party - that invented and gave expression to the labour movement. The second reason is the collapse of communism. Of course, the mainstream labour movement in this country never subscribed to its tenets, but both the social democratic and communist traditions shared, in different ways, the vision of a better society based on collectivist principles. It is that vision that was buried with the interment of communism. For over a century, European politics was defined by the struggle between capitalism and socialism: suddenly, capitalism became the only show in town, both in Europe and globally. The result was the rapid deconstruction of the left such that it now exists as but a rump of its former self - not just in Britain, or Europe, but everywhere.

Purple America

This is a pretty cool little map that Professor Robert Vanderbei at Princeton University created. It depicts county by county results of the 2004 presidential election. Each county's color is an RBG mix in porportion to the election results for that county. This map is much less red than the one on the TV on election night.

Naming names

I'm working on updating Centrist Coalition's "Candidate Profiles" list. I've got a list of several senators and several governors that I need to draft profiles for, but this list is pretty thin on U.S. representatives and state political figures.

So, how about it? Do you all have any U.S. representatives that you think are marvelous centrists that you think we should profile? What about politicians at your individual state levels? Can I get some names out of you? And if you're a Plains Stater, a Mountain Stater, a Texan, an Alaskan, or a Hawaiian, I'd doubly love to hear from you!

Open Thread

What's on your mind? Nothing is off-topic

Tigua Casino Scandal

If you admire creative ways to be evil, this is admirable

The Washington Post previously reported that Abramoff and Scanlon quietly worked with conservative religious activist Ralph Reed to help persuade the state of Texas to shut down the Tigua casino in 2002, then persuaded the tribe to pay the $4.2 million to try to get Congress to reopen it.

As they had in September, committee members struggled to express their disdain for the way the pair treated the tribes, with Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) branding their efforts "incredibly, deeply cynical." Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who is leading the investigation, vowed to pursue it wherever it leads -- a path that increasingly is heading into the halls of Congress.

Et tu, Arlen?

Buried halfway through this press release from the office of Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., today is the statement:

I have already registered my opposition to the Democrats’ filibusters with 17 floor statements and will use my best efforts to stop any future filibusters. It is my hope and expectation that we can avoid future filibusters and judicial gridlock with a 55-45 Republican majority and election results demonstrating voter dissatisfaction with Democratic filibusters. If a rule change is necessary to avoid filibusters, there are relevant recent precedents to secure rule changes with 51 votes.

I hope the McCain-Snowe-Collins-Chaffee-Smith(?)-Gregg(?) block can hold together and defeat the rule challenge. They'll need all six now, with Specter surrendering his opposition to avoid a 50-50 tie, which Vice President Cheney could break. With McCain, Collins, and Gregg each holding A-list committee chairmanships themselves (Commerce, Govermental Affairs, and Health, Education, and Labor, respectively), one wonders if they dare to buck the conference.

While it may be immoderate to preserve the possibility of filibustering nominees, I have little doubt that a qualified, centrist nominee would not be threatened with a filibuster at all. The Democrats, trading with significantly diminished political capital, can only afford to filibuster the worst of the worst anyway; but, that's a necessary check on right-wing ideology.

President Mark Warner?

Steve thinks so. He has created this blog to rally support for the millionaire/business leader turned Virginia Governor.

I will say this... The Democrats could do a lot worse than Warner. He is a pro-gun, social moderate, pro-business Democrat who recently has boasted about a gain of 11,000 new jobs in his state with an average income of $76,000 per year. The Governor's biggest accomplishment to date is his backing, and eventual signing, of a tax reform package supported by Democrats, many Republicans, and Virginia business leaders. The legislation was hailed nationally as an act of common sense moderation that reformed an archaic and regressive tax system responsible for hurting Virginia's ability to invest in infrastructure and grow the economy.

Can Warner do for Democrats nationally what he did in Virginia... win back Southern, Conservative rural votes? Governor Warner is not only a candidate Democrats can get behind, but centrists also... This is one moderate Republican Virginian, who is at least intrigued by the idea.

With Spellings Nomination, Bush Angers Conservatives

From Redstate:

"Margaret Spellings = Worst Bush Nominee Yet

Needless to say, I wish Rod Paige had hung around."

From the Washington Post:

"Some conservatives, such as Reagan education secretary William J. Bennett, have expressed disappointment at her appointment, on the grounds that she is too pragmatic and insufficiently committed to such ideas as school choice. 'The emphasis will be on standards and accountability rather than choice-based reform,' said Frederick M. Hess, an education expert at the American Enterprise Institute.

In a 2001 interview with the Dallas Morning News, Spellings described herself as 'an earth-mother type of Republican.'"

I think the Spellings nomination ought to debunk the theory that Bush is a puppet for the right wing, a little bit at least.

Beyond the ideological debate Bush's pick for Education is interesting because it is the development of a pattern. This President is appointing people that are close and loyal to him even more so than in the first term. All three so far (Rice, Gonzalez, and Spellings) have come from within the White House and have been close to Bush since before his time as Texas Governor.

I think it could be said that this President may have more control over the Federal government this time around than any other throughout history. Some would argue that it isn't a good thing that there is nobody left in the inside to question the policies of the administration, but their ability to get things done, at least within the bureaucracy, will be remarkable.

A Backbone in the Moderate Republican Caucus

According to this article in the Chicago Tribune, Rep. Mark Kirk is the new co-chair of the House Republican Mainstream Tuesday Group, a group of 35 moderate Republicans in the House.

To get a sense for their level of determination, consider what they did in the voice vote yesterday over the rules change that helped Delay. Kirk and Shays seem to have organized quite a little rebellion.

Kirk is among the boldest of the centrists. He's quite conservative on economic and fiscal issues, from taxes to trade to Social Security reform. He also favored the Iraq war and the reconstruction funds.

On the other hand, he's strongly pro-choice and co-sponsored the effort to outlaw employment discrimination against gays. And he supported campaign finance reform.

He is the very model of a bold centrist, with distinct policy preferences and a determination to see them enacted. Now he's helping corral the troops in the House. Awesome.

An Excellent Take on the Cultural Split

Dean Esmay has an excellent piece this morning on the cultural split between liberals and conservatives that's well worth reading. Growing up spending equal time between rural Texas and urban Chicago gives him a rather unique perspective on the differences. It might also explain why it is that his political viewpoint is now fairly moderate.

I can relate to that. I was raised by fundamentally religious, conservative parents in a culturally liberal state. Those two conflicting factors influenced me in different ways, but also allowed me to appreciate the value of different points of view.

Senate GOP Changes Rules Too

Although not quite as alarming as the House GOP Conference rule change to protect Tom DeLay, R-Tex., as discussed on this thread, the Senate GOP Conference also changed its rules. As the Hill reports, the Senate has changed its rules to allow the party leader to fill half the vacancies on the A-list committees. Under current rules, the vacancies are filled by seniority (as the other half of the vacancies would continue to be under the new rule). This amendment was adopted in lieu of a more modest proposal to allow the leader to appoint two vacancies.

The new rule will allow the leader to enforce greater party discipline.

Coulter Speaks For America

In the past, I've been loathe to take seriously the journalism of Ann Coulter. However, were I a Europe-based analyst trying to understand the intentions of the government of the United States, I would conclude that Coulter is a more reliable, semi-official voice of the government than the so-called paper of record, the New York Times. Here, therefore, is Coulter's analysis of the election.

Using classical Marxist thinking, liberals can't fathom how issues like abortion and gay marriage could trump ordinary people's economic interests -– which liberals axiomatically assume are furthered by the Democrats' offers of government assistance. Democrats are saying to voters: How can you be so stupid to subordinate your own selfish economic interests to "moral values," the betterment of the country and the general welfare of people you don't even know?

Voter turnout

Here is the final tally from Minnesota.

This year's turnout represented 77.72 percent of the estimated population of eligible voters, tops in the nation -- and well ahead of second-place Wisconsin's 73.7 percent -- but short of the Minnesota high of 83.15 percent achieved in 1956, when 1.6 million people voted. The only other higher showing since records were first kept in 1950 was 79.39 percent in 1960. . .

Same-day registrations at the polls totaled 581,904, 20.57 percent of all voters and more than 117,000 greater than the previous high in 2000. On a percentage basis, that was exceeded only in 1980 and 1976. Same-day registration began in Minnesota in 1974.

This was our second election at our current address. This year, when we went to the polls, I was on the voter roll, but my wife was inexplicably absent. She had been looking forward to casting her vote this year for a long time, and same day registration saved the election judges at that polling place from having a very bad day.

No Better Luck Next Time

Despite the tradition that the party that is out of power does well in the mid-term elections, the prospect of Democrats gaining control of the Senate in 2006 is a longshot.

Of the 17 Dem incumbents up for reelection in two years, eight are first-term senators, who lack some of the advantages that accrue to entrenched incumbency. Of those eight, the ones that should face real Republican challenges are Senator Mark Dayton of Minnesota (Representative Mark Kennedy is itching to take him on); Senator Maria Cantwell of Washington (the challenger will likely be current gubernatorial candidate Dino Rossi, if he loses the protracted vote count still underway in that race); and, as Duffy likes to call them, “the Nelsons -- Ben and Bill,” of Nebraska and Florida, respectively. Senator Ben Nelson will likely face a challenge from Nebraska’s popular governor, Mike Johanns. Senator Bill Nelson has slightly less reason to worry, particularly if the Republicans nominate Representative Katherine Harris to take him on. But the Florida GOP has become a force to be reckoned with, and they don’t lack for viable potential challengers.

Among the 15 GOP incumbents, it’s tough to name a single particularly vulnerable candidate residing in a red state; Virginia’s George Allen might be one if, and only if, Governor Mark Warner decides to challenge him.

Update: Historian Robert "KC" Johnson argues that Democrats won't win back Congress for a long time. Orrin Judd points out

That George Bush won 30 states even in his losing effort in 2000 suggests that the GOP's natural base level is 60 Senate seats.

Hyper-X!

NASA Test Flight Nears 7,000 Mph, Breaks Record

Wow! New York to LA in under 30 minutes. That's their second world speed record this year...and their last, as that was the last test vehicle. (If anyone is wondering why they don't recover and re-use the test vehicles, consider what's left to recover after a supersonic "splashdown" in deep ocean.)

The mother ship, a modified B-52, was making its last working flight. It's been the launch vehicle for the X program for almost half a century, and is the oldest B-52 still flying, but the parts and fuel required are no longer available other than by special order and manufacture. It will be parked on display at Dryden next to the last SR-71.

Teflon Tom DeLay

Does anyone else find this disturbing? This Washington Post article talks about how House Republicans will likely change the rules of the House so that Tom DeLay can retain his leadership position even if he is indicted for illegal fundraising efforts in Texas.

Granted, an indictment is an accusation, not a conviction. Still, there is something unseemly about the party who claims to have just been given a mandate based on "values" suddenly lowering the bar when it suits their interests. Of course, the GOP is claiming this whole thing is partisan, and I might normally be able to see something in that....except for the fact that DeLay has been censured on multiple occasions by the BIPARTISAN House Ethics committee.

I'm not surprised by this, just saddened.

Specter Appears to Win; Religious Right Rends Garments, Gnashes Teeth

From the Associate Press, by way of How Appealing, on the apparent success of Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Penn., in securing his Judiciary Committee chairmanship:

Conservative and religious leaders who led the pray-in protest said elevating Specter could jeopardize their support of GOP senators, including Frist, who are eyeing a White House run in 2008.

"It is a betrayal and a slap in the face to millions of pro-life Americans who helped re-elect this president," said Patrick Mahoney, director of the Christian Defense Coalition. "Don't turn to us in four years when you want to run for president ... and expect us to contribute millions of dollars."

One would think that Republicans would eventually learn that they'll never completely satisfy the conservative faction anyway.

PS - No chauvanism. Just reformulating "Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned."

PPS - For all the futility of appeasement Republicans fear vis-a-vis the war on terror, some of them sure do try a lot to futilely appease the right wing.

Shooting The Wounded?

Did a Marine execute a wounded prisoner contrary to the Geneva Conventions. MSNBC has a link to the video.

I don't know if this is uncharacteristic, or if it's always gone on, and there were never video cameras on the battlefield before. I do feel that the longer our armed forces are at war, the more likely they are to depart from civilized standards and create their own code. This happened in Vietnam. I hope our armed forces can complete their mission in Iraq before their spirit is ground down.

Red States At The Trough

Taxprof has a follow-up with neat maps on his post showing how the red states are in general the beneficiaries of federal spending, while the blue states pay up. The maps show a decent correspondence. Among the explanations that come to mind are the concentration of military facilities and retirees in the Sunbelt.

It seems like it would be in the self-interest of blue state voters to seek to restrain federal spending and for the Democrats to become the party of fiscal responsiblity. This would be quite a reversal from historic norms. But as cultural issues play an increasing role in determining who is a Democrat and who is a Republican, it may be that the Republicans will become the defenders of big government which enriches their voters.

Deterring Terrorism

During the 40 years preceeding the fall of the Berlin Wall, the fear of nuclear annihilation was omnipresent. Between the wonderful evening of November 9, 1989, when Germans from both sides of the divide climbed to the top of the Wall, and the terrible morning of September 11, 2001, when Al Queda terrorists attacked America, the threat of nuclear extinction was no longer a serious concern. With the toppling of the World Trade Center and the burning of the Pentagon, the fear that had been put to rest was revived. The fear will be with us for the indefinite future.

In one respect, the threat we now face is less serious than the former one. Had they chosen to launch their huge arsenal of multi-megaton ICBMs, the Soviet Union could have destroyed the United States many times over. A nuclear attack by terrorists would pale in comparison: their weapons would be fewer in number and smaller in destructive capability. They would be exploded in one or possibly a very small number of American cities. Still, millions could die. The aftermath of a Soviet first strike would have been total devastation. Rebuilding would not have been an issue, as there would be no one left. The aftermath of a terrorist attack would be very different and, in some respects, worse. In addition to mourning the dead, we would be faced with a mammoth rebuilding effort at a time when our economy would be in shambles.

In other respects, however, today's threat is more serious. Unlike the later-day Soviet leaders, the terrorists are fanatics. Worse still, they are theocratic fanatics who are not only unafraid to die but welcome death as the entry into a blissful heaven. While we and the Soviets were enemies, we both preferred life to death. It was this common denominator that made deterrence, in the form of Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD), efficacious. Because the terrorists do not partake of this common denominator, there is a widely-held body of opinion that terrorists cannot be deterred.

Two other consideration cast doubt on the viability of nuclear deterrence as a strategy to persuade terrorists to not attack us with nuclear weapons (or other weapons of mass destruction). Unlike the Soviets, the terrorists are stateless actors who are not responsible for the preservation of a physical infrastructure. The poses the question of what assets should be targeted in our response to a nuclear attack.

The second consideration is similar to the first one. If a large number of missiles were to have appeared on our radar screens during the Cold War, there would have been no doubt that it was the Soviets who had launched them. If a terrorist organization explodes a bomb and does not take public responsibility for the act, we will not immediately know which terrorist group perpetrated the act. The group could be domestic extremists that hate Muslims acting on the belief that our government would assume that Islamists pulled the trigger and would respond accordingly. A nuclear detonation would be proof that our intelligence community had less-than-perfect information: if the information were perfect, the detonation would have been prevented.

Not withstanding these considerations, I believe that terrorists can and should be deterred. Terrorists do not exist in a stateless vacuum. In each state in which they have refuse, there are two other actors: the people, some of whom are sympathetic to the terrorists and some who are not; and the government, which may (1) actively support, (2) condone, (3) actively oppose, or (4) be unable to oppose the terrorists. While the terrorists may welcome death and have little or no physical assets, at least some of the general population prefers life to death and the government does have an infrastructure that it is responsible for protecting.

The objective of a deterrence policy -- more precisely, a warning that the U.S. will respond with a nuclear attack on targets of our choosing, including Islam's holy sites -- should be to cause ordinary people and governments to fear the consequences if terrorists explode one or more nuclear weapons on our soil. By making the nuclear second strike doctrine public, it would hopefully have enough credibility to alter the behavior of people and governments. The specter of devastation should be an incentive for both people and governments to stop supporting terrorists and for governments to root them out. The less fanatical of the terrorists, recognizing these changes, may decide to pursue other, less deadly, activities.

During the Cold War, a second strike would have had to be launched as soon as it was recognized that we were under attack. There would have been precious few minutes between recognition and devastation. Because the countries in which terrorists make their home lack the ability (for now) to attack our homeland, our response need not be immediate. Thus, our intelligence agencies would have time to establish which terrorist group was responsible and which country was unwilling or unable to reign them in.

The most prominent objections to a publicly-announced nuclear second strike doctrine are that it would inflame the Muslim world, where the U.S. is already despised, and make it impossible for those Muslim governments that are cooperating with us in the war on terror to continue to do so. In other words, the effects of the policy I am advocating would be precisely the opposite of those that I anticipate.

If I am wrong, would we be any worse off than we are now? For the past 25 years, starting with the Iranian hostage crisis, we have pursued a policy of weakness toward Islamic fundamentalists. The disastrous attempt to rescue the hostages, the withdrawal from Lebanon after the truck-bombing of the Marine barracks, the withdrawal from Somalia, the pin-prick response with cruise missiles to the African embassy bombings, and the absence of any response to the Khobar Towers and USS Cole bombings all contributed to the perception, shared and exploited by Bin Laden, that America was a paper tiger. With the 9/11 attacks, Bin Laden finally discovered the threshold for concerted U.S. military action. Even after 9/11, our military has operated with one hand tied behind its back: our wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have been conducted with an eye on minimizing civilian casualties against enemies intent on maximizing civilian casualties.

Our restraint during the past quarter century did not prevent the rise of anti-Americanism in Islamic lands, especially in the Middle East. By having power without the will to power, we lost the respect of those for whom the former without the latter is a sign of weakness and decay. Should the doctrine that I have proposed have effects that are the opposite of those that are intended, the result will be a continuation of a long-established trend set in motion by policies of weakness.

Another objection is that there are alternatives -- such as encouraging the growth of moderate Islam -- to a big-stick policy. There are two problems with this "soft-power" approach to dealing with the Islamists. First, as with the big-stick policy, there is no guarantee that it would be successful. Second, it would, at best, take several years to produce the attitudinal changes that are its objective. The threat of nuclear terrorism in America is here and now. It must be met by a policy that would have an immediate impact, not by a policy that promises dividends in the indefinite future.

Federalism

Liberals are discovering state's rights. Conservatives are less enamored with it than before.

As Hamilton points out, many conservatives stop advocating for states' rights as soon as they get their hands on the levers of federal power. The Bush administration is currently challenging California's medical marijuana law, which will go before the Supreme Court next year, and Oregon's assisted suicide law. The Federal Marriage Amendment, which in its current form would also ban civil unions, strips states of the power to regulate marriage, which previously was their exclusive domain.

"Once conservatives got in power they forgot federalism," Hamilton says. "They left that principle in the dust and rushed to control the states that were now engaging in social experiments."

"What's happening is that the liberals are getting the issue," she continues. "The issue is how do you get power in a circumstance where you don't control the federal government. If the answer is federalism, which I think is obviously the only answer, what's going to happen is that all those liberal law professors who were extremely critical of the Supreme Court decision in Boerne, those law professors will have to eat their words."

Harry Reid

I'm surprised to find that the new Democratic minority leader in the Senate is pro-life, according to the Center Ring over at A Bigger Tent. How did that happen?

By the way, the current issue of Harper's has a long and surprisingly moderate article about the politics of abortion.

Iran Pulls Another Fast One

The European appeasement of Iran continues, as the Big Three of the European Union have offered the mullahs a package of economic incentives in return for a temporary, non-legally binding promise to suspend its uranium enrichment and reprocessing activities. By so doing, they have all but eliminated the possibility that the UN Security Council will vote to censure or sanction Iran, as desired by the U.S. Like Saddam's Iraq, Iran has learned that it can stall for time by causing a split among the veto-carrying Security Council members. This time, the Brits aren't on our side.

Recently, I posted an article by Henry Kissinger in which he harshly criticizes using incentives to prevent proliferation. Here's what he said:

"Invariably, proliferating countries claim that they are seeking merely to participate in the peaceful uses of nuclear energy or to enhance electricity production or both. Countries determined to prevent proliferation are therefore tempted to provide incentives in the form of guaranteed alternative sources of energy or of nuclear fuel for power plants. Yet this approach generally fails, because the ultimate objectives of the proliferating country are political and strategic, not economic.

A policy of offering material incentives in return for denuclearization is likely to fail, however appealing it may be in the abstract. For the incentives in one way or another increase the dependence of the proliferating country on the states against which the proliferation is really directed."

As reported in the New York Times, the Washington Post and elsewhere, France, Great Britain and Germany have reached an agreement with Iran under which Iran agreed to cease all uranium enrichment and reprocessing activities for as long as it is negotiating possible benefits with the three countries and the EU. When suspension of the specified activities has been verified, the EU will restart negotiations on a trade and cooperation agreement with Iran. It will also "actively support" negotiations for Iran to enter the WTO, a move that the Bush administration has blocked and can continue to block.

In a related development, the IAEA released a report that didn't totally reject the view of the U.S. and the European countries that Iran was trying to develop nuclear weapons, saying it could not rule out covert activities.

"All the declared nuclear material in Iran has been accounted for, and therefore such material is not diverted to prohibited activities," the agency said in a report, referring to possible weapons activity. "The agency is, however, not in a position to conclude that there are no undeclared nuclear materials or activities in Iran."

European diplomats said Bush's reelection helped the negotiations by limiting Iran's options. Had Kerry won, Iran might have tried to play for more time or probe what policy shifts were in the cards.

The agreement will be implemented in two phases. The first was the notification of IAEA head El Baradei that Iran had agreed to a full suspension and invited inspectors to verify its commitment. The parties will then set up three working groups: one to tackle nuclear issues, another for non-nuclear cooperation between Iran and Europe, and a third for regional security issues.

The deal was a compromise that disappointed both the Europeans and the Bush administration, both of which wanted Iran to permanently end its enrichment activities.

By signing the accord, Iran is likely to defuse a U.S. threat to take the Iranians to the UN Security Council for possible censure or sanctions. The Bush administration has been steadfast in its opposition to negotiating with Iran and has criticized its European allies for offering economic inducements in return for denuclearization.

The temporary nature of the suspension represents a concession to Iran''s leadership, which has maintained that Iran isn't engaged in a nuclear weapons program but has the sovereign right to enrich uranium. At a news conference, Iran's chief nuclear negotiator called uranium enrichment "Iran's right, and Iran will never give up its right to enrich uranium, " and that the suspension during the negotiations "will be a matter of months, not years."

His deputy made clear that Iran's decision wasn't legally binding, saying that "We have accepted the suspension as a voluntary step, and it does not create any obligations for us."

Putting a positive face on the agreement, a spokeman for the French foreign ministry said "This accord constitutes an important stage in the diplomatic efforts that lead the international community to find a satisfactory response to the preoccupations created by the Iranian nuclear program."

The Bush administration has thus far avoided taking a position on the agreement. The White House press secretary said "We will be talking to our friends and allies about this agreement. We will have more to say after we've had the opportunity to learn more about the specific details."

Previous attempts to get the Europeans to agree to use the IAEA to bring the Iranians before the Security Council have been unsuccessful. More of the same is likely, as only two of the 35 countries (Canada and Australia) on the IAEA board have been willing to take this step.

Voter Inflow And Outflow

Am I reading this right? Even though Gore got more votes in 2000, there were 6% more voters who stated they voted for Bush in 2000 than Gore. Where did the Gore voters go? Did they die of old age? Or is this the bandwagon phenomenon, where voters in hindsight recall having picked the winner.

Moderates Jockey

Today's Boston Globe has a story projecting the role of GOP moderates in the coming term:

"I think the view that moderates as a group should be jettisoned from the party wouldn't bode well for the future," said Senator Olympia Snowe, Republican of Maine and cochair of the Senate Centrist Coalition. "We should be striving to embrace anyone who wants to be a Republican and who shares some beliefs with the Republican Party."

Darrell West, a political scientist at Brown University, notes that with 55 members next year, Republicans "are not as dependent on New England. But the most ambitious parts of the Bush agenda are going to require 60 votes to overcome a filibuster. In those terms, New England still has clout."

Cultural conservatives, especially antiabortion activists, are not so inclusive. Claiming a critical role in reelecting President Bush and expanding the Republican majorities on Capitol Hill, conservatives are pressuring senators to deprive Senator Arlen Specter -- a moderate Republican who won reelection to his Pennsylvania seat despite the state going for John F. Kerry -- of the Senate Judiciary Committee chairmanship.

That fight will be an early test of Republican leaders, who must weigh the demands of Christian conservatives against moderates like Snowe, who are supporting Specter's ascension.

Since things are quieting down a little after the election, I think it's worthwhile if we spend some time familiarizing ourselves with the people in power who respond to positively to the merits of centrism. Snowe, Specter, and Chaffee are a few. I'm offering the above article in that spirit.

Another Kick at the Dead Horse

I know people have expressed exhaustion at the theme of liberals blaming stupid heartland conservatives for re-electing Bush. Those people can stop reading here. Roundabout the time you repeat something for the 20th time, the GP audience starts to notice. I'm going to keep on linking to takes that encourage understanding between the sides and moderation. Here's Cathy Young's take,Debunking Political Stereotypes:

The idea that Bush voters are reality-challenged is based partly on surveys showing that a large percentage of Bush supporters believe, despite evidence to the contrary, that Iraq under Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction or a program to develop them. Many also persist in the belief that Iraq had substantial ties to the Al Qaeda. Other Republicans who support tougher environmental and labor standards incorrectly assume that Bush favors these positions as well.

Is this a damning indictment of Bush voters and conservatives? George Mason University law professor David Bernstein, a libertarian who was highly critical of both candidates in the past election, points out on the Volokh Conspiracy blog that in other surveys, Republicans have on average scored higher than Democrats on knowledge of political issues than Democrats -- though voters across the board tend to be woefully ill-informed. Bernstein speculates that in the more recent polls, ignorant Bush supporters were likely to pick answers flattering to Bush, while ignorant Kerry voters did the opposite.

Furthermore, on weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and Iraqi ties to Al Qaeda, the evidence leaves room for some ambiguity. I know intelligent and well-informed people who believe it is quite likely that Hussein managed to get his stockpiles out of the country before the invasion. As for collaboration between Hussein's regime and terrorist groups, it clearly did exist; the only question is how substantial it was.

Is it possible that Republican voters are likely to fall for the administration's spin on these issues? Of course. But is there any evidence that Democratic voters are less likely to fall for their own side's spin or to buy into their own side's myths? Not really. I'm willing to bet that if you asked people whether it's true or false that President Bush wanted to allow higher levels of arsenic in drinking water after he took office (a charge made in a MoveOn.org ad), a lot more Kerry supporters than Bush supporters would have said it was true. Yet this claim has been conclusively debunked as a lie by New Republic writer Greg Easterbrook, who is no conservative and no Bush supporter.

Cathy Young continues to be one of the finest libertarian-leaning centrist columnists out there. Check her out at Reason. She so often does an unparelled job of understanding and quickly summarizing both sides views, and closing with a nice and realistic synthesis point. Rick, do we have a blogroll for centrist national columnist pundits?

Some Relevant Thoughts on Media

William Raspberry's column today has some good insights on how the media can approach contentious issues in a more reasonable, informative, and thoughtful manner.

Accepting Our Shades of Purple

But neither is it all that rare. Scores of public controversies are reported as to-the-mat battles between unyielding opposites -- in part because our journalistic habits send us looking for these irreconcilables. What, we ask ourselves, is the point of seeking out a minister who believes that gay and lesbian couples should be treated fairly, even sympathetically, but who draws the line at church-ordained marriage? And it's a cinch such ambivalent people won't seek us out.

We ridicule people who insist that, on one issue or another, they are just a little bit purple. And yet I dare say most Americans are just a little bit purple on most issues.

Acknowledgment of this fact -- in our politics and in our journalism -- might go a long way toward the healing our country clearly needs.

(P.S.: The dam in question was never built, because the courts decided it might impact a scarce sub-species of fish--the "Snail Darter Principle.")

Good News From Afghanistan

The peripetatic Aussie-tranplanted Polish blogster Arthur Chrenkoff weighs in again!

The Spark of Democracy: A roundup of the past month's good news from Afghanistan

In which Chrenkoff reports on Karzai's run-away election victory, the women's movement in Afghanistan, the rise of a free Afghani radio industry, the coming of the Internet, a bodybuilding craze, reconstruction and a booming economy, wind and solar energy efforts, water and agriculture, humanitarian efforts, the annoyance felt by NGO's that coalition troops are a major part of the humanitarian efforts, security issues and the fading insurgency, and anti-drug efforts.

Carville is hilarious

James Carville is as partisan as they get until an election but, once the election is over, he is brutally honest and, in the process, often hilarious. In 2002, he put a garbage can on his head on election night as it became clear that the Republicans were going to make gains in Congress. Today, he cracked an egg on his head on Meet the Press to acknowledge that he has egg on his face for predicting that John Kerry would be elected with 52% of the vote.

Since the election, Carville has also said this about the situation for Democrats nationally.

"We can deny this crap, but I'm out of the denial. I'm about reality here," Mr. Carville told reporters at a breakfast hosted by the Christian Science Monitor. "We are an opposition party, and as of right now, not a particularly effective one. You can't deny reality here."

I think that Carville's "reality" will sink in more broadly within the Democratic party in the next few months. The real issue is how the Democrats, as a party, will respond. It seems to me that making Howard Dean the new party chairman would not be a good start.

Final Election Post-Mortem -- Part 2

Today's election post-mortem articles are from the Washington Post:

Richard Cohen, "The Once and Future Hope?"
David S. Broder, "An Old-Fashioned Win"
George Will, "America's Shifting Reality"
E. J. Dionne Jr., ". . . He Didn't Get"
Ellen Goodman, "Winning Back Value Voters"
Michael Kinsley, "Am I Blue"
Mark J. Penn, "It's the Moderates, Stupid"
Kate O'Beirne, "A Coaltion of Conviction"
Bruce Reed, "Ending Our Losing Ways"
E. J. Dionne Jr., "Moderates, Not Moralists"
Charles Krauthammer, "'Moral Values' Myth"

Richard Cohen, "The Once and Future Hope?," 11/4/04

Cohen thinks that Al Gore should be the Democratic candidate in 2008. Here's his reasoning:

If you set out to create the perfect Democratic presidential candidate, you would probably choose someone from the South or the border states, since John Kerry lost virtually the entire region on Tuesday, and someone who is comfortable talking the language of religion and values, since John Kerry was not, and someone whose wife is identified with conventional values, and, last, someone who took a very early position against the war in Iraq, which John Kerry did not. Such a person already exists and, as luck would have it, has a name: Al Gore.

He's not surprised that the power of culture has become so prominent in American political life. Cohen cites the voting pattern of Jews as evidence:

It is paradoxical that the Democratic Party, which is so beholden to Jews for energy, funds and ideas, has not looked into a mirror and noticed something odd. No matter how rich the Jewish community got, no matter how powerful, too, it continued to vote overwhelmingly Democratic. In other words, it voted against its economic self-interest, which would be lower taxes or, in the fantasies of Republicans, almost no taxes at all. This is the power of culture.

He's not keen on Hillary Clinton:

Back in July, delegates to the Democratic National Convention were asked whom they would choose in 2008 if Kerry lost. Twenty-six percent of them said Hillary Clinton, with Edwards the runner-up at 17 percent. It is always a mistake to discount Clinton -- or to ignore her spirituality. But she is blue where she needs to be red and North where she needs to be South and still and maybe forever more associated with scandal.

David S. Broder, "An Old-Fashioned Win," 11/4/04

Broder believes that the Massachusetts court decision legalizing same-sex marriage helped Bush:

It may well turn out . . . that the supreme court of Kerry's own Massachusetts helped the mobilization of these traditionalist and fundamentalist religious voters by its decision last year approving gay marriage.

That decision spurred the submission of initiatives against gay marriage that were passed on Tuesday in all 11 states where they made the ballot -- including Ohio. Phil Burress, who ran the Ohio initiative campaign, told me last week that the volunteers who collected the signatures to qualify it for the ballot also registered 54,000 new voters. The Massachusetts court decision was "a lightning bolt that hit right in the pulpit and ignited the whole congregation," he said.

George Will, "America's Shifting Reality," 11/4/04

Will is highly critical of Kerry's campaign strategy:

Kerry ran a high-risk "biography candidacy" based on a four-month period 35 years ago. His contrasting silence about his nearly 20 Senate years echoed. He was an anomalous kind of challenger. The most important changes he promised would be either restorations or resistances. That is, he campaigned as the candidate of complacency, albeit a curdled, backward-looking complacency. Regarding foreign policy, he promised to turn the clock back, to the alliance-centered foreign policy before the intrusion of the "nuisance" of terrorism. Regarding domestic policy, he promised to stop the clock, preventing any forward movement on entitlement reform to cope with the baby boomers' retirements.

Never in this marathon did Kerry himself do anything to change the campaign's dynamics. He counted on events in Iraq and on the power of his party's unconcealed belief that George Bush is an imbecile. But Democrats cannot disguise from the people their bewilderment about how to appeal to a country that is so backward, they think, that it finds Bush appealing.

He recommends purging the Michael Moore faction of the party:

Moore, the vulgarian who made the movie "Fahrenheit 9/11," is unhinged by his loathing of Bush -- and of the country that has now reelected him. Moore and the hordes of his enthusiasts are a stain on the party -- as are those Democratic senators and representatives who in June made a merry festival of the movie's Washington premiere. Moore illustrates the fact that the Republican Party benefits -- it is energized by resentment -- when the entertainment industry and major journalistic institutions (e.g., the New York Times, CBS News) enlist as appendages of the Democratic Party's advocacy apparatus.

I, for one, will be far more likely to vote for a Democratic presidential candidate if the Democrats follow Will's advice. The fact that Democratic senators and representatives greeted Fahrenheit 9/11 enthusiastically really bothered me. I considered their support to be an insult to me and the American people.

Will concludes with an historical perspective:

In the 37 elections since 1860 -- the first won by a Republican -- Democrats have won only 14. Only twice in 15 post-World War II elections has the Democratic nominee achieved 50 percent of the vote. American politics has known many oscillations; some scholars have discerned an almost metronomic regularity in its political cycles. Now, however, there is an astonishing stasis, immune even to the winds of war. Since 2000, the issues driving civic discourse have changed radically, but the electoral map has changed negligibly.

E. J. Dionne Jr., ". . . He Didn't Get," 11/5/04

Echoing the sentiments of many of Kerry's supporters, Dionne had this to say about the outcome of the election:

We are aghast at the success of a campaign based on vicious personal attacks, the exploitation of strong religious feelings and an effort to create the appearance of strong leadership that would do Hollywood proud. We are alarmed that so many of our fellow citizens could look the other way and not hold Bush accountable for utter incompetence in Iraq and for untruths spoken in defense of the war. We are amazed that a majority was not concerned about heaping a huge debt burden on our children just to give large tax breaks to the rich. And we are disgusted that an effort consciously designed to divide the country did exactly that -- and won.

Here's what he recommends:

The opposition should not crawl into a hole or be silent about these things. A decent respect for the outcome of an election never requires free citizens to cower before a temporarily dominant majority. There is, on the contrary, an obligation to stay engaged in a battle that . . . rages on.

What's required is a sustained and intellectually serious effort by religious moderates and progressives to insist that social justice and inclusion are "moral values" and that war and peace are "life issues."

Dionne is against "the exploitation of strong religious feelings," the Iraq war, the deficit, tax breaks to the rich, opposition to abortion, opposition to stem cell research, and opposition to gay marriage." Other than favoring more respect for people of faith, insisting that social justice and inclusion are moral values, and war and peace are "life issues," what is he for? He doesn't mention the war on terror; indeed, he's mute on foreign policy.

Ellen Goodman, "Winning Back Value Voters," 11/6/04

Another disheartened Kerry supporter, Goodman is upset that the overwhelming majority of people who indicated in exit polls that "values" was the most important consideration voted for Bush. Speaking for the "immoral minority," she said this:

. . . there are a whole lot of folks who believe that starting a preemptive war on false premises is a moral issue. There are a whole lot of people who believe that giving tax cuts to the rich and a deficit to the grandkids is a matter of values. There are a whole lot who put our faith, secular and sacred, in the most religiously diverse country in the world.

Like many others, Goodman believes that Democrats face an uphill battle in the culture war:

. . . if this is a cultural war, the Democrats came to it verbally unarmed. There was no larger moral framework for the war; just the promise to fight it better and smarter. The environment never made it onto the screen as central to the progressive "culture of life." Kerry voted for abortion rights but framed his support weakly. He sided with opponents of gay marriage, who opposed him anyway.

She closes by asserting that there is a segment of the electorate that will respond to a Democratic moral framework:

The blue candidates will never convert people who believe that homosexuality is a sin, or that the fertilized egg is a human being, or that evolution is a scam taught by secular humanists. But among the not-so-red voters are those who believe in legal protection for gay couples, who value a child with diabetes over a frozen embryo in a fertility clinic. They regard poverty as a moral issue and tolerance as an American value. They don't want their country racked by the fundamentalist religious wars we see across the world. And they need to hear the moral framework for these views.

Once again, it's worth noting that, other than a sideways glance at the Iraq war, the War on Terror and foreign policy are no where to be seen. Are these issues of no importance to the Goodmans and Dionnes of the world? Don't they understand that we face an existential threat from al-Queda and the spread of nuclear weapons to nations that may lack the inhibitions against using them? Can't they see that many people, like me, voted for Bush for these reasons?

Michael Kinsley, "Am I Blue," 11/7/04

Responding to claims from conservatives that liberals are arrogant, elitist, and contempuous of people who don't share their views, Kinsley says this:

It's true that people on my side of the divide want to live in a society where women are free to choose abortion and where gay relationships have full civil equality with straight ones. And you want to live in a society where the opposite is true. These are some of those conflicting values everyone is talking about. But at least my values -- as deplorable as I'm sure they are -- don't involve any direct imposition on you. We don't want to force you to have an abortion or to marry someone of the same gender, whereas you do want to close out those possibilities for us. Which is more arrogant?

We on my side of the great divide don't, for the most part, believe that our values are direct orders from God. We don't claim that they are immutable and beyond argument. We are, if anything, crippled by reason and open-mindedness, by a desire to persuade rather than insist. Which philosophy is more elitist? Which is more contemptuous of people who disagree?

Kinsley is right -- or, more precisely, partially right. There are liberals that fit his description. But there are those that don't. Just read the left-wing press. Instead of believing that their values come directly from God (many are atheists or agnostics, after all), they receive them from a secular ideology. The twentieth century proved that secular fundamentalism can be every bit as cruel and deadly as theocratic fundamentalism. If Kinsley could argue that all of "Blue America" rejected secular fundamentalism, I'd be impresssed and convinced. But he can't.

Mark J. Penn, "It's the Moderates, Stupid," 11/6/04

Penn, the head of a Democratic polling firm that worked for Bill Clinton in 1996, rejects the notion that evangelicals were responsible for Bush's victory. His analysis shows that two key groups -- Hispanics and married white women -- carried the day for Bush:

In this election, Bush received 3.5 percent more of the vote than he did in 2000. The exit polls show this movement to be almost entirely the result of changes in two disparate groups: Hispanics (who went from 35 percent for Bush in 2000 to 44 percent this year -- enough to move the entire popular vote 1 percentage point) and white women (who went 49 percent for Bush in 2000 and 55 percent this year -- enough to move the popular vote 2.5 percentage points). It appears that the bulk of the movement in the white women's vote was among married women, particularly those with kids, who may have gone as high as 2 to 1 for Bush.

He notes that these two segments of the electorate were solidly Democratic in 1996:

Bill Clinton won 72 percent of the Hispanic vote in 1996; Kerry got 53 percent. Clinton not only won female voters overall, he also won white women (48 percent to Bob Dole's 43), married women (also 48 percent to 43) and moms (53 percent to 38).

The implications for the Democrats as they prepare for 2008 are clear:

. . . the real battle at the end of the day is for the more moderate voters who this year slipped away to the Republicans, on the basis not of gun control and gay marriage but of security and secular values such as trust and standing up for your beliefs. They are the core of any winning national coalition and at the heart of our national values. These voters have chosen Democrats in the past, and as the Democratic Party rebuilds, they are the first and most important voters we must attract to win a majority in 2008 and beyond.

Penn's formula for a Democratic resurgence makes sense to me. Will the party take heed, or will the ideologues drive it to the left? Much depends on the answer to this question.

Kate O'Beirne, "A Coaltion of Conviction," 11/7/04

As the Washington editor of the conservative National Review, it's not surprising that O'Beirne is able to identify many reasons for Bush's victory and Kerry's defeat. Here's her comparisons of Bush and the Republicans with Kerry and the Democrats:

Authenticity: Bush enjoys the appeal of authenticity. He is a conviction politician, utterly comfortable with who he is and what he believes. Throughout the campaign, he could be counted on to remain on course in the face of withering criticism . . . Kerry, meanwhile, tried to shed his party and his past by donning a yellow barn coat and attempting to pass himself off as a fiscal conservative, a defense hawk, a gun aficionado, a faithful Catholic and a proud veteran.

Culture: Republicans find themselves on the majority's side of the cultural divide because they don't display the Democrats' condescension and hostility to the moral sentiments and concerns of most Americans. Bush's deeply held religious faith sometimes finds awkward expression but never seems insincere. His habits of heart and mind mark him as a man of faith. Kerry, on the other hand, glibly declared in the final debate, "My faith affects everything I do and choose. . . . And I think that everything you do in public life has to be guided by your faith, affected by your faith, but without transferring it in any official way to other people." . . . Talking the talk, as Kerry tried to do, won't be enough as long as the Democratic Party's most vocal supporters equate conservative Christianity with Islamic fundamentalism. The culturally tone-deaf glitterati clogged the red carpet for the premiere of "Fahrenheit 911."

Patronizing: Republicans don't talk patronizingly about the issues that matter to voters by telling average Americans to "vote their pocketbooks." Rich Hollywood liberals might put aside their own economic interests to support a candidate who pledges to raise their taxes, but the little people leading small lives in small towns are not expected to look beyond their parochial concerns about overtime pay or health benefits.

Decency: Bush believes Americans are smart and unfailingly decent. He doesn't think southern conservatives are closet racists, that opponents of gay marriage are hateful homophobes or that pro-lifers are mean-spirited misogynists. He is well aware that America's liberal media (and as well as European commentators) view him as a dangerous fool. Nonetheless, the majority of high school and college graduates voted for him.

Iraq: For about a fifth of voters, the war on terrorism was the priority issue and they went overwhelmingly for Bush. Although a majority of voters saw the war in Iraq as part of the war on terrorism, only a bare majority approved of the decision to topple Saddam Hussein. On balance, the war in Iraq and its aftermath probably hurt the president. It seems likely that those who approve of the president's handling of the war on terrorism would remain supportive had Iraq not been invaded, while a majority of those who put the situation in Iraq at the top of their agenda voted for Kerry.

Bruce Reed, "Ending Our Losing Ways," 11/7/04

Reed, a former domestic policy adviser to Bill Clinton and the current president of the Democratic Leadership Council, offers four suggestions to revitalize the Democratic Party:

Expand the map: If Democrats are going to be born again as a majority party, we have to speak to the whole country again. In the 23 uncontested red states, Bush held Kerry to 40 percent and ran up nearly an 8 million vote margin. That's 202 electoral votes Republicans now win without breaking a sweat, in states where they now hold 39 out of 46 Senate seats.
When we Democrats choose not to compete on three-quarters of American soil, we have no margin for error in the presidential elections -- and we're almost sure to be a permanent minority in Congress. Meanwhile, Republicans squeeze us on the turf we still hold. A majority party must be a national party, not a regional one.

Crack the cultural code: The heartland -- that great bastion of fiscal conservatism at home and restraint abroad -- had good reasons to doubt Bush's values, but doubted ours instead . . . At a time when some in the world are out to destroy our way of life, many Americans are more concerned than ever about the bedrock values that built it -- patriotism, personal responsibility, opportunity, a clear sense of right and wrong. Most voters in red states think we look down on them for worrying about the moral direction of the country. They have no idea that we might be concerned about it, too . . . We need to bridge the trust gap on national security by spelling out our own offense against terrorism, not letting Republicans portray us as the antiwar party in the war on terrorism. We need to lead, not follow, in the family values debate, by pressing our own ideas to give parents more tools to protect their children from a coarsening culture, hold absent fathers accountable for support and enable parents to spend more time with their families. Instead of scoffing at Bush's faith-based agenda, we could fight for a stronger safety net in which both government and religious groups do more. Even as we oppose a federal amendment to take away the states' right to define marriage, we can do more than Republicans would ever dream of to reward marriage by helping young couples own a home and start saving for college and retirement.

Make ideas matter most: If we want to take back the majority, we need to mount just as massive an effort at pioneering new ideas. This election was mostly about Bush. The 2008 election will be a fair fight about the future, where ideas will matter more than opposition. This was a turnout election. The next one will have to be a persuasion election as well.

Surprise peeople: A minority party that wants to become a majority party has to surprise people so they realize it's better than they thought. Clinton geared his entire 1992 campaign to proving he was a different kind of Democrat from those they'd been voting against for years. He proposed cutting bureaucracy, linking college aid to national service, putting more police on the street and ending welfare as we know it. The last two campaigns have been short on such shock therapy. Next time, we have to surprise people by becoming an insurgent reform party again. Indeed, the one silver lining in defeat is that we're finally free to reform a status quo we neither condone nor control.

I think that Reed's linkage of terrorism to an increased devotion to our "bedrock values" is a major insight. I know that my appreciation for being an American is greater now than before 9/11. There's nothing quite like an all-too-real threat to make you appreciate life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

E. J. Dionne Jr., "Moderates, Not Moralists," 11/9/04

Dionne, citing exit polls, concluded that moderates, not the religious right, were responsible for Bush's triumph:

About 38 percent of those who thought abortion should be legal in most cases went to Bush. Bush got 22 percent from voters who favored gay marriage and 52 percent among those who favor civil unions. Bush even managed 16% among voters who thought the president paid more attention to the interests of large corporations than to those of "ordinary Americans." A third of the voters who favored a government more active in solving problems went to Bush.

True, 22 percent of the voters said that "moral values" were decisive in their choices. But 71 percent picked some other issue. All this means that Bush won not because there is a right-wing majority in the United States but because the president persuaded just enough of the nonconservative majority to go his way.

Dionne then criticizes Democrats for having "an unlimited capacity to declare that their party suffers from some deep intellectual dusfunction." He goes on to say that the "insistence that Democrats need 'new ideas' is especially popular among think-tankers and columnists . . ."

He disagrees with this analysis, asserting that Bush won the election "on decidely old strategies that had nothing to do with ideas." These strategies included

. . . the attacks on John Kerry for being weak and the claim that Bush would be tougher on the bad guys. That's familiar, Cold War-era stuff. Gay marriage was a new issue, but opposing gay marriage is an old idea. Social Security privatization and tax cuts are old ideas, too.

Where was the Bush campaign innovative? In its analysis of the electorate: "Its effort to increase the overall Republican share of the vote by boosting turnout in the outer suburbs and rural areas was a big deal."

Dionne concludes that the Democrats can't leave current GOP margins in rural America uncontested: "organizing needs to be supplemented by a campaign to reach both social moderates and populists, many of wshom live in those far suburbs and small towns."

The tone of this column is markedly different from Dionne's November 5 column. Practical advice has been substituted for a rant about personal attacks, the evangelicals, incompetence in Iraq, tax breaks for the rich, and the growing national debt.

Charles Krauthammer, "'Moral Values' Myth," 11/12/04

In Krauthammer's opinion, the "liberal elite" has gone off the deep end in reaction to Kerry's defeat:

In the post-election analyses, the liberal elite, led by the holy trinity of the New York Times -- Paul Krugman, Thomas Friedman and Maureen Dowd -- just about lost its mind denouncing the return of medieval primitivism. As usual, Dowd achieved the highest level of hysteria, cursing the Republicans for pandering to "isolationism, nativism, chauvinism, puritanism and religious fanaticism" in their unfailing drive to "summon our nasty devils."

He then asks

With President Bush increasing his share of the vote among Hispanics, Jews, women (especially married women), Catholics, seniors and even African Americans, on what does this victory-of-the-homophobic-evangelical voter rest?

Krauthammer's answer is the question in the election day exit poll that asks "Which ONE issue mattered most in deciding how you voted for president?"

"Moral values" ranked first, with a 22 percent share. However, if the possible answers are grouped into foreign policy issues (Iraq, terrorism), economic issues (education, taxes, health care, economy and jobs), and moral values, the issue that the "liberal elite" latched onto came in dead last.

Krauthammer then identifies the liberals' fallback position: the gay marriage referendums. He refutes this refuse:

George Bush increased his vote in 2004 over 2000 by an average of 3.1 percent nationwide. In Ohio the increase was 1 percent -- less than a third of the national average. In the 11 states in which the gay marriage referendums were held, Bush increased his vote by less than he did in the 39 states that did not have the referendum. The great anti-gay surge was pure fiction.

He concludes with this:

This does not deter the myth of the Bigoted Christian Redneck from dominating the thinking of liberals and infecting the blue-state media. They need their moral superiority like oxygen, and they cannot have it cut off by mere facts. Once again they angrily claim the moral high ground, while standing in the ruins of yet another humiliating electoral defeat.

More on Judicial Activism

Michael Kinsey has a well-written article on the use of "judicial activism" by conservatives in today's Washington Post. Highlights include:

Ever since Chief Justice Earl Warren and Brown v. Board of Education (the 1954 school desegregation case), conservatives have complained about "activist" judges who allegedly impose their own liberal dictates on the country with no legal basis. Taking up this rallying cry is one way Republicans won the South.

One person's constitutional interpretation is another person's judicial rampage. Neither party has a magic formula for determining which is which, and neither can resist trying to enact its agenda through judicial fiat when it gets the chance.

I decline to post the full article here because I'm annoyingly obsessive when it comes to Title 17. Registration at washingtonpost.com is free.

Nuclear Deterrence Needed

According to the formerly anonymous author of Imperial Hubris, former CIA analyst Michael Scheuer, speaking to 60 Minutes

Osama bin Laden now has religious approval to use a nuclear device against Americans, says the former head of the CIA unit charged with tracking down the Saudi terrorist.

We need a doctrine of deterrence against stateless terrorists in the case of their use of weapons of mass destruction.

During the Cold War, there were analysts who would think about the unthinkable. While I don't necessarily endorse their conclusions, I believe the process itself is necessary.

The risk of determining and publicizing a retaliation strategy in the case of nuclear or biological terrorism is that it would further inflame the Muslim world. The risk of not publicizing a strategy is that Al Qaeda might use WMD's without fear of retaliation beyond the destruction of their organization, which is already US policy.

How can one deter terrorists who are already bent on suicide? It's not easy, but I believe the answer is to examine what they love, and what they are dying for. The logic of nuclear deterrence during the Cold War was not to kill Soviet leaders, which could not be guaranteed due to their access to bomb shelters, but to target innocent Soviet civilians. Unfortunately, we need to contemplate what things or people Al Qaeda's leaders cherish more than their own lives, and target them for retaliation in the case a WMD causes mass death within the United States.

It was inconceivable that we could have developed a doctrine during the highly politicized period of the last two years. Now that the election is over, perhaps we can come together and debate this, not as Democrats or Republicans, but as Americans living under the sword of Damocles.

Britain's Third Party

We've been talking a bit about the prospects for a centrist party. Britain already has one--although on some issues it is now to the left of the Labour Party. That party is called the Liberal Democrats, and it does manage to win a small representation in parliament.

The name Liberal Democrat should not be evaluated on its meaning in a US context. The party was formed by the merger of Britain's Liberal Party, which was long Britain's second party before it was overtaken by Labour, and the Social Democratic Party, a group which split off from Labour during its days in the left-wing wilderness of the Thatcher years. The Liberal Democrats' centrist turf was invaded when Tony Blair shifted Labour to the right, rebranding it New Labour. Wikipedia describes their dilemma

The Liberal Democrats (and the precursor Liberal party) have traditionally been seen as the centrist party of British politics. However, with Tony Blair's repositioning of Labour towards the centre, many now view the Lib Dems as being the most left-wing of Britain's mainstream parties and classify the Lib Dems as centre left.

However, attempting to place the Liberal Democrats within the 'left wing'-'right wing' model does not accurately represent their ideology. Liberalism claims to oppose undemocratic power in any form. When they oppose the power of the trade unions, they are seen as right wing. When they oppose the power of the corporations, they are seen as left wing. But neither term accurately represents the Lib Dems' ideology.

Here is the blog of a Liberal Democrat MP, Sandra Gidley.

DLC: What Happened?

During this morning's Meet the Press, Tim Russert mentionned a post on the Democratic Leadership Council website. I reviewed the referenced post on November 10.

Final Election Post-Mortem

During the past several days, I've collected numerous domestic and foreign commentaries on the presidential election from the mainstream media. In this post and subsequent posts, I summarize them, paying particular attention to their explanations for Bush’s victory and Kerry’s defeat and their recommendations (if any) for how the Democratic party can turn the tide in its favor. In today’s post, I look at the New York Times. Nest in line is the Washington Post. Others will follow.

Todd S. Purdum, “Electoral Affirmation of Shared Values Provides Bush a Majority,” 11/4/04

Buying into the theory that values determined the election’s outcome, Purdum notes that Carter and Clinton were the only successful Democratic presidential candidates in the past 28 years, and both of them had Southern and evangelical support. From this observation, he concludes that

We need a nominee and a partythat is comfortable with faith and values. And if we have one, then all the hard work we’ve done on Social Security or America’s place in the world or college education can be heard.

Thomas Friedman, "Two Nations Under God," 11/4/04

Friedman said that he disagree with Bush on what America is, not just on on what America should be doing. Unlike Bush, he wants an America

That doesn't intrude into people's sexual preferences and the marriage unions they want to make

That, most importantly, has a president who mobilizes deep moral energies to unite us -- instead of dividing us from one another and the world

Next, Friedman engages in a bit of hyperbole, claiming that we really didn't have an election on November 2:

This wan not an election. This was station identification. I'd bet anything that if the election ballots hadn't had the names Bush and Kerry on them but simply asked "Do you watch Fox TV or read The New York Times?" the Electoral College would have broken the exact same way.

Well, Tom, I watch Fox and I read the Times. Some of us like to get both sides of the story.

Religion and values don't escape Friedman's attention. His problem with Christian fundamentalists is that they and Bush have used their moral energy "to promote divisions and intolerance at home and abroad." He cites Harvard political theorist Michael Sandel, who says that

The Democrats have ceded to the republicans a monopoly on the moral and spiritual sources of American politics. They will not recover as a party until they again have candidates who can speak to those moral and spiritual yearnings -- but turn them to progressive purposes in domestic policy and foreign affairs.

Sandel's comments are a recurrent theme in the Democratic narrative of the election.

Maureen Dowd, “The Red Zone,” 11/4/04

Dowd sees Bush as the devil incarnate. By implication, she believes that the people who voted for him are imbeciles who were taken in by his rhetoric. Here’s excerpts from her column:

W. doesn’t see division as a danger. He sees it as a wingman.

W. ran a jihad in America so he can fight one in Iraq – drawing a devoted flock of evangelicals, or “values voters,” as they call themselves, to the polls by opposing abortion, suffocating stem cell research and supporting a constitutional amendment against gay marriage.

I’m in favor of a women’s right to choose stem cell research and I oppose a constitutional amendment against gay marriage. But, unlike Dowd, I understand and respect those whose opinions differ from mine. Fear, intolerance, ignorance, and Christian fundamentalism are among the favorite words of the leftist opposition to Bush.

Garry Wills, “The Day the Enlightenment Went Out,” (11/4/04)

Wills goes even further than Dowd. He asserts that Karl Rove understands what surveys have presumably shown, that many more Americans believe in the Virgin Birth than in Darwin’s theory of evolution. He then asks whether “a people that believes more fervently in the Virgin Birth than in evolution still be called an Enlightened nation?”

Of course, Wills totally ignored the fact that the Founding Fathers were believers and the Declaration of Independence proclaimed that “all men are endowed by their Creator . . .”

No matter. Wills, an adjunct professor of history at Northwestern, goes on to say that America now resembles the secular states of Europe less than our putative enemies:

Where else do we find fundamentalist zeal, a rage at secularity, religious intolerance, fear of and hatred for modernity. Not in France or Britain or Germany or Italy or Spain. We find it in the Muslim world, in Al Queda, in Saddam Hussein’s Sunni loyalists. Americans wonder that the rest of the world thinks us so dangerous, so single-minded, so impervious to international appeals. They fear jihad, no matter whose zeal is being expressed.

Talking about moral relativism! I guess we’re no better than the jihadists who slammed the airliners into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. And this was published in “the newspaper of record.”

Paul Krugman, “No Surrender,” 11/5/04

Krugman begins by demonizing Bush and his supporters:

President Bush isn't a conservative. He's a radical -- the leader of a coalition that deeply dislikes America as it is. Part of that coalition wants to tear down the legacy of Franklin Roosevelt, eviscerating Social Security and, eventually, Medicare. Another part wants to break down the barriers between church and state.

This is what he thinks the Democrats should and should not do:

One faction of the party [the Democratic Leadership Council]is already calling for the Democrats to blur the differences between themselves and the Republicans . . . But that’s a losing propsition.

Democrats shouldn’t cave in to Mr. Bush when he tries to appoint highly partisan judges – even when the effort to block a bad appointment fails, it will show supporters that the party stands for something.

Thomas Frank, “Why They Won,” 11/5/04

Frank (author of “What’s a Matter with Kansas?) begins by asserting that in nearly every election since Nixon’s, liberalism “has been vilified as a flag-burning, treason-coddling, upper-class affectation. Citing the misleading and ambiguous exit poll, Frank then states that voters ranked values as the most important issue. He then criticizes the Democrats:

. . . Democrats still have no coherent framework for confronting this chronic complaint. Instead, they “triangulate,” they accommodate, they declare themselves converts to the Republican religion of the market, they sign off on Nafta and welfare reform, they try to be more hawkish than the Republican militarists. And they lose. And they lose again. Meanwhile, out in Red America, the right-wing populist revolt continues apace, its fury at the “liberal elite” undiminished by the Democrats’ conciliatory gestures or the passage of time.

Clearly, Frank doesn’t want the Democrats to move toward the center. And what are the Democrats “conciliatory gestures?”

Next, Frank turns to the “culture wars.” He avers that conservatives have persuaded Joe six-pack that liberals are guilty of telling him how to live his life without giving consideration to his values and traditions. Continuing, Frank says that

The culture wars . . . are a way of framing the ever-powerful subject of social class, They are a way for Republicans to speak on behalf of the forgotten man without causing any problems for their core big-business constituency.

Against this Republican philosophy, Democrats respond with their “usual soft centrism” that takes care to antagonize no one and declines to criticize Bush at their convention.

Even worse, Frank says, is the fact that

For some time, the centrist Democratic establishment [presumably the DLC] . . . has been enamored olf the notion that, since the industrial age is ending, the party must forget about blue-collar workers and their issues and embrace the “professional” class. During the 2004 campaign these new, business-friendly Democrats received high-profile assistance from idealistic tycoons and openly embraced trendy management theory.

I guess this is where George Soros comes into the picture.

Frank thinks that the Democratic establishment will react to the election “disaster” by redoubling their efforts to move to the right. His prescription is radically different:

Democrats must confront the cultural populism of the wedge issues with genuine economic populism. They must dust off their own majoritarian militancy instead of suppressing it; sharpen the distinctions between the parties instead of minimizing them, emphasize the contradictions of culture-war populism instead of ignoring them; and speak forthrightly about who gains and who loses from conservative economic policy.

There will be no “coming-together” if Frank has his way. In my view, there also will be no Democratic presidents, Senates, or Houses of Representatives.

Andrei Cherny, “Why We Lost,” 11/5/04

Cherny is much less polemical than Frank: he doesn’t speak of culture wars or vilify Republicans. However, he agrees with Frank that the Democrats suffer from a “lack of a clear sense of what the party stands for:

Democrats have a collection of policy positions that are sensible and right. John Kerry made this very clear. What we don’t have, and what we sorely need, is what President H. W. Bush so famously derided as “the vision thing” – a worldview that makes a thematic argument about where America is headed and where we want to take it.

On the other hand,

Misguided as they may be, the Republicans have a clear vision of America’s future. Confronted with their ambitious agenda we have not chosen to match it. Instead, we have adopted Nancy Reagan’s old antidrug motto, “Just Say No.”

Cherny closes by raising some important questions that the Democratic party needs to answer:

What is our economic vision in a globalized world?

How can our national security vision be broader than just a critique of the Republican foreign policy?

Altogether, this is a clear, sober analysis of the Democrats’ plight.

Jim Rutenberg, “Poll Question Stirs Debate on Meaning of Values,” 11/6/04

Exit polls revealed that a higher percentage (22%) of voters picked “moral issues” as their primary concern than any other issue. Democrats have looked at the data as evidence that they desperately need to do a better job connecting with cultural traditionalists. Conservative groups have used the survey data to make a case that mainstream America agrees with the conservative agenda that Mr. Bush now has a mandate to act upon.

Several pollsters have taken issue with this result:

Gary Langer, director of polling for ABC News, one of the sponsors of the poll, said a major flaw in the question is that "moral values" is not the same sort of specific issue that taxes or Iraq are. He said "moral values" was a sort of "catchall" for Mr. Bush's voters that could include topics as varied as gay marriage and vulgarity on television.

Bill McInturff, a Republican pollster, disagreed. McInturff said that if "moral values" was really a "catchall" with a confused meaning, then more Democrats would have picked it. Of the 22 percent who chose "moral values," 80 percent were Bush supporters, 20 percent were Kerry supporters. "It's self-selected by people for whom these issues are very important for their votes," he said.

Gary Langer, “A Question of Values,” 11/6/04

Langer agrees with Rutenberg: “A poorly devised exit poll question and a dose of spin are threatening to undermine our understanding of the 2004 presidential election.”

He also found that pre-election polls produced materially different results that did election day exit polls:

Pre-election polls consistently found that voters were most concerned about three issues: Iraq, the economy and terrorism. When telephone surveys asked an open-ended issues question (impossible on an exit poll), answers that could sensibly be categorized as moral values were in the low single digits. In the exit poll, they drew 22 percent.

Another reason for the disparity was the nature of the other alternatives on the election day list:

Four of them played to John Kerry's strengths: economy/jobs, health care, education, Iraq. Just two worked in President Bush's favor: terrorism and taxes. If you were a Bush supporter, and terrorism and taxes didn't inspire you, moral values was your place to go on the exit poll questionnaire.

Nicholas Kristof, “Time To Get Religion,” 11/6/04

Kristof’s column is devoted to giving advice to the Democrats. He begins by asserting that

. . . the party's image risks being defined even more by bicoastal, tree-hugging, gun-banning, French-speaking, Bordeaux-sipping, Times-toting liberals, whose solution is to veer left and galvanize the base. But firing up the base means turning off swing voters. Mobilizing the base would mean nominating Hillary Rodham Clinton in 2008 and losing yet again.

Rather than following this path,

Democrats need to give a more prominent voice to Middle American, wheat-hugging, gun-shooting, Spanish-speaking, beer-guzzling, Bible-toting centrists . . . For a nominee who could lead the Democrats to victory, think of John Edwards, Bill Richardson or Evan Bayh, or anyone who knows the difference between straw and hay.

As far as specific suggestions are concerned, this is what Kristof had to say:

Don't be afraid of religion. Offer government support for faith-based programs to aid the homeless, prisoners and AIDS victims. And argue theology with Republicans: there's much more biblical ammunition to support liberals than conservatives.

Hold your nose and work with President Bush as much as you can because it's lethal to be portrayed as obstructionists.

David Brooks, The Values-Vote Myth,” 11/6/04

Every election year, says Brooks, produces a story line to explain the outcome, and the story line must have two features: it has to be completely wrong, and it must “reassure liberals that they are morally superior to the people who just defeated them.” This time, the story line is that

. . . throngs of homophobic, Red America values-voters surged to the polls to put George Bush over the top.

The facts, as compiled by Andrew Cohut of the Pew Research Center, say otherwise:

Evangelicals made up the same share of the electorate as in 2000.

The fact is that if you think we are safer now, you probably voted for Bush. If you think we are less safe, you probably voted for Kerry. That’s policy, not fundamentalism. The upsurge in voters was an upsurge of people with conservative policy views, whether they are religious or not.

Brooks ends his column, which is convincing to me, with some harsh words for liberals:

. . . the same insularity that caused many liberals to lose touch with the rest of the country now causes them to simplify, misunderstand and condescend to the people who voted for Bush. If you want to understand why Democrats keep osing elections, just listen to some coastal and university town liberals talk about how conformist and intolerant people in Red America are. In makes you wonder: why is it that people who are completely close-minded talk endlessly about how open-minded they are?

Steven Waldman, “On a Word and a Prayer,” 11/6/04

Citing exit polls showing that 78% of voters said they didn’t view moral values as their top concern, Waldman says that Bush was elected without a “clear, specific ‘morality’ agenda.” Why, then, did evangelicals support him in such large numbers?

First, many believe that God put him in office for a reason, a sense that will undoubtedly grow with his clear re-election. Rank-and-file supporters repeatedly made this point and a series of films and faith biographies distributed in churches during the campaign argued that Mr. Bush was called to the presidency.

They believe in Mr. Bush because he rejects moral relativism. His willingness to call terrorists evil resonated with them because they believe that mainstream media and culture have lost the ability to distinguish right from wrong.

Finally, the "values voters" who helped keep him in Washington believe that God needs to be more present in public life. The Ten Commandments in the courtroom, prayer in school, "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance - these are all critical issues to many religious conservatives. They believe that we've kicked out God from our lives.

Bush’s rejection of moral relativism appeals to people who aren’t evangelicals. Like me, for instance.

Peter Steinfels, “The ‘Moral Values’ Issue,” 11/6/04

Andrew Kohut, president of the Pew Research Center, rejects the notion that Bush’s victory turned on moral values. Kohut correctly claims that ‘moral values’ is an “ambiguous, appealing, catchall” phrase:

. . . if the exit polls had constructed an equivalent catchall economic category adding concern about health care and taxes to that about jobs and growth, it would have been the top concern of 33 percent of the voters. If the poll findings had combined concern about terrorism with concern about Iraq . . . the resulting category would have ranked first with 34 percent of the voters.

And surely concern about moral values mixes revulsion at the offerings of Hollywood, cable television, the popular music industry and pornographic Web sites with defense of displaying the Ten Commandments in courthouses and of reciting "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance.

Nevertheless, some pundits claim that those who cited moral values as the top issue are ignorant, irrational, and intolerant. But this caricature, which casts millions of voters as ominous Others from another era, is inaccurate and unfair:

Whatever one may think of same-sex marriage, for example, it takes a real stretch to pretend that it is not a noteworthy departure from existing social and legal norms. It would also be a long shot to deny that it was the Massachusetts Supreme Court along with local officials around the nation challenging current laws by officiating at same-sex weddings who placed this on the national agenda rather than the religious right or President Bush.

Maureen Dowd, “Rove’s Revenge,” 11/7/04

In her second post-election column, Dowd accuses Karl Rove and President Bush as being reactionaries.

Both men, along with Cheney and Rumsfeld, want to return to the Eisenhower years:

Karl wanted to wipe out the gray, if-it-feels-good-do-it, blame-America-first, doused-in-Vietnam-guilt 60’s and turn the clock back to the black-and-white Manichaean values of the 50’s.

Continuing in this vein, Dowd says that

W’s presidency rushes backward, stifling possibilities, stirring intolerance, confusing church with state, blowing off the world, replacing sciences with religion, and facts with faith. We’re entering another dark age, more creationist than cutting edge, more premodern than postmodern. Instead of leading America to an exciting new reality, the Bushies cocoon in a scary, paranoid, regressive reality.

Wow! At least there’s no oppression. If there were, Dowd would probably be in jail for writing this article.

Pam Belluck, “Maybe Same-Sex Marriage Didn’t Make the Difference,” 11/7/04

Leading Republicans and leading Democrats have both asserted that the same-sex marriage issue helped Bush and hurt Kerry. But election results cast doubt on this appraisal:

Conservatives have crowed that in 11 states voters passed constitutional amendments to ban gay marriage . . . Even so, gay-marriage advocates say they do not believe that the amendments had a great effect on the presidential vote, especially because 10 of those states already had laws against gay marriage. "You can look at the three battleground states - Oregon, Michigan and Ohio - where amendments were on the ballot," Mr. Foreman said. Mr. Kerry carried Oregon by nearly 5 percentage points more than Al Gore did, Mr. Foreman said, and won more votes in Michigan than Mr. Gore. In Ohio, he was 2 points closer to victory than Mr. Gore.

Advocates also pointed to exit polls showing that 27 percent of voters support same-sex marriage and another 35 percent support civil unions. ''That means 62 percent of the American public believes in those values I believe in: fairness and equality," said Mary L. Bonauto, civil rights project director for Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders, who argued the case that legalized same-sex marriage in Massachusetts.

A.N. Wilson, “Starting From Here,” 11/8/04

English author Wilson “feel[s] a profound sympathy with my American friends who have a White House and a Congress - and will have a Supreme Court - dominated by Mr. Bush's right-wing faction. He wanted Kerry to win and thinks that the election results played into the hands of anti-American Europeans:

. . . those of us Europeans who love the United States, and think of it historically as a home of pluralism, variety and tolerance, had been hoping for a change of president. Instead, those Europeans who think of America as a gun-happy land of religious maniacs now have the satisfaction of having their prejudices confirmed.

However, Wilson admits that a Kerry foreign policy probably wouldn’t have been materially different from Bush’s:

We Europeans were probably wrong to think that American foreign policy would have changed radically under Senator John Kerry. While it was easy for Democrats to give the impression . . . that they wouldn't have started from here, we are here: the battle for Falluja is joined, the Palestinians are in disarray and the messy business of Israel's withdrawal from Gaza will go on come what may.

I’ve read in several places that European leaders were concerned that, had he won, Kerry would have expected a higher level of cooperation and in light of the widespread anti-American sentiments among their electorates, this would have caused considerable difficulties. If they were to refuse to accede to Kerry’s wishes, anti-European sentiment would have intensified.

Bob Herbert, “Voting Without the Facts,” 11/8/04

According to Herbert, the “so-called” values issue is overrated. Instead, citing the results of a recent survey by the Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland, he claims that it was the ignorance of Bush’s supporters that was responsible for his election victory.

Regarding values, this is his advice to Democrats:

You have to be careful when you toss the word values around. All values are not created equal. Some Democrats are casting covetous eyes on voters whose values, in many cases, are frankly repellent. Does it make sense for the progressive elements in our society to undermine their own deeply held beliefs in tolerance, fairness and justice in an effort to embrace those who deliberately seek to divide?

Note that Herbert doesn’t include patriotism as a desirable value. In addition, he doesn’t say whether the positive values he does identify are applicable outside the U.S. Under the Taleban and under Saddam, tolerance, fairness, and justice were certainly lacking. What kind of foreign policy would he have us pursue?

What does the Democratic party have to do? Here’s what he says:

What the Democratic Party needs above all is a clear message and a bold and compelling candidate. The message has to convince Americans that they would be better off following a progressive Democratic vision of the future. The candidate has to be a person of integrity capable of earning the respect and the affection of the American people.

While Herbert states that Gore and Kerry were “less than sparking candidates,” he doesn’t say why. Were their messages unclear, were their messages unconvincing, or were they not perceived as persons of integrity?

Tolerating Intolerance

Many years ago, the ACLU, many of whose members were and are Jewish, defended the right of a group of neo-Nazis to parade through a then-heavily Jewish neighborhood in Skokie, Illinois. By so doing, the ACLU -- in the name of our constitutional rights of free speech and assembly -- tolerated an intolerant organization whose members would kill Jews if they thought they could get away with it.

How far should a liberal society go in tolerating intolerance? Prior to 9/11, this was literally an academic question. After 9/11, the perception of the possible damage to our lives and way of life from tolerating intolerance was revised upward -- radically so. The differing opinions of the Patriot Act represent disagreements over how much intolerance should be tolerated.

The reaction to the ritual murder on November 2 of Dutch film director Theo van Gogh by an Islamic extremist is and will test how far intolerance will be tolerated. The Netherlands is the best place to have this test. The New York Times says that the Netherlands has been "the world's most tolerant, open-minded society, with full sexual equality and same-sex marriage, as well as liberal policies on soft drugs and prostitution."

But some of the people living there don't favor the tolerant ethic. In particular, a large segment of the fast-growing Muslim population objects strenuously, despising the freedoms that tolerance makes possible.

According to the Times (and many other sources), Dutch officials, like their counterparts elsewhere in Europe, have failed to address directly this bifurcation of their society. Instead, these officials have "churned out rhetoric about multicultural diversity and mutual respect." Such rhetoric has amounted to an approval of intolerance, as long as it emanateds from the Islamic community. There have been two sets of rules in Dutch society -- one for Christians (who were enjoined to avoid criticizing Muslims), and another for Muslims (who were free to criticize Christians). In a less extreme form, the same rule sets apply in America.

The Times reporter asks whether the tolerance of Muslim intolerance of Western society will result in the Netherlands "setting itself on a path toward cataclysmic social confrontation." In light of the much higher birth rate among Muslims, a confrontation seems inevitable if the multicultural ethic prevents the Dutch government from dealing with the problem.

When the reporter tried to broach thie subject of a social confrontation with his Dutch acquaintances, he was told that it was off limits. This hide-your-head-in-the-sand attitude was prevalent in February 2002, when the politican Pim Fortuyn was assassinated for arguing that radical Islam could destroy his country. For uttering these words, he was condemned in the media and expelled from his party.

With the killing of van Gogh, the media has changed its tune. In the words of the Times reporter:

After the murder of Mr. van Gogh, whose accused killer belonged to a radical Muslim network, Dutch newspapers were filled with long articles that sounded like Mr. Fortuyn. Jihad has reached the Netherlands, one commentator wrote. Another asked: Has the Netherlands become a country in which you can no longer say what you want, or does the taboo apply only to Islam? (This is a nation, after all, to which people fled centuries ago to speak and write freely.)

Not since 9/11 have I seen any country's news media outlets so preoccupied with a single topic. The Netherlands is undergoing a sea change. By the time I arrived, much had already happened. There had been several arrests; legislators had been placed under round-the-clock protection; government buildings in The Hague looked like an armed camp.

There has also been a sea-change in the government's attitude: the deputy prime minister, Gerrit Zalm, who once called Mr. Fortuyn dangerous because of his blunt words about Islam, declared war on radical Islamism.

The reporter, who during a previous posting in the Netherlands lived peacefully in a Muslim neighborhood in Rotterdam, was told by a police officer not to venture into such areas. Earlier that day in the same area, a journalist's car had been smashed, presumably by Muslims displeased with something he had written.

Later the same day, the journalist learned that the Rotterdam police had destroyed a street mural featuring the words, "Thou shalt not kill," a picture of an angel, and the date of Mr. van Gogh's murder because the leader of a nearby mosque reportedly considered it racist. A news cameraman who tried to protect the mural, was arrested, and a camerawoman who filmed its destruction was forced to erase part of her videotape, according to Dutch news reports. The incident, according to the newspaper De Telegraaf, resulted from orders given to the police nationwide to be alert for any signs of disorder or provocation.

Eight days after van Gogh's murder, police officers and marines carried out a daylong siege on an apartment in an immigrant neighborhood in The Hague. During the week, there were attacks on mosques and Muslim schools.

How do the Dutch feel about the current situation? At present, most appear to agree strongly with one commentator, Paul Scheffer, who wrote in the daily NRC Handelsblad last weekend: "We cannot hand over our country.... Words such as diversity, respect and dialogue fade against the dark context of this ritual assassination."

It could happen here. How would we react? Would we be willing to destroy a mural with the words "Thou shalt not kill" to placate a Muslim cleric? Would we be willing to deny our Judeo-Christian heritage in the name of multiculturalism and in the mistaken belief that denying who we are will satisfy the Islamists? For those who argue that they hate us for our policies, not for who we are, the Dutch ordeal should prompt a reconsideration. Liberal societies must defend themselves. There are limits to tolerance.

Blogs Added To Centrist Blogroll

I've added three blogs to the centrist blogroll.

Booker Rising describes itself as a "News site for black moderates and black conservatives." Well, they're half-moderate, and since we practice inclusion, that's good enough.

Restless Mania is a group blog which seems to be on the ornery side of moderate.

Ideonexus is a potpourri, which sometimes gets political in a centrist way.

If you have any other candidates, let me know.

The Bush Machine

I, for one, "misunderestimated" the Bush campaign's unbelievable organization this year. In 2000, Bush officially received 50,456,002 votes. Bush's current tally for 2004 is 60,480,957 votes. That is almost a 20 percent increase in raw votes.

Charlie Cook says this:

You have to give enormous credit to the Bush campaign, which unquestionably was the best planned, best executed presidential campaign ever. . .

The true measure of the quality of the effort by the Bush campaign, the Republican National Committee and the business community, is in the turnout figures. In key state after key state, the John Kerry campaign, the Democratic National Committee, organized labor and most of all, America Coming Together -- the 527 committee charged with the get-out-the-vote operation on the Democratic side -- not only hit but exceeded their target number of voters they thought were needed to win. But the Bush/Republican/business/social conservative coalition got even more.

In Ohio, for example, Kerry got 25,000 more votes than the goal ACT had set, but Bush got 130,000 more. This was also true in Florida. No one stands in more awe of the Bush campaign than the folks on the Democratic side. They put up a hell of a fight and yet were still bested by the Bush/Republican/business/social conservative effort.

All of this further convinces me that the Bush machine won this election much more than Kerry lost it.

CIA Turmoil

The Washington Post reports:

The deputy director of the CIA resigned yesterday after a series of confrontations over the past week between senior operations officials and CIA Director Porter J. Goss's new chief of staff that have left the agency in turmoil, according to several current and former CIA officials.

John E. McLaughlin, a 32-year CIA veteran who was acting director for two months this summer until Goss took over, resigned after warning Goss that his top aide, former Capitol Hill staff member Patrick Murray, was treating senior officials disrespectfully and risked widespread resignations, the officials said.

1. The CIA is getting a long overdue housecleaning.

2. GOP hacks are purging the CIA of its best people, and will replace them with managers who owe their loyalty to the administration, and can be guaranteed not to leak unflattering information.

Republicans (see David Brooks piece) will hold the first view, while Democrats will hold the second. As centrists, let's keep an open mind about this. We don't know which view is accurate, and even the people involved may not know yet. History will judge. But one thing is certain. President Bush now owns the CIA, and must be accountable for any intelligence failures which occur during his second term.

To war or not to war

The AP reports that soon-to-be former United States Attorney General John Ashcroft today iterated the magic words, "time of war" again. The context was his condemnation of judicial rulings defying the president's self-asserted authority over the due process of the people he alleges to be terrorists.

I simply do not understand why, if the Adminstration continues to say we're at war, they allege that the laws of war are not implicated. They say that terrorists are not protected by the laws of war because they due not fight for a state. If our struggle to defeat al-Qaeda can be analogized to war for legal purposes, then how do the laws of war not equally analogize to that struggle? If we consider al-Qaeda to be a state for the purposes of waging war against it, how does al-Qaeda escape from being the entity for which its adherents wage war against us?

If the law requires you to release enemy combatants, and released enemy combatants resume their fight against us, you do not hold enemy combatants in violation of the law. You change the law to allow you to hold them. Rather than obtain license from Congress to perform the perfunctory military review of alleged enemy combatant status--despite the urgent pleas of the judiciary that he do just that--the Administration has continued defiantly to work its own will. With a Republican Congress, there's just no reason not to seek Congressional approval.

Oh, wait, I'm wrong. There are two reasons: 1) this president doesn't like to ask for permission to deprive people of their civil liberties (remember American Yasser Esam Hamdi?), and 2) this president likes to have the issue. As long as the courts continue to rule against him, even though the courts are right to do so in the absence of affirmative law from Congress, the Administration can point to the courts and accuse judges of putting the country in harm's way by undermining the war on terror, further inciting the conservatives to press for right-wing judges and confusing the issue for the mainstream.

The president wants the courts to rule against him, because he wants to use the war on terror to get wider public support for his right-wing judges, just like he used the war on terror to get re-elected. Because the courts rightly insist on releasing these terrorists while there is no legal ground to hold them and because the president could easily turn to Congress to create that legal ground, it is the president's political motive, and not the rule of law protected by the judiciary, that puts this country at risk.

(Link supplied via How Appealing.)

Stirling Newberry points out that the red state-blue state split was evident in 1896

1. We're seeing identity politics. You vote for your side irrespective of its competence. Red Sox fans don't support the Yankees when the Yankees are playing better.

2. The Red-Blue split is deeply cultural, and to a significant extent, policy proposals don't affect votes. The Republicans understand this a lot better than the Democrats.

3. The Democrats are underperforming compared to the progressive party of 1896, which went by the name Republican. Why are Ohio and Indiana red states now?

Modernity and the Red States

This is an article in The New Republic by Brad Carson, the defeated Democratic candidate for the Senate from Oklahoma. I think he makes some excellent points about the problems that Democrats face in the "culture wars." Unfortunately, the article requires a subscription (although here is the link anyway). http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=20041122&s=diarist112204<

I have excerpted a part of the article that I think really goes to the heart of the Democrats' failure in the red states. And the fact is, it will not be easy to overcome merely by being "sensitive" because it involves a basic divergence in world view.

i>As a defeated Senate candidate in the most red of red states, many people have asked me for insights into the Democratic Party's failure to connect with culturally conservative voters. Much has already been written on this topic, and scholars will add more. But I do know this: The culture war is real, and it is a conflict not merely about some particular policy or legislative item, but about modernity itself. Banning gay marriage or abortion would not be sufficient to heal the cultural gulf that exists in this nation. The culture war is about matters more fundamental still: whether nationality is, in a globalized world, a random fact of no more significance than what hospital one was born in or whether it is the source of identity and even political legitimacy; whether one's self is a matter of choice or whether it is predetermined, before birth, by the cultural membership of one's family; whether an individual is just that--a free-floating atom--or whether the individual is part of a long chain that both predates and continues long after any particular person; whether concepts like honor and shame, which seem so quaint, are still relevant in a world that values only "tolerance." These are questions not for politicians but for philosophers, and, in the end, it is the failure of liberal philosophy that we saw on November 2.

I think he nails it to a great extent. It's one thing to talk about respecting the values of Middle America, but that's not going to be enough. People want candidates who don't just mouth the words, but actually believe in them.

We're Moral, We're Moral!

Here's a link to a page where, for the next 30 days, you can find the video of the CSPAN session with Simon Rosenberg of the New Democrat Network and Harold Ickes of America Coming Together.

Rosenberg is on the ball, though I would argue with some of his views. Ickes, however, is pathetic, and his statements can be boiled down to "we're moral, we're moral, don't you people realize we're moral" Clearly, Ickes has strong moral views based on the civil rights movement of the 1960's. He's moral, but for better or worse, that's not the morality that many swing voters want--and he's unable to recognize it.

If I heard right, Ickes said his group, America Coming Together, raised hundreds of millions of dollars. Considering the results, what a waste. Ickes is also the chair of Hillary Clinton's PAC. He can certainly raise money. But he doesn't know how to spend it well.

The Coz Speaks Up

I know these sorts of statements are not new for Bill Cosby. I'm pointing this one out because I think the Democrats would be well served to line up behind his take if they want to recapture the middle class family votes they've lost. He's authentic, and has credibility:

"This is about little children ... and people not giving them better choices," he told Paula Zahn in an interview for CNN's "Paula Zahn Now." "Talking. Talking. Parenting. Correctly parenting. That's what it's about. And you can't blame other things. You got to -- you got to straighten up your house. Straighten up your apartment. Straighten up your child."

"Judgment of the people in the situation is not helpful. How can you help them is the question," said hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons, founder of Def Jam Records and the Phat Farm clothing line.

Let 'em rant, Cosby says.

"Let them stay mad as long as they don't have good sense," he told Zahn. "I don't care what right-wing white people are thinking. ... How long you gonna whisper about a smallpox epidemic in your apartment building when bodies are coming out under the sheets?"

"When I say, 'I don't care what white people think,' I mean that. I mean, I'm addressing my people, period," he told CNN. "I'm telling you. I want all this loud profanity in the street stopped. ... I want you to stop doing things that are detrimental to your getting at least an education with a high school credential. I'm talking to the people who are dropping out.

I would not be surprised to see Bill Cosby on stage with Barack Obama, with both of them saying similar things. Unless the GOP beats the Democrats to him. I know Republican blacks have voiced such opinions in the past and been castigated. My sense is that this a message that a significant and maybe growing portion of black Americans responds to...I don't know if it's a silent majority. But I find that more and more black thinkers seem concerned that their culture define itself on its own terms instead of only in opposition to the white culture. Read the whole interview.

Open Thread

What's on your mind? Nothing is off-topic

CENTRIST GROUPS SEE AN OPENING

After reading this Washington Post article on Third Way, a new centrist Democrat group focuing on the silver lining in this year's election, I was curious to know what other mainstream Democrat groups like the New Democrat Network, Democratic Leadership Council, Blue Dog Coalition, Congressional Black Caucus (just kidding) :-), were doing.

It's generally the Democrat's pratice to sort of walk around with a sour face for a while after a defeat instead of taking charge and some haven't broke with that tradition. I hear Tennessee Congressman Harold Ford, Jr. was rethinking his run for Senator in 06 because of the elections. Others, are taking the offensive and seeing this as an opportunity for the centrists to get back in control of the party.

What do you guys think of these groups? Do you think they're smart enough to take advantage of this opportunity? What should they be doing?

Must See DLC

Here's the link to the video of the DLC election post-mortem discussed in a previous post. It's worth watching, and the opening minutes in which Bruce Reed explains why he is a "pathetic fallacy" is more than worth the price of admission.

For those who do not have the time to watch it, here is the DLC's official summary

As Democrats continue to mull over the disappointing results of November 2, the DLC held a forum at the National Press Club in Washington to look ahead and discuss "the road back." Featuring a broad array of panelists and a large audience of reporters, the event accentuated two fundamental facts about the post-election atmosphere among Democrats: an unwillingness to engage in finger-pointing or recriminations, and a determination to soberly reflect on the results as indicating some chronic problems with the party's message and image that go deeper than the presidential loss.

DLC president Bruce Reed opened the discussion by enjoining Democrats to avoid nitpicking criticisms of the Kerry-Edwards campaign, and to focus on the party's fundamental problems. "The core of Democrats problem is the same as it was when the DLC was founded 20 years ago: the middle class doesn't trust us enough to stand up for their security, their values, or their economic interests. From Franklin Roosevelt to Bill Clinton, the Democratic Party made its name by building the middle class. We don't win elections when they don't vote for us.... Democrats don't have to become more liberal or more conservative. We never have to take another poll again. We just need to remember that the burden of proof is on us."

Al From, the DLC's CEO and founder, laid out five keys to "the road back."

"Accept the truth" that Republicans have achieved majority status, albeit a narrow majority;

"Expand the map" by working on a Democratic revival in "red states";

Address three "trust gaps" that have become obstacles to acceptance of Democratic candidates: a "security gap," a "culture gap" and a "reform gap";

In constructing a message and agenda for the future, "remember that ideas matter";

Don't get discouraged; the problems facing Democrats today are no worse than those they faced at the beginning of the 1990s, prior to the Clinton revival of party fortunes.
Los Angeles Times political reporter Ron Brownstein interpreted the election results as indicating a "thumb on the scales" for Republicans after the long period of parity that was reflected in the 2000 elections. Citing the Times' own exit polling, Brownstein suggested that Bush might have won half of the white union vote, and that the Democrats' "southwestern strategy" of focusing on states with large Hispanic populations might have been a mistake. He also cited indications that both parties' expensive "ground games" may not have made as much difference as some have suggested. "When it's all counted up, both parties may have together spent about $1.5 billion contacting voters... and only 3 states switched from the party they supported in 2000."

Brownstein argued that one danger sign for Democrats is that they are not doing as well in "red states" as the Republicans are doing in "blue states." "Red America is becoming Fortress America," he observed, noting that over the last two elections Democrats have lost 10 out of 10 open Senate seats in the South. On the positive side for Democrats, Brownstein pointed out that Bush was the first winning presidential candidate since 1976 to have lost independent voters, which could be a growing problem for Republicans in the future.

As the one successful Democratic Senate candidate in the South on November 2, Sen. Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas offered three thoughts for Democrats in communicating with voters they have been losing in "red states:"

"Trust the voters" to understand the issues that most affect their lives, instead of trying to tell them what they should care about;

"Get rid of sacred cows" in talking about domestic issues, and stop defending federal programs as ends in themselves;

"Get comfortable talking about your faith" as a way of instilling trust in the values of Democratic elected officials.
Political consultant Donna Brazile, who ran Al Gore's 2000 campaign, cited some positive developments in the 2004 elections: "The Democratic donor base tripled in size, and the activist base quadrupled," she said. But she echoed other panelists in arguing that Democrats had to expand their geographical reach, and suggested that Democratic governors needed to play a bigger role in national party discussions.

Progressive Policy Institute President Will Marshall focused on the "security gap" facing Democrats, arguing that "martial moms" concerned about national security had a lot to do with relative Republican success among women in 2004. He also urged Democrats to get beyond their divisions over the invasion of Iraq, and work to develop a "progressive internationalist" vision for America's role in the world in which alliances, multilateral organizations, and American values "extend our power and amplify our voice," backed up by the credible willingness to use military force to fight the forces of "jihadist ideology."

Former Clinton White House political director Doug Sosnik argued that "elections are often lagging indicators of political trends," and suggested that the 2004 results reflected a long period of growth in Republican strength rather than any clear advantage in the future. But he also agreed with all the other panelists in urging Democrats to get better in touch not just with the values, but with the day-to-day lives of voters. "The vast majority of people in this country don't think of themselves as 'red people' or 'blue people,'" he said. "They think of themselves as just normal people living their lives."

Al From closed the forum by reminding the audience that a process of Democratic renewal was important not just for the party's electoral fortunes, but for "the future of progressive governance," and promised: "Make no mistake -- we're coming back."

The Left Youth Culture Minority

Intriguing article by John Avlon in the New York Sun. It's a subscribers only article, but I'll post an excerpt here

Last week quietly marked the 30th anniversary of Richard Nixon's "Silent Majority Speech." Nixon presided over a nation far more divided than ours today, and looking out at the protests that engulfed Washington at the time, in more anxious moments he might have wondered what would happen to America when the baby boomers took over.

They had, after all, unleashed a cultural revolution of rock 'n' roll and civil rights that intentionally threatened the status quo. In politics, the New Left was ascendant, and Vietnam Vets Against the War spokesman John Kerry - who Nixon aide Chuck Colson described as a "young demagogue" - was already being mentioned as a future president.

Which is why after last week's defeat, the Democrats and the entire baby boom generation are due for some soul searching. Because something funny happened on the way to the cultural revolution - a Republican political tide swept the nation. As the baby boomers went gray, the right and not the left was the beneficiary of their coming of age. Improbably for anyone reading Rolling Stone in the late 1960s, the sentiments behind Merle Haggard's "Okie From Muskogee" seem to have outlasted the impact of the Doors' "Break On Through."

Another Moderate Blog

Moderates are finding us, and we're finding them. Ideonexus is a site with articles on science and politics. Here is a discussion of whether scientists should get involved in politics at all.

And speaking of science and public policy, here's an article about state laws which requires abortion providers to warn patients that abortions increase the risk of breast cancer, even though the consensus among scientists is that there is no link.

Hillary Gets Religion

Speaking at Tufts University just outside of Boston, Senator Clinton called it a mistake for Democrats not to engage evangelical Christians:

I don't think you can win an election or even
run a successful campaign if you don't acknowledge what is important to
people.  We don't have to agree with them. But being ignored is a sign of such disrespect. And therefore I think we should talk about these issues.

Clinton said the Bible should be used to win debates over poverty the way Republicans tried to use it on gay marriage.

No one can read the New Testament of our Bible without recognizing that Jesus had a lot more to say about how we treat the poor than most of the issues that were talked about in this election.

Looks like the 2008 campaign has started.

Rememberance

Today, November 11th, is Veteran's Day. Originally established as Armistice Day to mark the end of World War One, the holiday was expanded by President Eisenhower in 1954 to honor all American veterans.

On that day let us solemnly remember the sacrifices of all those who fought so valiantly, on the seas, in the air, and on foreign shores, to preserve our heritage of freedom, and let us reconsecrate ourselves to the task of promoting an enduring peace so that their efforts shall not have been in vain. --Dwight David Eisenhower

Thank you.

What Percent of Corporations Pay Taxes?

What is the estimated percent of U.S. corporations that paid no federal taxes from 1996–2000?

Only FWIW. Discuss. Include more information. Try to avoid common party lines. No yelling.

UPDATE: I can't for the life of me get this link to work, and I dunno why. Here's the URL:

http://polls.yahoo.com/public/archives/57019568/p-quote-374

Third Way

Greg Wythe pointed out a new group, The Third Way, made up of centrist Democrats in the Senate.

Blanche Lincoln, Arkansas
Evan Bayh, Indiana
Tom Carper, Delaware
Mary Landrieu, Louisiana
Mark Pryor, Arkansas

Update: Greg also blogged a Washington Post article on the group, including some information on how they're ramping up. These are political entrepreneurs who know how to start an organization from scratch.

Specter on Moderates

Howard Bashman's How Appealing has a link to this Philadelphia Inquirer interview with Senator Arlen Specter. The most relevant section is excerpted below.

"It's important for the party but it's also important to the country that the Republican Party has balance," Specter said. "And there are a lot of independents and swing Democrats who look to see that there are moderate voices in the Republican Party."

Recalling his short-lived campaign for the presidential nomination in 1996, Specter said he never harbored any illusions about being the GOP nominee, but he was struck by the fact that he, as the only candidate in the field supporting abortion rights, received only token support from moderates.

"There really is an urgent need for more vocal participation by moderates and pro-choice Republicans," he said.

Specter said he had recently sought out other moderate GOP members of the Senate. Though he declined to characterize those conversations, he said the only way they could remain relevant was to assert themselves.

The latest episode over the Judiciary Committee chairmanship was just a skirmish in a longer siege, Specter said.

"It's a very important battle," he said. "And it's really a battle for balance in the party and it's really a battle for balance in America."

Arab Reaction to Falluja Is Mixed

The NYT reports that there's a "deep ambivalence in the Arab world about the assault against Falluja." Public reaction has been muted, especially in comparison to that which occurred when US forces attacked Falluja last April.

Why the ambivalent reaction?

"While few Arabs support the occupation, but most also dislike rooting for people they see as thugs beholden to Saddam Hussein and wild-eyed mujahedeen from around the world.

This operation is at least partly an Iraqi project, with the interim prime minister, Ayad Allawi, making most of the pronouncements about the assault and framing it as a fight against Hussein loyalists and Osama bin Laden's followers.

The bloodshed fomented by the resistance in the past months has diluted support for the insurgents

Initial reports have said that most civilians had fled Falluja before the assault began, and the resistance was much lighter than anticipated.

Because the American marines have seized the hospital in Falluja, television and newspapers have not been able to show pictures of bleeding women and children being taken into emergency wards. Al Jazeera, the Arab-language satellite news station, also says during almost every report that its Iraq bureau was closed by the interim government. Given the paucity of pictures, the station used part of its daily global news roundup to exhibit a slideshow of still photographs of the fighting taken from The New York Times Web site.

Arab attention is divided: the approach of Yasir Arafat's demise captured many of the headlines and broadcast time devoted to news analysis.

. . . the overall sense is that people are not paying that close attention to the fighting. On Tuesday, a cartoon in Al Sharq Al Awsat, a daily published in London, showed a television screen called "Preparations to annihilate Falluja" while a hand marked "The Arab Street" holding a remote control is entitled 'Preparations to change the channel.'"

Maybe the jihadists and the remnants of Saddam's regime have overplayed their hand. Let's hope.

Whither, Centrism?

This blog has considered a call for a centrist party, and introspectively asked whether the creation of a Centrist Party or a Centrism PAC is the most realistic and effect means of affecting the political status quo. We have examined Democratic moderate candidates and independent moderate candidates for president in 2008. We've discussed how to grow Centerfield.

I submit that, like the Democratic Party, before we can decide whom we support or what direction we should move in--PAC, party, or none of the above--we need to understand who we are. Centerfield provides an excellent forum for general discussion: for positing and considering general ideas and analyzing current events. I've enjoyed the short time I've spent here, and look forward to future philosophical explorations. However, I crave more. I want action, but not hasty and ill-considered action. I want to begin laying the foundation for affirmative action (lower-case).

My contribution, and I hope it's not presumptuous, is a forum dedicated to discussion of single-issue policy positions. In order to decide where we go and what we are, we need to understand who we are--what we believe collectively, if we can develop a consensus among ourselves. We are individually Republicans, Democrats, or Other. We have differing social policy, foreign policy, and fiscal policy perspectives. 45% percent of 2004 voters nationally self-identify as moderates. But is there a common definition of moderate that can be harnessed to have a real political impact? We need a platform, and we have to build it from scratch, plank by plank.

In order to begin this process, I've created a Centrist Platform Committee blog, and you're invited to join. I've laid out more specifics of the plan for this blog in its introduction--sort of a user's guide to the site. I hope all of you, whom I've come to respect as thoughtful and polite, will participate. As we learn whether we can agree on a platform, I believe the direction we ought to take regardings PAC or party will become more clear.

I respect Centerfield, and I look forward to participating here long-term. But I believe centrism must be more than an idea. We must do more than think; we must act. But before we can act, we must know who we are well enough to understand what action is possible.

Arafat dead

Here is a month-old news item from Israel:

JERUSALEM - Three weeks before the people of the United States choose their resident for the next four years, reports from Israel and elsewhere tellingly reveal how the parties to the Arab-Israeli conflict view the candidates.

While Yasser Arafat’s Palestinian Authority is rooting for Democrat John Kerry, Israel’s Jews overwhelmingly hope President George W. Bush will stay in the Oval Office through 2008.

Why The Democrats Are Moving Left

It's only been a week since the election, but I'm becoming convinced that the Democratic Party is moving left for the next election cycle. Here's why.

1. The seats which turned over to Republicans were on their right wing--including 5 southern senators and Texas congressmen like Charlie Stenholm. Even pursuing the status quo, the remaining Democrats will have a more liberal flavor.

2. There are numerous voices (here's one) arguing that Democrats must get back to their roots in the New Deal and Civil Rights eras, rejecting the New Democrat message of Bill Clinton.

3. In contrast to those who advocate a shift to the left, there is not a single voice within the Democratic Party advocating a shift to the center. Even the Democratic Leadership Council, which has in the past been a reliable advocate for centrism, is not pushing that message. Instead, they've chosen to bury the hatchet with the left

"The DLC and the Prospect, which have historically been at odds over the direction of the Democratic Party, formally buried the hatchet earlier in the year. Leading liberals and centrists may have ongoing disagreements on specific policy prescriptions, but the younger generation of thinkers, writers, and consultants, regardless of where they hang their hats, seems to me to have experienced a kind of convergence of thought that greatly diminishes the likelihood of future intraparty conflicts like those that ripped through the party in the 1980s and 1990s."

That "bury the hatchet" moment--the product of a series of quiet center-left discussions that began at the beginning of this year--didn't get much attention at the time, but it showed the center-left convergence that Franke-Ruta is talking about was not just a battlefield compact in the heat of the general election campaign.

Given that the remaining Democrats will need to move toward the center just to stay where they were in 2004, that all the pressure is to move to the left, and that there is zero counterpressure to move to the center, it is, in the words of George Tenet, a slam dunk that the Democrats are heading left. It's a recipe for political disaster.

Birthday and Rememberance

Today, November 10th, marks the 229th anniversary of the United States Marine Corps. Semper Fidelis and Happy Birthday!

Tomorrow, November 11th, is Veteran's Day. Originally established as Armistice Day to mark the end of World War One, the holiday was expanded by President Eisenhower in 1954 to honor all American veterans.

On that day let us solemnly remember the sacrifices of all those who fought so valiantly, on the seas, in the air, and on foreign shores, to preserve our heritage of freedom, and let us reconsecrate ourselves to the task of promoting an enduring peace so that their efforts shall not have been in vain.

Thank you.

The Democratic Leadership Council's Post-Mortem

Two days after the election, the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) published a post-mortem on their website. It strikes me as a mostly accurate, dispassionate assessment. While I voted for Bush, it's my hope that the Democratic candidate in 2008 is someone that I will have to seriously consider. If my hope is realized, it's likely that he/she will be closely associated with the ideas and policies of the DLC.

The post-mortem begins with an acknowledgement of the "slow but significant" erosion of support for the Democrats in recent years. This erosion

" . . . will not be reversed by any simple, mechanical move to the "left" or the "right;" by any new infusion of cash or grassroots organizing; by any reshuffling of party institutions or their leadership; or by any magically charismatic candidates. That's why engaging in any "struggle for the soul of the party," or any assignment of blame, is such a waste of time."

The DLC identifies three persistent "trust" gaps in the Democrats' message: national security, reform, and values and culture.

National Security

". . . while [Kerry] convinced Americans we would be smarter on national security, he could not overcome the party's reputation for being weaker, and that was a deal-breaker for many voters who didn't want to take any chances with their security. In other words, Bush didn't pay the ultimate price for his foreign policy failures because we couldn't put to rest doubts about Democrats."

Why the DLC believes that Kerry "convinced Americans we would be smarter on national security" escapes me. What's the evidence? Otherwise, their facing up to the facts.

Reform

"While Democrats [made] a strong negative case against Bush, we never conveyed a positive agenda for reform. Indeed, Democrats often reinforced the idea that the GOP was the "reform" party by trying to scare voters about every bad or deceptive Republican idea for changing government programs, instead of offering our own alternatives for reform. In the end, we relied on mobilizing voters who were hostile to Bush instead of persuading voters who were ambivalent about both parties, and about government. Since Republicans did have a simple, understandable message, it was an uneven contest: message plus mobilization will beat mobilization alone every time."

To which I say, amen.

Values and Culture

Facing reality, the DLC says that "here the evidence of a Democratic handicap is overwhelming." The problem is that

". . . many millions of voters simply do not believe that Democrats take their cultural fears and resentments seriously, and that Republicans do."

How true. Furthermore, overcoming this gap

" . . . is not just a matter of carefully calibrating positions on specific issues like guns, abortion, or this year's big wedge issue, gay marriage. Indeed, John Kerry did not repeat Al Gore's mistake of leading with his chin on such issues."

Take that, Mr. Gore!

The DLC recognizes that Americans aren't just economic animals:

"As in so many recent elections, some Democrats believed they could trump the cultural concerns of middle-class families through economic appeals, asking voters to look to their pocket-books rather than their hearts when entering the polling place. If there was ever an election where this should have worked, it was this one, and it didn't."

I disagree with the last sentence: there certainly have been elections won by the Republican candidate when the economy was worse shape (e.g., Reagan's victory in 1980).

What's needed to overcome the values and culture gap?

"We need a heartland strategy to go with a positive message that reaches the heart as well as the wallet. In presidential contests, we begin each campaign at a disadvantage because our strength is limited to the Northeast, the West Coast, and the upper Midwest, where our candidates must win nearly every winnable state."

True enough.

Faced with these three challenges, what needs to be done . . .

"They add up to the urgent need for a party strategy and message that's strategic, not tactical; that conveys a comprehensive message, not just targeted appeals to narrow constituencies; that's national, not regional; and that's based on ideas and hope, not just on opposition and anger."

. . . and what should not be done:

"There will be a powerful temptation for Democrats to simply go to the mattresses, fight Republicans tooth and nail, and hope for a big midterm sweep in 2006. That would be a mistake, just as it was a mistake to believe that Bush's weakness would be enough to produce a victory in 2004."

Paving The Way For The Middle-Of-The-Road

Historically, Middle-of-the-Road Presidencies don't leave their mark the way ideologically-driven administrations do.

The legacies of Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush will not jump to mind the way Franklin Roosevelt's and Ronald Reagan's will. However forgetful either administration may be in terms of the Historians' rankings, each man did seek a blend of policy which, in today's political arena, is sorely lacking. Carter, a fiscal conservative and social liberal, was at the time, a welcome face of reason and moderation. The same is true of his predecessor, Gerald Ford. Ford, a modest man who once said of himself, "I'm a Ford, not a Lincoln," cast a persona devoid of ideological overtones and zealous partisanship. He was a non-divisive choice by President Nixon in a time when the last thing the country needed in the Watergate aftermath was an extremist. As for the first President Bush, George H.W., he is often derided for raising taxes, but, history will show what he was willing to do, even in the face of staunch conservative disaproval within his own party, was to eradicate the debt incurred during the supply-side 1980s. Centrist Presidencies are not without their own legacies, however. Dwight Eisenhower was no more a Conservative Republican than Bill Clinton was a Liberal Democrat. Both men had the foresight and willingness to work with the opposition party. Ike sought not to deal FDR's "New Deal" any new blows, and Clinton signed welfare reform. They recognized that a man's opponent need not be his enemy.

Contemporary American politics has seen a shift in both political parties, and as a result, a shift in the country as well. Americans have never been more polarized, not even the way we were back in the late '60s and early '70s. We are a nation divided by the so-called red states of the farm belt and deep south, and the blue states of the two coasts and upper midwest. Big cities versus rural communities.

What is even more telling and often more overlooked, is the fact that both major political parties are polarized as well.

In the wake of the President's victory, the Republican conservatives will be keeping a close eye on their less-than-conservative members not to get in the way of the President's agenda. For Republicans standing in the middle of the road, they run the risk of getting bowled-over by the oncoming train from the right. For Democrats, that middle ground is safer as it relates to their ideology than being off to the left of it.

The Republican Mainstreet Partnership, an organization of Republicans in the tradition of Eisenhower and Rockefeller, are galvanized to keep some semblance of balance within the ever-growing, ever-far right philosophy, which has swept the GOP and large portions of the nation.

For Democrats, there is the DLC, the Democratic Leadership Council, a group of moderates who have been attempting since the '90s to keep their own party balanced; in their case, from too many left turns on the road paved with defeated Presidential candidates.

The Mainstreet Republicans and the DLC both illustrate the growing battles which lay ahead for both political parties over the next four years. The former is striving to reclaim its Eisenhower-Rockefeller roots; the latter, trying to lay down new ones which will not grow wildly off-center with McGovernite branches, or sprout more northeastern Presidential nominees.

No doubt the Democratic hierarchy feels there is nothing left for the Left as it relates to Presidential nominees. And the Republican hierarchy must now believe that the Right can do no wrong. That leaves a lot of ground to be paved by centrists in both parties. It will be a hard road a-ho for both groups and especially for the nation. After all, in the end, this whole process, from primaries to general election, is about the people. And the people are still polarized. In so many ways, so are the Democrats and Republicans.

For those who think that Centrists, or more specifically Centrist Presidents, are ineffective, perhaps they should take a second look at Dwight Eisenhower and William Jefferson Clinton. What both men managed to do was bring a level of moderation to the Oval Office which we could badly use today. No one would argue that the 1950s and the 1990s were not the so-called "Happy Days" in recent American history. The latter was a time of unequaled peace and prosperity in modern American history,and the former, the truly last era of American innocence. Granted, the times shaped the men as much as the men shaped the times. But, stop and think for a moment. Would the '50s have unfolded differently if America had had an extremist in office at the time? Or what if the 1990s would have given us someone who would have sought, at every turn, to veto bill after bill laid on his desk by an opposition party in power? Who says Centrist Presidencies don't leave their mark?

The left wing and right wing movements generally spend so much time on their own agendas that the nation becomes embroiled in senseless partisan politics. And the nation is almost always bogged down as a result. Both Ike and Clinton recognized what Centrists have historically known all along --- it takes two wings to fly.

Perhaps we would do well to recall that men and women of reason need not be extreme except in matters of reason.

President Eisenhower, that voice of calm and reassurance in the Cold War era, once said of the two conflicting philosophies within our nation: "The middle-of-the-road has all of the usable surface. The extremes, left and right, are in the gutters."

Perhaps Yogi Berra put it just as well when he said: "When you come to the fork in the road --- take it."

Cross-posted at http://poliscights.blogspot.com/

McCain-Schwarzeneggar 2008?

The Third Avenue participated in the dust-up this morning at BOPnews. I now see a post there pointing out a site promoting McCain-Schwarzeneggar in 2008 (and presumably a constitutional amendment to permit it)

The thought leaves my salivary glands entirely dry. After 8 years of Bush rule, I'll probably want the pendulum to swing left of center for at least 4 years to compensate.

What about a cross-party centrist ticket of McCain and Feingold? That has a familiar ring, somehow.

Assasinated Filmaker Theo Van Gogh Last Film

I've received a link to a page where you can view a version of the last film by Theo Van Gogh, the Dutch filmaker who was recently murdered, allegedly by an Islamic extremist. The film challenges the treatment of women in Islamic communities. I haven't viewed it yet.

Understanding Visceral Response

Those who bother to read my often lengthy posts and comments know that I often refer to people's visceral responses to things. Well last night I found myself utterly gripped by the PBS Frontline feature on marketing called The Persuaders. Large portions of the program dealt with market research based on better understanding visceral response, and lengthy peeks under the covers of research used to develop political language was also included. If any of this stuff interests you, this program is an absolute must-see. I give it absolutely my highest rating, it's fascinating and chilling. It's going to available as a webcast on November 12, and the link above includes further links to lengthy interviews with the featured people.

The guy that I find most interesting is a French former child psychologist named Clotaire Rapaille, who worked with autistic kids before becoming a zillionaire marketing guru. I'm an extremely skeptical person by nature. I don't go in for new age mumbo jumbo, horoscopes, ghosts, UFOs or any of that grand conspiracy stuff. Neither am I a guy to watch PBS unless its this old house or a documentary on blues. But I do have a degree in psychology, and this guy really knows what he is talking about. Click on his name to read his interview, it's great stuff. And if you are doubtful due to some of the zany-sounding language he uses, take note that big Fortune 500 companies keep inviting him back for more, at astronomical rates. An excerpt:

Once you understand the code, you understand why people do what they do. For example, the code for the French -- once you understand the code, you may understand why [French president Jacques] Chirac reacted this way to Bush, because for the French, the code is "to think." That's it: to think. "I think, therefore I am" -- not "I do," "I think." The French believe [that they are] the only thinkers of the world and that they think for the rest of the world. They believe that Americans never think; they just do things without knowing why. And so in this situation, where Bush say[s], "Let's do it," the French say, "No, wait, think; we need to think."

Now, what you have to understand about the French culture is "to think" is enough. You don't need to do anything with your thinking. The French philosopher would say, "I think, therefore I am," where in America you have Nextel, this campaign, fantastic, "I do, therefore I am," not "I think." I think they're right on target with the American code.

The Frank Lunz stuff was also very interesting. He's a corporate and GOP language consultant. Click on his name above to read his interview. And be sure to catch this program if you have a chance, I promise you won't be disappointed, it's very revealing stuff.

Iraq Veterans and PTSD

Last night on the Newshour with Jim Lehrer, I heard that and estimated 17% of the returning soldiers coming back from Iraq are being diagnosed with PTSD. That is the same rate as those who returned from Vietnam, and we all know what kind of an impact that had on those soldiers lives and on our cultural memory of that war. I believe the report said something like 43% of these soldiers don't want to report their symptoms because they fear being viewed as weak by their C.O., and 50% believe that it would jeopardize their job, possibly to the point of dishonorable discharge if they did report it. Sorry, I tried to find a text link to the story, but it doesn't look like the Newhour has posted one yet.

I think we need to do some serious examination of why these soldiers believe this. Are these men and women at risk of being stigmatized by the military if they report PTSD symptoms, and what can be done to correct that? Soliders are starting to return from this war. Are we doing everything that we can do to help these people in the aftermath of their service in this war? I'd love to hear the views of any former veterans if there are any of you lurking out there.

ANWR Likely To Be Opened

I read on CNN.com today that Congressional Republicans are going to push for drilling in Alaska early in the new year as part of the budget process, and they are almost certain they have the votes for it this time.

I have not read anywhere on here as yet what the centrist stance on the environment is, but I will admitt it is the one issue I am decidely left on. However, the fact that a majority of Americans in every poll taken on the subject say we need to do to more to protect the environment leads me to believe that greater protection is a centrist stance. I am all for sensible protection that doesn't hurt the economy or businesses too much, but clean technology is very useable and much more affordable than most think, but is unfortuantely owned mostly by oil companies who hold it back so they can continue to make money off of oil. Brilliant business move, but bad for nature. The CNN article is below.

Bush looking anew for Alaska refuge drilling
Environmentalists gearing up to fight it
Tuesday, November 9, 2004 Posted: 3:53 PM EST (2053 GMT)

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Republican gains in the Senate could give President Bush his best chance yet to achieve his No. 1 energy priority: opening an oil-rich but environmentally sensitive Alaska wildlife refuge to drilling.

If he is successful, it would be a stinging defeat for environmentalists and an energy triumph that eluded Bush his first four years in the White House. A broader agenda that includes reviving nuclear power, preventing blackouts and expanding oil and gas drilling in the Rockies will be more difficult to enact.

Republicans in the House and Senate said this week they plan to push for Alaska refuge drilling legislation early next year, and they predict success, given the 55-44-1 GOP Senate majority in the next Congress. Democrats and some environmental activists say continued protection of the refuge has never been as much in doubt.

"It's probably the best chance we've had," Rep. Richard Pombo, R-California, chairman of the House Resources Committee and a vocal drilling advocate, said in an interview.

Sen. Pete Domenici, R-New Mexico, chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, said he will press to open the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) as part of the government's budget deliberations early in 2005. That would enable drilling proponents to skirt an otherwise certain Democratic-led filibuster that would be difficult to overcome.

"With oil trading at nearly $50 a barrel, the case for ANWR is more compelling than ever," said Domenici. "We have the technology to develop oil without harming the environment and wildlife."

Bush is also expected in his second term to renew his call for action by Congress on a broader, largely pro-production, energy agenda -- from easing rules for oil and gas drilling on federal land in the Rocky Mountains to expanding clean-coal technology and improving the reliability of the electricity grid.

New tax incentives to spur construction of next-generation nuclear power plants also will be back on the table after Democrats and some moderate Republicans scuttled it last year. Greater use of corn-based ethanol in gasoline also has wide support at the White House and in Congress.

Drilling in the Alaska refuge has been all but dismissed as unachievable since drilling opponents two years ago beat back a pro-development measure by a 52-48 vote. Bush did not make an issue of the refuge during the presidential campaign.

But with four new GOP senators expected to support ANWR drilling and the loss of a Republican moderate who opposed it, drilling advocates believe they now have at least 52 votes in the Senate, enough to get the measure through Congress as part of the budget process.

By Senate rules, opponents of drilling cannot filibuster a budget measure. ANWR qualifies as a budget measure because it will generate income for the government from oil companies.

Environmentalists already are gearing up to wage an intense lobbying campaign to keep oil rigs out of the refuge's coastal plain, a breeding ground for caribou, home to polar bears and musk oxen and site of an annual influx of millions of migratory birds.

"This is as serious a threat to the refuge as any that has come before," said Jim Waltman of the National Wildlife Federation. "But the facts haven't changed. This is still a magnificent area and it can still be damaged by oil drilling."

But geologists believe 11 billion barrels of oil lie beneath the refuge's tundra and ice, and drilling supporters contend they can be tapped without damage to the environment or wildlife.

Potholes in full energy bill
Regardless the outcome in the Alaska refuge dispute, the path to getting a comprehensive energy bill is likely to be full of potholes. Twice in the last four years lawmakers have agreed on 85 percent or more of an energy package only to see final action derailed over narrow, although intensely contentious, issues.

Some lawmakers, including Sen. Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico, senior Democrat on the energy committee that will write the legislation, argue that lawmakers should focus instead on passing separate bills on the most urgent and widely supported measures.

Some of that already has occurred, such as the recently approved loan guarantees for a proposed $20 billion natural gas pipeline from Alaska to the lower 48 states.

Despite the GOP's new strength, Senate Democrats can still put the brakes on energy measures they strongly oppose through filibusters such as the one that blocked an energy bill in 2003. The issue then in dispute was liability protection for makers of the MTBE gasoline additives, which have been found to contaminate water systems.

However, given the stronger GOP majority, sustaining such filibusters may be more difficult.

A DLC Troll Speaks

I've been commenting on some threads over at Blogging Of The President, and now there's been a post specifically about me, which is quite long, so I'll respond in a post, rather than just a comment over there.

The substance of this discussion is whether the Democratic Party should move to the right to attract new voters, which is what I advocate. That's an unpopular view over there, and some of the people don't even want to hear of the idea. I've even been told to go away and join the Republican Party.

So first, let me explain why I participate in the discussion over there. Blogging of the President, or BOPnews as it's known from its URL, was started by Matt Stoller and Stirling Newberry, whom I worked with on the Wesley Clark campaign, radio broadcaster Christopher Lydon and journalist Jay Rosen. During the Democratic primary season, I contributed a weekly feature called Blogging The Numbers, in which I used an automated script to count references to the various Democratic candidates in the blogosphere. My last post was in May.

In the specific post attacking me, the writer says

Let's get real: "you should be happy to be raped by a friend" is psy-op trollery. Sorry, Rick: this Dem ain't bending over for you or your DLC buddies. You want to destroy the party; we want to save the country. We are going in fundamentally different directions here. We want to stop the oppression; you want us all to take the abuse, smile, volunteer, write checks, and say, "yes sir, may I have another" while we work to get our neighbors to buy in.

So no, I don't speak for the DLC. I'm standing outside the Democratic tent, asking if they'll be so kind to enlarge it so that I can be inside. So far, the answer is no. However, when one is attacked for being something, there may be some truth in it. So yesterday, I joined the DLC at the $50 level.

Now, with regard to the substance of the post. The sexual abuse metaphor is kind of rough, but not entirely inappropriate. For instance, I strongly favor the estate tax, or "death tax" as the GOP spins it. It seems to me entirely in line with the American tradition of equal opportunity, whereas the perpetuation of inherited wealth is characteristic of European aristocracy. Yet it seems that most Americans have accepted the Republican spin, and support its elimination, even though that position is against their interest and against their ideals. The GOP has found a way to get people to vote against their own material interests.

The writer accused me of just wanting the Democrats to win, and being willing to make the Democrats into a clone of the Republicans in order to do so. Not so. I have no attachment to the Democratic brand, and would happily vote for a good Republican. I want the Democrats to move to the center, where they will still be distinctly to the left of the conservative Republican federal government, and stop it from permanently damaging this country and its natural environment.

One other accusation I've heard is that when the Democrats move to the right, it allows the Republicans to move further to the right, which creates a vicious circle of rightward drift. I believe the causality is all wrong in that argument. Republicans have initiated the rightward shift, ever since Nixon's southern strategy, and have succeeded with it. Democrats have by necessity followed along. If they had not, Republicans would be in even a greater majority than they are now. With regard to the fundamental reasons of the rightward shift, I don't have all the answers, but it is deeper than politics, and is caused by a backlash to cultural changes which occurred starting in the 1960's. It may be more than that, however, as there has been a global shift to the right, following the far left collapse in the Soviet bloc and the rise of religious fundamentalism in the Islamic world.

The posters on BOPnews are not the looney left. They are liberal activists. With their passion to move the Democrats to a base strategy, and the DLC's timidity in confronting them, I think we can expect the Democrats to lurch to the left over the next four years. If so, the Democrats may commit political suicide, and finally dig the grave of 1960's liberalism. Such a prognostication is, of course, barring a horrific terrorist attack which Bush did not prevent, which of course would change everything.

If the Democrats commit suicide, there may really be an opening for a Centrist Party. At a minimum, we should be thinking of organizing a Centrist Party in the South, where the Democratic label is such poison that very conservative Democrats like Brad Carson lose to Republican extremists. If the Democrats are incapable of serving as a check to the conservative Republicans, there has to be an alternative.

This Ticks Me Off

Matthew Yglesias, a self-described "proud member of the reality-based community" had this to say earlier today:

American forces press into the heart of Falluja with mercifully few US casualties and discover "that many of the senior rebel leaders, including the Qaeda ally Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, had fled before the city was sealed off." Boy -- guerilla force flees rather than stand and be slaughtered by better-armed foe. Who could have predicted that except every goddamn person on the face of the earth.
In a couple of days, things should settle down, the civilian population
will return to their now-wrecked homes and places of business, no doubt
extraordinarily grateful to the foreign army that got them wrecked.

Give me a break, Matthew.  If we hadn't telegraphed our intentions, civilian casualties would be much, much greater, and you'd be complaining about our brutality. 

And Matthew, do you think that our primary objective is to capture or kill Zarqawi?  Or is it to make it possible to hold elections in late January?  If we force the terrorists out of their sanctuaries and into tents in the desert, it'll be a lot harder to make bombs and their command and control system will be dysfunctional. 

Ashcroft Resigns

As predicted. As does Commerce Sec'y Evans.

Ashcroft, Evans resign from Cabinet

Final Thoughts on Liberal Election Angst

And they're not even mine. Douglas Kern at Tech Central Station says it well enough without my assistance. And he's funny too!

Take That Advice and Shove It

(You) Love It or (I'll) Leave It

From Norm Geras at normblog:

Paul Chapman reports from Wellington:

Americans have been bombarding New Zealand officials with inquiries about emigrating since President George W Bush was re-elected last week.

The Immigration Service in Wellington said its website recorded
10,300 hits from America the day after Mr Bush was re-elected, more
than four times the average of 2,500. A further 300 inquiries were
being received daily by telephone and e-mail, compared with about eight
a day before the election.

Don Badman, the service's marketing manager, said: "It has exploded.
It really started picking up from 11pm on the night of the election."
Interest is especially strong in Democrat-voting San Francisco and Los
Angeles, where before the election many people threatened to leave if
Bush won.

The size of his victory has led hardcore Democrats, as well as
homosexuals, opponents of the Iraq war and supporters of abortion
rights to fear that their values and way of life may be at risk.

.....

New Zealand is seen as a relatively safe destination, because of its
geographical remoteness and because the Labour-led government has
distanced itself from the war in Iraq.

If this keeps up, there really will be a permanent Republican majority.

Farther Left

Former presidential candidate Howard Dean is considering a bid to become chairman of the national Democratic Party.

"He told me he was thinking about it," Steve Grossman, himself a former chairman of the Democratic National Committee, said Monday.

If this happens the Democrats might as well concede to the Republicans that they are out of touch with the south and heartland. I like the fire with which Howard Dean approaches his beliefs and I hope he does stay involved, but he would almost certainly drive the party platform even farther left than it is, or at least give the conservatives ample ammunition to claim he will. And we all know how well the current platform went over with "ordinary Americans."

How Much More Depressing Can it Get

People who think the the US is showing some special form of intolerance for Muslims should look at what is going on in Europe. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/09/international/europe/09dutch.html

Apprently in retaliation for the murder of a Dutch film maker who had made a film critical of militant Islam, someone bombed a Muslim school. Can it get any worse, targeting children? Europe has become increasinly hostile to Muslims, largely in response to what is seen as the community's hostility to liberal democracy. I'm not trying to make light of this in any way, but what would our enlightened European friends have said if this happened in the "cowboy" United States?

I don't believe in the clash of civilizations thesis, but it is clear that the rise of conservative Islam has set off alarm bells, probably with some justification, throughout Europe. The standard European response of increasing "sensitivity" for multiculturalism is no longer working and, unless the governments come up with more creative solutions and moderate Islamic voices come to the fore, I fear that the far right political parties will enjoy increasing success.

Ignoring the Middle East

I’m severely disappointed that Bush is not moving more to address the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. With Arafat now even in worse health Bush needs to re-engage. If he could at least help get the ball rolling again on a peace agreement for both sides to work on (not just Israel) then that might help cool some of the anti-American sentiment in the Middle East that is undoubtedly red hot right now. Bush has already stated before that Arafat was no longer an honest broker and that negotiations were no longer possible with him.

It's becoming clearer everyday that Arafat's time is about to be up. When he is gone the posturing in the PLO now will turn into a grab for power. If it is made clear that the U.S. is willing to devote a good deal of its attention on the issue then maybe that will give momentum for a more reasoned leader in the PLO. Tony Blair has already stated his commitment to revisit this issue with full attention; it's time for Bush to do the same.

Failure to address this issue will only re-enforce anti-American sentiment among the Muslim world, and further the cynical view of American foreign policy.

Should Democrats Abandon The Poor?

Amazingly, if you look at the LA Times exit poll data (pdf), Kerry won voters with incomes under $40,000 by a measly 5% margin. If you could factor out the overwhelmingly pro-Kerry African-American vote, it's probably a tossup. This suggests that the Democrats are getting absolutely no traction on class war issues. Should they just give them up?

As a clarification, I don't mean to equate issues of wealth and poverty with economic issues. Lagging economic performance is a concern of rich people as well as the poor.

The data suggests that the electorate is split over lifestyle and identity far more than economic issues. Should the Democrats try to win the working class back? Can they? Perhaps they might be better off redefining themselves as the party of lifestyle freedom, and try to make further inroads among affluent voters scared of the religious right.

Democrats Have No Soul?

This is from respected author Roland S. Martin:

If you asked any Republican why he or she is a Republican, it would take about 10 seconds to say lower taxes, smaller government and a strong defense. Yes, these are simplistic statements that leave out a host of important issues, but it does strike at the core of the Republican Party.

The failure to have a clear and concise agenda from which to speak makes it difficult for anyone to embrace your party. When precious time is spent explaining where you stand, most people have tuned you out and turned you off.

I think this is an interesting (and accurate) statement about Dems. It also points out a pitfall that centrists need to avoid, which is having no clear identity. We need to know who we are, so when people ask, we have a quick answer that highlights the basics and defines (at least in part) what it means to be a centrist. To read the whole article, continue below.

KERRY LOSS UNDERSCORES A SOULLESS PARTY

If the DNC continues down their present path, we might as well look at reviving Ross Perot's Reform Party, 'cause this country is fast becoming a one-horse town, and that is never good for anyone.

A Call For A Centrist Party

Centerfield has received the following email:

The most compelling statistic from this November 2004 election was that 45% of the voters described themselves as moderate, 34% conservative, and 21% liberal. When you do the math, the problem is easy to see. Approximately 17% of voters described themselves as moderate but picked Bush. About 27% of the voters described themselves as moderate but picked Kerry. Our vote is split. Why do we continue to unsuccessfully try to pull both parties to the middle when it would be just as easy to start the Moderate Party?

There's definitely a lot of chatter about it on the Internet, and rightfully so. This is the perfect time to start this new party. With a Bush victory, the Republicans are going to continue moving to the right. The Democrats are in crisis, and it doesn't look good for them. Any thing they do gets labeled as "liberal." Even the moderate Democrats are suffering. The party is just not going to appeal to the masses anytime soon. I'm up for the challenge to start a new party, and I hope others are, too. A goal would be to establish the party in all 50 states by the November 2008 election. Let's start voting together for centrist candidates that support a centrist platform. Who's in?

Hitchens Explains

Hitchens explains apparent flip-flop - Slate mispolled him.

A Deradicalization?

My $.05 On the Democratic Loss, Part II

Now that I've explained Rove a bit, I can get to the Congressional losses. Radicalization plays a much more key role here.

In my previous post, I said that Rove takes sometimes dirty action to encourage Democratic radicalization to scare moderates. With Rove against us, radicalized leadership and press are played up for the purposes of scaring the centrists needed for victory. Mind you, I am entirely for extremists having some positions of power, because they are better at bringing problems forward. But a party with senior leadership posts filled with extremists is going nowhere, because it doesn't represent the people. It will tend to lose elections (sound familiar?)

It is an interesting question how much Rove had to do with Democratic radicalization vs. how much we did it to ourselves. Many were radicalized without outside direct help, by the 2000 election overtime period. I think that's what happened to Krugman and Daschle, for example. In fact, a remarkably number of historic events happened during this admistration, each of which probably took its toll: the 2000 election, the Bubble collapse, 9/11, the 2002 election, Grey Davis recalled.

I have no idea how McCauliffe went.

What's more, radicalized leaders radicalize alot of their followers to add to the supply, and there are fewer moderate Democratic leaders to would provide encouragement for Democrats (including (D) leaders) to lose their fears.

But there's no question that Rove took full advantage to draw the contrast strongly between comparatively calm Republicans and radicalized Democrats.

Meanwhile, the President and Rove made sure that there were plenty of calming messages from GOP centrists out there, to preserve that contrast. The non-rightist media helped by not passing along thoseessages, so that you had to be watching Fox to be getting any help staying calm with events.

Party Perception

According to my way of looking at things, Kerry and Gephart were the only centrist party leaders during Bush' 1st term. The most powerful (D) leader, who got the most TV time, was Daschle before 2002, who, by my definitions, was no longer a centrist. Certainly, his time was spent explaining that everything Bush did was wrong instead of developing a forward agenda. McCauliffe was the same. And once Gephart resigned, Pelosi finished the group.

Although Kerry (after the primary) and Gephart did help, the Democratic party did mostly present a frightening face to centrist voters, especially non-Democrats. Their policies and statements (Bush sux, we're too busy saying that do anthing new) (what did you say? comporomise with those crooks?) poorly represented Democrats as a whole, much less the population. But we are still held electorally responsible for them.

Congress

People voting in Congressional races know that the particular majority leader or minority leaders strongly influence the votes of those they lead. Rove successfully casting Daschle as extreme (because, fun as it was to listen to him digging into W, he was extreme) probably resulted in most of the Senate losses.

For that reason, I hold Daschle responsible for the Senate losses. Whether Florida or Rove got to him, the result was the same: discrediting of Democrats among centrists, especially while we had the majority.

Fortunately, the GOP has kindly spent lots of money to turf Daschle out, something we would never have done for ourselves. Thanks, guys! Now we have a chance at picking a better one. An experienced guy comes to mind who survived Rove's aggravations and has earned vast respect by keeping the lawyers sheathed after the election. Of course, since the House picked Pelosi, one has to be a little dubious that Senate Democrats will be so smart.

Pelosi is mas del mismo in the House. Except that we have the fun of redistricting added.

Conclusions

Karl Rove has been working to radicalize the Democratic Party and present a contrast versus GOP centrists.

Right now, the Democratic Party IS too far to the left, as people keep saying. But, IMHO, only to the degree that the leadership is radicalized. Clinton presented a working model on how Democrats can win in the post-Cold-War, globalized era.

Mind you, there are plenty of Republicans who increasingly think that prolonged Republican rule is imminent and natural. Snicker. You have four years, then Bush/Rove are gone.

In the meantime, we will continue to suffer unless and until we can find an answer.

UPDATE: Did Rove help radicalize Dean?

Bush: Political Genius

Carlos Watson:

Whether you are a Democrat, a Republican or an independent, it is hard not to look at President Bush's re-election victory last week and conclude that he is probably one of the three or four most talented politicians of the last half of a century.

This seems way over the top to me. I don't think that it is particularly remarkable that a guy named Bush who is a Republican was able to unseat an incumbent Democratic governor in Texas. In 2000, there was Clinton fatigue and Gore was a stiff. And this year, Bush got a bare majority in the midst of a war. I voted for him, but I certainly am not in awe of this skills as a politician.

Issue Advocacy Time?

William's recent post describing fantasy centrist ads got me thinking about issue advocacy. Isn't it a little troubling (although not remotely surprising) that the parties spend mountains of dough on election campaigns and then, when the time to govern comes, the airwaves become comparatively silent? Given George Bush's short list of top domestic priorities and the Democrats' position as a now-diminished minority, doesn't it make sense for the democrats, as well as centrists worried that George might not be looking out for them, to pick one big commonsense objection to each proposed policy revision and trumpet it loudly?

For example, on social security reform/privatization, doesn't it make sense to state loudly the position that whatever reform happens, the government must keep its already-made promises, especially to little guys?

On income tax reform, now being sold happily as "simplification," doesn't it make sense to demand that it be made clear who will pay more in taxes so that others may pay less? Come on, we're not going to be sold on the idea that everyone can be made happier and no one will get the shaft, are we?

I give the President nominal credit for trying to address such pressing fiscal matters, but true credit only if he can ultimately make something good happen. I am ready to be very skeptical that Mr. Bush is prepared to make hard choices instead of deferring them while expressing faith that the equations will somehow balance some day.

I want the President to make hard choices on domestic policy where they need to be made. He didn't do that when he passed the prescpription drug bill. He opened the vault to pay seniors' drug bills and made no attempts at drug cost control, all the while concealing the true estimated bill to taxpayers. That's bad mojo, IMO. This time we're watching, Mr. President. If you give a bill a happy-sounding title but don't do the work of making tough decisions and protecting the little guys outside your circle of big contributors, I'm prepared to side with the obstructionists. Especially if they are obstructing fanciful have-our-cake-and-eat-it-too non-solutions.

Growing Centerfield

We've had an uptick in traffic here, and visitors seem to respond favorably to centrism. The posters here are encouraged, and we're thinking about some ideas that will help us grow. So in part, I'm opening this thread for suggestions from visitors of what you'd like to see more of...

And I'm floating my own idea. Now I know that a sense of good will towards other participants in a discussion is crucial in fostering productive discussion. Nevertheless, growing traffic, gaining notice, and so on may well be necessary if movement Centrism is to grow. So my idea is that we could consider some sort of regular feature that may allow us, as temporary agents provocateur, to amuse and challenge the blogosphere. I'm thinking of something along the lines of Sully's Derbyshire awards, which we could call "wingnut of the week" or month, and which could call attention, by turns, to bloviating excess on both sides of the aisle. We could even, if we did the award monthly to a lefty and a righty, have nominations and voting.

2nd the motion? Raspberries? Things you'd like to see?

Novak Addresses Democrats in 2008

Given all the speculation on this blog the last few days over who the Dems might tap to run for president in 2008, I thought some people might find it interesting that Robert Novak seems to be on the same wavelength as several of us, and writes as if he has sources to back this up:

Democratic strategists, seeking a more moderate candidate for president in 2008 and unable to find a Southern governor resembling Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, may go to the Midwest instead for Sen. Evan Bayh of Indiana.

Bayh, 48, was re-elected to a second term in a landslide Tuesday while President Bush carried the state easily and Bush's former OMB director, Mitch Daniels, was elected governor. Bayh's lifetime voting record measured by the American Conservative Union is 22 percent, high for a Democrat.

A footnote: The Democrat most clearly making himself available for 2008 at this early date is New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson. He is a former member of Congress who served as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and Secretary of Energy under President Clinton.

Being that I grew up in Indiana, I support this idea as a fellow Hoosier, but also support it as a moderate liberal. I know he is a favorite among many moderates and centrists. Hope you all find this interesting.

Ruminations on the Democrats

As long as everyone else is chiming in with an opinion, I might as well put in my two cents worth as well. No links, just some ruminations.

I think there is a significant psychological disconnect between the Democratic Party and significant portions of the electorate. Many liberals (e.g., Maureen Dowd) want to think that it is simply because of Republican scare tactics that have emphasized hate and divisiveness. And I believe there is some truth in that (although, I think it is not clear that Republicans have done this any more to Democrats than Democrats did to Republicans when the Dems were the majority). But I think Democrats are making a serious mistake if they refuse to look inward at how the electorate perceives them and why. IMO, this is related to how Democrats view the United States and the American public in general. It seems to me that there is a significant strain of thought on the left that views the United States as a disappointment if not a failure. This attitude reflects a belief that America is a somewhat “failed” experiment that has not lived up to its potential and that we are essentially a retrograde country, i.e, because they still see racism, sexism, homophobia, poverty and violence. (In the more extreme forms on the far left, it explicitly thinks that America is a racist, fundamentally unjust society.) In the current context, progressives see support for the war in Iraq and for measures opposing gay marriage and other “family values” as examples of how seriously flawed the country is. Thus, electing GWB constitutes not simply a repudiation of the Democratic campaign, but of “progressive” principles in general. As a result, the electorate that chose GWB are fundamentally backward, ignorant, and regressive.

I think these attitudes have contributed to the alienation of the Democratic Party from much of the electorate. I drifted away from liberalism in the late 80s and early 90s because I perceived that liberalism had drifted into a reflexive anti-Americanism that looked askance at traditional American values such as patriotism. In my view, and I suspect it is a view shared by many, modern liberalism, especially as reflected in the academy, see nothing but the failings of the country without any acknowledgment of the progress we have made. In effect, liberalism became like a constantly scolding parent for whom nothing a child does is good enough. Thus, regardless of our efforts to reform, regardless at progress, to “progressives”; the United States is nothing more than a racist, sexist, homophobic, violent, selfish culture undeserving of any respect. Now, that is not that these problems don’t exist, but it seemed to me that, for liberals, these failings occupied the entire space; there was nothing else to say about America. And, of course, you could not acknowledge progress because that would create complacency. There is a saying I heard years ago that applies to liberal opinion in the United States: “Good, better, best, never let it rest.” The implication of this is that America is held to a standard of perfection that no human society can achieve. (In fairness, some on the right seem to think we have already achieved this perfection and have nowhere else to go.)

Let me make it clear that I am not adopting an Ann Coulter-like idea that liberals are “treasonous” or “unpatriotic.” I don’t believe that and, in fact, I spent much of the time before the election arguing with conservatives on blogs against the conservative attempt to tar liberals as appeasers or unpatriotic. I also don’t believe that criticizing the government is unpatriotic and I myself strongly believe the war in Iraq was a mistake. However, I believe the attitudes I mentioned do exist, especially among more “progressive” minded members of the party, and they have helped to create a significant erosion in the party’s ability to appeal to the broad middle. During the heyday of the liberal Democratic ascendency (the 30s through the early (pre-Viet Nam 60s), the Democrats presented themselves as Happy Warriors. What this meant, I believe, was that Democrats had a fundamentally optimistic view of American society in spite of what failings and problems we might face. This was in contrast to conservatives who, in those days, seemed to stand for the idea that the world was a bad place and that the people were dangerous. The Democratic Party stood, in general, for an optimistic vision of society, for the idea that things are good and can get better with human effort.

In contrast, I believe today that the Democrats are now perceived, partly correctly, as an angry, negative party, its characteristics manifesting itself in “political correctness” on campuses and anger and hostility toward even minor failings in the country. The rise of New Left politics in the sixties has, I believe, left its mark in the party through identity politics, the purging from the party of social conservatives and others who don’t share what I call the prevailing “liberal social gospel,” which is the idea that America is an oppressive hostile place for minorities, women, and gays, that things are not getting better, and that the only acceptable goal is perfection. There has, in fact, been real progress that we should celebrate. This is not to deny that there is still racism and that far too many African-Americans are struggling, but to deny real progress is to fly in the face of history. IMO, one of the things that contributed to the decline of liberalism was its inability to acknowledge that, while the final battles had not been won, progress was being made.

From standpoint of practical politics, this attitude, I believe inhibits the Democratic Party’s ability to appeal to the broad middle. There is a snarky, sanctimonious quality to much of the rhetoric coming from the Democrats; anyone reading Democratic blogs will, I think, attest to that. How can you court the support of voters whom you consider either stupid or immoral? Since the election there have been comments by liberals to the effect that the passage of the gay marriage bans reflects an atmosphere of hate in the country. This is a misguided and damaging attitude. In my opinion, these bans don’t indicate hatred of gays as much as they show a reluctance to change traditional institutions. People are not saying we hate gays or want to ban their relationships; they are simply saying we don’t want to change so fast. I personally disagree with this attitude but is not an attitude of hatred. By perceiving it this way, liberals make it almost impossible to address the concerns voters have with values. After all, if these values reflect hatred, how can you compromise with or appeal to these people? Now, both sides engage in damaging racial politics. Republicans hasten to proclaim any criticism of Israel as anti-semitism; Democratics consider any reconsideration of affirmative action as racism.

This attitude, I think, has affected the ability of Democrats to articulate and sell their policies. This attitude is reflected in the way Democrats relate to the electorate; almost as if they are appealing to children. On the one hand, Democrats were reluctant to be candid with the American people on things like the war, where Kerry went so far out of his way to avoid criticizing the war itself as if Americans couldn’t take it. On the other hand, Democrats became obsessed with Bush hatred to the point where they refused to give Bush credit for anything or recognize the difficult situation he was in. It almost seemed as if many liberals wanted to blame Bush for 9/11 more than Al Quaida.

The Democratic platform today is far from radical. We stand (or should stand) for market-based economics but with sensible regulation to guard the workings of the market, affordable health care but not government-run health care, foreign policy based on a sensible balancing of morality and national interests, and freedom for individuals to choose how they live. None of these are radical ideas, yet many voters perceive the Democrats as a radical party. Why? I’m not naive enough to think that the Republican campaign tactics didn’t have an effect. But the picture of Democrats embracing the sophomoric Michael Moore (an egomaniac and avowed anti-American radical) at the time of Fahrenheit 9/11 couldn’t help but alienate the party from large portions of the electorate. It helped to create the perception that the Democratic Party could not be trusted with safeguarding the national interest.

Where are the Happy Warriors who actually believe that America has been a ray of hope in the world (albeit with failings) and can communicate this to the voters? Where is the understanding in the party that we need to reject the likes of Michael Moore and his ilk? Where is the acknowledgment that, whatever the Administration’s failings in regard to 9/11, the true evil in the world is not the Republican Party or George Bush, but the evil terrorists that crashed airplanes into buildings? (That does not mean, let me hasten to add, that we must agree with the Administration’s handling of the WOT or that it was correct in invading Iraq.) And, of course, where is the realization that values are, in many cases, more important to people than their economic self-interest?

IMO, until the American People think that the Democratic Party actually believes in America as it exists (and not some utopian project that can never be realized) and that it represents more than an academic elite with contempt for their values, we are always going to be a minority party regardless of what policies we advocate.

Mortuary Affairs

A moving interview with a Marine mortician discussing his work in Iraq. Then, there's this

Sitting at his kitchen table, Cotnoir, a licensed mortician, speaks in measured tones about his tour of duty. He is adjusting to civilian life, he says, but he still flinches when he passes under bridges, where in Iraq so many soldiers have been ambushed. When he's stuck in traffic near his home in Lawrence, he finds himself suspiciously eyeing the drivers in the cars next to him, looking for some tell-tale sign of an impending explosion.

"I just get a little jittery, a little nervous," he says. "I try to take deep breaths and let it go and remember this is Lawrence. Car bombs don't go off here."

No Comment Needed

From Davids Medienkritik (a highly recommended German blog)

Grading the Polls

RealClearPolitics grades the pollsters on their work nationally and in the battleground states.

Classical Values dissects Michael Moore's claim that

If there was one group who really came through on Tuesday, it was the young people of America.

and asks the following question:

exactly how many voters did Michael Moore directly cause to go to the polls and vote for the other side?

I would have voted for Bush anyway.  But I remember my visceral reaction to seeing Moore sitting next to Jimmy Carter at the Democratic Convention.  If I had been an undecided voter, seeing Moore treated as a guest of honor might well have persuaded me to vote for Bush.

My fellow centrists, are there any of you for whom Moore tipped the balance in favor of Bush?

Good News From Iraq

Arthur Chrenkoff continues to pass on all the things that AP, AFP, and Reuters choose not to.

Black and White and Red All Over?
A look at the past two weeks' good news from Iraq.

Pro-Choice Groups Must Bend

Steve Waldman suggests the Democrats make concessions on abortion

Republican leaders routinely sit down with their interest groups and say, in effect, "Cut me some slack and we'll win this thing." And the interest groups do—and they win. Democratic politicians have to say to pro-choice groups, "You got 100 percent pro-choice purity from the Democratic nominee—and Republican control of the White House, Senate, the House, and Supreme Court. Perhaps we could try a different approach?"

If Roe vs. Wade is overturned, I presume abortion law would go back to a state by state patchwork of laws. But Republicans might try to prohibit abortion through national legislation. Such legislation could be challenged on a states rights basis, but I suspect a Supreme Court made up of Scalia clones would allow it.

The moral of this story is that pro-choice groups must bend on abortion, or the whole post-Roe regime may break.

Thank God For Mexico?

According to Taxprof, the tax burden in the United States is 2nd lowest of the 30 mostly advanced nations in OECD. Take a look at the table

What does it say that we're sandwiched between Mexico and South Korea? Is being the lowest, which is where we may be headed, advantageous to the quality of life in the US?

Blue States Gets Bluer

Over at Preemptive Karma, Carla has a post about the election results in Oregon, which include a Democratic takeover of the Oregon Senate. Here in Massachusetts, Mitt Romney's attempt to reinvigorate Republicans in the state legislature failed.

Isn't this just another reflection of the partisan divide, with local politics aligning with the national divide? The one counter-example, where a state's local races ran against the state's preference at the federal level, seems to be Colorado.

Here we go

Iraq declares martial law

I have no idea what the prospects for "success" are for the impending offensive in Falluja. One thing seems sure - this necessary step is going to be bloody.

The Wages of Rudeness

This isn't commentary on a weighty issue, exactly, but I thought it was funny. From Josh Chavetz of Oxblog:

POLICY ANNOUNCEMENT: 99% of the email I get from our readers is civil, even when disagreeing with me, and I appreciate that. But 1% is not, and those really annoy me. So here's my new policy: if you sent me an uncivil email, I may well post, not only the email, but also your email address in hyperlink form. You have been warned: The wages of rudeness is spam.

Aftermath--Lessons

Now that the initial bitter blamestorming is dying down a bit, it might be possible to examine why the Democratic Party did so poorly in the elections, losing not just the Presidency but also more seats in the House and Senate.

So far I've heard variations of the following from the Democrats:

It's that Evil Genius, Karl Rove!

Anti-gay backlash driving higher evangelical turnout.

Red-stater knuckle-dragging Neanderthalian moronity.

The non-appearing overwhelmingly liberal youth vote.

The (ever-popular) conspiratorial claim that "It wuz rigged!"

And, naturally, the demonically influential NRA.

The finger-pointing will no doubt go on for quite a while, as that river in Egypt remains homonymically non-exclusive. It is worthwhile to note that this is a continuing trend and not a one-time event, and thus looking deeper than the surface dynamics from just this election cycle might be wise, even fruitful.

At the New York Times the clue phone continues to ring, even as Thomas Franks and Paul Krugman talk louder to drown out the bell tones. But today, Nicholas Kristoff and David Brooks have picked up the receiver, and listened to the voice on the other end. They have some very insightful things to say. The cost of not listening might just be ongoing minority status for the once-mainstream Democratic Party.

Senator Kerry: Thank You

I offer a few comments about Sen. John Kerry from someone who came semi-close to voting for him.

- In general, I admire and respect him more now than I did 12 months ago.

- I rejected every invitation to micro-evaluate his miltary service to our country. Who the hell am I to judge that?

- His immediate post-Vietnam activities are hard to understand, but I gave him a complete pardon for them for the purposes of this election.

- He was the most "electable" Democrat. Dean would have lost by 10 points.

- Kerry ran a good campaign and there was nothing he did wrong that can reasonably be argued changed the results.

- Bush won, Kerry did not lose.

Thank you, Senator Kerry. You forced a real debate.

Child Blogs

With the election over, we're thinking about new initiatives. One idea I have is for Centerfield to have children. That is, we would create new blogs, hosted at the Centrist Coalition, for centrists who lean Democrat, centrists who lean Republican, and possibly one for centrists committed to 3rd party politics, if there was interest. Centerfield would continue as is.

This initiative would not be non-partisan but rather bi-partisan. We would expect the new blogs to maintain the standards of civility which we've seen at Centerfield, and the experiment could be shut down if either of them degraded into the name-calling we see at many left and right wing blogs.

Why bother? There is one huge advantage I see in having blogs that are loosely affiliated either side of the partisan divide. That is, most political blogs are partisan, and they mostly link to their side! Centerfield is often excluded from consideration because it's on neither side. In addition to blogs, this is even more true of official party sites. Political pros dare not link to a blog that is not respectably within their orbit. To get our centrist message out, we need these gateways through the partisan divide.

Then, there's a matter of the names. I've been playing around with reds and blues, donkeys and elephants, but now I'm leanding toward: TiltingDemocrat and TiltingRepublican, which would indicate the moderate nature of our preference for either side.

Would any of you be put off by this development? Would you welcome it? I'd appreciate any suggestions about possible names.

Some Ideas for Movement Centrism

In the past couple days, the organization that sponsors this blog, the Centrist Coalition, has received a flurry of new memberships.

What's interesting to me is that our membership rate grew after the election was over. We expected new members in the week before the election -- with lots of folks logging on for political news and finding our site listed in various Google search results. But our highest signup rate ever was achieved Wednesday and Thursday, the two days after the election.

Our normal rate is about 2-3 new members a week. Wednesday and Thursday brought a total of 16 new members, which, if you do the math, is 22 times our usual signup rate.

I wonder if we're not seeing a certain nervousness out there. An anxiety not captured entirely by the notion of Bush as a two-term president, but by the sense of a lack of options. Perhaps a vague sense of having no appealing options, and Bush being a two-term president because of the absence of a solid alternative.

There has to be some way of changing that pattern, right?

Our organization is dedicated to making alternatives real -- pushing both parties so that at least one of them offers a strong leadership option each cycle ... stopping (and reversing) the erosion of centrist leaders in Congress.

This is a broad mission. It needs to include the basic elements routinely used by successful liberal and conservative groups -- advocating for candidates, campaigning, issue analysis, lobbying, participating in the public debate, etc.

I would ask you, for a moment, to think about and imagine one element of this overall picture.

Imagine that we were currently participating in the public debate. An election has just ended, and many of us feel we were lacking options. We also feel there are choices to be made on major public policy issues, and we'd like to encourage both the administration and Congress to move in the right direction.

Suppose we were able to express those thoughts and ideas through the media with an ad campaign. Imagine something simple -- kinda like the "Harry and Louise" thing the insurance companies did a while back, but more direct.

Let's say we have three spots, expressing a view on three hot issues of the moment.

Below, I will offer brief little draft scripts for those kinds of ads. I understand not all of us will agree with the positions endorsed in those drafts. The specific positions, and what issues to cover, are a matter for debate and discussion. I just offer this as a way to give an overall sense of participating actively in the public discussion and offering a new voice that is nonpartisan, balanced, and constructive.

In other words, set aside for a moment the question of whether you agree with these positions. Imagine three ads that illustrate a mixed policy perspective, some falling on the left and some the right.

Here goes.

Issue #1:

Since the presidential election, we've begun seriously discussing for the first time what would be a fundamental change in our society -- reforming Social Security by creating individual retirement accounts.

We're going to pay attention to those critical details. We hope you will too.

[End of text, followed by tag line: The Centrist Coalition: Leadership without Partisanship]

Issue #2:

Most of America is concerned today about the situation our young men and women face in Iraq.

We have a number of leaders in both parties with the right kind of expertise, understanding, and a willingness to balance the way we use force in the world with our efforts to build alliances and work constructively with the world. They're not reluctant to project American power, but they know how to build relationships with world leaders.

[During the above paragraph, flash images of Hagel, Lugar, Powell, Biden, McCain ... perhaps a few others.]

The truth is, neither party listens all that much to these balanced, informed, level-headed leaders.

We need to ask them to listen. The sooner the better.

[Tag line: The Centrist Coalition: Leadership without Partisanship]

Issue #3:

In the November election, eleven states enacted state constitutional amendments defining marriage as between a man and a woman.

Take a closer look at what's actually in the Protection of Marriage Amendment. [Flash a web address.] And if you agree that it takes away rights that have little to do with marriage, sign our petition to repeal the amendment.

We're believers too. But we don't feel our faith should be used to take things away from people.

[Tag line: The Centrist Coalition: Prosperity, Security, Inclusion]

REASONS WHY EXPLAINED - AT LEAST OPINED

I promise my last take on the election. Trust me, I'm just as glad it's over as everyone else, but I thought these were both interesting commentaries.

Thomas Frank of the NY Times tells us why Why The Republicans Won.

Andrei Cherny, also of the NY Times tells us why The Democrats Lost.

Arafat

Well, we've pretty much beaten the US election bloody on this blog. Life continues in the rest of the world.

Some lives are burning brighter than others, however. Mr. Arafat is obviously a very sick man. Any thoughts on what's going to happen with respect to the Arab-Israeli conflict and in the middle-east if Arafat does not recover from this illness? What will that mean to the idea of a Palestinian state? What will that mean to the way we conduct our foreign policy with respect to this issue?

My $.05 On the Democratic Loss, Part I: Karl Rove and the Presidency (Next: Congress)

This post is my oar in the water on what happened to us Democrats the day before yesterday. My version is not a simple one. Note that nowhere will I talk about Democrats having impossibly liberal ideas. I will talk about Karl Rove's actual role (as opposed to the fantasies), and how he has succeeded in radicalizing many Democrats. After explaining what I think about Rove's operation, I'll slog through case analysis of the various aspects of the loss - President, Senate, and House.

In fact, it's so long and complicated that I'm splitting it up.

Karl Rove

It just occurred to me recently to to explain Rove here, after somebody here in Austin asked me about him.

The first thing you have to realize about Rove is that, despite his Richelieu-like reputation, he's a centrist. As far as I can tell, he generally worked for candidates that were centrist at least in some aspects (Nixon, the Bushes); he consistently supports moderate Republicans over conservative ones.

Of course, he's good at getting out the base (gay marriage), but his skill at bringing centrist voters to his side is what makes him remarkable. Rove's strategy is to bring centrists to his side by scaring them. He does that by angering Democrats to radicalize them. Centrists, in turn, are scared of the radicalized Democrats being trusted with anything more important than dogcatcher. His campaigns for Bush II have left a long trail of paranoid, radicalized Democrats.

One interesting question here is of the ethics of his actions. This is definitely dirty pool, but doesn't quite make it out to being evil. If we asked Rove about this, I suspect he would point out that it's important that leaders be able to stay calm in a crisis such as 9/11. On the other hand, I wonder if anybody has ever tried Rovifying Rove?

The Presidency

This race was different than the rest. It was less classically Rovian than the others, but we lost anyway, IMHO because Kerry isn't much of an executive leader. He's a good legislative leader (no matter what the Republicans say), a smart, strong-hearted man with strong ethics, but the much higher ratio of Presidents who were Governors vs Presidents who were Senators suggests that a different skill is needed from Senators than from Governors or Presidents ("executive leadership," let's call it).

Gore was the same way. Both candidates followed Bush' lead on issues (war, education) and terms of engagement, rather than choose their own way, though both fought strongly on that turf. But how could they win? Bush and Rove chose the turf, and enraged them and/or who might helped them. Note that Gore was Rovified by Bush spending lots of time in Tennessee, but Kerry successfully resisted.

Some years I think the reason we Democrats hold the Presidency less often than Republicans is that we are worse at picking good leaders than the GOP is (yes, IMHO Carter and Clinton were both strong leaders). In this case, it's been three terms since we had a good candidate for President. Why? For one thing, we've gotta stop nominating VPs. Only Bush I breaks the modern pattern of Veeps losing, and he's the exception that proves the rule: the one with executive leadership experience (an oil company, CIA). Also, he did it by cloning Reagan marketing, not in his own right. Anyway, a rule like that would've spared us wasting time on Gore, Mondale, and Humphrey. Similarly, maybe we should require all potential nominees to have served either as a governor or in a Cabinet.

Stay tuned for the next exciting installment, Rove vs Congressional Donkeys

Oh, and I'd like to thank Kerry for taking one for the team and not looking for chads in Ohio. That was a class act, one that may have saved many, many jobs, and and certainly was a good start toward restoring faith in our election system. I'm sure there was no shortage of opposition, but he did the right thing anyway. That seems to be just a part of him. You know, I notice that we have a minority leader job open...if we're even a little smart, we'll choose somebody who's shown Rove-resistance like the experienced Sen Kerry (fat chance!).

Krugman: No Retreat

Not one inch

That seems to be what most Democrats are saying. I guess they'll wait for the Democratic Majority to emerge.

Domestic Reactions to Bush's Reelection

This post contains key quotes from publications that opposed President Bush's reelection -- the New York Times, the New Republic, the Nation, and the American Prospect.  Those of us who hope for a lowering of the body politics' temperature now that the election is over are likely to be disappointed.

From the New York Times:

• Tom Friedman: "This was not an election. This was station identification. I'd bet anything that if the election ballots hadn't had the names Bush and Kerry on them but simply asked instead, 'Do you watch Fox TV or read The New York Times?' the Electoral College would have broken the exact same way."

• Maureen Dowd: "The president got re-elected by dividing the country along fault lines of fear, intolerance, ignorance and religious rule. He doesn't want to heal rifts; he wants to bring any riffraff who disagree to heel . . . W. ran a jihad in America so he can fight one in Iraq - drawing a devoted flock of evangelicals, or 'values voters,' as they call themselves, to the polls by opposing abortion, suffocating stem cell research and supporting a constitutional amendment against gay marriage . . . Mr. Bush, whose administration drummed up fake evidence to trick us into war with Iraq, sticking our troops in an immoral position with no exit strategy, won on 'moral issues'."

• Garry Wills: "The secular states of modern Europe do not understand the fundamentalism of the American electorate. It is not what they had experienced from this country in the past. In fact, we now resemble those nations less than we do our putative enemies.  Where else do we find fundamentalist zeal, a rage at secularity, religious intolerance, fear of and hatred for modernity? Not in France or Britain or Germany or Italy or Spain. We find it in the Muslim world, in Al Qaeda, in Saddam Hussein's Sunni loyalists. Americans wonder that the rest of the world thinks us so dangerous, so single-minded, so impervious to international appeals. They fear jihad, no matter whose zeal is being expressed." 

From the New Republic:

• The Editors: "Not everybody to the left of Bush is like everybody else to the left of Bush; and it would be catastrophic for the Democratic Party to wallow now in the sort of Michael Moore leftishness that made many Americans worry whether John Kerry was sufficiently obsessed with American security, and sufficiently excited about American power, to protect them at home and to promote their purposes abroad. (On the question of American power, the American people are right and Ted Kennedy is wrong.) An internecine quarrel must now begin. But it cannot begin where there is only alienation, and the self-fulfilling confusion of the Bush administration with the United States of America. This country is bigger than its every president. This Constitution is not easy to destroy. This is not the apocalypse. But it is the most formidable challenge to American liberalism in our time."

• Peter Beinart: "American liberalism is going into a deep internal exile. This will be, at least with regard to our public institutions, Tom DeLay's America--craven toward the economically powerful and vicious toward the economically weak, contemptuous of open debate and thuggish toward an increasingly embittered world . . . The path back to Democratic victory does not lie in cultural issues--it never has, and the best that can be hoped for in that arena is a draw. It lies in a more compelling economic agenda and a more convincing national security one."

From the Nation:

• The Editors: "TV anchors and the candidates themselves call for a new civility and ask the public to 'come together' as one people. Pay no attention. The progressive movement in this country has suffered a huge reversal. But the struggle for the country's future--and its very soul--was anything but settled. It will be renewed at a higher level of intensity, and for higher stakes. There must be a fierce, protracted resistance in defense of democracy . . . John Kerry did not lose this election in the South (those defeats were fully expected). He lost it in leading industrial states that, given their economic condition, should have belonged to the Democrats. Kerry advocated establishment views, on trade and globalization, for instance, that distanced him from his natural constituency. He could not find the words and images to speak authentically about their lives. He did not offer plausible remedies to their pain . . . At least half of the country understands that the war in Iraq is unwinnable. The most immediate need, perhaps, is for a revived antiwar movement, which not only calls for a withdrawal from Iraq but opposes and prevents new bloody adventures."

• Ari Berman: "The
  biggest outrage imaginable occurred yesterday. Despite a lagging economy, an
  unpopular war in Iraq and unprecedented energy on the other side, Republicans
  actually increased their majorities in Congress and held the Presidency. How did
  this happen? A look at last night's exit polls reveal that Republicans
  effectively manipulated voter's anxieties about the threat from terrorism
  abroad and gay marriage at home to solidify their mandate."

• Katrina vanden Heuvel: "The American Right
  understands we are two nations, and cares less about healing than about holding
  power. A Bush wins forces us to understand, in a very deep way, what that means
  for us and for the values and institutions we care about. Not that they are wrong,
  or rejected or weighed down by "identity politics" or some other
  rationale for surrender. But that they are in desperate danger and we need to
  start thinking along the lines of how to resist, delay, deflect, oppose and
  ultimately defeat the assault on our freedoms. As progressives, we will need to
  marshal at least as much dedication, purpose, strategic focus and tactical
  ruthlessness, and The Nation is one of the few places that will have
  earned the trust of over 40 percent of the American people who were against
  Bush and all his works from the beginning . . . And we should be thinking about
  the indispensable work of resistance. We need to identify legislative and
  administrative choke points where Bush's initiatives can be blocked, and make
  clear to both legislators and their constituents that the days of go-along in
  the interest of non-partisan comity have to stop."

From the American Prospect:

• Jim Sleeper: "The Bush camp didn't resort to force or fraud in the voting process itself to win ratification of its old vision of American character and destiny . . . But force and fraud are coursing through the republic's bloodstream and discourse more powerfully than at any time since the early Cold War . . . In some ways, of course, liberalism asked for this. A 'rights'-obsessed liberalism that prattles on about respecting all 'differences' and suspending moral judgments ends up having to rely on virtues and beliefs that liberalism itself cannot nourish, much less impose. Combine such relativism with a misguided respect for the 'rights' of intimately intrusive corporate marketers and you have millions leading lives of quiet desperation and degradation and looking for a Billie Sunday in a commander in chief. On Tuesday, they came out in droves, blaming social decay on liberals, not the casino-corporate economy . . . The challenge for liberals is not to mock those who are being oriented like magnet filings toward a darkening, doomed crusade but to acknowledge American liberalism's own estrangement from a national character that is often, heaven help us, a balancing act as weird as that of a Jack Nicholson movie character, tottering along on a tightrope between rampant materialism and rapturous faith."
  

• Robert Reich: "I don't think most Americans rejected John Kerry's policies. It was Bush's moral vision they found more compelling. When politicians talk about having a plan for this or a policy for that, many eyes glaze over. But when they speak with righteous indignation -- with passion and conviction about what is morally right to do or morally offensive -- they can inspire the nation . . . My recommendation to Democrats is not to become more religious. Religion is a personal matter. But perhaps Democrats need somewhat fewer plans and policies, and a bit more moral conviction. They also need to talk more about faith -- faith in what this great nation can accomplish if we work together . . . I'm not saying Democrats have to adopt my particular moral positions. But unless or until Democrats return to larger questions of public morality, they won't inspire the American public."

Open Thread

By request, an open thread. Talk about whatever.

DLC And NDN Sound Complacent

Will Marshall of the DLC and Simon Rosenberg of the NDN were interviewed on NPR today(link to archived program available from this page)

These two may be the best minds in the Democratic Party, but I think they may be too complacent. They feel that the Democrats have made progress in the last 4 years. But the Republicans have made more progress faster.

Deeper soul-searching is required.

Any of you who can listen, please do, and leave some comments. Because it's archived, you can easily skip over the useless stuff, like the interview with Maxine Waters.

John Edwards: The Worst Pick Ever

Jack Kemp is off the hook. He is no longer the most meaningless nominee for Vice President in this country’s history. That honor now belongs to the former Senator from North Carolina.

Kerry bought the Washington D.C. establishment’s argument that Edwards would play well in rural America. As it turns out most rural Americans saw a trial lawyer in Edwards and not one of them; Kerry not only lost rural areas of the country, but he lost them big time. In my book, Kerry failed in three ways. First, he never had a consistent message on the two most important issues of the race, Iraq and Terrorism. Second, he never got past the Northeastern liberal label with rural America. Third, he listened to people like Bob Shrum, who has done nothing but write one good speech for Ted Kennedy and lose Presidential elections, and picked a guy for Vice President that probably would not have won re-election in his own state.

Had former Ohio Senator John Glenn, former Florida Senator Bob Graham, or current Florida Senator Bill Nelson been the nominee, all three more centrist on social issues and more qualified to talk about Iraq and terrorism, it would have been enough to put Kerry over the hump in one of the two most important states in the election, and we would be talking about cabinet picks.

North American, Redistricted

Take a look at the new map.

The Definition Of Insanity

I've heard it defined as "doing the same thing over and over again, and yet expecting a different result." My friend, Pinko Feminist Hellcat, is a liberal who doesn't want to leave the country, but rather stay and fight harder. But how does that differ from what liberals have been doing and failed at--except in intensity?

I think that liberals have to give a little on their agenda, so that they can win, and earn back public trust. And it's not just a matter of communication. There has to be real change in the agenda. Congress comes first. It's a tought nut to crack with gerrymandering and incumbency. But to win it, Democrats are going to have to run good candidates in red state districts, and not embarrass them through excessive antics in their blue state base.

Youth Did Turn Out

Contrary to initial reports, youth turned out, according to David C. King of the Kennedy School. They're just not especially liberal

While 29 percent of the general public call themselves "born again Christians," fully 35 percent of college students embrace the label.

No Wonder the Democrats Lost

If you want to understand the utter dichotomy in world view between the Coasts and the Heartland, read these articles in the New York Times.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/04/nyregion/04york.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/04/politics/campaign/04coast.html

They are hilarious, yet infuriating at the same time. The absolute arrogance, self-absortion, and lack of perspective among the left is simply stunning. If this is the Democratic base, we are in big trouble. This illustrates, to me, a good reason why Kerry lost and the problems the Democrats face in future elections.

Does this Just Not Matter Now?

Anyone wanna speculate on why only CNN reported this, and why it then disappeared from their front page by midafternoon:

LOS ANGELES, California (AP) -- Explosives were looted from the Al-Qaqaa ammunitions site in Iraq while outnumbered U.S. soldiers assigned to guard the materials watched helplessly, soldiers told the Los Angeles Times.

About a dozen U.S. troops were guarding the sprawling facility in the weeks after the April 2003 fall of Baghdad when Iraqi looters raided the site, the newspaper quoted a group of unidentified soldiers as saying.

U.S. Army reservists and National Guardsmen witnessed the looting and some soldiers sent messages to commanders in Baghdad requesting help, but received no reply, they said.

"It was complete chaos. It was looting like L.A. during the Rodney King riots," one officer said.

The eyewitness accounts reported by the Times are the first provided by U.S. soldiers and bolster claims that the U.S. military had failed to safeguard the powerful explosives, the newspaper said.

I didn't see it on Fox or MSNBC. and CNN faded it off their front page in a half a day. What's the deal?

Tidbits

Sorry, no links. All easily locatable:

John Edwards' wife has breast cancer. They found out yesterday. Clearly they are not having a good week. Prayers to them that ultimately it's been found in time, is treatable, and she comes through OK.

Fox and other sites are leaking that John Ashcroft is going to resign by january. This is in addition to the widespread assumption that Colin Powell's departure is a foregone conclusion. BTW, is Powell finished? Might he flop sides?

Is the centrist demise overstated? MSNBC is reporting that Arlen Specter has warned the President not to nominate SC justices that lean towards overturning Roe v. Wade.

Centrists Lose Leverage

Important article in the Washington Post: Rightward Shift May Squeeze Centrists

"Regrettably, we have seen an erosion in the Senate of centrists on both sides of the aisle," said Sen. Olympia J. Snowe of Maine, a Republican moderate whose leverage may drop substantially in the next Congress. She said she hoped Bush will push for cooperation between the two parties.

Another GOP moderate, Sen. Lincoln D. Chafee (R.I.), expressed even deeper disappointment, telling the Providence Journal he would not rule out switching to the Democratic Party.

A Dangerous, Stereotyping Meme

I'm seeing a dangerous meme (for Democrats) meme out there - that Bush won solely because of the sheeple down South here. Under this construction, Bush won because he got zillions of votes from ultra-religious sheeple who've been brainwashed by their church into voting for Republicans.

It's evil and dangerous for three reasons. First, the 'sheeple' thing is a nasty stereotype no better than talking about japs or kikes. Second, it's politically dangerous because this is exactly what Karl Rove wants; he loves to see Democrats foaming at the mouth instead of thinking. Third, it denies the importance of centrists in Bush' coalition and attempts to head off the hard task of actually thinking a bit about how to get centrists back in the (D) column.

There is a more moderate version of the meme, which NPR has been using, which is better because it doesn't explicitly stereotype. It says that Bush won because of those who saw morals as their primary issue in the election. But it still denies the importance of Bush centrists.

There is some truth in it, of course. Bush certainly used the gay marriage issue to get out his base. He knew it was wrong, but went along to inspire conservatives, hoping there wouldn't be consequences. Of course, the gay marriage amendment that he worked on went nowhere, but the anti-gay- marriage meme, thus validated, went on to result in the passage of some IMO ugly ballot initiatives.

But there are two halves of a political coalition. He could never have won without centrists like on this blog voting for him. Bush voters from this blog and people like Instapundit and Hitchens had different reasons. Hell, even the evangelical Christians so blithely described as "sheeple" are, by the numbers, *mostly* probably more interested in questions of cultural compatibility than cultural imperialism over the rest of us (although certainly *some* want to implement biblical law broadly in US law).

So the question we Democrats must ask is, why didn't more centrists vote Democrat? My next post will be my $0.05 on that.

Where go the Democrats?

Wasting no time, pundits have been casting out names as to who the Democrats might turn to for 2008. The names of Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, and Barack Obama have all been thrown out there as possible contenders for '08.

My feeling is that none of these candidates are right for the Democrats for 2008. Mrs. Clinton may be well loved within the Democratic party, but she is by no means well loved by many Independents and Republicans. John Edwards, IMO, lacks the experience to be president (and now he's become tainted by being the running mate of a (losing) "Massachusetts liberal." As far as Obama, one term in the Senate is not going to give him enough experience to be a realistic contender for 2008.

Agree, disagree? Aside from these individuals, who do you think the Democrats would be wise to look to next time around?

The Supreme Court

Even before the second Bush term starts, it seems guaranteed that sometime early in that term (or perhaps sooner) we will be faced with one of the ultimate polarizing issues -- who should be the next Chief Justice of the Supreme Court?

Accepting the fact that George Bush is a Republican who was just reelected based in large part by votes of social conservatives, I still think that Scalia or Thomas are not realistic choices. In my view, his best choice might be to elevate Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy, a moderate conservative. Obviously, Bush would also have to nominate someone to replace Kennedy and I could go on at length about this topic, but I will stop here and we can hash it out in the comments (to the extent people are interested).

Turnout

The highest turnout since 1968, and yet conservatives were a higher proportion of voters. In fact, Kerry won among self-described moderates.

It's obvious to me that if the Democratic Party is to get back into the game, it has to shift to the right. With the increasingly southern character of the GOP, there are Northern Republicans who are at an increasing cultural distance from the bulk of the GOP. Will Democrats try to bring them into the fold?

Don't, according to liberal bloggers I've been reading. They say the Democrats (and DLC specifically) are too much like Republicans as it is. Shift to the left, and bring out the voters who didn't vote this year!

A strategy based on hard-core non-voters seem like a recipe for perpetual failure.

Mandate

Wizbang argues that George Bush has a mandate. As I was drafting this post, the "mandate" issue was also raised as a topic on Hardball.

A mandate to do what other than to "stay the course" in Iraq and continue to take the fight to terrorists? It seems to me that even if Bush had won by 100 electoral votes, he could not claim a mandate on how to deal with issues that he did not want to talk about during the campaign.

One Centrist Perspective on the Election

I'd like to share a few thoughts on the election. I'm writing this before looking at any of the other comments here, or the opinion pieces no doubt being published in many places today. It's just my personal take on the whole thing.

I look at it from two directions. First, what this says about our elections and the way we go about selecting national leaders. And second, what we can expect -- and hope for -- over the next four years.

What we've had, fundamentally, is an election between two distinctly flawed candidates. We have a president who's not very good at managing our fiscal situation, and who has led us into a costly war that hasn't turned out (so far) to offer benefits in our overall effort combating terrorism.

We have a challenger with a long foreign policy record that betrays semi-pacifist or idealist instincts. The Democrats were lulled by a chest-full of medals and a record of personal heroism. They should have looked at -- and thought about -- the guy who led off his first Senate campaign with a pitch for the nuclear freeze movement, who opposed the first Gulf War, and who voted against reconstruction funds after supporting the second Iraq war.

They should have thought about it because this is the first election after 9/11. If you have a history of electoral weakness on security issues, as the Democrats do, this is a moment when you turn to your foreign policy moderates and find someone who can credibly project strength. I don't think the Democrats noticed that they weren't getting that.

We seem, in short, to have had an election without a solid candidate. Neither had a strong case to make in his favor, and relied mainly on attacking the other guy and highlighting the things that make the other guy unacceptable. Ironically, they were both right.

The country ought to be asking -- and centrists, especially -- how it is that we had these two guys as our choices. We have quite a strong bench of elected officials with decades of expertise in world affairs and a realistic, balanced view of the world -- guys like Hagel, Lugar, Biden, and Powell. One in this group actually belongs to the administration, but is not listened to, and soon will be leaving.

This is, honestly, really, really wrong. The most natural thing in the world is for one of those guys to be president -- or for the president, at a minimum, to listen to one of these guys.

Neither party found a way to offer us that option. We will have to ask with a stronger voice next time.

The Next Four Years
As for the immediate future, I see both opportunities and challenges.

The single biggest opportunity, in my opinion, is Social Security reform. The president campaigned openly for a partially privatized system, and made noises that he's serious this time. That's very encouraging to me because I think our window for doing something dramatic is rapidly closing. If we don't do it now, it's likely to offer no help to the generation that will be retiring in the next decade or two.

Look at the projections for these kinds of plans, and you see a big drop in the Social Security trust fund during the first few years, after which the line rises and ultimately passes the projections for the current system. We have to endure a few years of fiscal difficulty to reach the point where private accounts can improve the balance sheet.

I think it's now or never.

Other policy areas are less hopeful. The big one, of course, is the confluence of issues in the foreign policy arena that affect our security and our success in combating terrorism -- the Iraq war, the efforts to prevent Iran and North Korea from getting WMDs, the efforts to secure vulnerable WMD-related materials worldwide, etc.

We simply don't know if the imminent push to retake insurgent-held areas of Iraq will make it possible to restore order in the long run. There are few clear options, and a deteriorating security environment. What we probably have is some kind of emerging civil war in Iraq, with Sunni-held areas refusing to submit to majority control by the Shiites.

Maybe a military push will clear that up. But is that likely? Can the constant irritant of a large U.S. military presence outlast the determination of Sunnis to battle the Iraqi government?

This is why we need the Hagels and Powells of the world -- people who are tough enough to take decisive action, but smart and skilled enough to marshal our diplomatic and economic resources too.

With Iran and North Korea, we've been at a virtual stand-still diplomatically for almost the whole first Bush term. It's possible that time, along with a tough stance, will result in cooperation, or perhaps lead to the collapse of the North Korean regime. It's more likely that one or both regimes will simply continue stalling while building their nuclear weapons. I think they both see it as a matter of regime survival during a Bush presidency.

Most likely, the bad guys will have lots of nasty weapons by the end of a second Bush term. There are paths away from that result, but they are tenuous at best.

Finally, I think we should take a moment to consider moral and cultural issues, because yesterday's election builds on what seems like an emerging electoral momentum on the part of religious conservatives.

According to exit polls, moral issues ranked highly in the minds of voters. My state of Ohio enacted a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage that was written so broadly as to potentially interfere with any kind of partnership benefits or legal arrangements between same-sex couples.

There are gay men and women in Ohio today who don't know that their health benefits are legal, or that they can enter into voluntary legal arrangements that would ultimately be recognized in the courts.

I sense a new level of determination on these issues -- for example, the resurgent brand of traditional Catholicism that says it's your religious duty to enforce moral convictions via the law.

And I see the likelihood of two or three new justices on the Supreme Court.

It feels like the cultural battle has been joined, and the other side is grabbing a lot of territory. I think we need to stand up to it during these next four years and offer a competing vision most Americans would find quite appealing -- one based on tolerance, inclusion, and personal freedom.

Kerry Concedes

Just heard on the radio that NPR and ABC are confirming Kerry is going to give a concession speech at 1PM.

Post-Mortem Open Thread

Bush has won. Time to wake up and smell the coffee, John. Time for us to pick over the bones. This thread is for whatever you noticed during the coverage and thoughts about what to prioritize and where to head now that a 2nd Bush term seems assured.

A few things I noticed. NBC reporters were openly gleeful when they thought Kerry was winning, and Fox noticeably dour. Later on I thought it was petty of Fox not to put California in Kerry's column right away like everyone else did. Who were they kidding?

I went to bed when __I__ called Florida for Bush ahead of the sackless media. They've been over-chastened. Maybe they need some sort of conditional call with a map that uses pale and dark colors. But these trends were obvious well ahead of the networks making much of them.

I never thought Kerry would take Ohio, it polled red virtually all fall. And this is the most amazing thing to me, how much each guy "held serve." I think if you projected each state on the basis of what the majority of the fall polls said, you came VERY close to the actual results. So many of us were looking for a break, and there WAS no break. I was looking for a curveball, and it was a fastball the whole time.

I entirely agree with the idea that the democrats need to move to the right if they want to start breaking the GOP grip on the southern and southwestern states. Catering to the fringier elements of their base, IMO, would be a disaster. I hope they don't feel the need to try it once just to figure this out. If so, we could be headed towards John McCain cleaning Howard Dean's clock 1972 style.

But I disagree with those who are calling the democrats DOA based on this. It was a closely contested election under special circumstances. I don't see any reason why a democrat clearer, tougher, more middle-american, and more accomplished than Kerry can't compete in 2008. If they're smart, they start looking for moderate democratic governors with a little bit of folksy appeal, and someone who doesn't transmit liberal intelligentsia like Kerry does.

Open Thread - Election Results

The polls have closed in a few states. Here's where to comment on the election results. Use the thread below to continue discussion about your own personal voting experience.

Open Thread - Centerfield Exit Poll

This means you!

Go out and vote, and afterward, tell us who you voted for. Here's a chance for all you lurkers, and readers who've never left a comment, to pipe up.

Tell us what state you voted in, and about any local races of interest. No need to explain your vote. Just shout it out!

(By the way, I'll keep adjusting the time on this post as necessary, to keep it as the first entry in the blog today)

Polling Problem Watch

The polling site finder mypollingsite.com has created an associated site, Blog The Vote, to report on polling problems.

http://www.evoting-experts.com/

Say No to Drudge

Just wanted to add my blogger voice to the notion of not linking to or discussing the inevitable leak of early exit polling data that will most likely be posted in a few places this afternoon -- Drudge being the most prominent possibility.

I don't think media outlets should post actual votes until we've all had the chance to go and have our say. We're a really small media outlet, but still.

This is a collective weblog, so perhaps other bloggers disagree.

Update: Tully points to this most helpful, informative piece on exit polling by the Mystery Pollster. Check it out.

Another Tied Poll

Yet another statistically tied poll. Ho-hum.

But this one was taken in Iraq in mid-October by Baghdad's Center for Research and Strategic Studies:

About 21 percent of Iraqis polled favor John Kerry for president. Some 17 percent want four more years of Bush. But, with a built-in four percent margin of error, the two candidates might well be in a dead heat in Iraq, too.

But here's the rub: By an overwhelming majority of almost 60 percent, Iraqis just don't care who holds the job that will so largely influence this country's future.

Zogby's Call

FWIW, Zogby's call is here.

Another Kind Of Prediction: v1.0

Question: What will v1.0 of the vote look like, in terms of hacker 0wning and bug production, before the lawyers get to work?

An Election Day Perspective

BrothersJudd Blog: A BROTHERS JUDD PSA: Orrin Judd has posted some beautifully written and inspirational thoughts on the meaning of Election Day:

At the bottom of all the tributes paid to democracy is the little man, walking into the little booth, with a little pencil, making a little cross on a little bit of paper. . . . --G. K. Chesterton

While I'll freely admit I'd be enjoying today more if the President had a ten point lead, nothing beats Election Day. Even after the blossoming of representative governments we saw at the end of the Cold War we still encounter a world today where a couple billion people are fighting for a say in their own governance. Meanwhile, the men of our own family (if you'll forgive some self-reference) have voted in a presidential election every four years for over two centuries--and at least one Orrin Judd has voted in every presidential back to 1840. You can probably count on one hand the number of countries that have had something even approximating their current form of government for that long.[1] America is sometimes, usually contemptuously, called a young nation, but we are really just about the oldest, because we got to history's final form so much sooner than others and have maintained it uninterrupted. When we go to the polls today we will add one more stone to the long wall that our forefathers built up before us and which our children will certainly keep adding to long after we're gone. It is a privilege that should humble us and for which we must be grateful. It is a trust that's been handed down and that we're obligated to hand on in turn.

Today is not a day for partisan passion or knots in the stomach, not a day to whip yourself into a frenzy about the nation going to heck in a handcart if your guy loses, but a day to marvel at what we have here, the Republic blessed by Providence and kept by millions of hands and hearts and minds since 1789. Vote today and vote joyfully, for we are a people too favored by fortune to ever take lightly this gift, that we get to be those little men in the little booths making the crosses that determine who gets to represent us.

[1] According to a comment attached to this post, there are only seven: U.S., U.K., Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Switzerland, and Sweden.

The Tradition Continues...

In Philadelphia, the hallowed tradition of poll-fixing apparently endures.

Drudge is reporting that several machines in Philadelphia were found to have hundreds of votes on them before the polls opened. Named to the Electoral Hall of Shame so far are:

Ward 7 (1 machine noted, 292 votes on it):
The 2000 election results for Ward 7 were Gore 4,342 Bush 660

Ward 12 (1 machine noted, 456 votes on it):
The 2000 election results for Ward 12 were Gore 7,821 Bush 320

Ward 37 (6 machines, 1000+ votes on them):
The 2000 election results for Ward 37 were Gore 4,899 Bush 216

In Ward 30 (2000 results Gore 4,679 Bush 408) it is being reported that a Republican poll watcher was threatened with a gun, and that police are on the scene.

Second Dutch Critic Of Islam Murdered

Theo Van Gogh, a descendent of the brother of Vincent Van Gogh, has been murdered in Amsterdam.

A filmmaker who is a relative of the painter Vincent van Gogh was slain in an Amsterdam street Tuesday after receiving death threats over a movie he made criticizing the treatment of women under Islam. A suspect, a 26-year-old man with dual Dutch-Moroccan nationality, was arrested after a shootout with officers that left him wounded, police said.

I think it's fair to say that freedom of expression is under threat in Europe, at least when it comes to speaking about Islamic radicalism. For Americans, this means that while we should be sensitive to European public opinion, we cannot look to Europe for leadership in our struggle against terrorism.

It is time for predictions

At this point, I invite everyone to go out on a limb and offer an opinion as to (1) which candidate you think is going to win (a) the popular vote, and (b) the electoral vote, and (2) by what margins.

I will vote for Bush but, as I indicated in a comment to Rick's most recent post, I make Kerry a 5 to 4 favorite at this point. Playing with the LA Times interactive electoral vote tracker, my complete speculation is that Kerry will win the popular vote by less than 0.5 percent, and the Electoral College result will be Kerry 272, Bush 266. But that speculation assumes that Kerry needs and wins Hawaii. If it comes down to Hawaii, which appears to be in play, aggressive litigation everywhere else is probably inevitable.

I hope that my speculation is wrong. I want a reasonably decisive winner more than anything else.

Confidence Gap

Matt Yglesias posts an interesting tidbit.

according to the latest Washington Post poll, 48 percent of respondents intend to vote for John Kerry. 48 percent intend to vote for George Bush. But 53 percent say Bush will win, while just 33 percent say Kerry will win

Kissinger on "America's Assignment" -- Part 2

This is the second and final part of the former Secretary of State's thoughts on the challenges that the winner of tomorrow's election will face and the policies he should pursue. It covers pre-emption, nuclear proliferation, and the long challenge.

3. Pre-emption

Kissinger begins be generalizing upon what was experienced in the run-up to the Iraq war:

When implemented by a power with the overwhelming military preponderance of the United States, the [pre-emption] doctrine prompts claims of hegemony by some on the American side and increasing resistance by others, particularly members of traditional alliances.

After asserting that "No nation, no matter hard powerful, can organize the international system by itself," he gives his prescription for American foreign policy:

The goal of U.S. foreign policy must be to turn dominant power into shared responsibility—to conduct policy, as the Australian scholar Coral Bell has written, as if the international order were composed of many centers of power, even while we are aware of our strategic pre-eminence. It implies the need for a style of consultation less focused on imposing immediate policy prescriptions than achieving a common definition of long-range purposes.

Kissinger concludes this section with this advice:

The newly elected president could contribute greatly to a new global order by indicating a willingness to discuss international principles of pre-emption—even while reserving the right to defend national security alone as a last resort.

4. Nuclear Proliferation

Until now, Kissinger avers, nuclear weapons have been in the possession of countries "with everything to lose and nothing to gain from assaulting the international order." He is greatly concerned about the spread of nuclear weapons to North Korea and Iran, as these countries have "worrisome agendas." With nuclear weapons in their hands,

Deterrence will lose its traditional meaning even with respect to state-to-state relations. With such a variety of nuclear powers, it will no longer be clear who is responsible for deterring whom and by what means. Second-order issues can escalate into nuclear conflict. The possibilities of miscalculation grow. Even if the new nuclear countries do not use their weapons, they can become a shield behind which to step up terrorist challenges.

How has the international community reacted to the dangers posed by North Korea and Iran?

The international community has been torn between premonition of nuclear catastrophe and the escapism of treating warnings about proliferation as an example of American bellicosity. In some quarters on both sides of the Atlantic, the issue is presented as a case for testing whether pressure or diplomacy should serve as a principal tool . . . In practice, the distinction between diplomacy and pressure is academic since diplomacy is never abstract; it inevitably involves an amalgam of both. The challenge is to determine the proper mix.

Kissinger has very harsh words for policies that provide incentives in return for denuclearization, and insists that negotiations be multilateral, not bilateral:

Invariably, proliferating countries claim that they are seeking merely to participate in the peaceful uses of nuclear energy or to enhance electricity production or both. Countries determined to prevent proliferation are therefore tempted to provide incentives in the form of guaranteed alternative sources of energy or of nuclear fuel for power plants. Yet this approach generally fails, because the ultimate objectives of the proliferating country are political and strategic, not economic.

A policy of offering material incentives in return for denuclearization is likely to fail, however appealing it may be in the abstract. For the incentives in one way or another increase the dependence of the proliferating country on the states against which the proliferation is really directed. Progress is unlikely unless it involves, at the least, the implication of pressure and a goal that addresses the security concerns of all interested parties. Multilateral talks, including the proliferating country, are essential.

. . . the solution cannot be left to bilateral U.S. talks with the proliferators. The insistence on U.S.-North Korea bilateralism would leave America as the sole enforcer of any agreement at the borders of China. And it would invite Pyongyang to use the new agreement for future blackmail—the pattern it followed after the bilateral agreement of 1994. The same applies in a different context to relations with Iran.

Reality therefore imposes a time limit on these negotiations—or else the newly elected president is likely to leave a fearsome legacy by the end of his term. The all-consuming queries then will be: How does a society react to a nuclear explosion of undetermined origin? How should the world react to a nuclear war between emerging nuclear countries or the use of nuclear weapons by emerging nuclear countries against non-nuclear adversaries? At what point do the existing nuclear powers decide that a world of unrestrained nuclear proliferation is too dangerous and that they must impose nonproliferation for the survival of humanity?

5. The Long Challenge

After recalling that the emergence of a unified Germany under Bismarck unbalnced the European system by introducing a state stronger than each of its neighbors, Kissinger brings our attention to China:

In our age, the rise of China as a potential superpower is of even greater historical significance, marking as it does a shift in the center of gravity of world affairs from the Atlantic to the Pacific.

As to U.S. policy, Kissinger says that, while we should maintain our traditional opposition to hegemonial aspirations over Asia, our long-term relationship with China "should not be driven by expectations of a strategic showdown." Continuing, he asserts that China and the U.S. "require a permanent strategic dialogue at a high level seeking a common definition of long-range purposes . . ."

Turning to globalization, Kissinger fears a revival of colonial era rivalries:

The equable management of access to energy and raw materials is beyond the capacity of the international system as presently constituted. If nothing is done, there is the real risk of a return to the rivalries of the colonial era—the contest over the direction of pipelines replacing the contest over territory—and a commodity pricing crisis that could drive the world into general recession. These issues must be addressed with great urgency by the newly elected president—in concert with directly affected trading and financial partners.

Kissinger concludes his lengthy article with his thoughts on the stresses in transatlantic relations. More fundamental than the disagreement over Iraq are generational changes on both sides of the pond and the Europeans' focus on the European Union:

The impasse is partly due to the fact that the generation that formed the Atlantic relationship has passed from the scene. In the United States, the new leadership group is preoccupied with the challenge of radical Islam; our European allies either do not share America's assessment of that threat or, to the extent that they do, believe themselves capable of dealing with it outside the Atlantic framework. In the United States, the political center of gravity has shifted to parts of the country whose representatives have fewer personal connections with Europe and less experience with its internal challenges than their predecessors who created the postwar structure.

Across the Atlantic, leaders have been concentrating on transferring national sovereignty to new European institutions. This involves a host of technicalities and legal issues which are both arcane and elusive for most Americans. More fundamentally, the United States conducts its policies as the sovereign states of Europe did in the 19th and first half of the 20th centuries. The European nations having invented the concept of the nation-state are now in the process of seeking to abandon their sovereignty to a European Union not yet possessing the traditional attributes of the state. They find themselves in a halfway house between their history and a future still in the process of evolving.

The result has been a "witches' brew of mutual misunderstandings:"

In America, critics describe European attitudes as fainthearted, querulous and, on occasion, duplicitous. In Europe the media (and too many political figures) revel in descriptions of America's racial tension, the death penalty, differences over the environment and mistreatment of prisoners as if aberrations reflected the ultimate meaning of the United States. Shifting their priority from the Atlantic alliance to the U.N. Security Council, Europeans feel no special obligation to support U.S. policy, on occasion actively opposing it.

To overcome the impasse, a change in attitudes is required:

The nations bordering the North Atlantic need to ask themselves the fundamental question that has always underpinned the alliance—that is, what will the allies do for the relationship beyond the international consensus reflected at the United Nations? Much of European debate today implies that the answer is "very little." To subject common military action to prior approval of the Security Council is incompatible with the very concept of alliance, which implies a special set of obligations. It spells the ultimate disintegration of a world order with the Atlantic partnership as its centerpiece. The Atlantic relationship, to be meaningful, needs to have a special character. The United States and Europe should be prepared to do things for each other in the sphere beyond the immediate dictates of national interest and without insisting on universal consensus.

The Atlantic Alliance requires a new common purpose, and could find it with a new approach to the Palestine-Israeli conflict:

For decades the diplomatic stalemate has been deepened because Europe was perceived to champion the Palestinian claims and America the goals of Israel. But new circumstances permit envisaging how the two positions can be brought closer. Israel has implied that settlements beyond its new security fence are negotiable; the fence is already being brought into a relationship to the 1967 frontiers and some compensatory territory from present-day Israel has been discussed in Camp David and Tabba. At the same time, a few moderate Arab leaders have called for new initiatives. An effort to develop a European-U.S. position as part of a reinvigorated peace process might encourage reluctant parties to break the deadlock. In this process, the Atlantic alliance could rediscover its common purpose.

Finally, Kissinger offers his thoughts on the debate between unilateralism and multilateralism:

Unilateralism for its own sake is self-defeating. But so is abstract multilateralism. The former absorbs purpose into a sense of special national mission; the latter waters down purpose in a quest for a formal consensus. The challenge for America is to reconcile consultation with vast power. The question for Europe is whether it views Atlantic relations as a partnership or as part of an international system of multipolarity very similar to pre-World War I Europe, in which major power centers engaged in shifting coalitions to maximize their advantage from case to case. That system broke down in the early 20th century; its 21st-century version is likely to be even less successful.

Voter Gasm

My apologies if the following offends anyone sensiblities, but I think it's at least worth a laugh and a mention.

If there was not enough reason to vote this year here is one more. Voter Gasm is requesting voters pledge to have sex with another voter within a day or so of the election, and withhold sex from a non-voter for 4 years. Short of actually paying people to vote, I doubt there is anything else one could do to motivate people.

Osama Surprise, no?

Absolutely only for what it's worth given the import of the timing:

Jim Lindgren at the Volokh Conspiracy reports that the best translation of the recent Bin laden tape threatens states that would vote for Bush. He quotes the NY Post as saying:

Osama bin Laden warned in his October Surprise video that he will be closely monitoring the state-by-state election returns in tomorrow's presidential race — and will spare any state that votes against President Bush from being attacked, according to a new analysis of his statement.

First a thought, then a question. Thought: If Bin Laden wanted Kerry to get elected, would he speak as he is speaking here, or would he know that endorsing Kerry could only help Bush? We may never know for sure.

Question: Based on what we see in this late-breaking and at least coincidentally extraordinarily well-timed tape, what reason do we have to believe that it is genuine? I haven't seen it. What are you guys thinking? Genuine? Fakeable? Faked?

I don't see it as in any way factorable into my own decision, but my sense is that if it has any effect, it will be to create some kneejerk "screw you, I'm voting for Bush" effect.

Splittin' the Endorsement: McCain for Proxy

If you live in a state which could conceivably choose either of the 2 candidates that could actually get elected, your choice is clear. You must choose one of them. And the choice is yours, listen to your own heart, be your own counsel.

From a state where your vote can't really count because it's drowned out by either red or blue partisans, send the eventual victor a message: look to the center.

Last Minute Hit Piece On George W. Bush

That's what this is, so if anyone has a last-minute hit piece on John Kerry, feel free to post it.

Erasmus points to piece with left-wing (TomPain.com, The Nation) fingerprints all over it, but which nevertheless seems to have some credibility.

Two years before the September 11 attacks, presidential candidate George W. Bush was already talking privately about the political benefits of attacking Iraq, according to his former ghost writer, who held many conversations with then-Texas Governor Bush in preparation for a planned autobiography.

“He was thinking about invading Iraq in 1999,” said author and journalist Mickey Herskowitz. “It was on his mind. He said to me: ‘One of the keys to being seen as a great leader is to be seen as a commander-in-chief.’ And he said, ‘My father had all this political capital built up when he drove the Iraqis out of Kuwait and he wasted it.’ He said, ‘If I have a chance to invade….if I had that much capital, I’m not going to waste it. I’m going to get everything passed that I want to get passed and I’m going to have a successful presidency.”

Getting it Over With

The fact that the election will be over in only one more day makes me happy. I think both candidates are embarassments to statesmanship and leadership, to name a few. Cathy Young says it nicely in today's Boston Globe:

With only one day left until the election, I don't know how I'm going to vote. I know that I'm fed up with the hysteria and the distortions on both sides, and of trying to figure out which side lies worse. I'm offended when the Bush team suggests that a Kerry victory would leave us more vulnerable to another terrorist attack. I roll my eyes when Bill Clinton tells people to vote for the candidate who offers hope rather than fear while Kerry tries to scare us with the prospect of a draft. I find myself bitterly amused when each candidate rips into the other for stating, at different times, the difficult truth -- that it's unlikely we will defeat terrorism completely, and that the best we can do is reduce the risk to manageable levels.

Many years ago, the great American essayist H.L. Mencken wrote, "Under democracy, one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule -- and both commonly succeed, and are right." Never did this insight seem so true.

I'm 40. If I am blessed enough to live to be 80, that means I'll have 10 more chances to vote for president. Will any one of these votes be cast proudly for someone with vision, foresight, and a true understanding of where the American experience should lead? I'm wishing and a-hoping, that just once those doors aren't locked...

ADDITION TO APPROPRIATIONS BILL LINKED TO VOTER SUPRESSION

I read on Daily Kos, a HEAVILY, and I do stress HEAVILY LEFT website that Christopher Bond (R-Missouri) has introduced a subsection (sec. 224 of Section II "Administrative Provisions") to Senate appropriations bill S2825 on public housing, veterans affairs, etc., prohibiting the use of federal housing funds for political purposes."

It was safe for me to assume the source of this post was biased, so I did my own research at the official site.

What I'm getting is that he wants it to be illegal for the government to support persons, regardless of party affiliation, to conduct voter registrations, canvass or GOTV efforts in public housing projects. Although military housing is considered public housing, he excludes this group. Hmmmm.

Then I went on to read that there is a concerted effort by Democrats on the hill to fight this through the National Income Low Housing Coalition.

I'm ready to blow my lid. After I've tried to stay as objective as possible in this situation, that objectivity is about to flee the coop. I'm not the expert on appropriations bills, but it doesn't seem to be too complicated. It looks to me as if he is specifically trying to limit access to voter registration information and processes by targeting one segment in the public housing arena (poor, minorities, etc) that doesn't serve his party, while protecting another segment (military) that does serve his party.

If anyone knows specifics about this, please share. I don't want ranting, I want facts. I'm going to keep investigating this issue so this isn't the last you've heard from me.

Precriminations

On Wednesday morning, or whenever the results of the presidential election are known, there will be recriminations in the camp of the losing candidate. In order not to be biased by the actual poll results, let's have some precriminations. Who's to blame and what should be changed if either candidate loses? My take:

Kerry: I think he has done well to bring the race to a dead heat on election day. If he loses by a razor-thin margin, Kerry will have done better than any northern liberal since JFK--who himself won by a razon-thin margin. Kerry would be a viable candidate for president in 2008.

Bush: If he loses, even by a razor-thin margin, he will have, like his father, blown a huge groundswell of public approval. There will be no interest in a third member of the Bush family as a candidate in 2008. Paleoconservatives will point to the Iraq War as the reason for the loss, and launch a "battle for the soul of the Republican Party."

In sum, recrimination among Republicans is guaranteed in the case of a loss. Among Democrats, it may not be necessary, though some will no doubt indulge in it for their own advantage.

Latin America Trending Left

This will have absolutely no effect on the US election, but a trend is developing in South America, confirmed by the results of the election in Uruguay which is worth noting.

The victory by the coalition, the Progressive-Encounter-Broad-Front-New- Majority, whose largest faction consists of Tupamaro guerrillas turned politicians, strengthens a trend throughout the continent. As in the last presidential votes in Venezuela, Brazil, Ecuador and Argentina, the candidate most opposed to U.S.-supported free-market policies has defeated backers of those policies.

E-Vote: Getting Better All the Time

This post is (hopefully) last in my unchecked e-vote series. It's about two things: predictions on how the post-election process will play out, and hopeful signs that things are going to get better on the unchecked e-vote front.

There are signs that, here and there, state officials are beginning to understand the score.

Judge Kirkland in Florida has required Florida to make manual recounts possible, though Florida election officials are still in denial and may appeal.

In California, Attorney General Lockyer has filed suit against Diebold for fraud. He said that they misrepresented their capabilities (I vividly remember a Diebold representative saying that their machines were bug-free on the NewsHour; that's not too far off from claiming to invent a perpetual motion machine).

There has been a heartening energy in e-vote reform efforts. E-vote is by no means a hopeless idea, just implemented too hastily. E-vote would be OK with a recountable paper trail, that actually is checked in some fraction of places on every election. That very idea is embedded in the Voter Confidence Act. Call your congresscritters to back it; do they want elections to be determined by their political campaigns or by hackers?

There is a long roll of people who've gotten involved in carefully documenting severe problems, thinking about these problems, spreading the word, and trying to get some of these problems fixed. Some include: Rebecca Mercuri, Avi Rubin's research group, Representatives Holt and Rush(Voter Confidence Act sponsors), and others involved in helpful legislation, Black Box, etc. But these are just the people I happened to think of in five minutes. There are hundreds of other organizations and thousands of people involved in many roles on moving the ball forward. If any you are reading, thank you!

I'm even bullish on the fear that I expressed in my last post on this, about the same kind of psychology that brought us unchecked e-vote making things even worse. That's because shortly after I made my last post, several big newspapers, including the NewYork Times and Washington Post ran sections on voting problems, usually including a section on e-vote. Thanks, guys!

Here's a limited selection of some e-vote trouble articles.

As a result of all this activity, people at large are beginning to understand that unchecked e-vote is untrustworthy. Getting the county e-vote officials who chose unchecked e-vote technology to understand is a harder process because it involves admitting serious error. But even that's beginning. Maybe the one fact I wish was understood more broadly is that unchecked e-vote less is reliable than punch-cards, yes, chads and all.

...So how do I think things will proceed in the post-election period, especially re e-vote? Well, unless there's a free and clear electoral landslide, a possibility believed likely only by partisans, the lawyers will get back to work. Although doubtless the lawyers will bring up every possible thread of doubt to bring, I rather guess that the biggest issue will be about questions of circumstances under which e-vote results are distrusted and revotes occur, and standards sufficiently strict to allow e-vote machines to be trusted.

So, once again, I think the lawyers will get to work. There is some grounds for fear that elections from now on will feature "the legal phase" as a normal part of proceedings. I believe that would be regrettable, as it seems likely to result in a serious increase in voter cynicism, just like in 2000. Fortunately, I think it's unlikely. Although lawyers will give many reasons for doubt, the only one that will stick in this election is the combination of election closeness and e-vote unreliability. Given that e-vote is likely to be fixed soon, and that these kinds of squeaker elections aren't common, I think the "legal phase" is temporary.

I believe that it's pretty likely that e-vote will be effectively reformed by 2008.

Kissinger on "America's Assignment" -- Part 1

Say what you will about former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, the aging realist is one of a select few about whom it can be said that he's got the whole world in his head. Whether you love him or hate him, he's worth listening to. On the MSNBC website and in the November 8 issue of Newsweek, we are treated to a lengthy look at his current thinking. Kissinger's "America's Assignment" is divided into five sections:

1. Introduction
2. On Iraq
3. On Pre-emption
4. On Nuclear Proliferation
5. On the Long Challenge

This post deals with sections 1 and 2. Another post that I hope to complete later today will cover the remaining sections.

1. Introduction

In Kissinger's view, the winner of tomorrow's presidential election will face a foreign policy and national security agenda of unprecedented scope:

Never before has it been necessary to conduct a war with neither front lines nor geographic definition and, at the same time, to rebuild fundamental principles of world order to replace the traditional ones which went up in the smoke of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

He likens the task to that facing President Truman at the end of World War II but believes that our newly-elected president will have to deal with an even more difficult set of circumstances:

In 1945, the Soviet Union was emerging as a threat to the global equilibrium, while the war had left a vacuum in Central Europe. But the Soviet challenge was concrete and geographically definable. Today's principal threats are abstract and mobile.

The contemporary security challenge arises from two unprecedented sources: terror caused by acts until recently considered a matter for internal police forces rather than international policy, and scientific advances and proliferation that allow the survival of countries to be threatened by developments entirely within another state's territory. Truman could take the legitimacy of the international system for granted; the Atlantic alliance rallied America's West European allies from the Second World War. The newly elected president will have to lead an effort to define and then maintain an international system that reflects the new, revolutionary circumstances.

Kissinger's introduction ends with an appeal to Americans to overcome their differences:

All concerned with the future of the country must find ways to cooperate so that the world will again see Americans working toward a common destiny both at home and in the community of nations. It is to such an effort that this article seeks to make a contribution.

2. On Iraq

Bipartisanship is especially important for the next phase of Iraq policy, regardless of who wins the election. If Bush wins,

. . . it is important that America's adversaries not confuse the passion of an election period with lack of unity regarding ultimate goals.

and, if Kerry wins,

. . . there is an overwhelming need for immediate cooperation between the incoming and the outgoing administration, lest the rhetoric describing the war as unnecessary at the wrong place, coupled with the hiatus imposed by the months of transition, undermine the confidence of the Iraqi authorities and cause a collapse before the new team can even begin to chart a course.

Kissinger describes the U.S. as "the trustee of global security," a reality that many other countries fail to admit or even recognize due to "domestic obstacles." He then says that "such a one-sided arrangement cannot continue much longer," and that other countries "should find it in their interest to participate at least in political and economic reconstruction."

The next step is the restoration of security and the elimination of terorist sanctruaries:

There is no shortcut around the next steps: the restoration of security in Iraq, especially in areas that have become terrorist sanctuaries, is imperative. No guerrilla war can be won if sanctuaries for insurgents are tolerated.

Realist that he is, Kissinger believes that achieving democracy in Iraq will be a long difficult process. He briefly describes the process by which the West was democratizied this way:

Democracy in the West evolved over centuries. It required first a church independent of the state; then the Reformation, which imposed pluralism of religion; the Enlightenment, which asserted the autonomy of reason from both church and state; the Age of Discovery, which broadened horizons; and finally capitalism, with its emphasis on competition and the market.

And then notes that none of these conditions exists in the Islamic world: "instead there is a merging of religion and politics inimical to pluralism."

Referencing the fact that Iraqi society is both multiethnic and multireligion (Sunnis and Shiites), Kissinger has this to say about the forthcoming January elections:

The January elections in Iraq, therefore, must be regarded as the beginning of an extended contest among the various groups, involving the constant risk of civil war, or of a national struggle against the U.S., or both. All factions maintain militias for precisely such eventualities. It will be necessary to augment the national electoral process with a significant element of federalism and to establish clear-cut constitutional protections for those who might find themselves in the permanent minority. Democracy must not be seen as a suicide pact by the Sunnis and the Kurds. Federalist structures and the assurance that free speech, freedom of conscience, and due process of law are constitutionally beyond the reach of any majority might provide some guarantee for the concerns of the various groups and a safety net if national reconciliation proves impossible.

While security comes first, internationalization must follow:

The survival of the political process depends in the first instance on security—for which the United States retains the major responsibility—but ultimately on international acceptance to enable the Iraqi government to be perceived as representing indigenous aspirations.

Regarding the form that this internationalization should take, Kissinger has this to say:

Germany and France—the two most difficult allies on Iraq—will not reverse their stand in sending troops to Iraq at the beginning of a process of reconciliation. (The German Foreign Minister has said so explicitly.) And countries that have sent troops have enough domestic difficulties maintaining their participation and little, if any, scope for increasing it.

Meaningful internationalization requires a focus other than security and the participation of countries other than—or in addition to—NATO. After the January elections, an international contact group, under U.N. auspices, to advise on Iraq's political evolution is therefore desirable. Logical members would be countries that have experience with militant Islam and much to lose by the radicalization of Iraq—countries such as India, Turkey, Russia, Algeria, in addition to the United States and Britain. This is not an abdication to consensus. The United States, by virtue of its military presence and financial role, would retain the leading position. The issue of military contribution by other nations, including NATO, can be raised again at a later stage in a more favorable political environment as a means to protect the governmental process.