Michael Tomasky's Blog, page 25

Vox pop to Bam: We loved it | Michael Tomasky

I forget Tomasky's First Rule of politics, but I know I laid one down a few months ago, and it was pretty good. But here's Tomasky's Second Rule: if the experts didn't much like a speech, you can be certain the regular voters did, and vice versa.

Insider response to the speech, including my own, was mixed. This is because partisans tend to focus on the things they didn't like. Liberals didn't like the spending freeze, and the failure to mention gun control. Conservatives didn't like the new investments and the blast at millionaires' taxes.

The American public, or, well, at least the 500 Democratic, independent and Republican members of this focus group, saw a totally different speech:

An overwhelming majority of Americans approved of the overall message in President Obama's State of the Union speech on Tuesday night, according to a CBS News poll of speech watchers.

According to the poll, which was conducted online by Knowledge Networks immediately after the president's address, 91 percent of those who watched the speech approved of the proposals Mr. Obama put forth during his remarks. Only nine percent disapproved.

Last year, 83 percent of viewers approved of Mr. Obama's State of the Union remarks.

Okay, that last sentence tells us not to give this exercise too much weight. But 91% is pretty off the charts. What we don't know yet, but will at some point today, is how many people watched. Obama had an audience of 48 million last year. My guess this year is just slightly less. Bill Clinton has both highest and lowest, 67 million in 1993 and 31.5 million in 2000.

On the absence of gun talk: Christ Matthews said before the speech, as if it had been leaked to him specifically to say this to liberals (who overwhelmingly watch the network he was on, MSNBC), that they left guns out last night because they wanted this morning's headlines to be about the economy and innovation and so on, and that there will be a separate gun-related speech in the near future. Makes sense, if true. Any rhetoric that set up a future gunfight, so to speak, would have stolen the headlines and been translated in middle America as: "Obama uses speech to grovel to liberal interest group."

Uh...was Michele Bachmann not looking at the camera? She wasn't looking the viewer in the eye, but was looking at a spot in the distance above the viewer's left shoulder. What was up with that?

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The state of the union: Obama's appeasement strategy | Michael Tomasky

Going beyond Obama's usual 'post-partisan' politics, this speech was almost weirdly emollient. Will it wrongfoot the Republicans?

• The full text of President Barack Obama's 2011 state of the union address

The answer to one of my questions heading into this state of the union address came very early. I'd been wondering what kind of impact the much-ballyhooed, first-time mixed seating – senators and House members breaking the tradition of sitting on separate sides of the chamber by party, and mingling for the first time – would have on the theatre of this event.

It took less than three minutes to get an answer to that. Even right as Barack Obama reached the podium at 9.10pm, the bursts of applause were shorter. There's always been a completely superfluous second round of introductory applause, because the president is introduced twice. Sometimes, five minutes is spent in applause before the president even speaks. Tonight, the second round was abruptly brief. Even the applause for Obama's inevitable tribute to Congresswoman Gabby Giffords, which came early on, was shorter than expected.

So, having to sit next to members of the opposition clearly made members of the majority a little self-conscious about those self-congratulatory and pandering bursts of applause whenever the incumbent explains how deeply he loves apple pie and motherhood. This will be a good thing in the long run, but it was a little odd tonight, as was the speech itself in certain respects.

First, what was good about it. It was pitched firmly toward the political middle, which was widely expected, but I was more struck at how firmly it was pitched towards the future. Innovation, education and infrastructure are about the future, Obama said; only by investing in these three areas can we stay competitive:

"The rules have changed. In a single generation, revolutions in technology have transformed the way we live, work and do business. Steel mills that once needed 1,000 workers can now do the same work with 100. Today, just about any company can set up shop, hire workers, and sell their products wherever there's an internet connection."

I would suspect that this got through to centrist voters. We know from polling that these are pretty popular investments. I don't think the Republicans have set themselves up well here. When Americans hear the word "investment", said Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell earlier Tuesday, they know it's "Latin for Washington spending." Maybe they do, but it's Washington spending that a solid majority of them like – even if the GOP base abhors it.

Likewise, a solid majority supports Obama on ending tax cuts for the upper brackets. I'm sure the president is perfectly happy to let the GOP play only to its base by opposing him on these positions.

This state of the union speech also seemed to tap the national mood just about right. It acknowledged that times are still hard, but the mood of the country is a little better now than it was four or five months ago, and he reflected that. The address was just upbeat enough, I thought – and certainly delivered ebulliently, maybe one notch too much so.

That's what was good about the speech. The odd thing about the speech was how dramatically non-confrontational it was. Yes, there was the normal Obama post-partisan language to which we've all become accustomed:

"With their votes, [the people have] determined that governing will now be a shared responsibility between parties. New laws will only pass with support from Democrats and Republicans. We will move forward together, or not at all – for the challenges we face are bigger than party, and bigger than politics."

But it went far beyond that. Obama almost never used language designed to throw down a challenge to Republicans or raise the hairs on the back on their necks. On taxes for the rich, he came sort of close; otherwise, nothing. There were goals and priorities and so forth that Republicans will certainly disagree with. But there weren't any lines drawn in the sand. Think, for example, about how confrontational he could have been on healthcare, for example. Or on spending, or on social security.

For the most part, it went unsaid.

That's a rhetorical choice, and it's one that is probably rooted in a White House decision along these lines. Huge fights are coming, and much mud is to be slung. This address, which, for most Americans, constitutes the first salvo in this battle, was intended to be strictly mud-free: present Obama as reasonable, middle-of-the-road, chastened by last November, but still progressive enough that he wants to do some of your traditional Democratic things (spend money on infrastructure and schools). Let the Republicans throw the first mud-balls. Then, later, he can waive the muddy shirt: "See, America, I tried, but these people are just so darn unreasonable."

That can work. Given that Republicans' budget logic does not remotely resemble our earth logic, I'd guess it probably will work. But he's going to have to draw those lines in the sand some time. In this speech, he merely put that task off for another day.

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State of the union buildup puts Obama ahead in PR battle | Michael Tomasky

Barack Obama's state of the union address has been framed as middle-ground, while Republicans are on the defensive

The White House, perhaps having learned from some of its errors over the past two years, handled the runup to Barack Obama's second state of the union address adeptly. This runup is a five-days-or-so period of raising and lowering expectations with timely and well-placed leaks that attempt to frame the way the media talk and write about the speech beforehand. Both sides play, of course, and the Republicans are generally pretty good at this sort of thing.

But heading into tonight's speech, it seems to me that the White House people are clearly winning this public relations battle. They managed to get the speech framed as Obama reaching out to the middle with various non-controversial proposals on popular issues such as education, research and innovation. The president's recent (or current) comeback in the polls among independent voters helps to drive this narrative.

At the same time, the White House has managed to placate Democrats to his left – for now, anyway – by making it clear that Obama will not be discussing possible cuts to social security in the speech. Here was another layer of what we Americans call inside baseball. About three weeks ago, blind quotes from administration aides started appearing in news stories speculating that Obama might be willing to put social security on the table. I'm not clear on whether these leaks came from people who wanted that to happen or did not, or both. In any case, the pushback from the left was enough that liberals' most cherished policy of all seems safe for now.

Finally and most importantly, Republicans are on the defensive. It's nearly become conventional wisdom in Washington that the Republicans' budget numbers don't add up, and that they can't possibly find the savings they say they can in the domestic budget without infuriating the American people, who are in fact quite fond of much domestic spending. Paul Ryan, the Wisconsin congressman who was slated to give the GOP rebuttal to Obama's speech, has drawn up a detailed cost-cutting plan that balances the federal budget ... in 2063. It's not much on the fiscal responsibility front, but it does a marvellous job of keeping rich people's taxes low.

I am writing this before seeing the speech, of course, so whether Obama knocked it out of the park or not (another baseballism) is not yet revealed. But there is a strong sense afoot that he should be able to win the coming budget battles, and that having Republicans such as John Boehner and Mitch McConnell as his foils will make him look that much more appealing, especially to independents. The state of the economy remains the most important factor, and if it doesn't improve, neither will his fortunes. But if, as most economists expect, the picture is sunnier in a year's time, it may well turn out that last November's election, in handing him the gift of a useful opponent, may have the best thing that could have happened to him.

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More on Rahm and the judges | Michael Tomasky

Like laws and sausages, the judicial-selection process in American cities is sometimes better left unexamined, lest it reveal situations like this, via the Chicago Trib:

The two Appellate Court judges responsible for tossing Rahm Emanuel from the ballot in February's mayoral race both won their jobs after being anointed by a Chicago political power broker who openly supports an Emanuel opponent.

Whether or not their opinions are colored by politics, the case has recharged the debate among critics who decry a process of selecting judges that relies more heavily on political clout than merit.

Longtime Appellate Court Judges Thomas E. Hoffman and Shelvin Louise Marie Hall — who on Monday ruled that Emanuel's stay in Washington precludes him from running for mayor this year — were both judicial candidates slated for election by the Cook County Democratic Party judicial slating committee chaired by Ald. Edward Burke, 14th.

Burke, one of Chicago's most powerful politicians, holds huge sway in the election of judges at every level, including the Illinois Supreme Court, where his wife, Anne, sits as a justice and where the Emanuel ballot question is now headed for a final decision.

Edward Burke supports another mayoral candidate, Gery Chico. The article continues:

"The real question now is whether Anne Burke must recuse herself," said Malcolm Rich, executive director of the Chicago Council of Lawyers, a group that evaluates judges and advocates reform. "Yes, there is an inherent conflict. These judges are slated by politicians. That is just the way it is.

"There is this political link within our judicial system that makes these kinds of problems impossible to avoid when judges are deciding on these kinds of inherently political matters."

Hall ran for the vacant appellate seat in 2000, and Hoffman was first elected to the Appellate Court in 1994. News reports from the time say both were slated by the Democratic Party.

Supporters of Hoffman and Hall said there is no way politics crept into their decisions.

"Judge Hall is the most apolitical person you will ever meet," said Ellen Douglass, a lawyer and longtime friend of Hall's who chaired her campaign to become an appellate judge. "She is a good judge. People are even talking about her as a candidate to become the first African-American woman on the Illinois Supreme Court."

Douglass said she could not remember whether Burke was instrumental in helping Hall win the job. "That was 15 years ago," Douglass said.

So maybe Douglass is right, who knows.

As I said yesterday, I don't really care about Rahm Emanuel, but I do think tossing him off the ballot for this was specious: superficially justified, but not within what had to be the actual spirit of the residency requirement.

It's really hard to come up with a good way to choose judges. Elected judges are generally bad because they have to go out and seek campaign contributions, which seems definitionally corrupting. So thinks Sandra Day O'Connor anyway.

But merit-selection processes usually become political. I remember from my years in New York that when Ed Koch was mayor, his judicial screening process represented real reform and progress, but if memory serves the process eventually became political again, as seems inevitable. In this case, it surely seems that Judge Burke should recuse herself.

I hadn't even grasped, by the way, that Carol Moseley Braun was in this race and running second to Rahm. She doesn't have, shall we say, a reputation as a squeaky-clean reformer. I remember seeing her speak in a west side church in 1992 and being bewitched by that lovely smile, and then feeling increasingly embarrassed about my original write-up as various ethics complaints mounted over the years.

But not too bad: apparently Illinois needed a change. Don Rose, the longtime Chicago political consultant and commentator, once wrote of that same election that against the incumbent, he'd have backed Eva Braun, let alone Carol Moseley. A slight exaggeration but a good line.

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Ryan and Bachmann's rebuttals | Michael Tomasky

Paul Ryan, the new chairman of the House budget committee, will deliver the official GOP response to the state of the union address tonight, and Michele Bachmann will deliver the so-called tea party response. Two rebuttals is without precedent, and a lot of people are wondering what Bachmann is up to.

But first let's talk about Ryan. As you probably know, he is the author of the famous "roadmap" from last year that spelled out the Republican view of how to get to fiscal sanity, because he's the party's acknowledged expert on this stuff and the only one who really seems to know the ins and outs of fiscal and budgetary policy. So he's da man.

Except that when he released the roadmap, John Boehner and everyone else gave it about the degree of love they'd give a new translation of the Qu'ran. The reason? It told the actual truth about real GOP priorities and policies.

Here's Matt Miller writing in today's WashPost on the roadmap. Bear in mind that Miller is a Democrat but a committed centrist who has often written in the past that the parties have to be more bipartisan and has aspersed the left pretty much as equally as he has the right for our current dis-comity:

Imagine that President Obama said Tuesday night that it was time to get America's fiscal house in order and then proposed a plan that would not balance the budget until the 2060s - while adding more than $62 trillion to the national debt between now and then. Can anyone imagine Republicans hailing Obama as a "visionary fiscal conservative"? The idea is absurd.

But Republicans do hail House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan as a "visionary fiscal conservative," even though it is Ryan's "Roadmap for America's Future" that I've described (using cautious assumptions) above. Now that Ryan, with his State of the Union response, is becoming his party's most visible spokesman on fiscal matters, it's vital to grasp how huge the gap is
between the rhetoric surrounding Ryan's plan and its reality.

Ryan's plan slashes Social Security and Medicare, the latter by 80% around 70 years from now (come to think of it, when my daughter would be using it). It wouldn't balance the budget, as Miller said, until 2063. It would make the debt problem worse by a staggering $62 trillion. It would slightly raise taxes on the middle class, according to reviews by admittedly liberal (though expert) policy analysis shops.

And why would it do all these things in the name of fiscal prudence? Because in keeping with supply-side religion, it must first and foremost do that which supply-side economics holds as its First Commandment: cut taxes on the morally superior rich. It is madness. It is a joke. And, writes Miller:

Ryan doesn't dispute these basic facts (though I believe this is the first time his actual debt numbers have been called out). When I asked him at a recent National Press Club event how he could put out a plan that didn't balance the budget for decades and added trillions to the debt, and still call himself a "fiscal conservative," he offered an evasive digression on how this just shows how tough the demographic challenge is. But it really shows something different: that you can't double the number of seniors on Social Security and Medicare and keep taxes at their recent long-run average of 19 percent of GDP, as Ryan's plan would do. Even after assuming entitlement reforms that most Republicans think would be politically fatal, Ryan's red ink never stops flowing.

Understood properly, Ryan's debt-soaked "Roadmap" is not the threat liberals perceive but instead fresh proof of the inevitability of higher taxes as the boomers age. If Ryan publicly accepts this reality in his new leadership role, he'll hasten bipartisan progress toward budget fixes that blend long-term spending reductions with tax increases. If he denies it - well, then, sorry, Paul, you'll just have to live with being the $62 trillion man.

Now, Bachmann. She's up to testing the presidential waters as a tea-party candidate, for sure. Does that mean as an independent, running in November 2012 against Obama and the Republican? Or does it mean in the GOP primaries, accepting whatever fate she gets out of that contest? With her, who knows?

I'm surprised that CNN is giving her airtime. I have no idea the effect of this. She might make Ryan seem reasonable. On the other hand, her presence forces GOP leadership to embrace Ryan and his plan in a way they haven't. Eric Cantor already did this.

The other possibility is that Bachmann comes off to middle America as the reasonable one, and Ryan the extremist. After all, she's pretty, and butter wouldn't melt in her mouth.

But they'll both be up there shoveling lies, because they cannot reveal the fundamental truth of the modern right's world view, which is that we must cut taxes for the upper-brackets above all else. That's all their economic policy comes down to really - protecting the well-off from redistribution.

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Rahm Emanuel's residency problem | Michael Tomasky

I'm sort of chortling about Rahm Emanuel being thrown off the ballot. I'm not a big fan.

However, it seems unfair to me. The guy was serving his country, for goodness sakes. Public service should count just as much as military service does. Suppose a candidate for mayor of Chicago were just coming off a tour of duty in Afghanistan. Would she or he be thrown off the ballot? Other candidates might would not dare to do that to a soldier. Why isn't serving your country as a public servant worth anything? That's kind of troubling.

Then there's this:

An attorney for two voters objecting to Emanuel's candidacy argued again last week that the Democrat doesn't meet the one-year residency requirement because he rented out his Chicago home and moved his family to Washington to work for President Barack Obama for nearly two years.

"If the house had not been abandoned by the whole family ... we wouldn't be here today," attorney Burt Odelson told the panel of judges, all three Democrats.

So he's additionally punished for trying to keep his family together?

I don't particularly admire Emanuel. I don't think saying "fuck" a lot is funny or charming. I think it's grotesque that he went off and made $18 million in 18 months. I think his contempt for those to his left is itself kind of contemptible. But he was responding to a call of service from a duly and legitimately elected president of the United States. And before that, he was serving the people of Chicago, or at least the people of his district, in Congress.

Let the voters decide whether he's a bona fide Chicagoan. I suspect this is what the Illinois Supreme Court will say. Strict residency rules date to the era of old powerful Democratic (usually, but Republican in some locales) machines to keep insurgents and reformers off ballots. The court can strike a blow for the relaxing of these anachronisms.

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Glenn Beck and Fran Piven | Michael Tomasky

You may not know Francis Fox Piven, the left-wing social scientist, but this New York magazine item sums the situation up fairly well:

Glenn Beck has made repeated mention lately of Frances Fox Piven, a 78-year-old liberal academic and CUNY professor. In Beck's view, Piven's a veritable enemy of the Constitution who's responsible for a plan to intentionally "sabotage" the American economic system. Piven, pictured, actually authored The Nation story that led Beck to this conclusion 45 years ago. It's called "The Weight of the Poor: A Strategy to End Poverty," and proposes "that if people overwhelmed the welfare rolls, the system could force reform and give rise to changes like a guaranteed income." Somehow, Beck links what he termed "the Cloward-Piven Strategy" to Obama's statement during the 2008 presidential campaign that "we are days away from transforming America." Beck also accused Piven of "inciting violence" in The Nation this month by writing that unemployed people should be staging protests. Anonymous visitors to Beck's website have now called for this lady's death, and some, she said, have even contacted her directly.

Piven is now receiving death threats.

I'm one of the few people not subscribing to The Nation in 1966 who has actually gone back and read that article, which I did in the mid-90s as I was thinking about the history of where the left had gone wrong. To be sure, Piven and Cloward's welfare rights strategy was wrongheaded and self-defeating, as I wrote in the mid-90s.

They thought that John Lindsay and Lyndon Johnson would see that their voting coalitions would be threatened by a mass uprising of poor people demanding to be put on welfare, and would perforce respond with action - for example a guaranteed income, as the above piece says. It apparently didn't occur to them that the system would just regard rabble-rousing black people as a phenomenon to be ignored or quashed.

It's fair to call it radical, I guess, but it is obvious to any even-keeled reader that their goal was to make the system more responsive to poor people. Beck is either really stupid, which I doubt; or being completely dishonest for the sake of ratings, which I do not doubt.

Jim Sleeper, also not a defender of Piven's on these matters, nevertheless defended her as I do against these attacks, writing at TPM Cafe:

But Piven and Cloward's call for a racialized "Politics of Turmoil," which they celebrated in a book by that name and excerpted in The Nation in 1966, held no solutions for American political culture, unjust and hypocritical though that culture often was. It certainly offered no sound strategy for a socialist agenda by relying on a politics of racial paroxysm.

Neither, however were Piven and Cloward and their admirers the powerful, malevolent conspirators they're now being made out to be. They weren't the reasons why the liberal capitalist welfare state, such as it was, damaged its supposed beneficiaries...

...I rest my case -- against Piven & Co. for being so hapless, but, even more, against Beck et al for trying to make political hay out of leftist radicals supposedly holding "such power over the lives of innocents," as McWhorter puts it. All Beck is doing is shifting the blame from where it really belongs. Only perversely hypocritical conservatives -- and perhaps a deranged loner -- would fall for phony indignation like this. That's why we have to take heed and speak out against Beck and Fox News.

Today, Piven is a 78-year-old woman receiving death threats. And really, who knows? It's frightening and sickening. And of course I should add that the welfare-rights movement is not the only thing she ever did in her life. She was the brains behind Motor-Voter legislation, which I think has served our country very well.

It's never been particularly controversial that I'm aware of. But watch that change. What's really at stake here, aside from Piven's well being, is the continual twisting of American history into some paranoid right-wing fable, whether it's Woodrow Wilson was a facist or Fran Piven wanted to overthrow the government. Liberals need to be aware that all this history we think is settled is being contested fiercely.

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Joe Lieberman update | Michael Tomasky

Last week, I wrote about Joe Lieberman's announced retirement and mentioned in a sentence that he "undercut his own campaign" in Florida in 2000. This is based chiefly on Lieberman's association with the view that the Democrats shouldn't have challenged military absentee ballots and is a pretty widely held opinion among liberals.

A person who was in the Democratic boiler room down in Florida writes in to say that Lieberman has always taken an unfair rap on this point. This person thinks that raising a big stink about military ballots would have been a public-relations loser in the long run, which could well be true. Other than that, this person says: "I can tell you that there was a fault line between those who wanted to fight it out and those who wanted to throw in the towel. And Joe was one of the strongest voices in arguing that we needed to fight this to the finish."

I may not be Lieberman's biggest fan in general, but if this person says the above, I believe it, and I am happy to correct the record.

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Obama's approval ratings still rising (yes, really) | Michael Tomasky

The successful lame duck session and improving economy have helped the president, but we're headed for a budget war

They snuck up on us over the holidays, those presidential approval numbers, such that one barely noticed at first, and then, when one did notice, one didn't quite believe them. But they're a hard fact now. As I write this morning, Barack Obama's "approve-disapprove" numbers on the widely read website realclearpolitics.com are 49.8% to 44.2%. That's more than respectable for any president in this partisan age, especially for a guy who's presiding over an unemployment rate still well north of 9%.

The reasons for the rebound seem clear enough. First, the accomplishments of the lame duck session, when Democrats and Republicans for the first time worked together (to some extent anyway) to approve some popular items, like the New Start nuclear treaty and the repeal of the don't ask, don't tell policy on gay people in the military. Second, the signs of an economy that really is going to start getting better in 2011. Third, the graceful way the president handled the Tucson shooting tragedy, with a speech that respected commentator Garry Wills compared to Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg address, one of the most venerated speeches in US history and one on which Wills had written a celebrated book.

I would add a fourth: that overall, Americans are happy with the results of last November's election insofar as they generally prefer divided government. This is especially true of independent voters. We are very different from Britain in that these unaffiliated voters make up roughly a third of our electorate. They supported Obama by 15% over John McCain, then swung to GOP candidates last fall. Now, in most polls, they're back on the president's side.

So far, so good. But, starting today, we're about to see the downsides of divided government. We are headed for a budget war this spring. Republicans want draconian cuts and think, because of last November's results, they have the American people behind them. But do they? Americans famously dislike government in theory, but when it comes to entitlement programmes and cleaning up air and water and funding medical research against deadly diseases, they decide they rather like the government after all.

In his state of the union address tonight, Obama will call for new spending in three areas: education, infrastructure and research and development. Republicans will oppose this – and keep pushing for more tax cuts. The polls say that Obama's positions are the winners. But the Democrats have wrested defeat from the hands of victory before. To emerge from the coming battle well-positioned for 2012, the White House will need to be much better at politics than it was during its first two years.

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Olbermann's departure | Michael Tomasky

That certainly was abrupt, wasn't it? But apparently Olbermann's departure from MSNBC is not part of a vast conspiracy. From TheWrap:

It was Keith Olbermann's decision to leave his high-profile perch at MSNBC, TheWrap has learned. The outspoken host abruptly announced his departure on Friday evening, sending shockwaves through the cable news world.

But the sudden departure has a history, and the timing does not rule out a preemptive MSNBC move. The gadfly commentator first told the network last April that he wanted to leave and began negotiating his exit then, according to an individual with knowledge of the situation.

Olbermann abandoned the notion of leaving at that time but revived his plans in recent weeks with new representation from the talent agency ICM.

With two years left on his $7 million-a-year contract, Olbermann was seeking a full exit package but he really has his eye on creating his own media empire in the style of Huffington Post, according to the individual. That way, Olbermann would control his own brand and, in his view, potentially earn far more as an owner.

Then there's this other story I read over the weekend that he really wants to quit politics and go back to sports, so who knows.

In any case I admit I find the idea of an Olbermann media empire intriguing. We're in the day and age where you pretty much have to be someone like Arianna or Olbermann, or Tina B. with the Waugh-inspired Beast, to get the capital to get something like that off the ground. So I say good luck to him.

Even so...$7 million a year? Look, he should take every penny they give him, who shouldn't? But every time I read something like that I can't help thinking...Thirty years ago, he'd have been making (in today's dollars) something like $700,000 a year, and that would have seemed to the rest of us absolutely astronomical. And that in large part is what's happened to our economy and goes a long way toward explaining why we have such inequality in this country.

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