Michael Tomasky's Blog, page 44

Palin and 2012 | Michael Tomasky

Politico leads this morning with a big and needlessly long piece digging into how worried the Republican establishment is about the prospect of Sarah Palin winning the GOP nomination in 2012. Sum-up grafs:

There is rising expectation among GOP elites that Palin will probably run for president in 2012 and could win the Republican nomination, a prospect many of them regard as a disaster in waiting.

Many of these establishment figures argue in not-for-attribution comments that Palin's nomination would ensure President Barack Obama's reelection, as the deficiencies that marked her 2008 debut as a vice presidential nominee — an intensely polarizing political style and often halting and superficial answers when pressed on policy — have shown little sign of abating in the past two years.

"There is a determined, focused establishment effort … to find a candidate we can coalesce around who can beat Sarah Palin," said one prominent and longtime Washington Republican. "We believe she could get the nomination, but Barack Obama would crush her."

First of all, I think it's really weird that someone who quit her job after two years to go off and make millions is in the hunt at all. She had one of the easiest governor's jobs in America. Every Alaskan gets a cut of the oil riches, and for a Republican there's not a strong opposition to speak of. But of course, her credential with her adherents is the way she gets under the skin of people like me. That she's a quitter only helps burnish her image in this regard, if liberals yelp about it.

But I'd like to make the argument here that I think assessments that she can win the GOP nomination are a bit overblown. Of course she could. I've said so myself.

However. In a several-candidate GOP field, she's going to be attacked, naturally, since she would start out as one of the leaders in the polls, or perhaps the leader. In that case, answering criticisms from Mitt Romney and Tim Pawlenty and so on, she couldn't blame liberals or the lame-stream media. Also, presumably, Karl Rove would be thickly involved in efforts to try to stop her. He's not much of a liberal either.

So in other words, the core of her identity - that she embodies right-wing anger about what liberals have done to America - would be stripped from her in the context of a GOP primary. Does this make sense? Since she couldn't paint her GOP opponents as liberals who wanted to weaken America etc etc., what card could she play? The gender card I guess, but I don't think that gets very far in a GOP primary either.

Palin-related preemptive correction: In the predictions video that's about to go up, I say that it looks as if Joe Miller might win in Alaska. I taped Friday, and I said that line in over-reliance on Nate Silver, who last Friday was still pegging Miller the handy winner. In fact, it seems that Miller started dropping like a stone last week, and Lisa Murkowski will win. Classy, the way Palin dumped on the guy over the weekend, too, no?

Palin-related reader response: In the thread of my Saturday post about the Sewart rally, MoveAnyMountain wrote to me:

No but it is sad to see you are saying nothing about the slut shaming of Republican women - and I think that is especially sad with Nikki Haley.

Ummm...okay. I'll say something about it, but I doubt it will prove what you think it will prove. The "slut-shaming" of Haley is entirely a Republican production as far as I can tell. It happened in the context of a GOP primary, when leaks and gossip started bubbling. The two men who have signed affadavits saying they had affairs with her, Will Folks and Larry Marchant, are Republicans. Soooo, your point?

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About voter lack of knowledge and assumptions | Michael Tomasky

I've been meaning to get to this fascinating poll result that I read about late last week, in which Americans were asked what percentage of US household, as their best guess, took in more than $250,000 a year? From the site YouGov:

Any idea what proportion of American families make more than $250,000 a year? Or, to potentially make it easier, any idea what proportion of families in your state make more than $250,000 a year?

Don't feel bad if you don't know - most people don't. The actual number, nationwide is somewhere less than 3% of families earn more than $250,000 a year. What did the survey respondents say when asked this question? The average response was close to 17%! - meaning your typical survey respondent thinks that almost 1 in 5 families in America earn that kind of money, when the answer is closer to 1 in 50!

They were actually asked if they knew what proportion of people in their own state made more than $250,000 -- but that didn't bring many people closer to reality: there are only a few states where a guess of 17% comes close to being right - meaning that 17% is only about twice the actual number. These states are Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, and Virginia -- and, perhaps ironically or appropriately, depending on who you ask, Washington, DC, at 15%. The people in these states were not as wrong as respondents in other states, but they still adjusted their answers up to about 21%.

Actually the last time I looked at the census data it seemed closer to 2%, but whatever, let's call it 2.5%. So the reality is one in 40 families, while Americans think it's one in six.

This obviously has a pretty big impact on how people think about the extension of the Bush tax cuts, and more generally about a lot of things. Presumably, people are less likely to support ending the tax break on these families if they're under the impression, as they are, that there are far more of them than is in fact the case.

So this is an instance in which lack of information and wrong assumption leads voters to take a more conservative policy position. The temptation here for liberals is to bemoan this and imagine a time 30, 40 years ago when the media were more responsible and did a better job of informing voters, who then reached better conclusions.

But I don't think that's right. I imagine the media always did a pretty poor job of informing voters of these kinds of things. These kinds of things are news, because it doesn't suddenly "break" one day that 2.5% of families make $250,000 a year. It's a data-based social condition, and I'd imagine the media have always been lousy at telling people about data-based social conditions. They're probably worse today, since "the media" now includes many outright ideological liars and propagandists. But I don't think there was any golden age here.

Instead, I think that in the America of 30 to 70 years ago, when there was far less wealth and there was far, far less extolling of the lifestyles of the rich and famous and all that, people would have made different assumptions based on what they saw in their everyday lives. Changes in the economy (vast explosion of high-end compensation) and Republican greed-is-good rhetoric have flipped people's natural assumptions from what they were 40 years ago.

I have long argued, as some of you will recall, that with more and more "news" outlets, citizens are getting more and more "news" but less and less actual information. News takes things out of the contexts in which they arise. Information is context. The US media in general do a terrible job of offering context. The result is misperceptions like this, which lead people toward policy conclusions that are divorced from reality.

It's one of the biggest problems of our democracy. If you needed to solve a problem on your street, and your eight or ten neighbors all had a totally non-factual grasp of what the problem was, would you want to rely on them to reach the right solution? That's what happens in the US every day in politics. And it's not the people's fault. It's the fault of the folks who are supposed to tell them the right information.

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The rally | Michael Tomasky

I didn't go to the Jon Stewart rally but watched it on TV. The funny thing was that it wasn't that funny. I thought the serious parts worked far better than the funny parts.

What Stewart and Stephen Colbert and their writers put together was a television special, which is unsurprising, because television is what they do. But a television show is a different thing from a rally; pacing is different, timing is different, many things are different. So a lot of it didn't seem to translate.

Television, their shows in particular, depend heavily on the audience as participant. And that's not hard to do when the audience is 800 people or whatever it is. It's fairly intimate, and the audience gets its cues immediately and responds accordingly. An audience of 150,000 is another matter. Sound from a stage takes time to move through an audience that large, and it throws timing off. I sensed lots of awkward little pauses.

More substantitively, to cut to the chase, I didn't get the impression that this was a major capital-P Political intervention in the election. There was no You Go Barack Obama, except for one little comment by one of the guests brought on stage, and no We Hate You Republicans. Stewart played it pretty much down the middle ideologically, as he promised he would.

His closing speech of about 10 minutes was a plea, and I thought a very strong one, for...well, sanity. For decency and cooperation and taking the temperature down a few degrees. A video montage of anti-sanity cable-television screaming probably leaned more on Glenn Beck and other Foxies, but it responsibly included Keith Olbermann and Ed Schultz and Chris Matthews.

It was during Stewart's soliloquy that it struck me that maybe the thing would have had more impact if it had been more serious overall. Maybe he should have had, say, a handful of regular Americans who in some way work across ideological lines for good and non-ideological causes. Imagine if he'd had sets of liberals and conservatives who actually do put aside their differences to work together, and they do exist out there, sharing the stage to make the point that below the level of Beltway screaming, some people are trying. It would have been a more serious show, and I think a better one that would have made his point more powerfully than much of the comedy.

Now. About Yusuf Islam. Conservatives are apparently seizing on his appearance. I do not believe that it should merely be the province of conservatives to object to what Islam said about Salman Rushdie. I object to what he said. Quite vigorously. Any liberal should.

At the same time, it was 20 years ago and it should not wholly define him. And that business about his being denied entry to America was a mistake - his name matched the name of someone on the watch list.

I was surprised at how moved I was to hear "Peace Train." He was doing a beautiful rendition, and I actually thought it was kind of appalling that Colbert interrupted him. That was a choice: irony over conviction.

About my earlier expressed fear, that Fox would capture images of potentially offensive signage and go town...well, we don't know yet. As Richard Adams reported in his live-blogging, Fox resolutely ignored the rally today. But as he also reported, there were some signs that they might feast on later, mostly about witches, it seemed, referring to you-know-who. I suppose this will be revealed over the next day or two.

Anyway. It seemed to me not historic. But healthy. What did you think?

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Obama, left, right, etc. | Michael Tomasky

Madame Max wrote at 8:19 in the last thread:

Mr. Tomasky, if the Democrats have to keep moving to the right and walk in step with the Republicans, what's the point of having Democrats in office at all? The so-called swing voters seem to swing in only one direction––from right to far right. And everyone falls over backwards trying to appease them.

This is all very gloomy.

Yes, Madame Max (by the way, are you related to Madame George?), it's all very gloomy. But I wouldn't go so far as to say that the Democrats will "walk in step" with the Repubs. Give the GOP eight years of control of the White House and both houses of Congress, and I think you'll see plenty of differences and will very much see the point of having Democrats after all: Social Security would be finished, Medicare vastly revamped, Medicaid (for the poor) greatly reduced if even still in existence, no EPA (or at least no EPA with enforcement power), no this, no that, no a lot of things.

And a Supreme Court that would keep cranking out rulings increasing corporate power and laying the legal basis for the dismantling of the welfare state, which by the way it's already started doing, but give them eight unchecked years and we'll be back, in legal and regulatory and tax terms, to about 1905 to 1915 in this country. And of course goodbye Roe v. Wade and a lot of other stuff.

No, it's not a very inspiring fight, a rearguard action to protect existing things. But those things are under well-orchestrated attack. So it's the fight we have.

You (not just Madame Max, but many of you) may feel that Obama is already a centrist or a corporate stooge or whatever. Fair enough. In some particulars I would agree with you, although not in most. But you're about 10% of the country. Well, check that; 17%. From July:

On "too liberal," 35 percent of likely voters say it describes Obama "very well," 21 percent say "well," 21 percent say "not too well," and 17 percent say "not well at all." In other words, 56 percent of likely voters consider Obama too liberal.

"Not too well" is ambiguous to me; it would seem to mean people who are of two minds on the question. But if you think Obama is not liberal enough, you are in a pretty small minority. Yes, some of the reasons for these perceptions are unfair and silly and so on. But they are what they are.

As far as moving to the right, it'll concern the deficit, and maybe something about pensions, although that would be an intra-Democratic holy war. But we think too much in linear left-right terms. There are lots of options for a president that are basically kind of nonideological. For example: an emphasis on a forward-thinking, cutting-edge new economy for a new world, and bringing an urgency to that. My old saw about innovation and broadband and yada yada. These are progressive things, but they're coded as "centrist" in the media for the simple reason that they're not huge-pricetag capital-L Liberal things.

Greenlake asks:

You didn't answer the question, MIchael.

Where specifically do you think Obama went too far to the left?

Doing healthcare reform before the economy was improving. I've written this before. It signaled to middle-of-the-road voters that he was more interested in fulfilling some historical liberal wish list than in addressing their most immediate concern. May or may not be fair, but it's what happened. I said at a talk I gave in Charleston, WV in December 2008 that healthcare should wait until the economy was better, like year three. And that's why.

So no, it's not a happy view. Be disappointed in Obama and Democrats by all means if you want to be. But don't go around thinking there's not a dime's worth of difference between the two parties. There's a huge amount of difference. On this, at least, our conservative friends will agree with me. Bon weekend.

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The silver lining of a Senator Angle | Michael Tomasky

I've been meaning to get to this matter for a little while, and a front-pager in today's Times finally nudges me. There's a reason why it's probably okay if Harry Reid loses, which is that the Democrats in the Senate will probably choose Chuck Schmer of New York to be their leader. From the Times:

Mr. Schumer, one of the party's most prolific fund-raisers, has distributed $4 million from his own campaign coffers to the party and his colleagues this election cycle, including the $500,000 turned over to the Nevada Democratic Party to help Mr. Reid. Mr. Durbin has given nearly $500,000 to the campaign effort of Senate Democrats, and has appeared at fund-raisers and events and barnstormed with Mr. Reid.

Neither Mr. Schumer nor Mr. Durbin appears to be openly courting support for the job. And in the treacherous world of Senate leadership elections, even a hint of acting before Mr. Reid's fate is known could be costly.

My thinking on this is as follows. If somehow the Democrats lose their Senate majority, which I doubt but is possible, one would think Reid would step down as leader, even if he beats Angle. They may stick with Reid, I suppose, but one would think that losing the majority would seal his doom as leader.

If the Democrats keep their majority and Reid wins, they stay with him, in all likelihood. But if they keep their majority and he loses, then it's between Schumer and Durbin, but I am told that the energy leans toward Schumer. As it should.

I think Schumer has it in him to be a great majority leader. He's savvy. He's a wheeler-dealer. He knows how to talk to some Republicans and has a few cross-aisle friendships. He was born to legislate and make deals, which I mean in a positive way.

He has some of the best political instincts I've ever seen. Taking out Al D'Amato as he did in 1998 was a big job. Today people don't even remember D'Amato, but he was formidable. No one thought Schumer was going to be the senator. In January 1998, he was an extremely distant third among three candidates. By September, he crushed the other two. Even so, not many people thought in September he was going to beat the Fonz. He pummelled him, by about eight or 10 points as I recall. Wasn't close. All because of Schumer's excellent political nose.

He's incredibly hard working. When he was a young state legislator in Albany, most of his colleagues from the city went up to Albany – a three, three-and-a-half hour drive, depending on what part of the city they were from – Tuesday to Thursday. Schumer often drove back and forth every night.

More important than all this, I think he can and will tell the White House, and the president to his face, where they're going run. He'll say no. He has this relentless focus on average, middle-class people. He wrote a book about his centrist, incremental but nevertheless identifiably Democratic agenda. He seems to me far more likely than Reid is (or was) to be able to say to Obama, you're going too far to the left.

And he won't make any boneheaded plays like Reid did the time he announced out of the blue that suddenly immigration was going to take precedence over climate.

He has downsides, like anybody. He's too close to Wall Street. Always has been. But he is one sharp knife. It's not like I want Sharron Angle in the Senate, but if she gets there, leader Schumer is a definite upside for the D's.

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Video | Tomasky Talk: US midterms 2010: Crucial house races

Michael Tomasky sifts through the 435 midterm house of representatives races to find four that could prove bellwethers of the overall result

Michael Tomasky

Friday quiz: Bobbies on bicycles, two by two | Michael Tomasky

In deference to the veritably religious revelations this week from Frances56 (we are not worthy!), our subject for today's quiz is Swinging London. On Wednesday, I asked, after our friend Jabsco, about a concert wayback machine. But if there were a general life wayback machine, not merely for peeking in on things spectrally but for living there and then, my first choice would be to have been on the scene in 60s London. That may seem like a not-terribly-high ambition, and maybe it's not. But there you go. I would put it even before witnessing the French Revolution, which would be a close second but during which they lacked air conditioning and defensible dental hygiene.

I wouldn't ask the wayback machine gods to have made me a star. Even they don't have that power. But, let's say, a session guitarist; someone who namelessly showed up, plugged in his '58 Telecaster and plucked the solos on a few of the hits by Wayne Fontana and the Mindbenders, and perhaps the Hollies. I'd have frequented all the right clubs. I'd have been on a first-name basis with John-Paul-Mick-Keith-Eric-Jimmy. I'd have won the affections of my share of the birds. Today, of course, I'd be toothless and touring with the Zombies, but by God it would have been worth it. And I'd have NHS.

Unfair advantage to the Brits with this topic? Maybe. We'll make it up in the near future. But everybody should know certain things about Swinging London. Even Rich Iott should. So let's have at it.

1. What famous editor said in 1965, "London is the most swinging city in the world at the moment"?
a. Harold Evans of The Sunday Times
b. George Plimpton of The Paris Review
c. Diana Vreeland of Vogue

2. Who was the famous fashion designer who named the miniskirt?
a. Christian Dior
b. Jean Shrimpton
c. Mary Quant

3. What street was the locus of Swinging London fashion?
a. Portobello Road
b. Carnaby Street
c. Edgware Road

4. Which of these models was Mick Jagger's first famous girlfriend?
a. Chrissie Shrimpton
b. Twiggy
c. Donyale Luna

5. The future girlfriend and wife of which Beatle, also a famous model in her own right, made an appearance as a schoolgirl on the train in the early scenes of A Hard Day's Night, two years before she married him?
a. George Harrison
b. John Lennon
c. Ringo Starr

6. Which of these was not a famous nightclub where the Beatles and Stones and so on hung out?
a. The Ad Lib
b. The Bag O'Nails
c. The Mad King George

7. Victoriana was all the rage at some of the au courant clothing and bric-a-brac shops. What was the name of the famous clothing shop where Jimi Hendrix purchased his military coat that he wore for many concerts and photos?
a. Bandersnatch and Jabberwocky
b. I Was Lord Kitchener's Valet
c. The Big Bright Green Pleasure Machine

8. Even footballers were Swinging Londoners. Which member of England's 1966 World Cup team, who wore his hair like a Mod, scored the winning goal at Wembley over Germany?
a. Martin Peters
b. Geoff Hurst
c. Keith Relf

9. Who was the artist who designed the Sgt. Pepper cover?
a. Peter Blake
b. Peter Max
c. Pete Shotton

10. What British children's comic book was Eric Clapton pictured reading on the cover of a John Mayall's Blues Breakers album?
a. Good Prince Harald
b. Beano
c. Roy of the Rovers

11. Who was Emma Peel?
a. The author of the controversial Do It Yourself, a 1967 book that celebrated female self-stimulation
b. An heiress of the Bass Ale fortune who once scandalously took LSD before an audience with Queen Elizabeth
c. Diana Rigg's character on The Avengers

12. This actor cut a wide swath, as they say, across Swinging London, and his brother Chris helped bring The Who to prominence:
a. Terence Stamp
b. Michael Caine
c. Terry-Thomas

Great fun, eh wot? Let's have a peek.

Answers:

1-c; 2-c; 3-b; 4-a; 5-a; 6-c; 7-b; 8-b; 9-a; 10-b; 11-c; 12-a.

Notes:

1. A tough one unless you knew it. Harry didn't run the Sunday Times until 1967, but of course he did have the power of speech in 1965. Plimpton might have said something like that, but was better known for haunting New York and Paris than London.
2. Should have been easy by process of elimination. Jean Shrimpton was a model.
3. There's also the King's Road, but among these three, the choice should have been clear.
4. That's the kind of thing I think everybody knows. We'll see.
5. Ditto. Patti Boyd. What a hottie.
6. Probably one of the tougher ones. Nice fake answer on my part.
7. I got a from Lewis Carroll, obviously, and c was the title of a Simon & Garfunkel song from the era.
8. This is the one I probably would not have known, but probably the easiest for some Brits. Peters was on the squad as well, while Keith Relf was the Yardbirds' bassist.
9. One I expect people to know. It should be obvious it wasn't Peter Max. Pete Shotton was a childhood friend of Lennon's. John put him in charge of the ill-fated Apple clothing boutique, and then bought him a supermarket to manage on Hayling Island.
10. Basic rock iconography; you know it or you don't, I guess.
11. Today's gimme, I think, inserted largely because the fake answers are pretty great.
12. If I couldn't have been my dream session guitarist, I would like to have been Terence Stamp, not only for the ground he covered in Swinging London, but also for later getting to say "Kneel before Zog!" to Superman.

I would have gotten at least 11...maybe not Hearst. Tell us how you did, and most importantly, tell us your memories, if you were around. Frances56 can't be our only Swinging Londoner. And, Frances, we're just going to assume you went 12-for-12, and please don't tell us otherwise.

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More on Boehner and Iott (and some of you) | Michael Tomasky

I have to say I'm shocked and disappointed at some of your reactions and comments on the previous thread. Put the elections aside, Obama aside, Glenn Beck aside...do you really want to put yourselves in the position of defending people who dress up in Nazi uniforms?

Maybe you think it's just reenactment for the historically minded and interested. I think that's a very strange way to look at it. But if that's how you look at it, I suppose I can't persuade you to think it's just a categorically wrong thing to do.

However. Let's assume that all of us have never done this. So first of all that makes it a pretty rare practice. Second, imagine how you would feel, physically and emotionally, slipping into an SS uniform. Put yourself there, mentally: imagine hiking up those trousers (very specific things, those trousers), fastening those buttons, running your hands across those insignia, straightening that hat. Then looking at yourself in the mirror. Could you do it?

Maybe you could. I could not. For The Sound of Music or Schindler's List, sure, but that's a wholly different context. For Halloween...I guess some would, but not me. Your Halloween costume is a choice that says something about you. I would not tell the world that I thought it was funny or clever to dress as a Nazi. The last Halloween costume party I went to, I did fat Elvis (whatever that says about me). Prince Harry - and why he came up I have no idea, he had nothing to do with this - was a fool that day.

I cannot believe you excuse this. I really can't. Putting aside everything else about them, which is putting aside one hell of a lot, the Nazis were making war on us: America and England. That is not funny or interesting. They were the enemy. And I don't care if the guy dressed as Genghis Khan and Norse sailors and the French at Agincourt in addition. That's irrelevant. History offers us hundreds of armies from which to choose. And Iott chose to dress in the uniform of a regime that murdered millions and made war against his country, in the living memory of millions of his countrymen.

I can guarantee you that if there were some wacko Democratic candidate out there who dressed up in Chinese Red Army outfits for reenactments of the Korean War, I would not find that amusing or interesting. Maybe for an average Joe. But for a candidate for the House of Representatives? I would never excuse it. Most liberals would never excuse it, and I can certainly guarantee you that Nancy Pelosi would not be making a campaign appearance with that candidate the last weekend before an election. Or any time. And with greatest and gravest certainty of all, I can guarantee you that the same commenters who are lashing out at me would be howling about treason if this hypothetical were happening now.

And to think that the man who wants to be speaker of the House saw those photos, as he must have (if he didn't, that's possible even worse), and decided it was no big deal...I thought nothing stunned me anymore. But that actually does. So Eric Cantor denounced Iott. Fine. I have no reason to doubt Cantor's sincerity. All the same, we know very well that Cantor is the only prominent Jewish elected official in the GOP. So let's trot the Jew out there to offer some criticism, but after that, green light, baby!

I can tell from some of your comments that I struck a nerve. Good. I'm going to keep striking it. You cannot defend this, and there are no wise-guy answers. And I did not call them fascists. I said that if someone on my side called them fascists, that would to conservative be more objectionable than what Iott did, and what Boehner is doing this weekend. I can't imagine how that's so.

Some things, believe it or not, are more important than elections and political advantage. Trust me, this is one of them. You conservatives have 40 or 50 or more candidates who are going to win their elections. You do not need to loiter on a morally appalling street corner with this guy. You do yourselves and your ideology a grievous disservice; or perhaps you think you do not, which is far worse. In either case, I'm going to call you on it.

US midterm elections 2010Michael Tomasky
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Boehner just does not give a f*** | Michael Tomasky

This one takes cojones. I do not say that admirably, as one sometimes does.

John Boehner, evidently the soon-to-be-speaker of the people's house, is spending some time on the precious final weekend of campaigning to appear with the GOP candidate for the House of Representatives who has been busted this cycle for his past as an Einzatsgrupen soldier in the Third Rech. From TPM, quoting the web site of said candidate, Rich Iott:

RALLY WITH LEADER BOEHNER

Oct 30, 2010
When: Saturday, October 30th 8:30 am - 9:00 am

Where: Lucas County GOP Victory Center, 10 S. Superior St, Toledo

Calling all Iott Volunteers! Please join us for this very special pre-election rally with House Minority Leader, John Boehner. What a great way to start off our pre-election weekend. Please wear any Iott gear you may have! Should you have any further questions, please don't hesitate to call 419.324.[xxxx]

Josh Green of the Atlantic, not quite believing this could be right, contacted Boehner's people. And:

In a statement to The Atlantic, Don Seymour from Boehner's staff says it's about the volunteers: "Leader Boehner will be rallying Republican volunteers at the Lucas County Victory Center to support the local Republican Party's get-out-the-vote efforts. Boehner has been on the road headlining rallies for Republican candidates in Ohio and across the country, and he'll continue his busy campaign schedule into the final weekend before Tuesday's referendum on Democrats' jobs-killing policies."

The thing is, Iott stands only the very slimmest chance of winning, so why bother? And I thought Obama's scheduler was prone to error.

No. Wait. The thing of it is not that Iott won't win. The thing of it is that he dressed up in a Nazi uniform. And defended it. And now, the congressional leader of the Republican Party is going to appear with him.

And it's supposed to be a major outrage if someone on my side calls these people fascists, right? I give up.

US midterm elections 2010OhioMichael Tomasky
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Obama and the bus, which was not a bus at all | Michael Tomasky

I know some people have been chatting about this "back of the bus" comment. Surreal. The Obama comment wasn't about a bus. It was about a car. For months he's been talking about the GOP running "the car" of the economy into the ditch, and now they want the keys back. So the other he also said:

Finally we got this car up on level ground. And, yes, it's a little beat up. It needs to go to the body shop. It's got some dents; it needs a tune-up. But it's pointing in the right direction. And now we've got the Republicans tapping us on the shoulder, saying, we want the keys back.

You can't have the keys back. You don't know how to drive. You can ride with us if you want, but you got to sit in the backseat. We're going to put middle-class America in the front seat. We're looking out for them.

That is racial? Honestly. Give us a break. He's just extending a metaphor he's been using for ages. The only that is racial about that statement is the fact that the man who said it is black, and some people aren't wild about that fact, just as despise what they see as a history of complaint and grievance and whining. If there hadn't been 30 or 40 years of whipping white people into states of rage about that, it would never occur to anyone that there was a racial element to that statement.

The only thing that's racial about this is that Glenn Beck (among others) sees that it's to his advantage to make it racial, hinting that Obama is looking for payback. By what? I mean, by doing exactly what? Making Republican senators ride in the back cars of the little subway that ferries them to the Senate floor to vote? Passing laws making enrolled Republicans literally sit in the back sections of buses?

It's a real source of despair that we live in a society that can't defeat this manner of lie and propaganda. Not by barring these monsters and midgets from speaking. They have First Amendment rights. But we've lost a sense of judgment. And we didn't lose it because of the much shat-upon state; we lost it because of the profit motive. Life will carry on, as it always does; lovers will still love and poets will still write verse. But inch by inch, we are becoming a worse society. But then again maybe there's no such thing as society.

Barack ObamaFox NewsMichael Tomasky
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