"THIRD RAIL" IS PUTTING IT MILDLY

I really don't understand the insiders and wonks who think this kind of bill can pass in the foreseeable future:

In a last-ditch showdown on immigration relief for illegal migrants, the Democratically-controlled House of Representatives on Wednesday narrowly approved the so-called DREAM Act that would offer a pathway to citizenship for undocumented young people who attend college or serve in the military.

The House passed the bill 216 to 198.

The Senate is scheduled to vote on the bi-partisan legislation, which would potentially legalize hundreds of thousands of young people, on Thursday. Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nevada), majority leader, is not expected to have the 60 votes needed for passage.

Republican leaders said the bill is just another form of "amnesty"....

The legislation would give hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants a chance at becoming legal. The requirements state that, to be eligible, a person must have been brought to the United States before he or she was 16, been in the United States for five years, earned a high-school degree and be attending college or be in the military.

In recent days, Democrats had aimed to pick up some Republican support by dropping the maximum eligible age from 35 to 29, extending the waiting period for a green card from six to 10 years and eliminating the requirement that DREAM Act youth pay tuition at in-state rates rather than out-of-state rates....

Forget it. It's an exercise in futility.

See, here's the problem: voters say they want "comprehensive immigration reform" but oppose "amnesty." That sounds promising, but what it really means is that anything you propose that isn't "round 'em all up and deport 'em" is automatically described as "amnesty" by the right. And then swing voters hear that it's "amnesty" -- whatever the proposal is -- and assume they should be against it.

As long as right-wingers control the debate, you can't propose anything that won't fall victim to this sequence of events. You could write a bill that mandated fifty years at hard labor before the opportunity to apply for citizenship kicked in, and right-wingers would still call it "amnesty." And the public, not knowing any better, would just nod in agreement.

Someday this will change, I suppose. But not anytime soon.

WELCOME, TBOGG READERS

Aimai's words are in the comments to this post (link fixed). Feel free to join the pile-on.

NO ONE ELSE WAS AROUND, SO WE BEAT OURSELVES UP

If I were a shrewder blogger, I'd look at the poll results on the tax deal and just cherry-pick the numbers that proved I was a genius, but right now all I see is a muddle. Bloomberg:

Americans don’t approve of keeping the breaks for upper-income taxpayers that are part of the deal President Barack Obama brokered with congressional Republicans, a Bloomberg National Poll shows.

The survey, conducted before, during and after the tax negotiations, shows that only a third of Americans support keeping the lower rates for the highest earners. Even among backers of the cuts for the wealthy, fewer than half say they should be made permanent....

Contrast that with Gallup:

Two major elements included in the tax agreement reached Monday between President Barack Obama and Republican leaders in Congress meet with broad public support. Two-thirds of Americans (66%) favor extending the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts for all Americans for two years, and an identical number support extending unemployment benefits for the long-term unemployed.

According to Gallup polling conducted Dec. 3-6, the slight majority of Democrats, as well as most independents and Republicans, would vote for a two-year extension of [all] the tax cuts passed in 2001 and 2003....

My take on this? Most Americans oppose the giveaway to the rich when asked about it point blank. Ask them about it another way and their opposition vanishes. Opposition to this is a mile wide and an inch deep.

Oh, and in general (as Frank Chow notes), Democrats, including liberal Democrats, continue to support the president according to polls, despite the long list of alleged dealbreakers earlier in his term.

****

Now, I'm going to engage in wild speculation about what else the public is thinking (or at least is likely to start thinking soon). Greg Sargent is telling us this about the prospects for the tax cut deal in Congress:

* ... the Senate math remains daunting: According to vote counters, at least 30 Dems in the Senate firmly oppose the deal right now, meaning passage is anything but assured....

* House Dems draw a hard line: Nancy Pelosi and her caucus appear unwilling to accept the GOP-favored estate tax proposal in the tax cut deal....

* More scorching criticism of Obama from Dems: Obama's sharp rebuke of Dem critics yesterday isn't doing much to quiet the likes of Anthony Weiner:

"There's this general sense that we need the President to be the leader of our country, to be the leader of our party, and to be the leader of the values we believe in, and he seems to go from zero to compromise in 3.5 seconds. I'm not saying that you never compromise or that you never do deals. This is Washington, that's how laws get passed. But he and his team just don't seem to be that good at it."

You know what I think is coming next? A period of gridlock in Congress caused by Democrat-on-Democrat bickering. You know how the public's going to respond? The public's going to say, "We hate gridlock! It's bad enough when you guys are fighting with the Republicans, but now you can't even stop fighting with yourselves long enough to get things done." Democrats will be blamed -- while Republicans, who are keeping a very low profile, stand off to the side and laugh (as they await the moment when they seize the one house of Congress they don't already effectively control, at which point they'll get whatever they want).

Was this a good deal? Was this a damnable compromise? I'm sick of discussing that question -- for the purposes of what I'm saying now, I don't care. The point is that Democrats should pick one approach and join together on it. I look at the poll numbers at the top of this post and I'm convinced that even voters opposed to cuts for the rich would have given Obama credit for being a grown-up, just because they don't hate those cuts as much as they hate D.C. mud-wrestling and gridlock. But now they're going to hate the cock-up the Democrats seem on the verge of generating. And they ain't gonna blame the Republicans, because every kid throwing a punch in this particular sandbox has a name that's followed by a "(D)."

NO STRUGGLE, PLEASE, WE'RE EXPECTING A MESSIAH

Kevin Drum on the tax cut deal:

Anyone who doesn't like it needs to spend the next two years persuading the public not just to tell pollsters they don't like tax cuts for the rich, but to actually vote out of office anyone who supports tax cuts for the rich. That's the only way we'll win the replay of this battle in 2012.

Well, exactly. A new poll from the Bloomberg news service shows that Americans, yet again, say they want tax cuts for the rich repealed (details in this PDF) -- but if that's how they feel, why don't they vote against the Republicans who endlessly defend rich people's tax breaks? Congressional Democrats wimped out in September and chose not to put the issue in relief by holding a vote -- that, as I said at the time, was when the battle was lost -- but even in the absence of a vote, what does the left, professional or otherwise, insider or outsider, ever do to make the governing philosophy of the GOP clear to the broad general public, in a way that will get the public mad?

Related to this is what mistermix says about the angry left voices out there now:

It is beyond parody that these idiots can experience the last two years of legislative gridlock and conclude that the proper response is to launch a primary challenge in 2012. You don't have to be an O-bot to see that the biggest challenge to progressivism in this country is the Senate. Though it’s always given rural, conservative states a bigger voice in Congress, the aggressive use of the filibuster has turned it into the place where progressive legislation goes to die.

Most of the drama we experienced in the 111th Congress is directly related to the anachronistic rules of the Senate. If progressives need a windmill to tilt at, why not pick filibuster reform? Is it because it would take time, patience, subtlety and political cunning?

That's harsh, but I think there's truth to it -- that and the fact that we seem to believe that all we have to do is pick a hero (or set of heroes) and an enemy (or set of enemies), and if we can achieve victory for the good guy(s), everything will just fall into place. We won't have to keep fighting and keep persuading. All good will flow from a rider or riders atop one or more white steeds.

I saw this mindset in 2000 among Naderites. The two-party duopoly is hopelessly corrupt! Elect Nader! And if you had elected Nader, my Underpants Gnomes, what's Step 2? Wouldn't he be working with 535 legislators who were all (or nearly all) from the two-party duopoly? I also saw this mentality, with less pure heroes, in the great Netroots/50-State Strategy/Ned Lamont moment of 2006 and, needless to say, with Obama in 2008.

Of course, Obama did very little to disabuse supporters of the notion that he was, in fact, a messiah -- a good electoral strategy, perhaps, but it gets you in trouble when you can't deliver. Not that he tries very hard to engage the public. Atrios yesterday:

Meh

I guess that's my reaction to the budget Deal Or No Deal. The economy does need more stimulus and it does provide more of that than expected (recognize expectations game). But if the economy needed more stimulus, why haven't they been making it the case? I understand that stimulus has become a dirty word because, well, I have no idea why, but they could have called it Magic Ponies or whatever.

"Stimulus" has become a dirty word because Republicans never stop messaging and Democrats never start.

It's odd that we now have the sneering term "the professional left" because, literally, there is no professional left -- no set of institutions that effectively promotes progressive ideas (rather than liberal or people-we-hope-are-liberal politicians). There sure as hell is a professional right; every day it grinds out effective propaganda and gets right-wing ideas even more deeply embedded in the national consciousness. This is what progressives have to do -- sell the ideas. Sell them to people who aren't Democratic Underground commenters and Kos diarists. And think of electoral victories as won battles, not won wars.

FIREBAGGING GOES MAINSTREAM

An exchange between Zandar and me earlier today, in comments:

Zandar
I still say the Tea Party will kill this deal to prevent President Obama from getting Centrist Warm Fuzzies from the Village.

stevem
Interesting theory. Although won't lefties try to beat them to it?

Or maybe we can look forward to [a] Jane Hamsher/Michele Bachmann summit meeting to pool anti-Obama resources.

I thought I was joking, but, well, here comes the normally level-headed Bernie Sanders:

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) is making the loudest filibuster threats in the Senate right now, vowing to do all he can to block President Obama's tax cut compromise.

Here's how: "Find a handful of Republicans who are willing to vote no on this agreement and then come back and come up with a proposal that is much stronger and much fairer," he told reporters today.

"What I'm saying as a progressive should appeal to conservatives all over this country," Sanders added. "I think we have a winnable fight here. I think the American people are with us and I intend to do everything that I can to defeat this proposal."

STOP. PLEASE. JUST STOP.

I actually fear that this is more or less what's going to happen: a deal-scotching revolt (and thus the complete negation of the lame-duck session). Sanders is angry, Pelosi and other House Dems are angry, Durbin says some Senate Dems are angry, long-time Bush tax cut supporter Mary Landrieu is hypocritically angry ... Ahhh, the good old Democratic Party, the folks who never, ever hang together because they'd always rather hang separately. (And, given his unilateralism on this, I absolutely have to include the president in that criticism. His party is virtually incapable of coming together on anything, so why did he play right into this tendency by excluding congressional leaders?)

The absurdity of what Sanders says is in his fantasy that Democrats will "come up with a proposal that is much stronger and much fairer" -- and it will be able to get past the GOP brick wall in Congress. So how, precisely, is that going to happen? Oh, right -- he's going to start an insta-revolution!

"I'm not into naming names," he said, "but let me tell you something: Obviously I come from a more progressive state than most. But I will be willing to bet -- and you ask them -- dollars to donuts, that in R states all over this country there are people saying, 'Wait a second, it is insane to give tax breaks to billionaires when the rich have done phenomenally well in recent years.'"

You know what? He may be right about those folks in the heartland. And you know something else? Republicans don't give a goddamn. Republicans have been pounding their propaganda into these people's heads for thirty years. When Republicans let up for a few seconds, these people sometimes think for themselves and say, "The rich? Why are we cutting their taxes?" But if Republicans thought that argument could ever trump their DEMOCRATS EVIL BIG GOVERNMENT EVIL SOCIALIST EVIL TAX-AND-SPEND EVIL IVY LEAGUE EVIL HOLLYWOOD EVIL ACORN EVIL EVIL EVIL, they'd just crank up the volume to 11 to the 11th power and flood the zone with even more propaganda. And it would prevail, as usual.

Long term? Maybe -- maybe -- a concerted messaging effort could beat the GOP, despite the GOP's 30-year head start. However, Bernie thinks he can beat this messaging before Christmas. And, I suppose, get an unemployment extension, DADT repeal, and the DREAM Act passed in the lame duck as well.

IT'S TOO FREAKING LATE RIGHT NOW. Filibuster this and the GOP will ram something through that's immeasurably worse.

Though, yeah, I suppose before that happens there could be a summit meeting between angry lefties and Mark Levin, or the Club for Growth. If so, good luck with that, folks.

****

A stray thought: I have no evidence to back this up apart from a gut sense, but I can't help thinking that if the White House fought off an extension of the Bush tax cuts for the rich but didn't get a dime in extended unemployment, the people who are the angriest now wouldn't be nearly as angry as they are now. I'm not sure they'd be angry at all.

Am I right about that?

And if so, what does that say about the priorities of the angriest Obama critics? What's more important -- getting what can be gotten for the people who are struggling, or experiencing a satisfying win against the GOP?

SAINT REAGAN FLUNKED CIVICS, TOO

Steve Benen writes:

About a month ago, President Obama delivered a speech at the University of Indonesia in Jakarta, and included a line in his remarks that seemed wholly unremarkable: "In the United States, our motto is E pluribus unum -- out of many, one."

Of all the things for the right to complain about, they're actually raising a fuss about this.

Members of the Congressional Prayer Caucus have criticized President Barack Obama for telling an audience in Indonesia last month that the phrase "E Pluribus Unum" is a good summary of the American experience.

The Prayer Caucus, led by U.S. Rep. Randy Forbes (R-Va.), wrote to Obama today complaining that he called "E Pluribus Unum" the national motto during a Nov. 10 speech at a university in Jakarta. The national motto, the caucus insists, is actually "In God We Trust."

The Congressional Prayer Caucus' letter insisted to the president that he's "casting aside an integral part of American society," by "removing one of the cornerstones of our secure freedom." The caucus added, "If we pull the thread of religious conviction out of the marketplace of ideas, we unravel the tapestry of freedom that birthed America."

... What's more, conservative and Republican activists actually seem to care about this. Fox News ran an item, as did TV preacher Pat Robertson's Christian Broadcasting Network. Conservative blogger Ed Morrissey is outraged, or at least pretending to be, asking whether "high schools in Hawaii actually teach civics."

Well, I have to ask myself whether schools in Tampico and Dixon, Illinois, taught civics back in the old days. You see -- as religion blogger Frank Lockwood notes -- Saint Ronnie himself made the same America-disdaining, religion-bashing, tapestry-uunraveling mistake:

Would Ronald Reagan, the Great Communicator, the Gipper, refer to E Pluribus Unum as our national motto?

The answer is Yes. Speaking at the National Forum on Excellence in Education, on Dec. 8, 1983 in Indianapolis, Indiana, Ronald Reagan said, and I quote:

"The motto of the United States is 'E Pluribus Unum,' from many, one."

...There wasn't a national outcry when Ronald Reagan called E Pluribus Unum our "national motto."

Lockwood also notes that the sainted George W. Bush issued a proclamation in 2001 in which he said,

In 1782, the Founding Fathers chose as our national motto "E Pluribus Unum," which means "out of many, one."

A 2002 proclamation referred to "E Pluribus Unum" as "our first national motto." In fact, it was never officially our national motto.

So send W -- and Reagan's corpse -- out for the same reeducation Obama gets!

ON LATE-BLOOMING OUTRAGE, PUBLIC OPINION, AND THE CHANCE FOR A NEW TEA PARTY

I know it's satisfying to find one Antichrist at whom to direct your hate, but this anonymous person who talked to ABC's Jake Tapper is right:

"We wanted a fight, the House didn't throw a punch," a senior White House official tells ABC News, pointing out that for months before the 2010 midterm elections, President Obama was making the case against the Bush tax cuts for wealthier Americans. "The House wouldn't vote before the Senate, and the Senate was afraid they'd lose a vote on it."

"It was like the Jets versus Sharks except there weren't any Jets," the official said. "Senator Schumer says he wants a fight? He couldn't hold his caucus together."

On the other hand, Ezra Klein is also right:

For the record, if the White House had wanted a fight, it could have simply announced that it would veto any tax-cut compromises that retained the breaks for income over $250,000. That would've made it much easier for House and Senate Democrats to hold the line.

There's plenty of blame to go around -- but the point is, you don't squander nearly all the time you have, while your opponents are putting rhetorical points on the board, and then squeeze this and half a dozen other fights into a couple of weeks before December and expect to have a seamlessly executed game plan that wins public favor and gets your goals accomplished. Republicans were vulnerable to attack ads and campaign-trail rhetoric during the campaign, and the Democrats wimped out. (Ezra is right that a veto threat at that time would have strengthened congressional Dems' hand, but they shouldn't have needed that. So everyone's to blame.) In any case, this fight wasn't lost in the past 24 hours -- it was lost months ago.

****

An editorial in today's New York Times:

Mr. Obama said on Monday night that he still believed extending the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy was a bad idea. He predicted that it would be undone in two years when it becomes apparent to everyone that the country can't afford it. The president needs to ask himself why he couldn't make that case now -- and how he plans to change his approach to governing so he doesn't get trapped this way again.

As I say above, I don't believe the president could "make that case now" -- "now" being the eleventh hour, that is, the last few weeks of the two-year period he and congressional Democrats had to deal with this.

Well, it would nice to believe that Democrats would actually use the next two years to devise and deploy a strategy that will change the terms of this debate. Do you think they'll manage it? Me either.

But maybe that's what the rest of us need to do. Shouldn't outside groups be trying to foment class warfare, on the assumption that it should be done whether Democrats get on board or not? That's how successful progressive movements have worked historically -- not in lockstep with Democrats, and not primarily as sworn enemies of Democrats, but on the principle of "Here's where we stand; join us or don't -- we're marching anyway."

This should be our tea party -- there should be groups spring up all over the country with names like Tax the Rich. Activists need to make more activists out in the heartland, on the principle that the well-to-do have done well while the rest of us have struggled.

I'm having a naive fantasy, of course -- much more energy will probably go into a "PRIMARY EVERYBODY!!!" movement. But a fella can dream, can't he?

****

The Huffington Post published Emily Swanson's speculations on the public-opinion fallout from this deal under the headline "Extending Bush Tax Cuts: The Most Unpopular Thing Obama Has Done?," but that's a ruse to drawn in the most frustrated lefties, because Swanson -- correctly, I think -- argues that this won't be broadly unpopular:

While most public polls have shown that extending the tax cuts only for those making less than $250,000 is by far the most popular option, polls have shown that allowing all of the cuts to expire would be even less popular. The same CBS poll found that only 14 percent wanted to let the cuts expire for everyone.

Additionally, a new poll released Monday by the conservative group Crossroads GPS found that, when presented with only two options, 65 percent of likely voters would prefer to extend the cuts and only 29 percent would allow them to expire.

If you don't trust that poll, go look at the collection of polls on this subject at polling report. Letting all the cuts expire -- which is what a lot of lefties wanted Obama to do -- is always, by far, the least popular option.

(And, well, of course it is. Ordinary Americans have taken it on the chin for a couple of years now. This would seem like just one more way they have to sacrifice for the mistakes of other people, most of them extremely fat cats.)

I have a hunch that Obama's poll ratings might go up as a result of this deal. Ordinary Americans, including rank-and-file Democratic voters (i.e., people who don't read the Huffington Post and watch The Ed Show) got a continuation of their tax cut and an extension of unemployment benefits and a bipartisan negotiating process that seemed to end with everyone acting like adults and compromising. Cringe if you must, but I'm guessing that that's how heartland Democrats and non-teabag independents are going to see this, even if lefty political obsessives are fuming.

SHH! DON'T TELL THE WINGNUTS OBAMA DIDN'T GET HUMILIATED!

HLike John Cole, Kevin Drum, and Ezra Klein, I actually think the deal Obama got isn't all that bad. (If you're looking for the best summary of the deal, go read Ezra.) I'm still trying to puzzle the deal out: Jonathan Cohn says Republicans were "flexible" for one reason:

They are willing to deal away a lot if they're getting tax cuts for the rich. President Clinton got Republicans to establish a Childrens' Health Insurance Program in 1997 in return for a capital gains tax cut. Now Obama got a fair amount of stimulus in return for upper-bracket tax cuts. Unfortunately, it tends to be terrible policy. But it's the party's core policy goal, and if you help them attain it they can be surprisingly reasonable.

And yet why did Republicans agree to restore the estate tax, albeit at a much lower rate than the pre-2010 rate? Recall that the estate tax disappeared this year, temporarily, as a result of a provision in the original Bush bill. It seemed likely to me that Republicans were going to dig in their heels and insist that what they call the death tax be eliminated permanently, unilaterally declaring this year to be the baseline. I guess dropping it from 45% to 35% for estates above $5 million is enough of a victory for them. It is a huge tax cut for very wealthy people, which sucks, but I'm used to Republicans demanding much more before they've concluded that they won.

Here a way they think they won, via Drudge:

Obama went along with a tax cut! Can you believe it? What a humiliation! Of course, the tiny minority of us who are paying attention know that Obama has been a tax cutter; we also know that reducing the payroll tax has been an idea a lot of liberal wonks have spoken of favorably. Don't tell the 'pubs, but we think of it as stimulus -- it puts more money in the pockets of ordinary workers, who'll spend a lot of it. It's not much stimulus, but it's more than we had reason to expect. Now, this particular cut goes exclusively to employees, as The Wall Street Journal explains:

The version of a payroll-tax holiday under discussion now would reduce the 6.2% Social Security tax levied on a worker's wages to 4.2%. A worker making $40,000 a year would save $800, and some economists say that could help stimulate demand at a time when it's remained relatively weak.

The employer's half of the tax -- also 6.2% -- wouldn't be affected under the White House proposal, and thus the cost of hiring new workers wouldn't be directly affected.

I'm a bit surprised at that -- I might have expected the GOP to insist that the cost be split, so all those potential employers (including the poor, suffering ones that are sitting on piles of cash but not hiring) would have lower costs per worker. But maybe Republicans really don't want businesses to have an increased incentive to hire -- can't have that while there's a Democrat in the White House!

I'm assuming Republicans will want the lower payroll tax rate to be extended past the one-year period it's slated to last. I suppose that would be good for workers -- although it will drain money from Social Security trust fund. Ah, but for Republicans, I'm sure that's a feature, not a bug.

Overall, I think Republicans think they won bigger than they did -- and maybe that's why the deal happened.

COMPROMISE, BECAUSE MOST AMERICANS ARE NOT POLITICS JUNKIES

David Leonhardt of The New York Times tries to explain where we are on the Bush tax cuts -- and gets it wrong:

There are really two separate questions here. The first is whether a showdown over ending the tax cuts, which would cause everyone's taxes to rise, would politically hurt the Democrats or the Republicans, independent of the economic effect. That is, if the two parties fought to a stalemate and everybody's taxes went up on Jan. 1, would voters blame Democrats for dawdling on the issue over the last two years and then finally getting tough only after the Republicans had won a big election victory? Or would voters blame Republicans for refusing to pass a tax cut unless it included an extension of the cuts for the affluent?

Leonhardt askes, "would voters blame Democrats for dawdling on the issue over the last two years and then finally getting tough only after the Republicans had won a big election victory?" I'll answer that: no.


Here's why. Most voters simply don't know that that's what's happened. They're not following this the way we are. They haven't thought about the Bush tax cuts in years, if they were ever more than dimly aware of them. But they'll sure as hell know if they're taxes go up, because the Republican noise machine will never stop talking about it. (And I mean never, the way Republicans have never stopped talking about how evil the health care bill is.)

Which is I respectfully disagree with Aimai's tax cut brinkmanship idea. Democrats can't mess around with this, because all most voters know is that a Democratic president is in charge and taxes could go up -- and Republicans will make certain that they know which party allowed the tax cuts to lapse, or tried to (and, in 2011, which rode to the rescue and restored the cuts, if it comes to that). Republicans can do that because they have a better message operation and because much of the public, even the low-information segment of it, knows the GOP stereotype of Democrats: they're people who engage in taxation and government spending as a compulsion, the way alcoholics drink. That's a far more ingrained idea than "Republicans love millionaires" (and, after the last two years in particular, it's hard to persuade these voters that Democrats love millionaires any less).

The message of Aimai's plan is "Democrats want to keep tax cuts for the middle class, but Republicans insist on holding that approach, and a lot of other important public business, hostage to a huge tax cut extension for rich people, so we Democrats held their hostage-taking hostage, and then ..." See? Already you're getting to a very complex message -- what Al Franken calls "See next bumper sticker." Republicans' message is two words: lower taxes.

That's why this battle had to be fought before the midterms -- possibly well before the midterms (I think possibly in 2009, before the massive dissipation of Democrats' political capital by the health care fight) -- or not at all.

Contrarily, I don't think this likely loss is the end of the Obama presidency, as so many lefties are arguing right now. Those who arguing that this was a central pledge of the Obama presidential campaign are assuming most voters even remember the campaign pledges in that kind of detail. Trust me -- the average voter doesn't remember them that way. That was a pledge that, again, those of us who pay a lot of attention noticed, and those who don't let escape from their memories. If Obama allows their taxes to rise, most voters will notice; if he doesn't allow the taxes of the rich to rise, most voters will just shrug.

THOUGHTS ON THE LEFT'S "MANCHURIAN PRESIDENT" MEME

The White House appears to be close to a deal that would extend the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy for perhaps two years, possibly with an extension of unemployment benefits as compensation. I can't say that the dealmaking makes me happy, but it doesn't make me want to write something like this:

What makes Nancy Pelosi think that this president even WANTS anything else? At this point, it's pretty clear that lip service to working Americans is all this guy does, while he amasses chits with Wall Street to be cashed in for a fat Wall Street paycheck when he leaves office....

Does anyone actually believe that an extension of unemployment benefits will be part of the final package?

I know a lot of you believe this "Manchurian president" idea -- you think he's come to office with the goal of fooling us into thinking that he shares our beliefs and goals when in fact he shares none of them, and wants only to do to the country more or less what Republicans would do. The fighting between parties? It's all theater? Obama's alleged incompetence as an advocate for his agenda? A smokescreen, because it isn't really his agenda.

Here's my problem with this argument: Barack Obama is the most hated man in America. He has a wife and two young daughters, and death threats against him are reportedly 400% greater than those faced by his predecessor. If it's all theater and he's just faking it, isn't there an easier, less punishing, less threatening way for him to do that? Couldn't he simply stop arguing for policies that stir up hate in the heartland? Couldn't he become more like Ben Nelson or Harold Ford? Wouldn't that be easier -- and safer -- while leading to similar results?

The argument is that he's the political equivalent of the Washington Generals -- the team that exists solely to lose to the Harlem Globetrotters, while maintaining the illusion that the Trotters have an opponent. But when was the last time you heard of a Washington Generals player being viciously fouled? How much punishment do the Globetrotters dish out to the Generals? How angry does play get? That's theater disguised as competition. If Obama vs. the GOP is all Kabuki, why isn't it like that?

I know what your answer to that will be: pro wrestling. But after a scripted wrestling match, it's likely that either wrestler, the hero or the villain, will come away really banged up. In this supposedly staged political cage match, if the Democrat is just a clever actor playing a part, why is he inevitably the one who takes one in the jaw, while Republicans always seem to walk away unscathed -- even when they lose elections?

For that matter -- stepping away from the sports metaphor for a second -- why did Republicans lose the election in 2008 in the first place? John McCain had been a mainstream media hero. Barack Obama was the underdog who overperformed. Why didn't The Puppetmasters Who Control Everything use the media to allow Obama to come close, like Stallone in the first Rocky movie, but not actually win? Remember, McCain actually led in the polls briefly in September 2008 -- if Republicanism is what they want, why didn't the powers-that-be just let him take it all? Why didn't Obama just let him take it all, if he's just a fat cats' plant?

No, Obama isn't passionately, solidly progressive. But I just don't buy the notion that he's a cynic acting as a Judas goat to lead progressives astray and lead America into the arms of the GOP. I think he genuinely wants some of what we want, and genuinely lacks the political skills to attain it. We can argue case by case, but the notion that he's getting exactly what he wants -- see also Laurence Lewis at Daily Kos -- strikes me as absurd.

Its Really Quite Simple.

Look, we have two separate problems as Democrats trying to run the country. 1) The Tax Cuts and 2) Running the Country. Because the Democrats don't understand the first thing about bargaining and negotiating we are in a massive crunch during this lame duck session. The Republicans have linked the tax cuts for millionaires to the entire Democratic governing agenda and basically said that if, and only if, they get what they want will they (possibly) allow the Democratic majority to get passed cloture and vote on DADT, DREAM, and everything else. The public and the blogs are running around with their hair on fire, to the extent that they even grasp what is happening, screaming that the Republicans either have to be given what they want or that we have to essentially burn the house down to get the legislation we want--that is sacrifice everything for the tax cuts. In fact, those geniuses at the White House are apparently debating just how badly to throw the game by extending the tax cuts to the most politically difficult next stage of the game while continuing to get nothing for it.

But the solution is really quite simple. Utterly simple. The Republican party--specifically the Senate--has demonstrated that they value the tax cuts for millionaires above all other things. In a real negotiation, with non morons on your side, this is an incredibly important piece of information. Reid and Obama should simply schedule the Tax Cut vote *that they want* for the last hours of the last day of the lame duck session. They tell the Republicans that if they refuse to vote for cloture on each and every one of the pending issues: DADT, DREAM, Judges, etc... then the vote on tax cuts simply never happens. The Bush tax cuts go away.

What's the downside of my approach? Nothing. At the moment the President and Reid's method amounts to allowing hostage taking, extortion, and brinksmanship by a number of key players (Brown, Snowe) who have shown themselves over and over again to be acting in bad faith. Under my system there would be no reward for bad faith negotiations just a straightforward quid pro quo: allow the business of government to go forward and the minority gets a shot at getting a vote on something it wants. Refuse to allow the business of government to go forward and the opportunity to keep low taxes on millionaires simply vanishes.

Now (some) Democrats will argue, apparently, that it will be fatal for Obama to allow the "Bush Tax Cuts" for the middle class to expire on his watch. But that assumes, as such arguments always do, that Obama and the Dems continue to lose the war of words that really is politics--that they throw the narrative down the drain. But they don't have to. To put it mildly: its a choice they make. If they put up a "Obama tax cut clock" on the floor of the Senate and have it count down "through the people's business" as the Republicans vote against cloture over and over again--well, the stories write themselves. Even if the tax cuts evaporate at midnight with the lame duck session from a political stand point its no harm/no foul. If middle class tax cuts are so important to the middle class Obama and the House Dems can run on middle class tax cuts for the next two years. Running on a clearly labled Obama/House Dem middle class tax cut is a much better ploy than running on "we kinda saved the Bush tax cuts for some people."

I can't believe the Democrats can't figure this out but I've been a Democratic voter and observer for a really long time. Yes, these people are just that stupid. They continually try to run on a "record of achievement" when all voters hear is "what will you do for me next." They fell right into this trap with HCR when they continually insist that the great legislative achievement of two years ago should determine how voters vote two years from now. As though getting us Social Security and Medicare guaranteed Democratic dominance with the two groups who use them the most. Well, those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it. Grasp that the voters need to be told over and over again who is doing what to whom. Then go out and do it harder to the other guy.

aimai

Cross Posted at I Spy With My Little Eye

DEAR SARAH: YOU HUNT? WE DON'T GIVE A CRAP ONE WAY OR THE OTHER

I don't understand why wingnuts like Sarah Palin have such a burning need to believe that their ideological opponents hate hunting -- and the same goes for you, Ted Nugent. The Note at ABC News at least recognizes that Palin and Nugent are fighting an opponent that has no interest in fighting back:

In tonight's episode of "Sarah Palin's Alaska," the former governor showcases the Alaska tundra while caribou hunting with her father.... the episode is giving Palin an opportunity to "proudly" take aim at "anti-hunting hypocrisy."

"Tonight's hunting episode of Sarah Palin's Alaska 'controversial'? Really? Unless you've never worn leather shoes, sat upon a leather couch or eaten a piece of meat, save your condemnation of tonight's episode. I remain proudly intolerant of anti-hunting hypocrisy. :)" Palin posted on Facebook and Twitter today.

... And while she alludes to the idea that the show is somehow controversial, it doesn't seem that there has been a giant public outcry. Palin seems eager to pick a fight here, even if no one is fighting back.

Rock legend and avid hunter Ted Nugent is also getting in on the game. In a web video to promote the hunting episode of "Sarah Palin's Alaska," Nugent says the decision to hunt is "so simple it's stupid." ...

Have either of these people ever had a civil conversation with a liberal, about this or any other subject? I don't mean some cable-news bit of verbal mud-wrestling, but an actual conversation, like the ones human beings have with other human beings.

On this subject, they'd probably learn that most liberals are meat-eaters, and actually know that meat, y'know, comes from animals -- animals who become meat after they die. Really -- we get it.

And many of the yuppiest cultural elitists are quite fond of artisanal butchering and the "snout-to-tail" approach to fine dining, meaning using every part of the animal. Anthony Bourdain eats offal and becomes a foodie rock star. Julie Powell (of Julie and Julia fame) writes a second book and gets slammed by upscale critics not for the accounts of butchering (which are praised), but for the accounts of marital infidelity.

Meat? Bring it on.

And hunting? What's always impressed me is that, while I tend to put it on the "conservative" side of the ledger, it seems very, very different from so much else that's on that side. Hunters seem to be cool with getting licenses and staying in season. They're not constantly insisting that such limitations on their ability to hunt are fascist impositions by satanic liberal elitists. They mostly seem to go out when they're permitted and hunt the animals they're legally allowed to hunt. Why the hell would I have a problem with that?

As for Nugent, I'm told he gives some of the meat from his kills to charity. I'd say that's one of the few aspects of his life I don't find reprehensible.

FOUR LEGS GOOD, TWO LEGS BAD BETTER

Well, this is an amusing thought exercise, but I have doubts about the likely result:

Dem: We could have let economy fall and been in majority for 40 years

Retiring Rep. Brian Baird (D-Wash.) said that Democrats wisely passed the 2008 financial rescue bill, but it cost them politically.

Addressing the economic collapse of 2008 and the subsequent passage of the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), Baird told The Hill, "Had we wanted to, we could have let the president, President Bush... stew in his own juices." ...

"We could have said, 'The economy is going to collapse. The world is going to go into a depression. You’re going to get the blame and your party is going to get the blame because you're in power and we are going to ride this into the majority for the next 40 years.' That is what the Democrats could have done." ...

Nahhh -- I don't think so.

Let's imagine that some Democrats joined with the proto-teabagger Republicans in the fall of 2008 to block TARP. And let's imagine that Congress continued to block TARP after Obama was elected. I agree that the results would have been even worse than what we got, for everyone.

But I don't think it would have sunk the Republicans. The GOP noise machine would just have delivered up a different script. There'd have been no attempt to elevate the tea party movement on Fox and talk radio -- instead, we'd have heard that, in demanding action, Bush was right!!! The rehabilitation of the GOP would have been based in an effort to rehabilitate Bush. And no matter what part of the Democratic spectrum the TARP resisters came from (never mind the Republican resisters), we'd have been told that TARP couldn't pass the Democratic Congress because Democrats hate business!!! (The complementary message from centrist op-ed pages would be that resistance to TARP came from "extremists on both sides.")

By now, needless to say, the (even more horrible) economy would all be the fault of the congressional Democrats and Obama. And Jeb would be the front-runner to beat Obama in 2012.

WE'RE NOT REJECTING NATIONAL DECLINE -- WE'RE REJECTING PERSONAL DECLINE

Matt Bai writes in today's New York Times that the recommendations of the Simpson/Bowles commission are unlikely to be enacted; the reason he gives for this (which I think is absurd) is that the recommendations make the public feel sad about the country:

Common wisdom here holds that the report issued by the president's fiscal commission last week is probably going nowhere, despite the endorsement of 11 of the 18 commission members. Sure, voters like to complain about the debt, the insiders say, but once you start talking about higher taxes and cuts in benefits, you find that no one wants to be the one to sacrifice.

There may be truth to this premise, but only some. After all, generations of Americans have sacrificed plenty for the nation's cause, and there's no reason to think we've lost the capacity. What makes this case for sacrifice so much harder to embrace, perhaps, is that it goes to our national psyche, threatening our self-image as a land with limitless potential. While past generations have readily sacrificed for national greatness, debt reduction -- at least in the gloomy way its advocates argue for it -- feels like a call to sacrifice in the name of our national decline.

After all, this sense of limitless potential, too, is what we often mean by "American exceptionalism" ...

Look, I don't know if Americans really are capable anymore of voluntary personal sacrifice for the national good -- though if they aren't, a big reason is that they have absorbed the values of political philosopher-kings such as Ronal Reagan and George W. Bush, who told us that capitalism is a moral force given to us directly by the Almighty, a notion most Americans interpreted, not unreasonably, as "Jesus wants me to keep shopping."

But if there's public discontent with the recommendations of the deficit commission, it's not because Americans simply can't sacrifice at all. Americans are sacrificing plenty, involuntarily -- losing jobs, experiencing foreclosures, facing salary givebacks and benefit cuts -- and we know the sacrifice is not being shared. We don't agree on who exactly is still living a soft life -- bankers, the rich in general, maybe (if you believe right-wing talk) public-sector union members or (if you're a Beckbot) some unholy cabal made up of George Soros acolytes and ACORN.

But we all know that some people's oxen haven't been gored yet. We suspect they never will be, while the rest of us will sacrifice more and more. "American exceptionalism"? We're not thinking about that right now. We gotta eat.

EXTEND THEM FOR FOUR YEARS

I've said a couple of times that Democrats may as well acknowledge that they'll never repeal the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, under any circumstances, and they may as well just extend them permanently. Now, I guess, it's time to do whatever's going to be done:

Now it's all or nothing on tax cuts

Senate Republicans blocked two Democratic measures Saturday that would have eliminated the Bush-era tax cuts for the wealthy, forcing both parties back to the negotiating table if they want to avert a tax hike next year for all Americans.

The doomed votes mean Democrats may ultimately need to agree to a deal that runs contrary to their campaign promises over the past 10 years. Rather than eliminating the upper-end tax cuts, Democrats will likely cede to Republican demands to renew all of the Bush tax cuts for several years....

If there's going to be a temporary extension, I vote for four years.

When it comes to countering Republicans, Democrats haven't even begun to grasp what they need to do in the thirty years of the Reagan/Limbaugh/Gingrich/Murdoch/Bush/Tea Party Era; it's really difficult to imagine them doing so in the next four. But if, somehow, they do, four years from now is likely to be a tough time for Republicans.

At that time, I assume they're going to control the White House and both houses of Congress. And I also assume we're still going to be stuck in this economic trough -- and the pain is going to be made worse by failed Republican economic "ideas."

Oh, and of course, the rich will still be getting richer.

Four years from now, Republicans will be in the same position Democrats were in this fall -- they'll be heading into midterms and trying to defend economic stewardship that's been an utter failure. And, in that climate, they're going to have to decide whether to extend a big tax cut for the rich.

Could Democrats make that a campaign issue? It's nearly impossible to imagine, but if they develop a clue, absolutely.

And if not, we'll be exactly where we're likely to be anyway, with the cuts about to be rubber-stamped again. But I say make it four years, just for the slim chance of a winning battle.

CHARLES BLOW, MEET TOM HARKIN

On today's New York Times op-ed page, Charles Blow responds to Sarah Palin's ongoing celebrity/GOP A-list status with a harrumph:

\She was a vice presidential nominee. But she lost. She was the governor of Alaska. But she quit. Now she's just a political personality -- part cheerleader, part bomb-thrower -- being kept afloat in part by the hackles of her enemies and the people who admire her resilience in the face of them. The left's outsize and unrelenting assault on her has made her a folk hero. The logic goes that if she's making people on the left this upset, she must be doing something right.

Yet the left continues to elevate her every utterance so that they can mock and deride her. The problem is that this strategy continues to backfire. The more the left tries to paint her as one of the "Mean Girls," the more the right sees her as "Erin Brockovich." The never-ending attempts to tear her down only build her up.

I suppose Blow has a point about our side's responsibility for her continued fame -- although, it's just not that simple, because the right is perfectly capable of developing and sustaining personality cults with little or no help from liberals. (Chris Christie, anyone? I can assure you that Christie would become an instant top-tier candidate if he announced a presidential bid; please recall that he won the Virginia Tea Party's presidential straw poll two months ago.)

What's more, this isn't just the work of two factions, the left and the right. There's a third faction: the entertainment/gossip complex. There are all kinds of people out there who are adored by the right and actively, intensely reviled by the left -- but no one's ever going to pitch an eight-week reality series called Rush Limbaugh's Missouri (or Florida or whatever the hell state he now calls home, nor is anyone going to make a similar offer to, say, Glenn Beck or Ann Coulter or Newt Gingrich, because none of them have a non-political celebrity vibe. Palin does, alas.

But, well, OK -- let's assert for the sake of argument that it's lefties who are really keeping her name in the headlines. Blow thinks we should think that's a bad thing. But why?

Blow's column appears one day after this remark from a liberal Democrat, Senator Tom Harkin, about President Obama's eagerness to compromise with Republicans on tax cuts:

"He campaigned on [allowing the rates for the rich to expire], was very strong on that, and sometimes there are things that are just worth fighting for."

And if he decided to compromise away from that, a reporter asked the senator.

"He would then just be hoping and praying that Sarah Palin gets the nomination," Harkin replied, insinuating that there would be few other Republicans that Obama could assuredly beat in 2012.

That's the obvious reason we don't refrain from fueling Palinism: we want her to be the 2012 GOP presidential candidate. Of the A-listers, she's the most likely to lose. Joe Scarborough knows that. So do Karl Rove and rest of the Bushie government-in-exile. Why doesn't Blow?

Blow writes:

People on the left seem to need her, to bash her, because she is, in three words, the way the left likes to see the right: hollow, dim and mean.

Maybe. But we also need her because, unlike the rest of the right, she seems beatable. The rest of the SOBs in her party seem capable of routing us at will. Palin is one of the few (Paladino, O'Donnell, Angle, and Miller are four more) we seem capable of besting.

HAS MENENDEZ FIGURED OUT THAT THE PUBLIC DOESN'T REALLY CRAVE BIPARTISANSHIP?

Perhaps:

Did Senator Robert Menendez (D-NJ) just compare Republicans to terrorists?

Well, not really. But he did compare negotiating with Republicans to negotiating with terrorists....

Asked if Democrats have a responsibility to move forward with a bill that can become law -- in other words, a bill Republicans will support and not block-- here’s what Menendez said:

"Do you allow yourself to be held hostage and get something done for the sake of getting something done, when in fact it might be perverse in its ultimate results? It's almost like the question of do you negotiate with terrorists."

Every poll says that voters want less fighting in Washington and more bipartisan cooperation to get things done. And then one party digs in its heels, says no to everything ... and cleans up at the ballot box, winning favor with voters who say they want just the opposite approach.

This strikes me analogous to the negative-ad paradox. Voters say they hate negative ads -- but negative ads work. Obviously, voters' gut reactions reveal what they truly think (or at least what they feel), and the high-minded principles they proclaim to pollsters aren't really an honest reflection of their feelings (probably because they're not being honest with themselves).

So voters actually want their politicians to be a bit nasty and snarly, polls notwithstanding. Or maybe they prefer solutions but, if they can't have them (or can't have the solutions they want), they'll settle for vicariously sharing in politicians' righteous indignation. Maybe Menendez has finally grasped that.

WINNING THE BOURBON PRIMARY

America is in crisis, it's desperately in need of leaders who can help get us out of our current morass -- and yet this is why the press is going to try to make one self-satisfied slickster into a contender for the presidency:

When he was running for president and even when he wasn't, Arizona Sen. John McCain liked to joke that the journalistic establishment was "my base." In the case of Haley Barbour, it might not be a joke.

The 63-year-old Mississippi governor, who's considering a 2012 White House run, enjoys the friendliest relations with the Washington media elite of any prospective candidate vying for the Republican nomination. He comes by this enviable position honestly, albeit lubricated by tumblers of good Kentucky bourbon....

NBC News political director Chuck Todd says [Haley] Barbour could benefit from his elite media connections. "I always say that dealing with the media is like dealing with any other human being, and he treats us as human beings," says Todd... "He's also a great quote. I think there's definitely an old-schoolishness about him that Obama doesn’t have -- maybe a bridge to the three-martini lunch, something from back in the good old days which reporters now know nothing about. A potential problem for him, in the Republican primary process, would be to be seen as an elite-media creature of Washington with a Southern accent."

... says one veteran Washington political journalist, "the fact that Haley makes himself so available to the media might help him explain away his lobbying activities" or other potentially damaging stories about backroom deal-making in Mississippi. "Reporters might be more willing to put such problems in 'context,'" says this journalist....

But ... but ... don't those sincerely anti-establishment tea party types and other members of the GOP base loathe insider wheeler-dealers like Barbour? I think Dave Weigel answers that correctly:

You could expect rival Republican candidates to attack Barbour's lobbying record, but Republican voters haven't shown much interest in the lobbying = bad narrative, or even the narrative that Washington connections are undesirable -- I don't recall massive votes against Roy Blunt in Missouri and Rob Portman in Ohio. It would be easier than a lot of people think for Barbour to brand himself as an anti-Washington candidate while remaining accessible to Washington reporters.

I agree. I don't think it hurts Barbour one bit with Republican voters, teabag or otherwise, to be perceived as the slickest, fattest porker at the trough -- hell, in Florida the 'pubs voted in Rick Scott. They don't hate lobbyists. To Republicans, lobbying is free speech. Lobbying is something bidness does. The bad thing about lobbying isn't that businesses do it -- businesses, after all, are saintly, exalted engines of wealth and freedom -- it's that they have to do it with government, which is unspeakably evil. However, government isn't quite as evil when it's in the hands of an unabashed, unapologetic corpocrat who doesn't try to spread evil socialist Hitlerian progressivism, but just agrees to give bidness whatever the hell it asks for. Someone like, y'know, George W. Bush. Or Haley Barbour.

The only reason Barbour probably can't win the nomination is that he won't have the sense to update his image by using grab-your-pitchforks teabag language. If he were to do that, no 'pub voter would think it was in any way hypocritical; however, he's just going to talk the way he does to reporters. That's not going to work in a field that will be to rabble-rousing demagoguery what the '27 Yankees were to baseball.

WHACKJOBS OF A FEATHER FLOCK TOGETHER

Christine O'Donnell? She's not going away, and she's found some soul mates in Virginia:

Christine O'Donnell, the Delaware tea party sensation who became a political insta-celebrity after upending Rep. Mike Castle in the GOP Senate primary, will headline a tea party event in northern Virginia next week.

O'Donnell is scheduled to speak at the Northern Virginia Tea Party Annual Banquet next Tuesday in Falls Church along with GOP state delegate Bob Marshall, who is mulling a run for U.S. Senate. ...

Perhaps you remember Bob Marshall:

State Delegate Bob Marshall of Manassas says disabled children are God's punishment to women who have aborted their first pregnancy.

He made that statement Thursday at a press conference to oppose state funding for Planned Parenthood.

"The number of children who are born subsequent to a first abortion with handicaps has increased dramatically. Why? Because when you abort the first born of any, nature takes its vengeance on the subsequent children," said Marshall, a Republican.

"In the Old Testament, the first born of every being, animal and man, was dedicated to the Lord. There's a special punishment Christians would suggest."

It appears that he's the tactical wizard who's making possible the efforts of Ken Cuccinelli, Virginia's mad zealot attorney general:

Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli plunged into controversy in recent weeks with a couple of major legal opinions, one saying it's okay for police to question people about their immigration status and another saying the state can more closely regulate abortion clinics.

If you look closely at those opinions, you’ll find a common thread: a guy named Bob Marshall.

In both cases it was a formal request from this Republican member of the House of Delegates from Prince William County that led Cuccinelli to issue his opinions....

This year's Virginia Healthcare Freedom Act, which paved the way for Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli's lawsuit against the Obama administration's health care legislation, was Marshall's brainchild.

And where did Marshall get his mad legislative skillz?

He can do [all] that ... because of his peerless grasp of parliamentary procedure, knowledge Marshall says he absorbed as a congressional aide to California Republican Bob Dornan in the 1970s.

You remember Bob Dornan. If not, go here. I'll wait.

The GOP Senate nomination Marshall wants is also being sought by George "Macaca" Allen, who's a big name and, in normal times, would probably have the inside track -- but if 2012 is anything like 2010, a crazy guy like Marshall might beat Allen precisely because he's the plucky/insane teabag underdog.

****

Oh, and meanwhile, O'Donnell now has a book deal with St. Martin's, publisher of the likes of Janet Evanovich and the Kardashians (and also Newt Gingrich). She may be a ditz, but she's smarter than fellow B-list wingnut grifter Joe the Plumber, who apparently rejected deals with major book publishers, put his book out through a tiny company, after which the tome was never heard of again.

HOW YOU GONNA GO AGAINST AN ARMY WITH A HANDGUN?

I'm reading about the Nancy Pelosi's victory in winning a vote on middle-class-only tax cuts, I'm reading about the maneuverings regarding the next steps, on the Bush cuts and other issues (Harry Reid, after some back-and-forth with Republicans, seems ready to hold votes comparable to Pelosi's, while the White House seems to be furiously negotiating its way to pro-GOP concessions) -- and, well, I have to agree with Jonathan Zasloff (though please note that he's not under any illusion that this could possibly happen):

Now, today, Obama should hold a press conference demanding Senate action. Then he should take the show on the road, going to, say Massachusetts, and Maine, and Ohio, demanding that the Republicans allow the Senate to vote on this plan. He’s got the biggest megaphone in the country. He can fill arenas. Now, today, he needs to ask:

Why are the Republicans intent on raising your taxes? Why are they holding your tax cut hostage so that they can reward billionaires?

... This is an opportunity to damage the Republican brand....

The Democrats' fear is that the public won't get it; the Republicans' fear is that they will get it. Obama can change that calculus. That would even be change I can believe in.

Obviously, I don't think it could possibly happen either: I'm just quoting it because I'm convinced that nothing good could possibly come from the tax endgame unless every possible weapon were to be used -- Obama public appearances, a televised Obama prime-time speech, third-party ads targeted at specific Republican senators who sell themselves in blue or purple states as centrists, the whole nine yards. I didn't quote Zasloff because I'm having naive fantasies of the impossible; I'm just saying that anyone who thinks victory is even theoretically possible for Democrats as a result of just hanging tough in D.C. is mistaken. You have to reach a broad swath of voters, including low-information voters, and hanging tough in D.C. isn't enough to get that done.

Somehow, you'd have to shame a couple of Republicans into flipping. The chances of that are slim -- but without specific, targeted pressure, the chances of that are absolutely nonexistent. Why do you think liberals and sorta-liberals still vote for Snowe and Collins in Maine? Why do you think Scott Brown appears likely to coast to reelection in Massachusetts two years from now? Because these people are never singled out for criticism in a way the voters in their states can't avoid noticing.

The fantasy party we all wish could magically replace the real Democratic Party would hang tough in Washington. But it would do more than that. It would go on the offense all over the country. It would simply have to in order to have any hope of reversing this situation.

APPARENTLY, IT'S IMPOSSIBLE FOR THEM TO GO TOO FAR

I knew that the Catholic League's Bill Donohue collected another scalp this week when he helped force the Smithsonian to remove a David Wojnarowicz video with a brief shot of an ant-covered crucifix, but I didn't realize how far he was going in his rhetoric until I heard an NPR story about the incident this morning. NPR's Renee Montagne tried to put Donohue's remarks in perspective:

RENEE MONTAGNE, NPR: Though the exhibit wasn't funded by federal dollars, Catholic League president Donohue says he wants Congress to eliminate all money from the Smithsonian. Donohue opposes the museums that house American artifacts ranging from Apollo space capsules to the original "Star-Spangled Banner."

BILL DONOHUE, CATHOLIC LEAGUE: Why should the working class pay for the leisure of the elite, when, in fact, one of the things that the working class likes to do for leisure is to go to professional wrestling, and if I suggested that we should have federal funds for professional wrestling to lower the cost of a ticket, people would think I'm insane. I don't go to museums any more than most Americans do.

Yup -- he wants the entire Smithsonian defunded.

I know, I know -- this is just cynical ante-upping from a guy who doesn't do anything with his life except throw verbal hand grenades and make people hate other people. But, um, really? The Smithsonian? Isn't that the kind of place even regular Americans who don't normally go to museums like to go? Don't most Americans, including a lot of rock-ribbed Republicans, want it to keep going?

But there's simply never a downside when a wingnut wants to declare himself on the side of ordinary Americans and against "elites." It's impossible to go too far. Say something nasty about "elites" and you have immunity no matter what ox you gore.

A good percentage of Heartland America actually does think the Christian right regularly goes too far; a lot of heartlanders hold televangelists in contempt and reject the Bible-thumpers' sexual moralizing. But there's nothing comparable on secular issues.

The one time these guys have ever gone too far was when Gingrich & Co. actually shut down government-funded institutions that ordinary Americans value. I suppose you can't blame Newt and his cohorts for misreading the national mood. As it turned out, there was a limit to what Newt and his buddies could actually do. But there doesn't seem to be a limit to what you can say.

****

Oh, and, incidentally, the government may not subsdize pro wrestling directly, but -- as Connecticut residents learned during Linda McMahon's Senate campaign -- governments in more than one state have given World Wrestling Entertainment tax breaks for film productions. And don't get me started on government funding and tax breaks for the kinds of arenas where WWE holds its events....

THE MOST IMPORTANT THING IS SINCERITY. ONCE YOU FAKE THAT...

Although I'd love to just stop thinking about the Democrats' pathetic response to the impending expiration of the Bush tax cuts, let me say that I basically agree with David Leonhardt of The New York Times, who thinks Dems could have fought to end cuts for the wealthy a while back, but now it's too late because most Americans, instead of seeing this as the outcome of a noble battle on behalf of the middle class, really would see it just the way Republicans would want them to see it, as evil Democrats raised your taxes!

But why? Why can Republicans risk brinkmanship on extending the middle-class tax cuts and not Democrats?

Well, it's simple. Republicans can take pretty much any position they choose on any issue because we all "know" what they stand for. Small government. Low taxes. Freedom. Patriotism. Fiscal responsibility. We know this even though anyone who pays the slightest bit of attention realizes that Republicans constantly do things that are very, very much at odds with all of these principles.

But they keep saying these are their principles. Whatever they do they define as consistent with these principles. They may be hypocrites, but they talk like principled people. They don't go off message.

We all know that Democrats don't live up to what we think of as Democratic principles -- looking out for the little guy and so on. But that's not their biggest problem. Their biggest problem is that so many of them -- Blue Dogs and even not-so-Blue Dogs -- love to openly proclaim that they don't believe in traditional Democratic ideas. They don't just fail to live up to those ideas -- they're proud of that failure.

Thus, they brand Democrats as the Party of Who-the-Hell-Knows-What?

If Democrats took even the slightest care to nurture the friend-of-the-little-guy brand identity, maybe they could dig in their heels on the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy and people would have an idea of why they might be doing it. But Democrats don't nurture this identity, so most ordinary people aren't really sure what to believe about them, and they're very ready to believe whatever Glenn Beck and John Boehner tell them they should believe.

Actually living up to Democratic ideals might do an even better job of solving this problem, needless to say.

ANGER MANAGEMENT

In response to this Ezra Klein post, Balloon Juice's mistermix writes:

... Ezra Klein thinks that Obama's a bad poker player. He may be right, but the analogy isn't helpful. Poker is a win/lose game. Negotiation is a win/win game, because both parties get something when a deal is struck. Republicans aren't playing poker or negotiating. They are playing another game, call it "You Must Lose". They're happy with win/lose, if they win, but they'll tolerate lose/lose as long as Obama loses.

The only analogy that springs to mind when I look at the Republicans' recent behavior is a bad divorce. Think of a situation where Lisa and Bob are getting a divorce, and Bob is so hell-bent on hurting Lisa that he doesn't care about their kids or their bank account. Bob will deploy a hundred variations on the same tactic: put the Lisa in a bind where she has to choose between damaging the children and losing money. Lisa will lose money almost every time in order to save the children.

In this situation, capitulation is inevitable, the only question is what form it will take.

I've said this over and over again on the blog, but I'll say it again: the analogy that seems apt to me is spousal abuse.

Abusers, like Republicans, work to assert absolute control, and severely punish violations of an often changeable set of rules. They try to avoid harm to themselves, and often succeed for years in avoiding negative consequences, usually by persuading those who might hold them accountable that they're fine, upstanding citizens -- but when they're pushed to the limits of their anger, they're likely to throw self-preservation to the winds and do anything to reestablish their dominance. It's no surprise when an abusive relationship ends in murder-suicide.

At this point I'm not sure whether Republicans even give a thought to what kind of country they'll inherit when (inevitably) they seize control of the entire federal government in 2012. And I'm not sure they care anymore. I'm not sure they care all that much anymore about privatizing Social Security or eviscerating the progressive income tax or nuking Iran. They just want to destroy the Democratic Party and (as they see it) murder liberalism. I'm not sure they care anymore what happens after that.

ELEPHANTS IN THE ROOM

What Andrew Sullivan says is glaringly obvious to those of us who've been paying a lot of attention -- but it's still a taboo subject in the mainstream press:

What we've observed these past two years is a political party that knows nothing but scorched earth tactics, cannot begin to see any merits in the other party's arguments, refuses to compromise one inch on anything, and has sought from the very beginning to do nothing but destroy the Obama presidency. I see no other coherent message or strategy since 2008.... There is not a scintilla of responsibility for their past; not a sliver of good will for a duly elected president....

I know it is the opposition's role to oppose. But the sheer scale and absolutism of the opposition ... is remarkable.

... They simply cannot bear that another party might actually have a role to play in government.

... These people are not conservatives in this core civilized sense; they are partisan vandals.

In my last post, I talked about how a dominant media narrative about Democrats (namely, that it's a horrible mistake for them ever to be progressive) gets into the heads of Democrats and into the public's consciousness, and helps make a weak party even weaker. Conversely, there's an MSM take on Republicans that strengthens the GOP: namely, that no matter what the party does, it's a legitimate party interested in governance. It's one of our major political institutions -- it can't ever be talked about as if it's gone off the rails, as if it's thuggish and deliberately acting in opposition to the national interest. Major political parties just don't do that with malice aforethought.

Think about laundry detergents -- all those well-established brands made for years by well-established companies. Now imagine that there was a change of formula that meant one of them -- Tide or All or Wisk or Cheer or Gain or Fresh Start or whatever -- was suddenly made with illegally massive doses of carcinogens. Imagine that this wasn't a secret -- it was openly available information -- but it was never reported, simply because, well, Procter & Gamble and Sun Products and Unilever and the rest are fine, upstanding, well-established companies, so it's just unthinkable that one of them would be selling dangerous products in the supermarket, blatantly and unashamedly.

That's where we are with the GOP. The MSM simply can't adjust its image of this venerable party. This venerable party can't have become a radical cult.

This isn't the only fixed, encrusted, unchangeable narrative about the right that poisoning our political life. Similarly, the MSM can't imagine that Rupert Murdoch, who attends all the right social functions and seems to run his business like any aggressive but otherwise conventional media baron, could have turned his "news" channel into a 24-hour propaganda operation whose superstar is a paranoid Alex Jones on ideological steroids.

Since our mainstream journalists can't seem to grasp what's in front of their faces, the public doesn't get it, even yet. Andrew Sullivan's harangue is valuable, but there need to be harangues of this kind on CNN and CBS and the front page of The New York Times, regularly, until the public truly understands.

TEAR DOWN THIS MYTH

Outgoing Ohio governor Ted Strickland thinks his fellow Democrats have an "elitism" problem, by which he means this:

... "I think there is a hesitancy to talk using populist language," the Ohio Democrat said in a sit-down interview with The Huffington Post. "I think it has to do with a sort of intellectual elitism that considers that kind of talk is somehow lacking in sophistication. I'm not sure where it comes from. But I think it's there. There's an unwillingness to draw a line in the sand."

... Talking, unprompted, about the debate over the expiring Bush tax cuts, Strickland said he was dumbfounded at the party's inability to sell the idea that the rates for the wealthy should be allowed to expire.

"I mean, if we can't win that argument we might as well just fold up," he said. "These people are saying we are going to insist on tax cuts for the richest people in the country and we don't care if they are paid for, and we don't think it is a problem if it contributes to the deficit, but we are not going to vote to extend unemployment benefits to working people if they aren't paid for because they contribute to the deficit. I mean, what is wrong with that? How can it be more clear?" ...

I agree with what The New Republic's Jonathan Cohn says about this, but I don't think he covers all the reasons Democrats struggle, nor does he answer Strickland's question "How can it be more clear?" Cohn:

I'm not sure "intellectual elitism" is really the big problem here. Ideology has a lot do with it: The Senate Democratic caucus, in particular, includes a lot of relatively conservative members. Campaign finance is also to blame: Even some more liberal Democrats spend a lot of time palling around with wealthy contributors who complain about their tax burden.

The wimp factor is also a problem. Many Democrats are simply too scared to fight right now. They think the merits of arguments don't make a difference--that, between Rush Limbaugh and Fox News, they just can't win media arguments anymore.

But it isn't just Limbaugh and Fox -- it's The Washington Post and CNN and the rest of the mainstream media as well. It's a body of conventional wisdom that's shared in the Beltway by politicians and mainstream journalists alike.

The conventional wisdom says, first, that Democrats were in the wilderness from '68 through the time they figured out that they had to abandon "doctrinaire liberalism" -- 1992. Everyone in the Beltway believes that narrative. Everyone believes that Bill Clinton's DLC-ism got them back in the game in '92 -- and then he had to be brought back into the fold after he went dangerously liberal in his first two years. Democrats always fail when they're liberal, according to this narrative. Obama, Pelosi, and Reed just proved it again in the past two years.

That's the story Democrats hear from the press -- and the press makes the story self-fulfilling by reporting any attempt (or even proposal) to go liberal, by anyone in D.C. on any issue whatsoever, as an act of folly, one that Heartland America is certain to reject.

And because Heartland America is always told that liberalism is folly, Heartland America continues to associate liberalism with folly. And then Fox and Limbaugh pile on.

Democrats are wimps and cowards and pawns of plutocrats. But they're also victims of this narrative. They should have the integrity and the cojones to defy it. But it shouldn't be the ingrained narrative that it is.

PALIN, BESTED BY A BLUE BLOOD

George W. H.W. Bush praised Mitt Romney and wife Bar said she hopes Sarah Palin doesn't leave Alaska, so Palin shot back with a snippy remark about "blue bloods" who don't like her. The skirmish has now moved to bookshops, where Palin's America by Heart went on sale last week, in direct competition with George W's Decision Points.

It looks as if blue blood won this round.

The new New York Times bestseller list just went out via e-mail, and Palin's book failed to reach #1 on the hardcover nonfiction list -- it's #2, behind Decision Points, which hangs on in the top spot even though it's been out two weeks longer and sold its millionth copy sometime last week.

Bush is also still #1 at Amazon, while Palin's book, among all books, is #26 (behind even Obama's kids' book!).

Have we already experienced Peak Palin? And gosh, whatever happened to the notion that Republicans "lost their way" during the Bush years? As I said a few weeks ago, is George W. Bush the new Sarah Palin -- the new GOP superstar?

DEAL WITH THE DEVIL

We're all discussing the Republican hostage plan -- the Senate GOP's letter, signed by the entire Republican delegation, which vows to block every bill in the lame-duck session until all the Bush tax cuts are renewed, including the ones on the wealthy. The specific hardball technique is a surprise, perhaps, but we all knew months ago that the GOP would be claiming a mandate after the midterms and playing hardball in the lame-duck; hell, we knew they'd be playing hardball even if they didn't have big gains in the midterms, just because that's what they do. So why are we even talking about this? Why are we surprised?

A day after the midterms, I told you that I think the Democrats should bow to the inevitable and make all the tax cuts permanent. I still feel that way. What the hell is the point of doing anything else? Democrats couldn't summon up the nerve to repeal the cuts for the wealthy when they had a 77-seat majority in the House and (for a while) a 20-seat majority in the Senate as well as the public's goodwill; they're not going to be able to repeal them now, or any time in the foreseeable future, so why even bother to fight for an extension that's temporary rather than permanent? What do Democrats get from that -- the chance to lose this fight again in a year or two, and then maybe again a year or two after that, and so on ad infinitum? Just acknowledge the inevitable and stop the bleeding.

That's what I think Democrats should do right now. Republicans want to hold the START treaty and DADT repeal and maybe a renewal of unemployment benefits hostage to tax cuts? Fine. Trip them up by giving them their damn tax cuts -- immediately. They're going to get them anyway, so what difference does fighting make? Dems should declare that they think Republicans are dead wrong, but say that the Democratic Party not going to let Republicans hold the rest of the people's business hostage. Do it so fast they'll have to scramble for another strategy.

It's ugly. It's a regrettable concession. But at least it might take control of the agenda from Republicans for a while, and suddenly put the onus on them to make compromises rather than just yammer about them.

PALINBOTS MISSING THE POINT: SCARBOROUGH'S ATTACK IS A BANK SHOT AIMED AT OBAMA

Palinbots are furious at Joe Scarborough for his Politico attack on Sarah Palin, and for this:

TV's Joe Scarborough, who today dismissed Sarah Palin as a symbol of "anti-intellectualism" with a "dopey dream" of being president, will help headline the launch next month of a new national group dedicated to restoring civility in politics.

Scarborough, a Republican, former Florida congressman and host of "Morning Joe" on MSNBC, will participate in the debut event of "No Labels" on December 13 at Columbia University in New York.

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg is also expected to take part, along with an array of other self-described centrists, including retiring Sen. Evan Bayh (D-Ind.) [and] Sen. Joe Lieberman, (I-Conn.)....

Nancy Jacobson, a leading Democratic fundraiser and wife of Clinton-era pollster Mark Penn, launched "No Labels" last year with major advice coming from Mark McKinnon, who was media advisor to George W. Bush in 2000 and Sen. John McCain in 2008....

But, um, at the risk of saying something glaringly obvious, what exactly do these people think the real aim of this campaign is? If its first high-profile act is an attack on the words and deeds of Palin -- rather than, say, an attack on the thousand other examples of Republican extremism and intransigence Scarborough could have mentioned -- then its obvious intent is to prevent the reelection of Barack Obama. I realize Palinbots can't allow themselves to imagine that Palin's nomination would inevitably lead to a second Obama term, but can't they at least grasp that other Obama loathers -- including presumably (despite agreements with him on one or two issues) Scarborough, Daddy Warbucks Bloomberg, and Penn -- believe that, and are doing anything they can to prevent this outcome?

(By the way, President Obama, so much for your efforts to carefully court Bloomberg.)

There's one possible alternate explanation for all this: Scarborough and puppetmaster Bloomberg are doing this because they actually want it to help Palin -- because, in other words, they think it will endear her to her base even more, thus increasing the likelihood that extremist Palin and "extremist" Obama will be the 2012 nominees, and centrists Bloomie and Joe will just have to ride to the rescue. But, nawww, I don't think that's what's going on. Guys like Bloomberg don't work by indirection -- if they want something, they demand it directly and they think they're always powerful enough to steamroll anyone who stands in their way. So I think this is an attempt to get an electable Republican nominated -- and elected. And, Palinbots, it'll probably be someone you'll like just fine, once it's the fall of 2012 and he's hating on the president.

****

On a somewhat related subject, I'm surprised to see that John Thune is doing well in online betting pools for the 2012 nomination. I don't know if he's really going to run, but really, how could he possibly win?

I'm not saying this just because he vted for TARP, which all by itself could sink him. I'm saying it because, while we really aren't sure whether many A-listers -- Palin, Huckabee, Gingrich -- are really going to run, the one guy we all think is 100% certain to run is Romney. How on earth would Thune win the nomination if he's competing for the not-completely-crazy voting bloc with a zillionaire who's a household name? If Thune got traction, wouldn't they split the not-completely-crazy vote, thus probably throwing the race to Palin? I know you can't predict the outcome of these things two years in advance, but I think you can predict that Thune doesn't have a path to victory, even if it's not clear who does.