To answer Mr. Chait's question, Texas and Ohio matter more than the tweener contests beforehand because those are the states that Senator Clinton is making her stand. To remain the de facto frontrunner, Obama not only has to maintain a lead in terms of elected delegates, he has to show at some point that he can win a race in a state where the battle has been joined.

Having lost New Jersey, Massachusetts, California, and arguably Florida and Michigan to boot, he needs to win a big, urban state at some point to make the case that his political reach extends beyond the retail skills he has demonstrated in the smaller states and in the caucuses. Losing in Ohio and Texas would show he can't deliver the knock-out punch, and that he can't win the Big One; moreover, it would give Clinton the momentum going into the remaining contests, particularly Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Since it is in the larger states that a disproportionately high number of SuperDelegates are situated, he can't afford to continue the trend of winning only the easy battles and losing all the contested races in large states.

We Are the Change That We Seek:

I hope you find this to be as inpiring as I did:



[link via TPM]

Go Crazy, Wingnuts: John McCain, Friend of Soros? OMG....

I would be more outraged about unelected SuperDelegates deciding the party's Presidential nomination if a disproportionate voice wasn't already being given to the barely-democratic election of delegates from states which hold caucuses, instead of real-life primaries. To put it another way, why shouldn't there be an institutional voice of the Party that has a say in who the Party nominates, when we've already given independents, Republicans and other non-Party members a voice in many of the contests to date.

If either Obama or Clinton run the table and build a clear lead in the remaining primaries, and then the SuperDelegates vote for the loser, then I'll be upset. But if, as both campaigns are projecting, the two end up almost even after the final primary in early-June, that will be a clear sign that there is no consensus within the Party as to who should be nominated. SuperDelegates strike me as being a fairer way of breaking a tie then, say, flipping a coin or shooting penalty kicks.

Who did she have to f***? Go ahead and read this piece in today's Opinion section of the LA Times, and tell me what earthly reason existed to publish it. Of all the things to dis Nancy Pelosi for, the fact that she's mandated the service of healthier food in the House Cafeteria seems rather minor. If its fried chicken you want, the Library of Congress cafeteria is within easy walking distance....

Blane Lives: I can't let the week end without mentioning the fine series of posts in Slate by one Andrew McCarthy, a Brosnian diary of the mundane tasks and activities that one goes through when acting in a TV show. For example, on the time-honored ritual of rehearsal:

Traditionally, table reads are notoriously dull affairs in which the director, writers, actors, and producers, along with various crew members, hear the script aloud for the first time. It can be a stressful moment—up to this point, the show has just been words on a page, and it can be nerve-wracking when it suddenly begins to take on three-dimensional life. Typically, actors react in one of two fashions: They either mumble their lines into their laps, or, worse, "perform" them with a gusto that I always find embarrassing. For years I had been a mumbler (most young actors are), until somewhere along the line I realized that I was going to be judged by everyone anyway, so I might as well speak like a normal human and be heard by the 20 or so assembled in the chairs lining the walls around us.

Or what a bad day is like for a professional actor:

And then there is the one day in 10 when nothing feels right. It's all a struggle, I have no rhythm, I strain to remember lines I know, and everything seems to be working against me. My body mic keeps cutting out, and the sound man has to keep shoving his clammy hand up my shirt to adjust the wire. I'm too pale under the lights, so the makeup lady must relentlessly bounce a puff at my nose, and the wardrobe man keeps plucking invisible lint off my shoulders ("It's very dusty in here"). It is on days like this that I tell myself it's high time I did something else for a living.

It's funny, because it's true:

And shortly thereafter I walked over to Ann Coulter's clandestine speech (she was banned from the main ballroom for last year's gay slur against John Edwards) sponsored by YAF and realized that it was really, really self-selected. A terrible Henny Youngman routine in a sound-sucking underground room drew about 9 times as many people who stopped to chat with the LP, most of them wearing "I WANT ANN COULTER" buttons. Even the sweatier, more "seasoned" men. Especially them. They probably hadn't seen so many cameras since their run-ins with Chris Hansen.

--David Weigel, Reason.

Ezra Klein has some nice posts today, two on Obama and the internet, and one on a phenomenum I alluded to a few weeks ago when I wrote about Rachel Cusk and the micro-culture of people who actually read Serious Fiction. Klein notes:

Bookshelves are not for displaying books you've read -- those books go in your office, or near your bed, or on your Facebook profile. Rather, the books on your shelves are there to convey the type of person you would like to be. I am the type of person who would read long biographies of Lyndon Johnson, despite not being the type of person who has read any long biographies of Lyndon Johnson. I am the type of person who is very interested in a history of the Reformation, but am not, as it happens, the type of person with the time to read 900 pages on the subject. More importantly, I am the type of person who amasses many books, on all sorts of subjects. I'm pretty sure that's what a bookshelf is there to prove. The reading of those books is entirely incidental.

Awhile back, I read (I think it was Harpers, but I might be wrong) that some goof put a note on the same page of a book that had received a great deal of hype among the literati, inviting the recipient to send it back and receive a cash reward equal to the price of the book. The rebate was placed so that it wouldn't fall out or be seen unless the book's purchaser actually turned to the page it was located, presumably forcing the recipient to actually read the book to collect the reward. In the end, only two out of one hundred coupons were redeemed, thus showing that most of the books in the realm of Serious Fiction are purchased to be seen, and not read. Or perhaps it only shows that most of the people who indulge in the reading of Serious Fiction are too wealthy to be bothered by rebate offers under $50.

A Tsunami Tuesday Primer: As much as I hate to say this, you really can't call last night a "victory," or even a draw, for Senator Obama, as Prof. Kleiman does here. And contrary to the impression left here, simply holding down Clinton's margin of victory from what she was pegged to receive back when she was the best-known name in the race is not a "victory." There simply aren't enough primaries left for the Obama Magic to work. Sip will I not thy KoolAid, Professor.

Every state where the battle had been joined last night was won by the former First Lady, in most cases by surprisingly large margins. Irrespective of delegate counts from states like New York and California, Clinton's decisive wins will give her a big head-start in terms of capturing those state's SuperDelegates, that motley collection of political hacks and elected officials who will attend the summer's convention free of any electoral mandate to vote for a specific candidate. Being the popular choice of the party in those states will better enable Senator Clinton to pick up the support of those pols, who will comprise a fifth of the delegates in Denver, and whose influence will become more decisive as the primaries continue to produce an even split in elected delegates. And due to the party's arcane rules, SuperDelegates disproportionately represent states that have reliably voted for Democrats in the past, so Clinton's edge will be more decisive.

Obama needed a decisive, sweeping win on Tuesday, and he didn't get it. That isn't to say he's out of the running, since he does have a financial edge (although it has not helped him that much so far) and wins in Ohio, Texas and Pennsylvania in the next two months would create a sense of inevitability in his nomination, as well as giving him actual, real-life "large states" in his column, rather than the assortment of caucus states and regions where Democrats don't have a chance this November (ie., who knew the first major black Presidential candidate would have such an appeal in states with large Mormon populations?). But in spite of what Prof. Kleiman and others say about delegate counts, the real battle will be for the SuperDelegates from the large states, and Clinton's wins last night are way more important in that battle than the even split in elected delegates allocated to the candidates last night.

Which is a shame, since he's clearly shown himself to be the more electable of the two candidates, and the one who promises to have the more historical Presidency. While most eyes were on California, New York and Massachusetts last night, Obama narrowly won the four "Purple" states up for grabs, the contests where the last two Presidential elections have been decided by razor-thin margins: Missouri, Minnesota, Colorado, and New Mexico (UPDATE: New Mexico still hasn't been called, as of 10 p.m. Wednesday). Clinton, on the other hand, continues to be more adept at capturing the low hanging fruit among the base of the party, voters who will vote Democratic no matter who the nominee is, and thus less valuable in choosing a winning candidate. Obama also kicked some serious ass in Georgia, a southern state that any Democrat seeking a large national mandate would love to pick up.

A Clinton-McCain match-up in November has always been the nightmare scenario for Democrats. Although much attention was played to The Maverick's win in California, which effectively ended Romney's candidacy, the tipping point was probably his extremely narrow win over Huckabee in Missouri. In spite of it being one of the closest battles of the night, he ended up winning every delegate in the Show Me State, giving him a decisive total for the night. He now has a comfortable, and probably insurmountable, advantage.

McCain has done much better in Purple States than his likely Demcratic opponent, and his defiance of his own party on symbolic issues gives him greater credibility with swing voters than Clinton, a bland but partisan technocrat. Since he's not identified by the media or the public as a run-of-the-mill conservative, and he's distrusted, even hated, by much of the VRWC, he can begin making centrist appeals almost immediately, while Hillary Clinton has to fight and scrape for the backing of SuperDelegates. An Obama nomination would have drawn a much brighter line between the two parties, and been a decisive break from the Clinton-Bush Era. While he could still win, the chances of that happening are less than they were twenty-four hours ago.

The Blogosphere and its Discontents:

A blog is generally a loathsome, tedious creation of the electronic age, an opportunity for even those with nothing to say to reach thousands and perhaps millions of people who own computers and say it. I intend taking advantage of that.

--Al Martinez, of the local paper of record, on starting a new blog today. [link via LA Observed]

Just voted for the Junior Senator from Illinois. Looks like we have a long night ahead of us.

A football fan reacts to last night's Super Bowl:

For one night, hardened New Yorkers acted like shameless tourists in Times Square, begging one another to take their pictures in the middle of a moment that felt a long time in coming.

"It's all about the Giants winning," said Greg Packer, 44, a retired highway maintenance worker. "I'm as proud as I was in the Yankees dynasty years."

Quite the opposite reaction, after a bitter defeat by the Yankees' cross-town rivals in 2006:

For most of the drizzly night, the Mets gave its towel-waving fans plenty to cheer about, including an acrobatic home run-robbing catch by left fielder Endy Chavez.

Through it all, Cardinals fan Andy Cohen cheered the St. Louis highlights, quietly.

"I am very excited, but I am trying to be very quiet about it," said Cohen, a Clayton High School graduate who lives in New York and attended the game with comic Jerry Seinfeld.

"There's another Cardinal fan over there, and I am BlackBerrying people in St. Louis."

Greg Packer of Huntington, N.Y., stepped forward to offer grudging congratulations after the Cardinals took the lead late in the game.

"It looks like you guys are going there," Packer said. "I just can't believe what I saw. … Heartbreaking for us."

Earlier that year, though, things were much cheerier for the fan of the Giants, Yankees and Mets:

Greg Packer, 42, a lifelong Steelers fan from Huntington, N.Y., wanted to see it in person after failing to bag a ticket to the Super Bowl.

"I couldn't get into the game, so I decided to make a detour to Pittsburgh to root for the team here at the rally," said Packer, who staked out a front-row spot near the stage at 5 a.m. "There was no way I was not going to be up close for this. It's fantastic."

So who is Greg Packer? Why, he's a Jets fan:

No. 1 in line is Greg Packer, a 43-year-old "retired highway-maintenance worker." He's been here since 5 a.m. Monday, 110 hours before the iPhone goes on sale. No one else showed up until midway through the afternoon.

(snip)

At the moment, he's shirtless, to display his round and hairy belly for morning TV. Littered around him are the provisions for his five-day techno-vigil: two camp chairs, a small New York Jets bag of clothes, an umbrella, an entire box of Kettle gourmet potato chips, and a large bag of Flava Puff Cheese Balls.

Go Big Blue: For those of you cannot, under any circumstance, separate your politics from your football on Super Bowl Sunday, take note that New England Pats owner Robert Kraft is a classic LieberDem, giving most of his money to Democrats in the past but recently opting for GOP aspirants John McCain and Mitt Romney, while the owner of the New York (football) Giants, Steve Tisch, is a Clinton supporter through and through. Here's an entire list to where greats from the world o' sports contribute their political tithes; perhaps the most solid Republican bloc in America comes from the world of professional golf, with NASCAR driver and football coach right behind.

And to think, a whole generation of Persian crooners was inspired by this:

Heal Thyself: Clinton supporter Sean Wilentz, on comparisons between Barack Obama and JFK:

Few will disagree that it is very rare for a candidate with as little experience in politics and government as Obama to capture the imagination of so many influential Americans. One way for a candidate like this to minimize his lack of experience is to pluck from the past the names of great presidents who also, supposedly, lacked experience. Early in the campaign, Obama's backers likened him to the supposed neophyte John F. Kennedy. More recently, some have pointed out (as did New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, among others) that Abraham Lincoln served only one "undistinguished" term in the House before he was elected president in 1860.

These comparisons distort the past beyond recognition. By the time he ran for president, JFK had served three terms in the House and twice won election to the Senate, where he was an active member of the Foreign Relations Committee. In total, he had held elective office in Washington for 14 years. Before that, he was, of course, a decorated veteran of World War II, having fought with valor in the South Pacific. Kennedy, the son of a U.S. ambassador to Britain, had closely studied foreign affairs, which led to his first book, "Why England Slept," as well as to a postwar stint in journalism.

(snip)

Historians cannot expect all politicians and their supporters to know as much about American history as, say, John F. Kennedy, who won the Pulitzer Prize for a work of history. But it is reasonable to expect respect for the basic facts -- and not contribute to cheapening the historical currency.

Since it is common knowledge that the Pulitzer Prize won by John Kennedy was for a book actually written by his speechwriter, Ted Sorensen, while his earlier book, which supposedly evidenced how he "closely studied" foreign policy, was a mediocre doctoral thesis re-written by columnist (and Joe Kennedy toady) Arthur Krock, I suppose it would be nice if the Times were to actually find a real historian who could write on this subject.

WireMania: Me neither....

According to this LA Times poll, Obama has cut Clinton's lead in the race from 24 to 9 points in just over a month. The other results are predictable: it's a virtual tie on the Republican side, with Giuliani cratering faster than the stock market; both Dems doing as well as the other in head-to-head match-ups with their GOP counterparts; and McCain is the only one who seems competitive right now. Perhaps the two most interesting facts are that there are almost no undecideds in any of the Hillary contests, and that Obama loses about 10% more of the Democratic vote than Clinton, a clear sign that the race-baiting strategy her campaign has followed is working. Each of the Republicans, except for McCain, lose support among the voters, particularly independents, when Barack is the opponent.

It's all about KFC... Genius, from one of his Jerry Maguire co-stars:

I never saw a Heath Ledger movie, other than his turn in the forgettable The Brothers Grimm, but the stories of his encounters with non-celebs are heartbreaking to read.

One of the nice things about having a Democratic Congress (and having a bankruptcy "reform" measure that was sloppily written) is that we don't necessarily have to repeal bad legislation in order to neuter it. Case in point: the most recent budget appropriates nothing to the Justice Department for audits of schedules and statements filed with the Bankruptcy Court. This means that in those situations where a debtor's income exceeds the median income for his state, which is the standard the 2005 BARF legislation established as the template for determining that a presumption of a bad faith filing exists in Chapter 7, there is no way to independently challenge a debtor's claim of legitimate expenses above and beyond the IRS norms.

Bowing to reality, this week the United States Trustee suspended its auditing of new Chapter 7 cases. Considering how badly underfunded Chapter 7 Trustees are (most of whom consider the work to be pro bono, or a loss leader, for their law firm), the presumption of bad faith rule, which was the most controversial part of the BARF, is, for the time being, a nullity.

Did you know...that Kenyans aren't really black? Me neither.... [link via Daily Kos]

Thirty-five years ago today: A whole bunch o' stuff happened.

The Billary Chronicles:

Hillary Clinton tonight:

The facts are that [Obama] said in the last week that he really liked the ideas of the Republicans over the last 10 to 15 years, and we can give you the exact quote.

Well, no, I don't believe she can. But I'd like to see her try. And I'd like to think that her supporters will mind, or even admit it, when it turns out that she can't. There's a difference between saying that a party managed to sell itself as the party of ideas and saying that the ideas were good ones.

The central Republican idea since 1980 has been cutting taxes. And Obama made it clear, in the very same editorial-board interview that the Clintons keep misquoting, that he thinks that idea has been tried and failed.

Update: Apparently she also re-told the fairy-tale about Obama's voting "present."

Is incurable lying a sexually-transmitted disease?

--Prof. Mark Kleiman, tonight.

I suppose it's Obama's own damn fault; the time to use the Reagan jujitsu is after you win the nomination, and there just aren't a lot of votes to be had in a Democratic primary to be perceived as being pro-Reagan. Still, the Clintons have never had a good rep on that whole "Truth" shtick, and this doesn't help.

As far as the criticism that Bill Clinton is playing too large a role in his wife's campaign, I have to wonder what planet those critics live on. The fact that the former President is taking an active part in his wife's political fortunes is the best reason I can think of for electing Hillary Clinton. The party base still reveres her husband, and the hope that some of his political success might rub off on her seems to be the raison d'etre of her candidacy. It's certainly not her somewhat spotty record in the Senate or her thirty-five years of "experience."

Coming soon to a bookstore near you....

The Sunday op-ed section in the local paper of record had a rather light-hearted column (on the increasing death toll in the Rambo films) by John Mueller, who is identified as the holder of the "Woody Hayes Chair of National Security Studies at [The] Ohio State University."



Yes, there is actually an endowed professorship at Columbus named after the late coach.

Having written an op-ed for the LA Times a few years back at the time the new bankruptcy law went into effect, I thought that a follow-up piece, about the ARM-caused home foreclosure boom would be in order. So I penned an offering, focused on the bill sponsered by Brad Miller and Linda Sanchez to allow bankruptcy courts to modify home loans through Chapter 13, and submitted it to the Powers That Be on Spring Street. Where it was quickly (and correctly) rejected without explanation.

Lo and behold, the Times did decide to publish a piece by another writer on the same subject yesterday, a former politico named Jack Kemp. It's an excellent piece, making the conservative argument for a more liberal bankruptcy law:

I applaud the White House efforts to encourage mortgage servicers to modify existing adjustable-rate loans for a limited number of borrowers who cannot afford interest rate resets. However, depending solely on the goodwill of an industry that bears no small measure of responsibility in this crisis is unlikely to be the full answer.

What is missing is a rational and urgent push to help the estimated 2.2 million families in danger of losing their homes to foreclosure in the near future. Congress is considering a small fix that would have more impact on these families than any other option under consideration: temporarily allowing bankruptcy courts to give the same relief to homeowners on principal-residence mortgages that businesspeople get on real estate investment loans, that farmers get on farm loans and that individuals receive on loans for vacation homes, cars, trucks and boats.

Bankruptcy law is wildly off-kilter in how it treats homeownership. Under current law, courts can lower unreasonably high interest rates on secured loans, reschedule secured loan payments to make them more affordable and adjust the secured portion of loans down to the fair market value of the underlying property -- all secured loans, that is, except those secured by the debtor's home. This gaping loophole threatens the most vulnerable with the loss of their most valuable assets -- their homes -- and leaves untouched their largest liabilities -- their mortgages.

In the absence of modification, many of today's loans will result in foreclosure. When servicers are unwilling or unable to voluntarily modify exploding, unsustainable home mortgage loans, Congress has a duty to consider involuntary modification in bankruptcy court, where the same relief is granted on all other secured loans. The proposed Emergency Home Ownership and Mortgage Equity Protection Act being considered by Congress would do just that. It is targeted at only sub-prime and nontraditional mortgages and will be available for only seven years after it is enacted in order to mitigate against the next wave of exploding interest rate resets.

I have a number of other proposals to reform the bankruptcy law to enable delinquent homeowners to keep their homes while paying down their default, here, here and here.

Although it would have been smarter to wait until he had the nomination before comparing himself to Reagan (Memo to Barack: Dutch is not exactly the most popular figure with the base of the party whose nomination you're trying to win), there is something shrewd in a liberal Democrat attempting to coopt the legacy of the 40th President. After all, it's exactly what Reagan did with FDR and JFK in 1980 and 1984, and what FDR did to his Uncle Theodore in 1932: take the most popular political figure in the other party, now safely deceased, and associate your agenda with their accomplishments, thereby marginalizing the current holders of that partisan legacy.

We tend to forget that neither FDR in 1932 nor Reagan in 1980 ran particularly polarizing races. Both men attempted to appeal across party lines, with the advantage of knowing that their races were basically referenda on the incumbents, and it was left to their opponents (Hoover and Carter) to get the country to fill-in-the-blanks as to what they really intended to do. Reagan spent almost the entire period after the 1980 GOP Convention denying he was going to gut Social Security, or rape the environment, and was on the defensive so much of the time that Carter actually had a small lead in some polls going into the one Presidential debate one week before the election. In fact, his famous line, "there you go again," was made in response to an altogether accurate charge by President Carter that he would try to cut Medicare if he was elected.

By presenting a moderate image, masking some of the less popular aspects of his ideology, and by campaigning as the true heir to FDR and the New Deal, Reagan was able to pull away from Carter and win a decisive victory. Although much has been made, by Prof. Krugman and others, of Reagan's clumsy attempt to pander to Southern whites, he won the Presidency not through a "Southern Strategy," since the South was Jimmy Carter's strongest region in that election, but by pursuing votes in every region of the country tired of the perceived ineptitude of the Carter Administration. Similarly, FDR succeeded not by polarizing the electorate in 1932, but by going after anti-Hoover votes everywhere in the country. It was by winning decisively, not by seeking vengeance for past political defeats, that gave them their mandates.

I just wish the junior Senator from Illinois had waited 'til there were actually votes to be had by appealing to the Reagan Legacy. I don't think it's such a fruitful strategy in Democratic primaries to be kissing the ass of the late Ronald Reagan. It also grants an invitation to people like Prof. Krugman to mischaracterize his statements (like he did last month with FDR). There aren't enough open primaries and caucuses left.

[UPDATE (1/18)]: Here's a good piece on Reagan's true legacy, which punctures the myth that Reagan was even a particularly popular President. True, as far as it goes, but it really misses the point about the savvy involved in coopting the GOP's most beloved icon for progressive purposes.

Many hissyfits have been thrown in the lefty blogosphere about Senator Obama's stated desire to get past "the fights and arguments of the '90's," but it seems we still haven't gotten past the '60's. Case in point: Barbara Ehrenreich takes Obama's principle opponent, Hillary Clinton, to task for her focus on the role LBJ played in passing civil rights legislation:

At first I took it as another, yawn, white rip-off of black culture and creativity: the Rolling Stones appropriating the Bo Diddley beat, Bo Derek sporting corn rows, and now Hillary giving Lyndon Baines Johnson credit for the voting rights act of 1965. If you had to give this honor to a white guy, LBJ was an odd choice, since he'd spent the 1964 Democratic convention scheming to prevent the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party from taking any Dixiecrat seats. By Clinton's standards, maybe Richard Nixon should be credited with the legalization of abortion in 1972.

There are so many things that are disingenuous about Ms. Ehrenreich's post, but I thought it would be best just to focus on that first paragraph. First, the former First Lady spoke about LBJ's (and JFK's) role in passing the 1964 Civil Rights Act, not the VRA the following year. I know all civil rights bills look alike, but still. There was a huge difference in context between the two bills, but it seems like her rationale for misstating Senator Clinton's quote is that it allows her to bring up the MFDP and the sainted Fannie Lou Hamer, and thus act like Ms. Clinton is not only dissing MLK, but also the martyrs of Mississippi as well. Since Congress passed the 1964 Act well before the Freedom Summer of '64, Ehrenreich is being just a wee bit dishonest here.

The MFDP battle at the '64 Democratic Convention was always considered a turning point for white leftist activists in the '60's, which brings me to my second point: by playing up the importance of what was little more than a floor fight in Atlantic City over credentialing (and one that managed to piss off both sides in the end), Ms. Ehrenreich is playing to one of the more trite cliches of that era, that LBJ was an evil racist cracker who only supported civil rights when it suited his purpose. By giving all the credit for passage of civil rights laws to "the Movement," while disparaging the role played by mainstream politicians of both parties, almost all of whom were white, male and middle-aged, she (and others of her generation) can relive the heady days when liberals were the true enemy, no one over thirty needed to be trusted, and LBJ was synonymous with "genocidal Asian-killing madman."

Lastly, her last sentence about Nixon and abortion is just a piss-poor analogy. The Supreme Court, not Tricky Dick, affirmed the constitutionality of a woman's right to choose. Unlike Johnson, Nixon didn't break arms and horsetrade to get the High Court to legalize abortion.

Her colleague at the Nation, John Nichols, has a much more nuanced notion as to how political movements and politicians can successfully create great change. In discussing the controversy, Nichols points out:

Where both Clinton and Obama are misguided is in their shared attempt to score political points rather than to step back from the abyss of an ugly discourse and to seek the clarity that is so frequently absent from our politics.

Neither Clinton nor Obama is using history well or wisely. Neither is telling those of us who recognize the significance of the King-Johnson collaboration – and, for a brief shining moment it was a collaboration – what we need to hear. Neither is answering the fundamental questions: How, as president, would they relate to social and political movements? Would they invite the Martin Kings and the Frederick Douglasses of the twenty-first century to the White House? Would either of these two candidates, as president, sit down with those demanding fundamental change, craft policies with supposed radicals, and coordinate political strategies with influential outsiders – as did both Lyndon Johnson in the 1960s and Abraham Lincoln in the 1860s?

Frederick Douglass knew, as did King, that it mattered who held the presidency. An imperfect Lincoln was better than a perfect Jefferson or Jackson. As Douglass explained in remembering the president who signed the Emancipation Proclamation,

"We saw him, measured him, and estimated him; not by stray utterances to injudicious and tedious delegations, who often tried his patience; not by isolated facts torn from their connection; not by any partial and imperfect glimpses, caught at inopportune moments; but by a broad survey, in the light of the stern logic of great events, and in view of that divinity which shapes our ends, rough hew them how we will, we came to the conclusion that the hour and the man of our redemption had somehow met in the person of Abraham Lincoln. It mattered little to us what language he might employ on special occasions; it mattered little to us, when we fully knew him, whether he was swift or slow in his movements; it was enough for us that Abraham Lincoln was at the head of a great movement, and was in living and earnest sympathy with that movement, which, in the nature of things, must go on until slavery should be utterly and forever abolished in the United States."

King was similarly clear-eyed about Johnson, a Texas politician who came slowly to the cause of civil rights but was crucial to its advancement. Where the administration of John Kennedy had kept King at arm's length, Johnson reached out to the man who would win the Nobel Peace Prize during the new president's first year in office. King said Johnson helped him understand that "new white elements" in the American South might be motivated by a "love of their land (that) was stronger than the grip of old habits and customs." Johnson, in turn, recognized the necessity of maintaining close ties with King and other civil rights leaders, both because the president valued their insights and because he needed their support.

Ehrenreich is correct to suggest that without mass movements, there are no Great Men of History. But we should also not forget that without Great Men (and Great Women) in the right positions of power, mass movements are just SAFSN.

Protocols of the Elders of Kenya: If this is any indication, Senator Obama can expect to confront a problem that has vexed Jewish politicians from time immemorial: the "dual loyalty" question. As Media Matters points out, almost everything in this editorial has been discredited, but like the allegations of the Swift Boaters in the last election, the Aztlan claims against Latino politicians, and of course, the granddady of them all, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, it often doesn't matter what the truth is. Obama has to take the bull by the horns now, and make anyone who even hints that his upbringing or faith are cause to doubt his patriotism a pariah.

I've cancelled that in my area: Tom Cruise, expounding on his own reality, here.

Kevin Roderick, the undisputed blog-maestro of all things Los Angeles, notes that the writer of a soon-to-be-released book on former USC running back Reggie Bush has created a website to shill his product, subtly entitled www.TarnishedHeisman.com (that also happens to be the name of the book). I certainly don't begrudge the writer, Don Yaeger, from merchandizing his wares however he sees fit, but I am confused about his argument. How exactly does a college athlete taking money from a third party "tarnish" his athletic accomplishments?

I mean, let's be serious for a moment. The NCAA regulations concerning payment to student-athletes are not what is known as "malum per se," that is, a law that regulates conduct that is, in and of itself, bad. In everyday life, murder, rape, embezzlement, fraud, are actions that society makes illegal because of a consensus that those actions are always wicked, and any transgression must be punished. In sports, a malum per se action would be something along the lines of taking steroids, or paying an opponent to throw a game, or bribing a ref. Such acts distort the credibility of what occurs on the playing field, and are inherently toxic in the context of athletic competition.

However, it is not inherently bad for an athlete to receive financial compensation for his talent, nor is it considered wrong for a college student to earn an income while in school. Leaving aside the many reasons, from racial exploitation to class, why "amateurism" continues to be the focus of college sports, the only good faith argument that can be made as to why young football players are still not permitted to receive payment in the 21st Century is that it's expensive. Over the past fifty years, the guidelines concerning payments to student-athletes have become gradually relaxed, reflecting the same trends that have marked the Olympic movement since the death of Avery Brundage.

Hence, the NCAA's regulations in this field are what is known as "malum prohibitum," or wrong because it's prohibited. In the real world, what Reggie Bush is accused of doing is similar to speeding, or downloading music off the internet without permission. It makes him no less the best player in college football in 2005 than if he had received a D in Spanish 101, just as Jim Thorpe didn't stop being the Greatest Athlete in the World just because he played semi-pro baseball before the 1912 Olympics.

But for some reason, the media doesn't treat it that way. Instead, we have sportswriters and columnists showing more concern about whether Rick Neuheisel once contacted a recruit on his cellphone while parked outside his home, than whether the players he coached at Colorado and Washington graduated. And we have talented investigative journalists spending months tracking whether some All-American athlete was driving a booster's car, as if that was tantamount to the Watergate break-in or the non-existence of WMD's.

To put it bluntly, nothing that a college athlete receives from a third party in the way of compensation can ever "tarnish" his accomplishments on the field. If it can be shown that Reggie Bush never took a single exam at SC, or that he and Matt Leinart injected roids into each other's butts, Bash Brothers style, or that Pete Carroll massaged the "cream" and the "clear" into his star tailbacks' shoulders before every game, or that Steven Sample paid the Oklahoma Sooners to take a dive before the 2005 Orange Bowl, then we can talk about something being "tarnished."

After Jim Thorpe was stripped of his two gold medals, it took seventy years for the IOC to decide, retroactively, that in fact he did finish first in the pentathlon and decathlon, and return his honors. More to the point, it is likely that in twenty years, full professionalism, or something like it, will be the rule in college sports; that has been the unmistakable trend since the end of World War II. If Reggie Bush is stripped of the Heisman for something that will be perfectly acceptable a few years from now, is the Downtown Athletic Club going to approach Vince Young and tell him that they made a mistake, and that he was really, truly the second best player in the country (and he though he got robbed the first time), and that they're going to have to take away the Heisman they awarded in 2009?

Something that's easy to forget in this political season, and in my flirtation with Obamism I have forgotten on occasion, is that the best thing about the Clintons, husband and wife, is the fact that they have always attracted the right sort of enemies. I mean, who wouldn't kill to be on the Enemies List of Christopher Hitchens, especially in light of his cheerleading for the Bushies the past eight years:

It's often said, by people trying to show how grown-up and unshocked they are, that all Clinton did to get himself impeached was lie about sex. That's not really true. What he actually lied about, in the perjury that also got him disbarred, was the women. And what this involved was a steady campaign of defamation, backed up by private dicks (you should excuse the expression) and salaried government employees, against women who I believe were telling the truth. In my opinion, Gennifer Flowers was telling the truth; so was Monica Lewinsky, and so was Kathleen Willey, and so, lest we forget, was Juanita Broaddrick, the woman who says she was raped by Bill Clinton.

Even Ken Starr (and his successor) thought Kathleen Willey was lying, and Juanita Broaddrick's account of her "rape" wouldn't even survive the giggle test in Boulder, Colorado or Durham, North Carolina. And none of the perjury counts listed by the Special Prosecutor as potential criminal charges (or impeachable offenses) dealt with women other than Lewinsky, or lies about subjects other than his relationship with her, a fact which Hitchens had reason to know about, since it's contained in the supporting hyperlink. With a degenerate liar like that as your opponent, are we supposed to hold it against Hillary Clinton that she once thought she had been named for the conqueror of Mt. Everest?

These numbers don't look good for the Republicans, at least in the Presidential race. Only McCain puts up a competitive battle against either Hillary or Barack, who pretty much capture the same numbers against any opponent.

Only the Giants remain....

The only living creature who ever loved me by choice, my blind albino cat Picket, died this morning. Yesterday was a day like any other, and she was up and about, crawling on my bed, and climbing onto the back of the same chair at which I now sit, rubbing her body against mine. This morning, I woke up to the sound of her crying outside my door. I thought she was just whining because I wouldn't let her in, but it turns out she had suffered a stroke.

She was lying flat on her side, unable to move or walk. She was barely alive, and when I picked her up, she tried to lick my hand one last time. I placed her on my bed, which was as much hers as mine, and within ten minutes, she had breathed her last. I miss her so.

Did you know a prostitute is more likely to have sex with a police officer than get arrested by one? At least it's true in Chicago....[link via Hit&Run]

Matt Welch does a pretty effective job at puncturing whatever credibility Ron Paul had left, here. And as the editor of the nation's preeminent libertarian journal, it is a topic on which he speaks in thunder....

Kos has a splendid idea to make mischief in Tuesday's Michigan primary: with the Democratic race a non-starter, partisans should venture over to the Republican side and vote for Mitt Romney, who, at least according to the early polls, is the weakest possible candidate in the general election. A Romney victory would keep his candidacy alive, the thinking goes, and further protract the nomination battle, hurting GOP chances in November.

I like that idea, and were I a Michigan resident, would probably select that option, but I would like to correct one historical misunderstanding the blogger known as the Great Orange Satan has:

In 1972, Republican voters in Michigan decided to make a little mischief, crossing over to vote in the open Democratic primary and voting for segregationist Democrat George Wallace, seriously embarrassing the state's Democrats. In fact, a third of the voters (PDF) in the Democratic primary were Republican crossover votes. In 1988, Republican voters again crossed over, helping Jesse Jackson win the Democratic primary, helping rack up big margins for Jackson in Republican precincts. (Michigan Republicans can clearly be counted on to practice the worst of racial politics.)

In fact, both Wallace and Jackson would have won the Democratic contests in Michigan quite easily even without Republican support; Wallace was shot and nearly killed in the early morning of primary day, 1972, and received a large sympathy vote both there and in Maryland. His margin of victory was 23% over his next-closest rival, George McGovern, who also received significant Republican support that day. Jackson's triumph in the 1988 caucus was even more overwhelming, and while GOP mischief may have broadened the final margin, it was by no means the determining factor. If Romney is going to pull it out here, he's going to need more than liberals behind him.

Don't Play B-17: Google is a truly wonderful invention. Combined with our innate egotism as a species, its use has probably done more to shrink the world than any technological advance since the railroad.

Case in point: my first crush. When I was in fifth grade, I discovered that my life would be a drab, dreary affair if I could not win the affection of a beautiful red-headed girl named Sarah Cusk. Sarah was the best friend of my younger sister, Jennifer, and had the added distinction of being the smartest kid in school. That was a bit tough for me to take, since I was a) the smartest kid in my class; b) she was a year behind me; c) she was a girl, which also meant she was supposed to be yucky to my male classmates at St. Michael’s grammar school in North Hollywood; and d) she was a bit bigger than I was, even at that age, so I couldn't bully her the way I did my siblings.

She also had a bit of a “Veruca Salt” attitude that begged to be dropped down a peg. Most of my courtship of the lass consisted of me trying to prove how smart I was, and she shooting me down with some withering remark about what a stupid boy I was. So we became archenemies, my Newman to her Seinfeld, and whenever we were in the same room, we’d fight, with victory invariably going to the lady. She always had the knack of pulling the football away at the last second.

We had lots of opportunities to argue, too, since, as I heretofore mentioned, she was my sister’s best friend. In fact, her little sister, Rachel, was a friend of my other sister, Catherine (all of us attending the same tiny school). The Cusks were English, and together with another British family at my school, the Yarletts (their eldest daughter, Claire Yarlett, was Jenny’s other best friend), our families socialized together quite a bit.

At least a couple times each summer, and always during the pumpkin harvest before Halloween, our families would take trips together up to Santa Barbara, either in my mom’s station wagon, or in the vehicle that was popularly known as the “Cusk Bus.” The Cusk Bus was an early-70’s VW van, a precursor to the SUV, which you can still see on the roads today, although it’s usually in the context of it being impounded by the police from its meth lab or serial killer owners. Back then, though, if you owned one, you were definitely styling.

I was always a shy boy, so these outings, fraught with the tension of unrequited pre-adolescent love, always had the potential of unleashing my inner psycho. Even worse, Jenny, Sarah and Claire were all huge fans of Olivia Newton-John and Helen Reddy, whom I couldn’t stand, so these car trips usually featured some family sing-a-longs of “If You Love Me” or “Please Mister Please.” As I said, pure torture.

Finally, I graduated from grammar school in 1975, and around the same time, both the Cusks and the Yarletts returned to England, seemingly out of my life forever. The same social skills that I had honed to perfection with Sarah were put to use on other unfortunate women, and thirty years passed.

The other day, my sister Jennifer was at my house, and we decided to set up her Facebook page. Since one of the best uses for the online social network is to get in contact with old classmates, I thought I would use the search engine at the site to look for old friends of hers, and I discovered a “Sarah Cusk” living in Bristol, England. It turns out she’s about a quarter century too young to be the girl we went to school with, so I tried Google.

And lo and behold, I found her. Like many of the other women I’ve fallen for, she’s gone and had a pretty successful life, which I’ve always figured was simply the Tao of Smythe: if you can suffer my advances, and survive the clusterfuckery of my existence, good fortune beckons. One ex-crush from Cal ended up being a wealthy chiropractor in Avila Beach, California, while my great unrequited love from high school is now a much talked-about reporter for the New York Times. I have exquisite taste.

But Lady Sarah topped them. She ended up bouncing from elite school to elite school like an academic version of Randy Moss, no doubt attending some Oxbridge school Cambridge before getting a graduate degree at Harvard and a doctorate at Columbia. After that, she got married, taught at a university in Warwick, (or as they would say over there, “taught at university”), and now lives la vida loca with her husband and four children in Brussels. That seems like a nice life. Did I mention that I spend my days representing debtors in bankruptcy court?

Even more intriguing is the googlized story of her sister, Rachel Cusk. I seem to recall that little Rachel was dark-haired, unlike the others in her family, and was a sweet little girl who was inseparable from her sister, which included a shared Olivia Newton-John worship. Well, it turns out she’s gone and made herself into a major literary figure of the English language, a writer of Serious Fiction.

Incidentally, did you know there is an entire subculture of people who read Serious Fiction? Not merely “fiction,” in the sense of Grisham, Patterson, the Harry Potter stories, etc., or even in the sense of a Bush Administration press conference on the “surge,” but Serious Fiction. It’s a subculture that is disproportionately well-educated and wealthy, consisting of people who, for example, not only read the novel “Atonement” before the movie came out, but before “Atonement” had even been optioned.

Not only that, there’s a special supplement in most Sunday newspapers targeted at precisely this audience; in fact, there are even periodicals that are devoted to writers like Coetzee, Pynchon, DeLillo, and my ex-schoolmate. This subculture is almost as large as that of American fans of soccer, or tennis, and most of these people don't even have to read those books, having long since left college. They just read them because it's what they do. Who knew? And if reading John Updike or Martin Amis can get me laid more often, count me in.

In any event, Google only provides a superficial accounting of others, even public figures. With a little research, we can find out the notable accomplishments and failures of others, but not whether they are truly happy, or if they are a good friend to others. But it does mark out the location whenever our lives leave skid marks, insuring that neither time nor distance can totally erase each other from our existence. So wherever you are, Sarah, this is for you:

Some Thoughts:

Hee-hee: From Larry Johnson over at TPM Cafe:

...being the “Pentagon specialist on Islamic law and Islamist extremism” may be akin to being the Oral Roberts University expert on fellatio and anal sex. A terrific title for one with no genuine expertise.

And surprise, surprise, the Pentagon "Islamic Law and Extremism" expert in question does not speak either Arabic or Urdu. Heckuva job, Brownie !!!

Not surprisingly, Kos has an informed take on last night's unexpected result. Perceived persecution by the "MSM" has long been a potent serum to whatever ails ideologues on both sides of the political spectrum; before the Clintons, it was Dick Nixon who would rally the troops with plaints of maltreatment. And clearly, it does seem that much of the punditocracy has a personal animus against Hillary Clinton. If she can harness whatever latent rage that exists among women of a certain age (the "Gender Card," if you will) to a victory in November, I won't hold it against her.

L.S.U. 38, O.S.U. 24: Congrats to the Bayou Bengals for being the worst team ever to win the BCS. And can we all agree that no Big 10 team should ever again be allowed to play for the national title? I think that's something that people of all political persuasions can agree, from Barackolytes to Paultards...I'd rather watch that awful Hayden Christensen film that was constantly being previewed during the game in a continuous loop than see the Buckeyes play after January 1. Speaking of which, does it make any sense to hype a film that will mainly be of interest to teenage girls during a prime time college football telecast in which the overwhelming majority of viewers are adult men?

Den Beste Lives !!!!

Oops.

A Final Blogpost:

I suppose I should speak to the circumstances of my death. It would be nice to believe that I died leading men in battle, preferably saving their lives at the cost of my own. More likely I was caught by a marksman or an IED. But if there is an afterlife, I'm telling anyone who asks that I went down surrounded by hundreds of insurgents defending a village composed solely of innocent women and children. It'll be our little secret, ok?

I do ask (not that I'm in a position to enforce this) that no one try to use my death to further their political purposes. I went to Iraq and did what I did for my reasons, not yours. My life isn't a chit to be used to bludgeon people to silence on either side. If you think the U.S. should stay in Iraq, don't drag me into it by claiming that somehow my death demands us staying in Iraq. If you think the U.S. ought to get out tomorrow, don't cite my name as an example of someone's life who was wasted by our mission in Iraq. I have my own opinions about what we should do about Iraq, but since I'm not around to expound on them I'd prefer others not try and use me as some kind of moral capital to support a position I probably didn't support. Further, this is tough enough on my family without their having to see my picture being used in some rally or my name being cited for some political purpose. You can fight political battles without hurting my family, and I'd prefer that you did so.

On a similar note, while you're free to think whatever you like about my life and death, if you think I wasted my life, I'll tell you you're wrong. We're all going to die of something. I died doing a job I loved. When your time comes, I hope you are as fortunate as I was.

--Andrew Olmsted, who was killed yesterday in Iraq. A message of condolence to those that loved him can be sent here.

Living History:

To hear Chris Matthews tell it, the fact that "more than 2/3 of the Democratic" turnout in Iowa "rejected" Hillary Clinton tonight is somehow earth-shattering news. To put that into some perspective, did you know that more than 70% of Iowa Republicans "rejected" Ronald Reagan in the 1980 caucus? It seems that surviving the cold repudiation of Iowan voters has been done before....

I don't know if this rises to what Michael Kinsley calls a "gaffe" (ie., when a politician accidentally utters the truth), but the Obama Haters in the blogosphere are having a field day with what can only be interpreted as a willful misprepresentation of the statement in question. It is a matter of fact that half the country was disinclined to vote for the Democratic nominee in 2000 and 2004, just as the other half was disinclined to vote for George Bush. There is nothing in that statement that blames the party standard-bearers for the polarization (neither was even mentioned by name), nor can it even be remotely interpreted as a criticism of the Democratic Party.

It's just a fact that Democrats have participated in the last two Presidential elections facing a divided country, where its message fell on deaf ears, and were either defeated twice, and/or put themselves in a situation where they could be screwed twice by malevolent Republican votecounters. Senator Obama is simply stating that rather obvious fact, with the implication that maybe such polarization is not a guarantor of future electoral success for The Democracy. Whether he's the one who can expand the electoral base of the party is another question entirely, but it's not inappropriate for him to base his case before primary voters on that issue. Kos and Digby really should know better.

Bad News for the Cowboys, Colts, Steelers, Jags, Bucs, Giants and Seahawks: Teams that drop their last regular season game almost never win the Super Bowl; the all-time record, in fact, is 34-7 for the future champion, a winning percentage slightly over .829. Over a sixteen game schedule, that would be a little better than a 13-3 record. The exceptions are the 1967 Packers (who dropped their last two games), the '69 Chiefs, '75 Steelers, '88 Niners, '91 Skins, '94 Niners, and the '99 Rams. Of those teams, only the '67 Packers and '88 Frisco lost at home, and only Green Bay, Washington and St. Louis lost to non-playoff teams. The '88 49'ers are the only team to have lost to a team needing a win to make the playoffs.

In all regular season games, the winning percentage for the future Super Bowl winner is .810, or just under 13 wins a season. In other words, the last game of the season is a slightly better indicator of who will win the Super Bowl than, say, any other game of the regular season, but I suspect that differential will be all but wiped out if the Pats run the table undefeated. Happy New Year.

SC Law Grad (Class of '88) Makes Good: And it's about time, too. One of the best people I knew at law school, Rick Neuheisel had the uncanny ability to overcome all-night bar-hopping and other assorted vices shared by the other members of my Property and Criminal Law classes, and always beat back the Socratic pestering of our professors. Forget about the trivial violations at Colorado and the ludicrous excuse that UDub used to fire him (for participating in an NCAA basketball pool !!); the guy can coach, he's smart, and he always understands that no matter what question is on the final, you can never overlook the part about the Antichrist.

Prof. Krugman, on why vituperative partisan fights are good things:

I like to remind people who long for bipartisanship that FDR's drive to create Social Security was as divisive as Bush's attempt to dismantle it. And we got Social Security because FDR wasn't afraid of division. In his great Madison Square Garden speech, he declared of the forces of "organized money": "Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate for me—and I welcome their hatred."

There are several things worth noting about the above passage. First, it can hardly be said that President Bush's weak and ineffectual attempt to privatize Social Security in 2005 was "divisive," since it quickly collapsed for non-support, even within his own party. It hardly seems like a good endorsement of the strategy when the best example you can come up with for avoiding bipartisan solutions is a policy proposal that was defeated so easily.

Second, FDR could afford a bitter partisan battle when he proposed the Social Security Act of 1935; his party controlled both houses of Congress by overwhelming margins (319-102 in the House, and 69-25 in the Senate), and the measure passed with little opposition (372-33 in the House, and 77-6 in the Senate). No matter who the next President is, he will not likely have majorities even half that large in the Congress, or come close to having enough votes to invoke cloture in the Senate, for that matter.

Lastly, the MSG speech cited above was not from the "divisive" Social Security debate in 1935, but from his reelection campaign the following year. Selectively omitted in the Salon Slate column was this Obamaesque passage towards the end:

Aside from this phase of it, I prefer to remember this campaign not as bitter but only as hard-fought. There should be no bitterness or hate where the sole thought is the welfare of the United States of America. No man can occupy the office of President without realizing that he is President of all the people.

It's always a foolish thing to use FDR as a role model for the use of vicious partisanship. His campaign in 1932 was geared towards blurring distinctions and vague generalities, with the awareness that simply being the principal opponent of Herbert Hoover would be enough to ensure victory. Most of his victories in his first Administration were with Republican support, including the Social Security Act of 1935 (a point that he also alluded to in the MSG speech). Reaching across the aisle to pursue progressive goals was not merely limited to domestic issues; his War Cabinet included several Republicans, including their Vice Presidential nominee from 1936, and he even went so far as to enlist the support of his opponent from 1940, Wendell Willkie, in backing the Lend-Lease Act and related measures in support of America's pre-war build-up.

In short, Roosevelt was a canny politician, willing to take on members of his own party, as well as build coalitions with Republicans and conservatives when it served his purpose. Because of that, when he did go on the offensive against "economic royalists" and the "forces of organized money," he did so knowing he had the backing of the broad center of public opinion. I don't know if Obama is made of similar stuff, but his rhetorical style is certainly not inconsistent with the Father of the New Deal, nor is his belief that excluding half the country from the debate is counter-productive to achieving progressive goals.

Paging General Otis and Col. McCormick: Did you know that the Republic lacked a "truly partisan media" until Rush Limbaugh came along, in 1988? Me neither....

Always look on the bright side of life... Mr. Kaus notes the accelerating decline in home values, and sees a silver lining:

Are you impressed with a "drop in home values of 6.6% over a year? It doesn't seem like such a big correction, given the dramatic run-up in prices over the last decade or so. ... And don't declining prices make housing more... what's the word? ... affordable? ... This evening NBC Nightly News billboarded a "housing CRISIS." (Link available here.) I thought a "housing crisis" was when people couldn't find housing, not when it got cheaper. (NBC's expert: "It's very, very difficult to find any silver lining." No it's not.)

I like that way of thinking, because, on a personal level, I certainly see a "silver lining" coming out of all this, in the way of more clients visiting my office. I suppose morticians get the same feeling every time there's a natural disaster; with bankruptcy lawyers, it's the thought of a member of the Bush family in the White House that gives us some serious wood.

For prospective homeowners looking for bargains, however, I don't think the declines we've seen to date are steep enough either to entice them into making an investment or to lure them into establishing a homestead for their families. And since so much of the economy's growth in the past decade has been the result of people being able to invest their home's equity, the current squeeze isn't a zero-sum game, where a homeowner's loss is a potential home buyer's gain; a 6.1% deflation in home values* means that there is 6.1% less money to pay off other debts, which means more defaults in other areas, which leads to more creditors losing their investments as well. It also means 6.1% less money will now be invested in the stock market, in construction, in tuition, in tourism, and in other branches of the economy that relied on the money people obtained after refinancing their homes.

But I bet it will mean at least a 6.1% increase in bankruptcy filings....

*Based on the twenty largest metropolitan areas. When focused on the ten largest metro areas, it comes to a 6.7% decline. Yikes.

There's a spirited debate going on here over the historic racist legacy of the Democratic Party, and the more recent dominance by the GOP in the South. The Bartlett position, as I understand it, is that the Democratic Party for many years relied on the support of avowed racists in building its electoral dominance after 1930, and was for many years before that the partisan bulwark of white supremacy in the South. Such views were not the sole province of Southern rednecks, either; non-Southerners, like FDR, Woodrow Wilson, William Jennings Bryan, and the editorial board of the New York Times, circa 1900, expressed views about the participation of non-whites in our political system that would, under any definition, be considered vile.

Of course, such positions were also shared by Republican officeholders of that same period. White politicians were a lot more racist back then, largely because white voters in both the North and South were a lot more racist, and it wasn't unusual for a political figure to try to court both blacks and bigots in the same election, or to zig-zag between different forms of populism, one of which embraced interracial harmony against the plutocrats who sought to divide the oppressed masses by skin color, versus another which relied on racial and ethnic stereotypes that would find their fullest expression in Central Europe in the 1930's and '40's.

It would not be hard to cherry-pick from the collected quotations of such luminaries as Abe Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, William McKinley and Calvin Coolidge to find instances where such politicians might have trouble winning votes in Harlem or Oakland today. The complete disenfranchisement of African Americans in the South, as well as the entrenchment of Jim Crow policies, occurred between 1876 and 1932, a period in which the Republican Party controlled the federal government for all but sixteen years. As far back as the Election of 1900, Democratic candidates for President were covertly seeking the votes of Northern African-Americans who had felt spurned by the Republican Party, and W.E.B. DuBois even went so far as to endorse Bryan in the 1908 Election. By the time of the Great Depression, it was inevitable that the party with the strongest political base in the Northern cities was also going to capture the votes of African Americans, and that proved to be the critical reason for the sudden partisan shift in how the descendents of the people freed by the Party of Lincoln became Democrats.

But just as it's false to suggest that the Democrats were the only racist political party in America for much of its history, so to is it false to claim, as Paul Krugman and Matthew Yglesias do, that the post-1968 dominance by the GOP at the national level was caused by its pursuit of a "Southern Strategy" followed by Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan. One can actually see a decided shift in partisan allegiances dating back to the 1928 election, when Herbert Hoover captured several states in the Deep South against Al Smith. Southern states like Texas, Florida, Virginia, Oklahoma, Kentucky, and Tennessee were swing states thereafter, and even segregationist Louisiana voted for Dwight Eisenhower in 1956, two years after the President's nominee for Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, Earl Warren, had helped overturn segregation in public schools.

In fact, Republican hegemony in the South is a much more recent trend, effectively dating back to the 1994 mid-term landslide. Whatever nefarious machinations may have been intended by Kevin Phillips and Lee Atwater, the net result was not immediately apparent. In 1960, JFK squeeked by Richard Nixon in a race that saw the losing Republican candidate win Florida, Virginia, Oklahoma, Kentucky and Tennessee. Eight years later, Nixon won eighty-two more electoral votes and the election, but only added the Carolinas to his Dixie tally; infinitely more important to his success was winning over former Democratic voters in Illinois, New Jersey and Missouri, states without which Kennedy could not possibly have won in 1960. When it was all said and done, the South was largely a sideshow in that election, as it would be in each Republican victory through 1988.

Even in 1980, the year Reagan famously used the code words "states rights" in the city where Goodman, Cheney and Schwerner had been lynched, the South ended up being Jimmy Carter's most competitive region. Ironically, it has been the reemergence of a new "Solid South" backing the GOP since 1992 that has proved to be most detrimental to the party at the national level. After easily winning four out of five Presidential elections from 1972 to 1988 with a national coalition, Republicans have now lost the popular vote in three of the last four, and have seen their regional bases dwindle to the South and the sparsely populated states of the Rocky Mountains and Great Plains. As the 2006 mid-terms show, that's a recipe for long-term political exile. It may be convenient to lay past disappointment for liberals and progressives at the feet of a malevolent racist conspiracy, but the truth is far more complicated.

Transcontinental:

1. My friends Matt and Emmanuelle depart on the morrow for Washington, DC, where he will take over the editorship of the cool libertarian rag Reason, and she will no doubt seize control of the Beltway media social circle. LA will be the poorer without them, while conscientious political reporters in the Capital shall greet them as liberators. And by all means, purchase Mr. Welch's political biography of John McCain, since it's unlikely the national media's love affair with the "straight-talking" Arizona Senator will distract them into doing anything as banal as analyzing where he actually stands on the issues. Neither a hatchet job nor a hagiography, the book is perfectly timed for the first primaries, where its subject may possibly emerge as the front-runner while the campaigns of Giuliani and Romney implode before our very eyes.

2. At last week's farewell for the couple, I ran into Ken Layne, Welch's former bandmate and partner in crime (as well as the distinguished ex-editor of Sploid, Wonkette, and his own eponymous blog back in the day). Sadly, because he feels that the collection of songs on the second Ken Layne & the Corvids album did not reach his high standards, we should not expect a release date anytime soon. Pity, that; just as any music fan would kill to hear Smile in its original form, warts and all, Transcontinental is a fine, original work, with several songs ("Happy MacKaye" is almost a Peckinpah western set to music, and "Mama Now Don't You Cry" is a truly haunting ballad) already valued members of my IPod fraternity. Hopefully, he'll return to these compositions in the future. [link via, natch, Mr. Welch]

Needless to say, however well he does in his bid for the GOP nomination (not to mention his likely third party next November), Ron Paul will be forever remembered as the first Republican Presidential candidate to have denounced Abe Lincoln for fighting a war to rid the South of the Peculiar Institution.

More School of Comedy:




A Rule of Thumb: Sketches that feature Baltic caricatures, teen mandolin players wearing only diapers, lots of blood, and the theme to "Friends" = COMEDY GOLD !!!

Just in case:

A week late and a dollar short. Scenes from The Last Welch:






More pics to come....

Done Deal: The word I got last week at The Last Welch was that Ron Paul was definitely going to run as the Libertarian candidate in the general election, so his hints here aren't that surprising (after all, he was also the party's nominee in 1988). Frankly, I doubt he would take many votes away from Obama.

What Hath Selig Wrought?

If there was any doubt the Democratic-controlled Congress could find ways to embarass the nation even more efficiently than their Republican counterparts, it's this.

Liberal Fascism: I know that the inclination to mock his argument may seem overpowering, but I prefer to treat statements like "The quintessential Liberal Fascist isn't an SS storm trooper; it is a female grade school teacher with an education degree from Brown or Swarthmore," with the same intellectual firepower that Mr. Goldberg brought to bear when he wrote his magnum opus. To suggest that a female kindergarten teacher who graduated from some East Coast safety school is the "quintessential" Black Shirted thug is ludicrous, when everyone knows that the true symbol of modern fascism is the seventy-year African-American widow living on a fixed-income in Baldwin Hills. I get chills just thinking about Granny....

Mortgage Foreclosure Update: Confused by the manifold measures winding their way through Congress? Here's an idiot's guide to s***pile relief for your troubles, sir....

Prof. Kleiman, on the political gifts of the junior Senator from Illinois:

Paul Krugman thinks Barack Obama is "naive" (Gee, where have we heard that word before? Is Krugman still writing his own stuff, or is he just mailing in talking points from Mark Penn?) for thinking that the drug companies and health insurers will play a role in shaping a new national health policy. I would have thought that anyone who thought otherwise was showing a dangerous distance from consensus reality.

But Krugman's real point seems to be that Obama isn't nasty enough to be President: that his agenda of inclusiveness (including even — horrors! — drug companies in the national community) means giving up on serious change. That strikes me as a remarkably un-subtle view for someone of Krugman's sophistication, and can only attribute the error to the fact that Krugman is as committed to his candidate as I am to mine.

To my eye, Obama is super-slick, and part of his slickness is not looking slick: looking, indeed, as if butter wouldn't melt in his mouth. It's the Reagan trick. To interpret that technique as weakness is a foolish mistake.

If you're going to provoke a fight and want the onlookers on your side, you have to make sure that the other side looks like the aggressor. In undoing the damage of the past eight years, Obama is going to need a fairly free hand to wield the powers of the executive. He can't get that by looking like a power-hungry, revenge-driven would-be tyrant.

By emphasizing unity over conflict, for example, Obama might be able to get a Truth and Reconciliation Commission: or, to put that in English, he might be able to acquire the power, through his nominees on such a commission, to purge the Executive Branch of Bushoids. Can you imagine Hillary getting away with that?

Somehow I doubt that either Krugman or I really has the chops to judge the toughness of a guy who cut his political teeth on the Southside of Chicago. But Obama looks to me like a skilled counter-puncher. His crack at Hillary in the last debate —which must have been impromptu, since he might have anticipated the question but not her intervention — suggests to me he knows how to fight back without looking mean.

You have to love the way the Clintonites are screaming that Obama is unfairly getting away with saying bad things about their candidate, while having the press criticize her as "negative," at the very same time they're complaining that he's not tough enough to take on the Republicans. No one seems to notice the contradiction. A very sharp knife doesn't hurt as much going in, but it does just as much damage.

Ouch !!! Read the whole thing, here.

The argument that the next President will need to conduct a partisan fatwa against the GOP is rather common in the lefty blogosphere, and it's a tone-deaf argument for two reasons. First, the public is recoiling from the Rovian politics that the bloggers seem so intent on aping; much of the unpopularity of the Bush Administration and the GOP is based on precisely that revulsion. The last thing the voters desire is to replace one set of partisan thugs with another, particularly those who whine about having been victims for the last twenty years.

And second, if one desires that the next President actually pursue a progressive agenda, it is incumbent that said policies actually have a chance of being enacted in the first place. Since it is unlikely that the Democrats will increase their partisan edge in the Senate by more than 4-5 seats, and perhaps 10 seats in the House, even under the best case scenario, and since none of the potential nominees has yet to call for anything so radical as the abolition of the filibuster, some degree of compromise will be needed to enact anything. And perhaps even more important than compromise, the next President will have to build coalitions with the other side, allowing them some face-saving gesture for giving in to the progressive tide. That simply can't be done in a vortex of perpetual ideological war.

Maybe it's just the past week, but I can't help thinking of HGH when I ponder this season's feel-good story in the NFL....