The Lion and Gun

I have by nature a healthy allergy to any use of the justice system for crass political benefit or, perhaps worse, to punish political enemies. And so the calls on the left over the past several years to impeach and try Dick Cheney and George W. Bush have inclined me against the idea. I'm still uncomfortable with it, and lean against prosecution. I think that some crimes should go unpunished; from South African truth and reconciliation tribunals to the pardon of Richard Nixon, there are many different cases where the crimes of leadership burrow so far to the heart of the country that it's better to forgive as a people than to be torn apart. But on this point I'm willing to be persuaded, and conservative Conor Friedersdorf at Culture11 makes a gloomy but compelling argument:

[I]f Dick Cheney is found guilty of a prison worthy offense, the process of investigating, trying and convicting him is going to be an exceedingly ugly one for the country. . . . It is unimaginable that anyone in the upper levels of the Bush Administration would go to jail without fighting for the contrary outcome in the ugliest way.

It is not entirely irrational to fear that judicial proceedings might one day be used by a new president against his political opponents in the previous administration. Nor is it entirely irrational to fear that a future president might fail to take some prudent action to protect the country, applying some overly legalistic standard to his every action for fear of future prosecution, or take brutal, unethical actions while president — perhaps even atempting to hold onto power — to avoid the prospect of jail once leaving power. And it is almost certain, in any case, that legal action of this kind would mean that every president going forward would take even greater pains to hide their every action, decrease transparency, eliminate the possibility of even backward looking scrutiny. . .

Those who think that executive crimes should be punished have the right of it, I think, because not punishing such crimes is more dangerous, and triggers its own slew of frightening incentives, slippery slopes, and unintended consequences, that portend even more dangerous possibilities for the future, and do more to weaken the prospect of representative democracy governed by the rule of law. . . . But we should not fool ourselves that holding someone like Dick Cheney accountable would be a "very good day," given the inevitable reactions to it amoung our countrymen, even if we can agree that it would be a better day than the alternative. . .

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After last night's counting Alaska Democrat Mark Begich now leads Republican incumbent and convicted felon Ted Stevens by 1,022 votes with about 15,000 remaining to be counted by Tuesday. In Minnesota Dartmouth College released a study which finds that the recount there is likely to favor Democratic candidate Al Franken, who is currently at a 204-vote deficit to Republican incumbent Norm Coleman. (h/t Political Wire) This will leave the Democrats just one seat shy of a sixty-seat majority; they'll be fighting for the last one in the Georgia run-off between Republican incumbent Saxby Chambliss and Democrat Jim Martin.

As previously noted, President-elect Obama has decided to take the President's weekly radio address to YouTube. The first is now online. In it, Obama once again calls for an economic stimulus plan and promises that it will be his first priority if not enacted by the lame duck Congress. Also perhaps significant, amidst conflicting reports that health care might be put on the back burner or pushed forward next spring, Obama re-confirms his commitment to reform.

For my Canadian friends:

This is all still scuttlebutt, and maybe it's just a slow news day, but the noises out of Washington about Clinton's trip to Foggy Bottom are growing louder and louder. Somebody's piloting a leaky canoe, and I suspect it's on Clinton's side. A little while ago Politico reported that a close Clinton associate suspects she'd be open to State (another has since said otherwise). Now Huffington Post is reporting that Clinton was actually offered the position in her meeting with Obama yesterday and is taking some time to consider it. I remain skeptical of the wisdom of selecting Clinton as Secretary of State, but will withhold judgment till we see what actually happens.

Jonathan Cohn suggests that a bailout of General Motors might be necessary. His reporting suggests that anywhere between half a million and three million Americans would be thrown out of work as the result of a complete Big Three meltdown, and contrary to many bailout critics' assertions a company like GM would not have much opportunity to restructure under Chapter 11:

In order to seek so-called Chapter 11 status, a distressed company must find some way to operate while the bankruptcy court keeps creditors at bay. But GM can't build cars without parts, and it can't get parts without credit. Chapter 11 companies typically get that sort of credit from something called Debtor-in-Possession (DIP) loans. But the same Wall Street meltdown that has dragged down the economy and GM sales has also dried up the DIP money GM would need to operate.

That's why many analysts and scholars believe GM would likely end up in Chapter 7 bankruptcy, which would entail total liquidation.

William Ayers appeared on Good Morning America this morning. In his six-minute interview Ayers, a former leader of the radical leftist Weather Underground, appears perfectly reasonable in comparison to his interviewer.



Chris Cuomo grills Ayers over and over on Republicans' ridiculous guilt-by-association charges. In particular, Cuomo insists that the real problem with the so-called relationship is the 'evasiveness' used in Obama's and Ayers's descriptions of it.

This is perhaps the most politically dangerous (or profitable, depending on whose side you're on) lines of attack in the guilt-by-association arsenal. It is virtually impossible to refute: short of admitting outright to whatever your interlocutor's accusations are, you will continue to be charged with evasiveness.

The fact is that Obama's description of his relationship with Ayers rings true, corresponds with Ayers's own characterization, and is reflected by the known record. And yet Cuomo can still sit in front of Ayers and, with face straight and tone grave, object that 'there's an evaiveness here.' Cuomo's prosecutorial questions are loaded ('Will you admit to your close relationship with Obama or are you going to continue to lie about it?') and irresponsible.

Ayers, every inch the professor, makes a vain attempt to raise the level of the conversation:

What I'm saying about the guilt-by-association -- which, as you know, has a long and tragic history in this country -- what I'm saying is that every one of us actually should talk to lots and lots of people, and especially our political leaders. Far from being a demerit on his record, the fact that he's wiling to talk to a lot of people from a lot of different walks of life, listen to a lot of opinions, and still have a mind of his own is something we should honor and admire.

But then you have to come clean about saying, 'I'm one of those people.' Barack Obama either sought me out or I sought him out to discuss my ideas, my radical ideas, and then he made his own decision.

Beginning this weekend, President-elect Barack Obama will begin recording the weekly Presidential radio address . . . in video. It's very Web 2.0. Circa 1983.

I think it's a bad idea, and I'm increasingly convinced that Obama's transition team agrees.

Ezra Klein suggests that this is just an elaborate show of respect that will ultimately result in nothing, and that sounds about right. One of the reasons Clinton was not seriously considered for Vice-President was her (and especially Bill's) refusal to be vetted. As I've mentioned, however, Obama's transition team is just as carefully vetting applicants for high office. And with State there's not just a concern about the potential political ramifications of some of the Clintons' doings. Certain beliefs and revelations could have a deleterious impact on the conduct of American foreign policy.

Central Asia, for example, with its oil reserves, is being jealously eyed by the Russians, Iranians, Chinese and others, and could become an international flash point in the years ahead. That the American Secretary of State's husband might have had shady dealings with the government of Kazakhstan therefore becomes a real problem. Even the appearance of impropriety could negatively impact America's ability to act.

What about Clinton's Presidential ambitions? As a base of operations for Hillary's plotting State doesn't make much sense. It's a high-profile position but not one that lends itself to politicking. And after that, what? Some have suggested Obama wants to build a 'team of rivals' in the manner of Lincoln; that allusion has a double meaning here, since Lincoln's Secretary of State, William Seward, was the only Secretary of State in American history to serve two full Presidential terms. It's unlikely Clinton will repeat that. So let's say she rests at State for three or four years. Then what? Madeline Albright and Warren Christopher haven't exactly aged well, politically speaking.

And if she were to make State a base from which to establish a rival or shadow administration -- which is pretty likely -- that would be even worse. The President famously has to wrangle with Congress to get anything done but has a relatively free hand in foreign affairs. Would he want a Secretary of State, then, that's working to undermine him? And how would that affect American interests abroad? Clinton had a very different (and much more hawkish) foreign policy agenda than Obama's during the primaries. What happens if she goes rogue? Presumably at some point the President would have to ask for her resignation. That would be pretty harmful to his administration. It hurt Bush's legitimacy when Colin Powell departed amongst speculation that he mightily disagreed with the country's direction in international affairs, and Powell didn't take half of the Republican party with him.

Andrew Sullivan suggests that Max Baucus's recent moves on health care are 'a sign that Obama might have already been signaling this maneuver.' I doubt it. Max Baucus's emergence as the front runner on reform is a natural consequence of Senate organization. Clinton was never going to be able to take the lead on health care from within the Senate unless Harry Reid decided to step aside and open up a path to leadership -- which he hasn't done. Clinton's on the wrong committees and has little seniority. The leaders for health care reform were always going to be Kennedy and, if he got on-board, Baucus. And Baucus has made it clear for the past year that he's on-board.

I'm not sure what Obama should do with Clinton, but my suspicion is nothing. Leave here where she is. Unless a great opportunity opens for her in the Senate she'll probably return to New York and run for Governor. That would be a better launching pad for a second Presidential run in 2016, and it would make a potentially very popular President Obama's life a hell of a lot easier.

Photo provided under a CC license by Chris Dunn

I'm not sure what I think of this. I don't think she'd be terrible. It would open up all kinds of things in New York state. But there isn't exactly a lack of qualified candidates. This article by Kevin Drum, pointing out some of Hillary's advantages over her rivals (mostly political), only considers John Kerry and Chuck Hagel as alternatives. But someone like Richard Holbrooke or Bill Richardson could also be effective at State. And in the meantime Josh Marshall at TPM raises an important question which might make all the speculation moot:

Secretaries of State don't usually last more than a single presidential term. And sometimes they don't make it that long. So, for the life of me, I do not understand why Hillary Clinton would want to give up what is in all likelihood a senate seat for life to run the State Department for Barack Obama.

Vladimir Putin, meeting with French President Nicholas Sarkozy in the aftermath of Russia's invasion of Georgia, made no bones about his ambitions in the region.

In an attempt to illustrate just how hard he planned to lay the smack down on Georgia, Putin told Sarkozy, "I am going to hang Saakashvili by the balls," referring to Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili.

Wait, it gets better:

Mr Sarkozy responded: "Hang him?"

"Why not? The Americans hanged Saddam Hussein," said Mr Putin.

Mr Sarkozy replied, using the familiar "tu": "Yes but do you want to end up like [President] Bush?" Mr Putin was briefly lost for words, then replied: "Ah, you have scored a point there."

Your morning reading assignment: Michael Lewis, author of Liar's Poker, returns to the world of finance now that his twenty-year-old predictions of ruin seem to be finally coming through. He does his best to contain his schadenfreude.

Lots of good stuff, but for my money the most visceral evocation of just how badly things were managed is this:

Eisman knew subprime lenders could be scumbags. What he underestimated was the total unabashed complicity of the upper class of American capitalism. For instance, he knew that the big Wall Street investment banks took huge piles of loans that in and of themselves might be rated BBB, threw them into a trust, carved the trust into tranches, and wound up with 60 percent of the new total being rated AAA.

But he couldn’t figure out exactly how the rating agencies justified turning BBB loans into AAA-rated bonds. “I didn’t understand how they were turning all this garbage into gold,” he says. He brought some of the bond people from Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers, and UBS over for a visit. “We always asked the same question,” says Eisman. “Where are the rating agencies in all of this? And I’d always get the same reaction. It was a smirk.” He called Standard & Poor’s and asked what would happen to default rates if real estate prices fell. The man at S&P couldn’t say; its model for home prices had no ability to accept a negative number. “They were just assuming home prices would keep going up,” Eisman says.

Watch Peter Schiff's economic doom-saying over the course of the past few years. In every instance he's laughed off. (The extended clip from Fox with Ben Stein is especially hilarious.) Everybody else, in hindsight, looks like a fool. Reminds me of a line from Jurassic Park; 'God, do I hate being right all the time.' My question is: who is paying these people to tell us what to do with our money? And why do we believe them?



(h/t Andrew Sullivan)

Bigotry appears in the guise of an eloquent, soft-spoken man, well-groomed and wearing a nice suit, speaking very reasonably from your television screen. Dan Savage v. Tony Perkins re: Proposition 8.



Savage interrupts a lot. Perkins complains. Savage finally returns with a sincere and devastating response:

When you strip me of my rights and I interrupt you, who's really suffering here?

Feeling a bit under the weather at the moment; hopefully will be up to full speed tomorrow. In case I'm not you can make do with reading David Remnick's excellent examination of Obama and race in this week's New Yorker. Lots of great stuff in it, but there's one point I wanted to emphasize. I think it draws the fundamental distinction between Obama and previous African-American candidates for President.

Of Obama's landmark Philadelphia speech on race Remnick writes:

Obama was in the midst of a high-stakes rhetorical balancing act. He empathized not only with his embittered preacher but also with the embittered white workers who have seen “their jobs shipped overseas or their pension dumped after a lifetime of labor” and cannot understand why their children might be bused across town or why a person of color has a leg up through affirmative action “because of an injustice that they themselves never committed.” Obama signalled to all sides that he heard them, that he “got it.”

The key pronoun is always “we,” or “us.” The historical fight for equal rights comes only at the end of a peroration on national purpose:

Hope is what led a band of colonists to rise up against an empire; what led the greatest of generations to free a continent and heal a nation; what led young women and young men to sit at lunch counters and brave fire hoses and march through Selma and Montgomery for freedom’s cause. Hope—hope is what led me here today.

The civil-rights struggle is deftly recast in terms not of national guilt but of national progress: the rise of the Joshua generation. What the African-American left once referred to as the “black freedom struggle” becomes, in Obama’s terms, an American freedom struggle.

President-elect Barack Obama has submitted his letter of resignation to the United States Senate, effective Sunday.

This is not simply a procedural move. Both the incoming and outgoing administrations are working hard to make the on-going transition smoother than usual. In some ways, however, this puts the incoming President in an awkward position. With such time-sensitive challenges facing the nation today Obama has to show leadership without stepping on the current President's toes. Hence the quick moves by both parties to disclaim reports earlier this week that Obama and Bush had hit a snag in negotiating a possible economic stimulus package. Obama wants to see a stimulus passed (as well as a bail-out of the auto industry) before Inauguration without raising President Bush's ire.

As such, remaining a member of a lame duck Congress that is being pressured to act on the economy before its term expires is politically problematic. Should a closely-contested stimulus bill be placed before the Senate, especially one opposed by President Bush, Obama will not want to be in a position where he either has to vote for it or skip the vote. (Bush's Colombia trade bill, which Obama opposes, presents a similar situation.)

I'm not sure where this falls in with usual etiquette. I'm not sure if there is a usual etiquette. No American has made the transition from Senate to President since John F. Kennedy. I'm not sure when, if ever, a member of a lame duck Congress expected to vote on an important piece of legislation was also President-Elect. If somebody is aware of this happening in the past, please let me know in the comments below!

Barack and Michelle the new Brangelina:



(h/t Ben Smith)

Yeah, slow news day. And I'm irritable. My fridge is broken so all of my food is arranged next to an open window. Trying to eat all of my meat products before they go bad. I'm overstuffed and have a headache and my apartment feels like a meat locker. And it's raining. Brilliant.

With most blue-state and moderate Republicans losing their seats in Congress over the past two election cycles, it would be easy to conclude that the base conservative movement -- currently embodied in Alaska Governor Sarah Palin -- will strengthen its stranglehold over the party in coming elections. Indeed, just days ago reformist conservative David Brooks admitted defeat when battle had yet to be joined. But this obscures the other side of the story. And statements made this morning at the annual conference of the Republican Governors Association suggest some high-profile elected Republicans are taking up the fight against a rightward swing.

Leading the charge, according to this MSNBC report, is Minnesota Governor (and top Veep contender before Palin's surprise announcement) Tim Pawlenty:

"People don't want to just hear I'm against earmarks, and 'we need to get back to things,'" Pawlenty said. That's nice, he added, but people are want to know, 'How can I pay for college, fill up my gas tank,' he added. "People are wondering, 'What are you going to do for me.' … Enough's enough."

One thing that seems to be emerging here is a split between the Pawlenty, Jindal, Crist wing versus the Palin, Perry, Portman and Sanford types. (Though perhaps less so with Sanford).

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Fox News anchor Shep Smith has been on a bit of a roll lately. Once again he bats it out of the park, taking conservative comedian Nick DiPaolo to task for claiming the mainstream media won the election for Obama. Smith makes the point that the mainstream media reflects what the electorate is doing and thinking much more than it influences it. I'm not sure the newsmedia accurately or fairly represents voter desires or concerns, but I'm under no illusion that it manufactures them. The media has had an important and often deleterious effect on the framing of political debate in this country, focusing on character and triviality and encouraging partisan grandstanding over compromise. That's profoundly changed the conduct of politics over the past half-century. But the tangible effect the media has on the outcome of any given election is, I think, small.

Anyway, watch the video. Smith makes no attempt to hide his exasperation, even disdain. He's going rogue! Or working on his application for MSNBC.



(h/t Ta-Nehesi Coates)

Alaska Governor and former Republican Veep candidate Sarah Palin just moments ago completed her first -- first! -- press conference on the national stage. After much speculation it turned out to be (unsurprisingly) a let-down. The entire event lasted seven minutes from start to finish, with the first four taken up by a rambling impromptu digression on how awesome Republican governors are. Plain then took three questions, answered them vaguely, and tried her best to retreat. Texas Governor Rick Perry, who had introduced Palin, would have none of it, forcing the Alaska governor into answering a fourth question. It was dispatched in half a minute of disjointed meaningless words. The entire performance was like an army of vacuous phrases moving over the landscape in search of an idea.

By way of Crooks and Liars, meet young Stas Gunkel -- a seven-year-old gifted student and violinist with his own infrequently updated political blog. In the last days of his campaign President-elect Obama sent Gunkel a letter; what's more interesting to me is the young boy's commentary, such as it is. And, for a seven-year-old, it's not bad. More astute than much that I've seen on cable news. And he seems to have a firmer grasp of logic and reality (and undoubtedly a greater interest in the world) than a certain former Republican Vice-Presidential candidate:

McCain and Palin are not be qualified to be President / Vice President of the U.S. The President's job is to do good for the country and the world. To do good for the country, the President must make smart decisions on important situations.

Governor Palin believes the world is 6000 years old. This is absurd. This is not a rational belief. This is a mistake. Scientists, experiments and evidence have shown this to be completely false. Therefore, she is not rational. If she is not rational, she should not be allowed to be President or Vice President.

Ezra Klein, who knows a hell of a lot more about this than I do, summarizes Baucus's plan:

Do not think of this as Max Baucus's health care plan. It isn't. Not yet. As of now, it's a policy paper, not a piece of legislation. It is the beginning of Max Baucus's attempt to create a health care reform process. What Baucus has offered is not the Max Baucus health care plan, but the generic Democratic health care plan. The place from which the policy process among congressional Democrats can start. It is extremely similar to the Obama plan if you added a mandate, and to the Clinton and Edwards plans if you left them untouched. If you liked those plans -- and most Democrats, eventually, did -- you like this one. It's as basic as that.

Things actually said by Sarah Palin, Vol. 12:

Sitting here in these chairs that I’m going to be proposing but in working with these governors who again on the front lines are forced to and it’s our privileged obligation to find solutions to the challenges facing our own states every day being held accountable not being just one of many just casting votes or voting present every once in a while we don’t get away with that.

The incoming Vice-Presidential Chief of Staff will be Ron Klain, former counsel to Biden's Senate Judiciary Committee, former Chief of Staff to Vice-President Al Gore, and played by Kevin Spacey in the HBO movie Recount. I don't know much about Klain (I don't get HBO) but from the sounds of it he's another competent staffer well-versed in the workings of Washington power.

Nate Silver reports that with thousands of votes left to count, Alaska Democrat Mark Begich is quickly catching up with opponent and convicted felon Ted Stevens. Convicted felon Stevens, the incumbent Republican who is also a convicted felon, was leading Begich by what seemed a small but probably insurmountable margin on election night despite being a convicted felon. However, 28,519 ballots counted this morning have reduced convicted felon Ted Stevens's lead from 3,257 to 971 votes. With the remaining ballots mostly coming from Begich-friendly regions of the state, it now seems fairly likely that the Anchorage mayor will in fact unseat the Republican, who is a convicted felon.

This is important for four reasons:

First, it will give Democrats a shot at a filibuster-proof 60-seat Senate. It seems to have been forgotten that the GOP has only secured 40 seats, with three outstanding. If the Dems pick up Stevens's seat -- which now seems like better than even odds -- and if Al Franken unseats incumbent Republican Norm Coleman in the Minnesota recount -- also a strong possibility -- Democrats will only be one away. The upcoming Georgia run-off between incumbent Republican Saxby Chambliss and Democrat Jim Martin will provide the opportunity.

It'll be a tall order. Georgia is still a red state and without Obama on the ballot the proportion of African-Americans coming out to the polls will probably be lower. On the other hand, turn-out in any special election tends to be low. Victory is a matter of turning out the base. With 60 seats in sight you can expect Dems to contest the race pretty strongly. Republicans will want to stop them from reaching that margin, but they've been organizationally out-gunned all year and are dispirited after the thumping they received last Tuesday.

Dems would have to run the table to hit sixty. But that's not out of the question -- and the odds of it happening increase every day.

Second, it will give Joe Lieberman more leverage. With sixty votes in sight, Democrats will be loathe to lose one, which increases pressure for a compromise solution. The Democratic caucus, set to vote on Lieberman's fate, is more likely to let him remain in his posts, including the Chairmanship of the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, if keeping him in the caucus keeps Dems at sixty.

(Incidentally, the importance of the sixty-vote margin is, I think, overblown. The way party discipline works in the Senate, or rather doesn't, the marginal difference between 60 votes and 59 isn't substantially greater than that separating 58 and 59. But people think it is, which is maybe enough.)

Third, this would considerably weaken Sarah Palin's position in 2012. If Ted Stevens wins the Alaska Senate race he will be under tremendous pressure to resign; if he doesn't there's a substantial chance he'll be expelled. Conventional wisdom tells us that Palin would jump at the chance to run in a 2009 special election for Stevens's seat. If Begich takes it instead Palin will have to find another ticket to Washington. Republican Lisa Murkowski is up for election in two years, but she isn't going anywhere. Palin could run for Congress that year even if Republican Don Young is sent back to the House this year (Palin previously supported Lt.-Gov. Sean Parnell in his primary challenge to Young), but two years in the House is a weak base from which to launch a national campaign. None of this precludes Palin taking a shot at the Presidency in 2012, but it would sure make it a steeper mountain to climb.

Fourth and finally, Ted Stevens is a convicted felon. I just think it's good on the face of it when the American people don't, y'know, elect convicted felons. I dunno. Maybe I'm old-fashioned.

Anyway, we'll know in a couple of days who won. Here's hoping for one more Democrat in the Senate -- and one more Republican behind bars.

Update: Begich is now up three votes. It's a small margin, but it's still a margin. Remaining votes will be counted on Friday.

I really don't know what to say to this. Yesterday conservative journalist Michael Barone, a writer for U.S. News & World Report but perhaps best known to junkies as the man behind the Almanac of American Politics, decried harsh treatment of Sarah Palin. Speaking at the annual meeting of the National Association of State Universities and Land Grant Colleges, Barone struck out against the media in, to put it diplomatically, rather blunt terms.

“The liberal media attacked Sarah Palin because she did not abort her Down syndrome baby," Barone said, according to accounts by attendees. "They wanted her to kill that child. ... I'm talking about my media colleagues with whom I've worked for 35 years.”

One vital lesson the incoming administration seems to understand: real power lies in the relationship between the White House and Congress, not in the Cabinet. Secretaries run bureaucracies and have input on policy formation, but it's White House staffers and Congressional Chairmen who have the real say on what gets done. And with Democrats holding a huge majority in the raucously partisan House of Representatives, it's the more placid and bipartisan Upper House that will be at the center of any Democratic legislative agenda.

Fortunately, Barack Obama's transition team isn't poised to repeat past administrations' mistakes.

Says transition co-chairman (and former Clinton White House Chief of Staff) John Podesta:

The important policy coordination role will be maintained in the White House. . . . There's a central function of policy development coordination that takes place at the White House in conjunction with OMB. What [Obama]'s looking for in a cabinet is people who are very strong, who can carry out the mandate, the missions of those agencies, and do it across the priorities that he's laid out to get the economy moving again, to get jobs moving again, to get wages growing again.

Democrats who survived the transition from George H.W. Bush to William Jefferson Clinton are a bit in awe these days of what Barack Obama is doing and how he is doing it.

Of the Clinton transition, one very senior and longtime Clinton adviser said: "No one would have imagined how quickly it all got screwed up." . . . Mr. Clinton famously never called [Democratic Senator] Pat Moynihan during the transition even though Moynihan was the chairman of the finance committee. Obama, being of the Senate, has a lot of pals, and he has the ultimate dealmaker as a close confidant, ex-Sen. Tom Daschle.

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Following up on my post below, Paul Krugman agrees with me:
But now Max Baucus — Max Baucus! — is leading the charge on a health care plan that, at least at first read, is more like Hillary Clinton’s than Barack Obama’s; that is, it looks like an attempt at full universality. (The word I hear, by the way, is that Obama’s opposition to mandates was tactical politics, not conviction — so he may well be prepared to do the right thing now that the election is won.)

So this looks very good for the reformers. There’s now a reasonable chance that universal health care will be enacted next year!
I've also supposed that Obama's opposition to mandates was a combination of politics and realism -- a desire to appeal to centrists and not promise progressives something he might not be able to deliver. But I really had no basis for that; just my estimation of Obama's pragmatism and liberalism. Anyway, I'm sure no Democratic President is going to strong-arm his Senate colleagues into being less liberal.

When it comes to President-elect Barack Obama's plans to overhaul American health care, Montana Democrat Max Baucus holds the keys to the castle. Baucus's position as Chair of the powerful Senate Finance Committee gives him power to mold any such legislation and debate that comes before the Upper House.

This has made some reformers nervous. Baucus is a heterodox Democrat, a low-key wheeler-dealer fluent in the long-forgotten art of bipartisan compromise. This is an essential quality on a committee upon which the very functioning of the federal government depends: charged with disbursing funds, if the Finance Committee fails to forge consensus or pass legislation seniors might stop receiving their Social Security cheques. It does not, however, make for many friends in progressive circles (or the Democratic leadership). Ezra Klein's detailed profile of Baucus outlines some occasions on which he's bucked Dem party lines -- supporting Bush's first round of tax cuts, pushing for repeal of the estate tax, supporting the bankruptcy bill, and negotiating with Republicans on the Medicare expansion, among others.

But Baucus also successfully led the charge against Social Security privatization. He fought a proposed reduction in Medicare physician reimbursement. This summer he suggested a willingness to hustle health care reform through the budget reconciliation process, thus limiting debate and calling for a straight up-and-down majority vote.

And now he might be the Democrats' best hope -- and greatest champion -- for comprehensive health care reform.

In his profile, Klein paints a portrait of a politically complex man. Baucus emerged in an era of Montana progressivism, rode out decades of Republican ascendancy in his state, and now seems to be moving back to the left as Democrats expand their foothold in the mountain west and their control in Washington. His relationship with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is a close one, and he has ties to President-elect Obama as well. (Obama's campaign chief of staff came out of Baucus's office.) For some time Baucus has emphasized the need for health care reform.

And this morning he released a draft plan that's even more ambitious than Obama's. Baucus's plan, like Hillary Clinton's in the Democratic primaries, would mandate universal coverage, whereas Obama's proposal includes mandates only for children. (Beyond that, obtaining health insurance would be voluntary.)

"My door is open and I seek partners with 'can do' spirits and open minds," Mr. Baucus wrote in an introduction to his 89-page plan. "I believe -- very strongly -- that every American has a right to high-quality health care...and I believe Americans cannot wait any longer."

"President-elect Obama applauds Chairman Baucus’s work to draw attention to the challenges of the health system and looks forward to working closely with the Chairman and other Congressional leaders, as well as the American public, to make quality, affordable health care a reality for all Americans."

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Via Think Progress, here's highlights from Van Susteren's lengthy interview with Sarah Palin and family. It abounds with hard-hitting questions about moose safety, caribou hunting, pot holders, how funny McCain is, and in what ways airplanes are like tuna fish cans. It's closer to The Surreal Life than to Katie Couric.



Granted, it's a step up from Van Susteren's wince-inducing September interview with the First Dude.

MSNBC has compiled a list of names bandied about in leaks and rumors and speculation about who President-elect Obama will appoint to various Cabinet and White House positions. The list has eighty names for just over a dozen Cabinet positions -- which should put recent breathless prognostication in perspective. We simply don't really know who Obama will appoint or what, precisely, his agenda will be. Those in a position to leak this information won't; those who do base their judgments and pronouncements on overheard conversations and wishful thinking. Most news reports in recent days proclaiming what Obama will do or who he'll appoint have turned out to be wrong.

So let's wait and see what happens, then figure out what it all means. Not before.

I've gotta admit, I kind of like Chris Matthews. Okay, so he's a preening misogynist self-proclaimed champion of the little guy with a massively fragile ego, tendency to say remarkably stupid things, and borderline-unhealthy infatuation with politics. So let's call it a guilty pleasure. In my defense, he probably knows more about politics than all the rest of the punditocracy put together. And he's more willing to call bullshit than most.

But would I want him in the Senate? I'm not so sure.

Neither are Pennsylvanians. Nevertheless, new numbers from Public Policy Polling show that he'd give incumbent Republican Arlen Specter a run for his money in 2010. And there's a fairly strong chance that Specter, who is pushing 80, won't run again.

A Matthews victory might just replace one grizzled centrist with another, switching only the 'R' to a 'D'. And Matthews is sure to invoke the ire of many progressives. If Specter steps down Matthews's greatest obstacle might be his Democratic primary opponents.

If he makes it -- and especially if Al Franken wins the Minnesota recount -- he will substantially increase the staid Upper Chamber's wackiness quotient. How long can it be till we elect Sen. Chuck Norris (R-World of Pain)?

Megan McArdle draws the distinction between bailing out the financial industry (good) and bailing out the auto industry (bad):

Whether or not it works--and I sure hope it will--I don't think very many people wanted to bail out the financial industry because we were so moved by the plight of those plucky traders on the mortgage desk. We bailed them out not because they deserved it--they didn't--but because if we didn't, there was a very big risk that they would take us down with them.

This is not generalizeable to other industries. Money is weird. Finance is weird. There is no other industry that is, first, so tightly coupled, and second, severely affects every other industry in the country. Moreover, there are few other industries that are so vulnerable to panic. Strategic injections of capital can actually salvage operations that are otherwise sound.

GM's operations are not otherwise sound. . . . What is government money going to fix? Will GM's management be so grateful to America that they decide to make an attractive, reliable vehicle as a thank-you gift?

In the week since Barack Obama's election to the Presidency the liberal blogosphere has been buzzing with angry denunciations of his appointment of Larry Summers to treasury, unwillingness to hustle Joe Lieberman out of caucus, retention of Bush appointee Robert Gates as Secretary of Defense, and refusal to overturn the sanctioned use of torture or close Guantanamo Bay.

What's curious about this is that none of those things have actually happened.

Instead, liberal supporters of Obama are working themselves up into a lather about what they think he might do, based mostly on rumor and guesswork.

The same thing happened in the week or two after Obama secured the Democratic nomination. In fact, this is part of a long-standing tradition of Democrats shooting themselves in the face whenever they manage to not screw something up in the first place. Seriously, my progressive brothers-at-arms don't know how to win. We don't defend our own until Republicans start being really mean to us. If the GOP ever caught on to this it could easily dispense with its entire attack ad budget and stand quietly by while we ate our own heads. I'm frankly amazed we made it all the way to election day without cutting Obama off at the knees.

Seriously, folks, settle the kettle.

Oh, and saying that doesn't make me an 'Obama cultist'. When the guy actually starts doing and saying stuff I disagree with -- like his vocal support for bailing out the auto industry -- I'll let you know. But until then let's give him the benefit of the doubt, mmmmkay?

Taylor Marsh doles out a chill pill of her own:

It's positively ridiculous to make snap judgments at this point about anything, least of all C.I.A. interrogation rules now in place, which would bring maximum heat down on Obama before he's even inaugurated. Seriously, on what planet are people residing and reporting these days?

What's going on right now is a bunch of political pundits, commentators and opinionators run amok; looking for a story to break about Obama that makes news, while keeping their habit fed. The lull after the election is revealing excitement rot, with a side of write anything that gets attention and looks like you're adding something about the current Obama Transition when you don't actually know squat.

Yes, right now the “Cult of Obama” wants you to STFU. At least until he, you know, actually does something that deserves your derision. And if and when he does, we will join you. Until then, amuse yourself writing diaries for No Quarter, and while you are at it, do us a favor and ask Larry about the “Whitey” tape. Wanker.

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Long-time Republican crusader against profanity in the media Joe Scarborough now finds himself the only MSNBC host since Don Imus to be placed behind a seven-second delay after a profane outburst earlier in the week. The Lion and Gun registers its amusement.

While we're on the subject of Joe the Plumber and broadcast profanity: An Obama-supporting radio talk show host in San Francisco has been fired after dropping a few f-bombs of his own and wishing death upon Joe the Plumber. The brief tirade was spoken over what was thought to be a muted mic.

You can listen to the audio below. Obviously it has some naughty language; if that's the sort of thing that offends you then you probably disagree with my stance on the FCC. So it goes.



The station obviously has every right to fire the guy, but it probably wouldn't bother if America didn't have such a major stick up its ass. Seriously, if this shit doesn't fly in San Fran-fracking-cisco, what does that say for the rest of the country?

Anyway, one can presume a bleeped out version of this will be played over and over again by conservative commentators who are shocked -- shocked! -- that this kind of smut would go out over the air. Can we hear it one more time, Jimmy?

Contrary to earlier reports, faded Republican light Newt Gingrich will not be seeking the party's leadership. Instead, he has promised to 'develop a tri-partisan approach to developing solutions for the challenges we face.' By tri-partisan he presumably means himself, Lou Dobbs, and Zell Miller.

Joe the Plumber's website -- What? Of course he has a website! -- is stuffed with BLINK and MARQUEE effects. Presumably reading from an HTML and netequitte guide circa 1993. Couldn't afford to get a new one because of all those tax hikes Obama hasn't done yet on people who make way more money than Joe.

Anyway, you can pre-order his book on the 'Joe the Shopper' page, which also includes this tantalizing promise:

More Products Coming Soon . . .

Marc Ambinder reports that evangelical bigotry toward Mormons is being washed away by their united bigotry toward gay people. Really warms the cockles, doesn't it?

If you were wondering how long it would take for President-elect Barack Obama to get his own Irish drinking song, The Economist has the answer: not very long at all.

How can you go wrong with lyrics like Turaloo, turaloo, turaloo, turalama/There's no one as Irish as Barack Obama? It's songwriting genius, I tell you.

Megan McArdle suggests he'd better be ready to lose it:

I've talked to quite a few smart economists with specialisations in various aspects of the crisis over the last few months, and the conversation usually goes a lot like this.

Megan: So, the financial crisis. What the hell?
Smart economist: Yeah, that's what I'm titling my next paper.


The lack of understanding, much less consensus, on what is happening and what to do next, would seem to indicate that there's a not insignificant chance that the crisis will get worse and the Obama administration will not be able to do anything about it, making them look (unfairly) completely incompetent, and giving generations of future economists something to smugly criticize.

In advance of her appearance at the annual meeting of the Republican Governors' Association former Republican Veep candidate Sarah Palin is making the rounds with the national press. It's a clear attempt to repair her damaged image as she attempts to lift the Republican banner and carry it to the White House four years hence. her softball interview with Matt Lauer in her kitchen as she prepares dinner for your family is a good place to start.



Make no mistake: the campaign for 2012 has already begun.

Update: Palin speaks about the Couric interview in a web-only portion of the interview. Her trouble answering, 'What books do you read?' She didn't understand the question. Video after the jump.

In today's Times David Brooks outlines the grounds on which the battle for the GOP's heart will be fought. On one side are reformist conservatives; the other, 'traditionalists'. The latter see opportunity in last week's defeat:

[A] group of Traditionalists met in Virginia last weekend to plot strategy, including Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax Reform, Leonard Leo of the Federalist Society and Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council. According to reports, the attendees were pleased that the election wiped out some of the party’s remaining moderates. “There’s a sense that the Republicans on Capitol Hill are freer of wobbly-kneed Republicans than they were before the election,” the writer R. Emmett Tyrrell told a reporter.

Only one thing is for sure: In the near term, the Traditionalists are going to win the fight for supremacy in the G.O.P.

President Bush is reportedly irked that the incoming administration leaked details of yesterday's meeting between forty-three and forty-four, particularly the characterization of Bush as opposed to bailing out the auto industry and tying passage of the Colombian trade deal to any economic stimulus.

I've already said that I don't support Obama's plan to bail out automakers. Still, from a political standpoint it looks like the outgoing White House just got rolled. This probably won't make transition easier, but it's put Bush in a position that will make it harder for him to oppose either stimulus or bailout.

If tapping Rahm Emanuel for Chief of Staff wasn't proof enough that Obama was ready to knock some heads to get shit done, this should hopefully convince you.

I think this about sums it up:

The RNC has launched a new four-minute video called 'Building Our Future'. It contains clips of past Republican Presidents set to stirring music. Nothing else.



The Republican Party. Where everything that's old will still be old.

I've recently remarked that I don't quite get the level of vitriol that's being thrown at Joe Lieberman. Now the debate over Lieberman's fate has turned into a thousand-angels-on-a-pin inter-textual deep reading of Obama's statements to determine whether they'll help the Connecticut Senator or hurt him.

Personally, I don't care. We'll know soon enough what happens with Lieberman. If you're that upset about the guy in the meantime you'd be better off signing a petition or harassing your local pols than sitting around staring at tea leaves.

That said, I think Obama's statements deserve to be taken at face value. The incoming administration is neither trying to undermine nor boost Lieberman's prospects. Why the hell would Obama want to embroil himself in a fight that's taking place in another branch of government, that he'd probably lose, and that has no upside for him with anyone who doesn't have Daily Kos as their homepage? Glenn Greenwald is right:

How the Senate organizes itself and which members chair its Committees is about as purely within the legislative domain as it gets. It makes sense that Senate Democrats want to cooperate with Obama and that they have good feelings towards him in light of his election victory. Still, if the Senate has any sense of its own institutional integrity and any intention to defend its constitutionally assigned prerogatives, the last thing Senators would be doing is allowing Obama to interfere with, let alone dictate to them, how they proceed in deciding what to do about Lieberman. If they don't jealously safeguard that arena from executive intrusion, what do they safeguard?

Spencer Ackerman lays out some very good reasons for President-elect Obama to retain Secretary of Defense Robert Gates in his position after Inauguration:

Substantively, Gates has been to Donald Rumsfeld what Obama hopes to be to George W. Bush: both an agent and a symbol of positive change. . . . There are a lot of men with stars on their shoulders who oppose Obama's plans for withdrawal from Iraq, and many of them will be ready to plant the narrative in the press that Obama is another Bush -- shunting aside his best military advice in favor of his ideologically-driven schemes.

Asking Gates to stay demolishes that. . . . Obama will be telling the tens of millions of McCain voters that they'll have a place in the administration on an issue that matters massively to them: national security.

According to the New York Times:

The struggling auto industry was thrust into the middle of a political standoff between the White House and Democrats on Monday as President-elect Barack Obama urged President Bush in a meeting at the White House to support immediate emergency aid.

Mr. Bush indicated at the meeting that he might support some aid and a broader economic stimulus package if Mr. Obama and Congressional Democrats dropped their opposition to a free-trade agreement with Colombia, a measure for which Mr. Bush has long fought, people familiar with the discussion said.

A new USA Today/Gallup poll shows President-elect Barack Obama entering office with unusually high favorability and expectations:

Nearly seven in 10 adults, or 68%, said they have a favorable opinion of President-elect Barack Obama. Almost that many — 65% — said they think the country will be better off four years from now.

"The reception he's getting is unlike anything we've seen in decades," says Andrew Kohut, director of the non-partisan Pew Research Center. "It's a very high set of expectations to live up to. On the upside, it means people are going to be pulling for him."

A lower level of optimism greeted President Bush and former president Bill Clinton when they were first elected. In both cases, slightly more than 50% said they thought the country would be better off in four years.

[M]ajorities also said Obama will not be able to substantially reduce the federal budget deficit, avoid raising taxes or control illegal immigration.

Convicted felon Ted Stevens, the long-serving Senior Senator from Alaska, seems likely to win re-election once all of the votes are counted in his race against Anchorage mayor Mark Begich. Now Republican Senator Jim DeMint is calling for a motion to expel Stevens from the party's caucus, a move that would strip the Alaska Senator of his committee appointments.

Surely this is partly a move to distance Republicans from the corrupt Senator. It is also undoubtedly intended to pressure Stevens to resign. Should he choose not to, a vote on censure, or even expulsion, becomes almost inevitable. Senators are loathe to investigate each other, and censure and expulsion procedures can be very publicly messy affairs. There have only been nine Senators censured in that institution's history. No Senator has been expelled since the Civil War, and there have only been two expulsion proceedings in the post-WWII era (both ending in resignation). Censure or expulsion would be deeply embarrassing for the Republican party and a terrible way to build morale so soon after taking a heavy thumping at the polls.

Should Stevens resign there will be a special election held in Alaska which would heavily favor the Republican candidate. Which is to say there's a fair chance we'll see Sen. Sarah Palin (R-AK) in Washington by this time next year.

(h/t TPM)

A Canadian veteran remembers

A thought goes out to all soldiers past and present who have fought in the name of their country. We can go back to arguing about the merits of America's overseas wars tomorrow. For today let's solemnly appreciate those who are willing to show that last full measure of their devotion.

Photo provided under a CC license by James Tworow

Okay, so you've probably seen lots of consternation in the liberal blogosphere over Joe Lieberman's fate in the Democrat-controlled Senate, but you won't see any here. Truth is, I never really got the liberal hate-on for Lieberman. Okay, not true; I get it, I just don't get it. I mean, yeah, the dude's kind of a douchebag -- but, hey, it's politics, get in line. And, yeah, there's that whole party betrayal thing. But thanks to liberal Dems he got rogered but good in the 2006 Connecticut primary, so I can kind of see where he's coming from. And, yeah, Obama campaigned for Lieberman in '06, so this really was a betrayal. But Lieberman probably (correctly) calculated that his electability in Connecticut is waning and by going all in with McCain he might get a Veep nod or at worst a Cabinet appointment should McCain win. He hitched his ride to the only horse that'd take him. It was cold, but he's not the first politician whose ambition spurs him to take a ruthless gamble.

In the end, though, Senate politics and real world politics are fairly separate realms. Within the world of the Senate folks are very very very very reluctant to punish one another, mostly for good reasons. The United States Senate is stuffed with frenemies.

Now, I think it's a good thing to remove some moral hazard by sanctioning Lieberman in some way. Preferably by removing him from his Chairmanship, but I'm okay with compromise measures as well. If he gets only a slap on the wrist, or nothing at all, I'll be unhappy about it, especially if it looks like Dem leadership has caved to Lieberman's baseless threats. But I'm not going to get worked up about it. And I think President-Elect Obama's public olive branch is a good thing.

I won't spend much time here speculating on who Obama will be appointing to his staff and Cabinet. It can be fun, at least for the sort of people who enjoy that kind of thing, but it's not especially enlightening. Better to wait and see who he actually appoints and then discuss that.

Nevertheless, I do feel compelled to comment on the debaeswirling around Obama's Treasury pick. Conventional wisdom -- for what that's worth -- suggests it'll be either former Clinton Treasury Secretary Larry Summers or Tim Geithner, President of the New York Federal Reserve. Both men have stellar CVs and would invite the confidence of Wall Street types. But the very possibility of appointing Summers has raised hackles on the left.

Partly this has to do with the controversy he provoked during his tenure at Harvard; partly with the slightly ridiculous belief that he wants to ship America's waste to Africa. Noam Scheiber does a pretty good job of defending him on both counts. I could say more about how faculty at Harvard who were unhappy with Summers's management style shamefully took his remarks out of context to smear him as a sexist -- but I won't.

My sense is that the left's major beef with Summers is his tenure under Clinton. He's associated with the movement to deregulate markets, which, to take an extremely simplistic view of things, Caused The Financial Crisis. At the heart of this reaction is a misguided liberal suspicion of all market deregulation. Look: deregulation is, on the face of it, a good thing if only because, by its very nature, it increases freedom. If, hypothetically, the same result in a given situation could be achieved by a regulated market or an unregulated market, the unregulated market would be preferable.

That's not an argument against all regulation. But let's be clear: is good regulation and bad, which means there's also good deregulation and bad.

I'm not gonna lie: I can't say decisively whether the deregulation Summers championed during the late 1990s was of the good or the bad variety. As with most things it was probably a mixed bag, and presumably a lot of the bad stuff looked good at the time. Regardless, Summers should not be dismissed out of hand because he advocated deregulation, or even because he made mistakes.

What I do know is that Summers has a stellar reputation amongst people who know way the hell more about this than I do. And that's enough to make me feel content. Not just because it suggests that Summers knows his stuff -- although it does -- but also because markets will react more favorably to a known (and trusted) quantity. Summers and Geithner are probably, on basis of reputation alone, Obama's best choices.

Liberal discontent with Summers does provide a legitimate argument against his appointment. Obama will want his base rallied behind him as he tries to pass his stimulus package or enact a sweeping health care plan. On the other hand, it's also an argument for his appointment. Summers has recently come out as a full-throated advocate for government intervention in the economy. The idea that only Nixon can go to China holds true in economics, too, and to pass a liberal agenda it will be just as (if not more) important for Obama to woo skeptics as it will be to win over his base.

Larry Summers has credibility with those wary of big government for precisely the reasons he's reviled by many on the left. This, ironically, might make him the left's best possible advocate.

Photo provided under a CC license by World Economic Forum

Among the many lessons this election holds for the GOP, arguably none is more important than this: It is no longer 1980. And some Republicans have clearly heeded the call. To them, it's 1994.

In their desperate search for new talent some prominent Republicans, including the Prince of Darkness himself, are embracing a man whose ideas were cutting edge when modems were measured in baud, geeks traded D&D for Doom II LAN parties, and The X-Files was still kind of cool. With the intellectual acuity of a hummingbird that smacks into a window, backs up, and does it again, these conservatives have turned to former House Speaker Newt Gingrich to lead them out of the wilderness. He is now making a play for leadership of the Republican National Committee and is emerging as one of the top Presidential contenders for 2012.

This is the sort of thing that makes a reasonable person seriously reconsider the wisdom of writing Sarah Palin off. For those of you who don't remember, Gingrich is the man who led Republicans to a stunning Congressional victory in 1994 with his much-vaunted Contract with America, then spent the next four years systematically destroying his own image and the Republican Party brand. A combination of political missteps, unpopular scandal-mongering, electoral losses, and rampant corruption led Gingrich to resign from the House in shame halfway through President Clinton's second term.

This is the new Republican hero. In 2012 he'll be 69 years old and eighteen years past his last original thought. Handing this guy the Republican banner would be really bad for the Republicans -- we're talking Cats bad. Which, I guess, is good for us. So, you know, cool.

Following up on my earlier post, I wanted to comment on the absurdity of trying to divine American 'ideology' from election results. Firstly, it's not very useful to speak of American ideology in the context of election results because, in a fairly specific political sense, there simply isn't one. There are plenty of regional and ethnic and other interest groups that share a (very roughly) coherent set of beliefs, but to discover a broadly-held American ideology one must retreat to platitudes about individualism, democracy, exceptionalism, and the like.

That's not to say that study of American ideology, as such, is fruitless. Certainly I've spent countless hours reading fascinating writing, from Turner and de Tocqueville to more recent books like The Right Nation, which attempt to distill America's essence. Rather, it's to recognize that what makes up the stuff of American thought sets the limits on political debate but does not decide it. In other words, American ideology, to the extent that it exists, delineates what is politically acceptable but does not determine what is politically preferable within those bounds. America is neither naturally Republican nor Democratic; instead, Republicans and Democrats work within the realm of American thought and attempt to better reflect and appeal to Americans' needs and desires (and, sometimes, fears) at any given moment.

Which leads to the second point I want to make.

Most voters do not hold anything like a coherent political ideology. Many might think that they do, but they don't. Voting at the individual level tends to be a fairly irrational act. For most voters it is, at least in part, an emotional act of self-assertion. This is true even amongst the well-informed. Candidates, movements, and political parties go to great lengths to build emotional connections with their supporters. I had many perfectly rational reasons to support Barack Obama for President, but I also just wanted him to win: because he's an inspiring speaker; because I feel like part of a generational movement; because I wanted to see a black President; because I came to dislike John McCain; because, yes, I wanted to throw the bums out. There's a degree of herd mentality here, too -- which is partly why in aggregate voting tends to be fairly rational and predictable. (Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight has spent most of the past year proving precisely that.)

To the degree that voting is rational it tends to reflect self-interest, not ideology, and typically a person's professed political ideology will fairly closely hew to their self-interest. Even this, however, is often quite irrational. People don't always have a perfect grasp of what is in their self-interest -- or, to be more diplomatic about it, different people may define their self-interest differently. Some voters, for example, will sometimes cast a ballot against their economic self-interest out of a desire to protect their guns. Voters also very often fail to perceive which party or candidate will actually fulfill their self-interest, misunderstand the potential effects of proposed policies, or believe incorrect information about party platforms.

The truth is that many, perhaps most, voters support a given candidate or party for pretty bad reasons. They vote the way their family has always voted. They vote the way their friends vote. They vote for the candidate with white skin. They think Republicans support an expanded welfare state or Democrats want to cut back spending. They think Democrats support terrorists or Republicans secretly destroyed the World Trade Center.

This is the 'low-information voter'. That's often said with disdainful presumption: a nicer way of saying 'stupid'. And sometimes that's right, but frequently it's not. Plenty of intelligent, well-educated people simply have no interest in politics. Hell, I consider myself a pretty smart guy, but if asked I couldn't name one member of the Rams' starting lineup. (I'm not even sure what sport they play. Hockey?) Granted, politics is more important than sports. And economics is more important than movies, but given the choice between reading a micro textbook till 3am or watching the latest Spielberg flick, I'm gonna see the movie.

But I digress. The point is, voters mostly cast their ballots for reasons independent of political ideology. Many, perhaps most, are low-information voters, but even the best-informed political junkies base their decisions on a combination of factors: emotion, partisan affiliation, self-interest, and so on. However, ideology has arguably become the most acceptable justification for casting a ballot one way or another, so many people will lay claim to an ideology without really knowing what it means. Which renders meaningless the following argument about the recent election (made here by Republican dunce Bill Kristol):

[T]here was virtually no change in the voters’ ideological self-identification: in 2008, 22 percent called themselves liberal, up only marginally from 21 percent in 2004; 34 percent were conservative, unchanged from the last election; and 44 percent called themselves moderate, compared with 45 percent in 2004.

In other words, this was a good Democratic year, but it is still a center-right country.

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