Broke my vow to post daily. That's mostly because my back gave out, which made it hard to type but easy to watch lots of Egypt coverage.
Maybe I'm overly-sensitized to this because of what I'm reading, but I was struck by how often Egypt is described as an economic revolution. Hillary Clinton kept talking about economic opportunity at the start of the U.S. Government reactions to the protest; though she talked quite a bit about democracy as well, cable pundits have been all about the economic part ever since. Second on the topic list has been a sort of poor-man's realpolitik, in which we make vague references to American security without actually owning up much to what we're after. Democracy runs a distant third.
Any revolution has a big economic component. But when we talk about 1776 in the U.S., tax issues don't lead off the story. This is a political revolution. I have yet to see an Egyptian protester demand an end to price controls. They're risking their lives to bring down a dictator. They talk about free elections. They talk about political prisoners. They deserve to be taken seriously, no?
Monday, January 31, 2011
Thursday, January 27, 2011
related: political space
One of the more minor side effects of Democrats refusing to mention any position they can't immediately pass into law is that it leaves a lot of space for a particularly current and toxic species of Republican.
Liberal sources everywhere are dedicating gallons of ink to Mayor Michael Bloomberg's stand on gun control. It's great that Mayor Bloomberg is taking a principled position on this issue. But if Democratic leadership weren't terrified of using the word "gun", the headlines would read "Republican joins Democrats calling for gun control."
By shying away, we don't just hurt progress on this issue or leave ourselves looking feeble. We give moderate Republicans, who never learned the 'avoid popular positions if you don't have votes for them in Congress' lesson, an enormous voice, and leave countless independents and more than a few Democrats thinking that Michael Bloomberg is what a strong, principled, moderate voice in politics looks like - Republican anti-government billionaires who aren't quite as crazy as the other Republican anti-government billionaires. The ban-assault-weapons poll this week: 63%-34%. Come on.
Liberal sources everywhere are dedicating gallons of ink to Mayor Michael Bloomberg's stand on gun control. It's great that Mayor Bloomberg is taking a principled position on this issue. But if Democratic leadership weren't terrified of using the word "gun", the headlines would read "Republican joins Democrats calling for gun control."
By shying away, we don't just hurt progress on this issue or leave ourselves looking feeble. We give moderate Republicans, who never learned the 'avoid popular positions if you don't have votes for them in Congress' lesson, an enormous voice, and leave countless independents and more than a few Democrats thinking that Michael Bloomberg is what a strong, principled, moderate voice in politics looks like - Republican anti-government billionaires who aren't quite as crazy as the other Republican anti-government billionaires. The ban-assault-weapons poll this week: 63%-34%. Come on.
This is the exact thing
Ezra Klein:
Throughout the Obama administration and for many years before, certain Democrats have been obsessed with the idea that you should never, never ask for anything you can't get. They believe there is nothing worse than losing a vote in Congress. They advocate no policies they cannot immediately pass.
This means we preemptively compromise, starting all negotiations from the middle and pretending that is exactly what we want. It also means that after that, when we have to compromise again (since that's the nature of negotiation), we then pretend the new compromise is ALSO exactly what we wanted. As a political strategy this is occasionally useful, but mostly completely frakkin' insane. We look untrustworthy - hell, we are untrustworthy; we find ourselves standing for positions no one likes and rejecting positions almost everyone likes; and if a policy doesn't work out well, as with the economy now, we have nothing to fall back on. What's our excuse? We passed exactly what we wanted, didn't we?
All this is based on the idea that the American people will love us much better if we appear to have an endless string of victories rather than a) standing up for something; b) making actual compromises between what we want and what they want, like they keep saying they want us to; and c) being able to blame not-fully-successful policies like the stimulus on the need to compromise with our opponents. Evidence for the success of that idea is awfully thin.
I sat in on a briefing yesterday where various "senior administration officials" explained the theory behind the State of the Union. When they were asked about shifting their focus to the future when the economy was so bad in the present, they explained that they got pretty much everything they thought they could get -- and, in fact, more than they thought they could get -- in the tax-cut deal, and it was time to let that work. Left unsaid is that they can't get anything more out of a Republican House, and so there's little point in begging.
Throughout the Obama administration and for many years before, certain Democrats have been obsessed with the idea that you should never, never ask for anything you can't get. They believe there is nothing worse than losing a vote in Congress. They advocate no policies they cannot immediately pass.
This means we preemptively compromise, starting all negotiations from the middle and pretending that is exactly what we want. It also means that after that, when we have to compromise again (since that's the nature of negotiation), we then pretend the new compromise is ALSO exactly what we wanted. As a political strategy this is occasionally useful, but mostly completely frakkin' insane. We look untrustworthy - hell, we are untrustworthy; we find ourselves standing for positions no one likes and rejecting positions almost everyone likes; and if a policy doesn't work out well, as with the economy now, we have nothing to fall back on. What's our excuse? We passed exactly what we wanted, didn't we?
All this is based on the idea that the American people will love us much better if we appear to have an endless string of victories rather than a) standing up for something; b) making actual compromises between what we want and what they want, like they keep saying they want us to; and c) being able to blame not-fully-successful policies like the stimulus on the need to compromise with our opponents. Evidence for the success of that idea is awfully thin.
Sunday, January 9, 2011
a few thoughts from Arizona
I'm getting some flak from right-wing friends about liberals 'using' this event for political gain. Wow.
First, generally speaking, when people are getting murdered, it's nice to leave their friends alone for a little bit even if you think they're offending you. I know pulling yourself out of constant political debate is hard, but consider being civilized for a moment.
Second, this is not a question of whether Jared Loughner is a Sarah Palin fan or not. Violent rhetoric anywhere in American politics increases the chances of things like this happening. It makes all sides more violent. It opens the door to crazy people of all stripes.
Third, when we say we'd like people to stop using metaphors of murder about Democratic politicians, that's not for political gain. It's just for not-getting-shot-anymore gain. We're not going to take down Sarah Palin's career by noting that she put targets with gunsights on our congressmen, and she's not going to lose the next election because she doesn't do that any more. We just want that to stop.
Fourth, the right can certainly point out examples of Democrats using violent rhetoric. I wish those would stop too. I think they're cherry-picked examples and false equivalences, but that's a pointless and endless argument. Here is what is relevant: it's us that keep getting killed. Every real political act of violence in this country for decades has targeted those on the left, and most of them have come from those on the right. Some incidents of domestic terror have no involvement in domestic politics - the Fort Hood shooting, for instance. But the rest have been George Tiller and anthrax to Harry Reid and Oklahoma City and Eric Rudolph. So maybe the rhetoric on the right is worse or maybe the crazies on the right are more susceptible, but either way that's where the problem is.
Fifth, this.
First, generally speaking, when people are getting murdered, it's nice to leave their friends alone for a little bit even if you think they're offending you. I know pulling yourself out of constant political debate is hard, but consider being civilized for a moment.
Second, this is not a question of whether Jared Loughner is a Sarah Palin fan or not. Violent rhetoric anywhere in American politics increases the chances of things like this happening. It makes all sides more violent. It opens the door to crazy people of all stripes.
Third, when we say we'd like people to stop using metaphors of murder about Democratic politicians, that's not for political gain. It's just for not-getting-shot-anymore gain. We're not going to take down Sarah Palin's career by noting that she put targets with gunsights on our congressmen, and she's not going to lose the next election because she doesn't do that any more. We just want that to stop.
Fourth, the right can certainly point out examples of Democrats using violent rhetoric. I wish those would stop too. I think they're cherry-picked examples and false equivalences, but that's a pointless and endless argument. Here is what is relevant: it's us that keep getting killed. Every real political act of violence in this country for decades has targeted those on the left, and most of them have come from those on the right. Some incidents of domestic terror have no involvement in domestic politics - the Fort Hood shooting, for instance. But the rest have been George Tiller and anthrax to Harry Reid and Oklahoma City and Eric Rudolph. So maybe the rhetoric on the right is worse or maybe the crazies on the right are more susceptible, but either way that's where the problem is.
Fifth, this.
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