Just An Excuse

Ygelsias—How Close Were We Really?:

[emphasis added] Now that’s not to deny that they were, in fact, close. In fact we’re still close and the door is still very open, logistically, to moving forward with essentially the deal that folks were working toward pre-Coakley. But I think the speed with which Coakley’s loss was seized upon as a reason not to walk through that door underscores how fundamentally uncomfortable with the framework so many people were. Say Coakley had turned back the tide and beaten Brown 51-49. Couldn’t some members have looked at that and said that Coakley’s very weak showing in the true-blue Bay State showed the unpopularity and infeasibility of Provision X and thrown a wrench in the works? It feels to me that a lot of members were looking for an excuse not to do it, and now they’ve seized upon one. But the underlying impulse to seek excuses and shift blame was long there.

This. Which is why I thought Coakley being a mortally wounded candidate at the finish line made the victory or loss not exactly irrelevant, but in the case of HCR, almost a wash. There were already far too many politicians—particularly in the House—who were ready to jump ship on the legislation. They would have pointed to a Coakley one-point WIN and learned the exact same fear-driven and incorrect lesson—the public doesn't want health care reform, the left is overreaching, and it's time to move to the right.

Had she won, Congress would only be hearing from the teabaggers and firebaggers that want to kill the package. The media would still be pronouncing the same Democrats are doomed, public rejection meme. The weak members would still be running to the hills. Those still centrally involved in the process would continue to weaken and erode the reforms and still end up with an unlikely-to-pass package out of a long, drawn-out and politically damaging conference process.

I look at the landscape now and absolutely believe that Coakley's loss might be the only thing that saves the reform and the Democrats from themselves.

Dick of the Week: Massachusetts

Yeah. Seems obvious, right? Here's the thing: I hated Coakley as a candidate and the way the party handled this whole affair. I can easily rationalize the loss away as a wake-up call, a moment of clarity on a path to passing the reform (see previous post), or a punishment for Coakley and her inept, arrogent campaign.

There's the obvious parallel to the voters to the south stupidly reelecting Joe Lieberman, but this was worse. the stakes so much clearer, but that stuff is beating a dead horse. The thing that's not getting enough play for my taste is the fact that Massachusetts HAS FUCKING UNIVERSAL(ish) HEALTH CARE!

The media likes to pretend that this election was a rejection of health care reform—which is wasn't—because clearly polls and past voting and the fact that they fucking gave it to themselves as a state indicate other wise.

But what is burning me up the most, and that I will have the hardest time getting past is the big, giant "Fuck you, I got mine!" these Massholes gave the rest of the country.

No one is talking about that. No one.

What Happens Now

I had a big post breaking down the potential ramifications of the Senate race in Massachusetts for either result almost ready to go when I had to put it down for a couple hours. Now the results are in and you might think that was all wasted.

Wrong.

Most of my conclusions ended up in the same place whether Coakley or Brown won.

In my desperate attempt to find a silver lining in what seemed likely, I ended up comfortable with the feeling that Coakley losing might actually be a good thing. No. I'm not going all FDL and becoming a "kill the bill" fanatic—I want the bill passed, and I'm starting to think the Republican upset might help that process.

Here are the things I think were an inevitable result of this election, no matter who won:

1. Bragging Rights -- The GOP declares the election a referendum on the Democrats at large and Obama in particular. The GOP smells blood in the water and is emboldened in their obstructionism and nihilism and ratchet up the rhetoric. Brown winning also makes their framing an easier sell, but even a narrow Coakley win would have been treated the same way.

2. "This is excellent news for John McCain." -- The media follows the GOP on No. 1. Since Brown pulled it out, they have a collective weeks-long orgasm. That is the result they wanted. It sets up the narrative for the year and the midterms, and makes their lives easy. These underdog and rebellion stories write themselves. But make no mistake: even a Coakley win would've been framed as a loss and a rejection of Obama, because it wasn't a blowout.

3. Massive Diaper Change -- Blue Dog and conservative Democrats shit their pants and run for the fucking hills on EVERYTHING. Funny how that works: A Republican loses? Then they weren't conservative enough, the party hunkers down and moves to the right. A Democrat loses? They weren't conservative enough, the Democrats abandon everything and run to the right like a goddamn bear is chasing them. This effect holds simply because it was close. Doesn't matter who won.

So what does all of that tell you? If Coakley had won 51-49 none of that would have changed. The only difference now is 59 Democrats instead of 60.

And. That. Shouldn't. Fucking. Matter.

This isn't the Republican party. The "60-vote super-majority" never was a given, and never would be. You don't think Evan Bayh isn't drooling at the chance to be the new Joe Lieberman? He just passed his first audition tonight by being the first Dem in front of a camera, scolding the party for drifting too far left.

--

For the sake of Argument, let's pretend for a moment Coakley had won:

The first order of business is Health Care Reform. Coakley's win sends the process right back into the quagmire of gutlessness and stupidity that has taken a a year to get us to this point—which is: still without a pasable bill. So, the existing Senate and House bills would go to conference, and there's no guarantee that what emerged would be as good as either current bill or that it would pass. In general, the longer it takes, the less likely it would pass, but in this climate, do you think after watching the bloodbath in Massachusetts the fence-sitters in the party are going to man-up or dither? The intra-party finger-pointing and second-guessing would be paralyzing in a conference.

And it would only get worse from there. Enough candy-asses are going to run to the right after a race this close, that 60 might be unattainable on any given legislation.

But, since Coakley lost, the mirage of a super-majority is exposed and the pursuit of 60 more futile, it might actually change both the tactics and the strategy from the Democrats. On HCR, the only way to pass the package now is to avoid the conference committee by eliminating the need to combine two bills.

Send the Senate bill as-is to the House, promise House progressives their concerns (mostly budgetary) will be handled in 50+1 reconciliation and have Pelosi gather 218 votes. It then goes straight to Obama's pen.

Failure to pass health care reform is not acceptable and the current scenario actually makes the process of enacting the legislation easier. Yes, it's a ballsier move, but by skipping the conference, the Senate vote has already happened—it negates Brown's 41st vote, or Lieberman's eventual stab in the back, etc.

If Reid, Pelosi and Obama are unable or unwilling to go that route and prevail, then I honestly believe they would not have gotten it done with Coakley's vote either.

"Get a Brain Moran!"

"[link] The half of my family who voted for Obama are for Brown," said Dennis Sheehan, an electrical technician from Lowell, who cheered the Senate candidate outside a Boston Bruins game. "They felt sold out. He said he'd bring the whole country together. I've never seen the country so divided in my life, and I grew up in the '60s, with Vietnam."

Yeah. And that's Obama's fault. And this will help.

This election is turning into The Darwin Awards.

Ugly

It doesn't look good for Coakley. Nate Silver:

Right now, our trusty little model of Massachusetts gives Martha Coakley just a 25 percent chance of prevailing tomorrow. Intrade also puts her odds at about 1 in 4. My subjective assessment might be a little better than that, but not much.

People are acting, however, as though 25 percent is the same as zero percent. And -- as disappointing as it might be to be in this position -- obviously it is not. This is not some basketball game where the score suddenly became Brown 75, Coakley 25; a 25 percent chance of winning means, quite literally, 25 percent.

Sorry, Nate. One-in-four, quite literally, is fucking screwed. Way to botch this up Democrats. And I honestly think parachuting Obama in to campaign on the eve of the election was a mistake. No voters like being told what to do by outsiders, and I think it played right into Brown's fake-ass regular guy versus machine politician.

Worthless

Sullivan:

...if the Dems can't hold Teddy's seat, what use are they? What you see here is the fathomless awfulness of the Democrats. Too fractured and listless to get a solid health insurance bill through both Houses in anything like the time they wanted, too disorganized to make a strong and coherent case for their proposal, led by charisma-free walking corpses like Harry "your dog is fat" Reid and Speaker Pelosi whose political skills do not extend to persuading anyone of anything, they really are the reason so many of us cannot apply that partisan label to ourselves, even when we believe Obama is the best thing this country has going for it politically right now.

But losing Kennedy's seat is a near-epic failure. If health reform fails, it will be because of a fatal combination of Democratic hubris and Democratic weakness. They just won the presidency and both Houses. And this is what they manage? Really, who wants to belong or support a party this goddamn useless?

I think he's too hard on Pelosi—because she's a woman, and he's Andrew Sullivan—but, yeah, that's pretty much how I'll feel if they lose that seat and everything falls apart.

Quote of the Day

Michael Steele says there's no such thing as black dialect, in his blog "What Up?"

Roger Ebert on Twitter

Stupidest Blog Post of 2010, Already?

Who else but Ann Althouse? Scroll down and read a few random comments for the full effect.

This stupidity kicked off by Glenn Reynolds.

Ugh...

Nothing beats dropping your wife and two young children off for a plane flight to Detroit today.

Let me ask a question here: If you have to sit in the terminal—with or without kids—for an hour waiting to take off, would you prefer to watch an endless loop of stupid-ass CNN "analysis" of the botched terror attack on a plane, or might the airport think of switching the feed to TNT and an endless loop of "A Christmas Story." Or fucking marathon of "Cake Boss." I don't much care.

Assholes.

Dick of the Week: BOGO Edition

As obvious a choice as Joe Lieberman is, giving him D.O.W. is almost akin to blaming the scorpion for stinging the frog—it's his nature. So it's a "Buy One Get One" sale on Dicks this week: Joe Lieberman, and his fucking caddy, Harry Reid. Because the fact that Joe Lieberman is able to torpedo the Health Care Bill—again—and walk away intact, is all on Reid.

Health Bill in Peril After Lieberman Pulls Support for Senate Deal [link]
In a move that senior leadership aides say has left them stunned, Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) has told Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) that he will filibuster a tentative public option compromise unless it's stripped of its key component: a measure that would allow people aged 55-64 to buy insurance through Medicare.

"Stunned" leadership? Why? Smart bloggers saw this shit coming a mile (or thirteen months) away.

If Harry Reid or anyone else was actually "stunned" by what Lieberman is doing they're as fucking stupid as they are weak, and twice as incompetent.

Reid and Obama fucked this up last year when they blinked and let Lieberman keep his Committee chair and seniority. They thought they could put a leash on him... It was one of a long line of stupid, weak moves by Reid, and a surprisingly boneheaded play by Obama.

Lieberman wasn’t needed to give the Dems 51 and the majority, and all that came with that (which would have been worth it), he was simply padding the lead short of 60.

For them to think he would reliably vote with Dems in exactly this type of situation is the height of naivety. If anything should be clear after his campaigning for McCain, it’s that he doesn’t give a shit about the Democratic party or agenda, only himself and jockeying for whatever comes after this term, because he sealed his fate with the voters a long time ago.

His move towards McCain was a calculated and transparent play towards a position in that Cabinet. He gambled and lost and should have been castrated for it. Instead, Reid's steely spine, Obama's Vulcan mind, and Rahm's gigantic balls got together and decided to let Holy Joe keep his chair, committees and seniority—making a guy who by all rights should be a pariah of both parties and sitting by himself in a Senate cloakroom into President Joe Lieberman with a special preemptive veto power.

Last year, I didn't want Lieberman banished simply for satisfaction—though that was high on the list—it was because I KNEW he was a self-interested traitor they couldn't control. Certainly not Reid. And not even Obama.

He was going to screw them. Hard. And at the time and place of HIS choosing. That this would happen was inevitable, and entirely predictible. Yet it wasn't exactly preventable...

The math dictates that Lieberman would be able to position himself as the 60/40 fence-sitter whenever he wants to, but the fact that he can do that at will and retain all of the benefits of a four-term Democrat is what's outrageous.

Lieberman's relevance stems from only two things:
1. That he can camp out on the 60/40 line.
2. He holds Chairmanship of the Oversight Committee.

Number one ensures Lieberman can piss on the Democrats any time he wants, and number two immunizes him from discipline: Reid cannot simply yank Joe’s seat between Senate sessions without a vote—meaning Lieberman gets another year to find the Oversight Keys he lost during the Bush Administration and use his Committee to run all over Obama or actively scuttle any investigations of the prior Administration.

Punishing him at that point will have the optics of a cover-up and/or protecting Obama.

That's the critical thing they fucked up thirteen months ago. Lieberman would still be a self-important asshole, and still be the GOP’s 41st vote—but he’d be neutered otherwise.

UPDATE: Rahm Emmanuel and the White House told Reid to "give Lieberman whatever he wants," which Reid quickly did, so the public option is out, and so is Medicare Buy-In, triggers or anything else. All to secure the vote that Lieberman will withhold for some other reason next week. Well-played you dumbasses. The 55-64 vote ought to turn out in droves for you guys next year.

UPDATE 2: Booman reminds us that Reid was fucking this up more recently as well...

Harry Reid empowered [Lieberman] when he decided to put the public option in the base bill (and why did Reid feel that was necessary?). Lieberman was freed to oppose anything in the bill he doesn't like without actually being responsible for killing health care reform. Had Reid just used the Snowe-trigger, the bill would have passed rather easily, and Lieberman wouldn't be able to fight for changes in the Conference Report because there are no amendments allowed to a Conference Report. Now you know why I argued against going for a public option in the Senate's base bill.

This is Your Criminal Justice System on Drugs

Will there ever be a politician with the balls to work on abolishing some of the draconian and ultimately ineffective drug sentencing laws in this stupid country? Jacob Sullum at Reason:

Last week the Minnesota Supreme Court ruled that bong water is an illegal drug. Under state law, a controlled substance includes any "mixture" containing that substance, "regardless of purity." The consequences of reading that definition literally can be severe. In the case before the court, a woman whose bong contained 37 grams of water with traces of methamphetamine will now be treated as if she possessed 37 grams of speed, which converts possession of drug paraphernalia, a petty misdemeanor punishable by a $300 fine, into a a first-degree drug offense, punishable by seven or more years in prison. Three dissenting justices wrote that the majority's interpretation of the statute "misapplies the plain-meaning rule...runs counter to the legislative structure of our drug laws, does not make common sense, and borders on the absurd."

In that column, Sullum refers to a previous absurdity...

Back in 1993, I wrote a piece for Reason in which I highlighted the ridiculously unjust results of including the "carrier medium" for LSD (typically blotter paper) in calculating the drug's weight for sentencing purposes:

Under federal sentencing guidelines, selling 100 doses of LSD in pure form triggers a minimum sentence of less than a year, but selling the same amount on paper will get you a sentence of at least two years, three months. And if you were old-fashioned enough to drop your acid onto sugar cubes, you will end up behind bars for no less than 15 years, eight months.

That makes about as much sense as tacking on the weight of the car in when someone's busted for a bag of weed in the glovebox.

Mandatory sentencing and the disparity between different drugs has made this whole thing a fucking joke.

[h/t Sullivan]

Chryon Shame

These are awesome.

Buzzfeed compiles 21 newsfeed/caption blunders.



[h/t Sullivan]

Reading Assignment: The Final Fall of Bush's White House

Former Bush speechwriter Matthew Latimer has a book coming out on the time he spent in the White House—the Administration's final 22 months. GQ has an excerpt in the upcoming issue, and it's now online. It details events last fall—the botched bailout, McCain's "five-spiral crash," and Bush's reaction to the Palin pick. It's a good read...

Crash

Strange fender-bender outside my office window just now... Looking down on it, for the life of me I can't figure out exactly how it happened. But that won't stop from speculatively blaming it on the guy in the Mercedes with the Bluetooth in his ear.

Reading Assignment

On the heels of my and Mrs. F's respite to the north and the disenchantment upon our return to the Overrated Capital of Southern Cool—Asheville... followed by this twoglasses thread comes, at just the right time, one of the best things I've read all year.

Too good to excerpt. Just read the whole thing.

The Phil Nugent Experience: Race Against Time

UPDATE: And, yes, Nugent leaps right into the blogroll on the strength of that South post, this Gates post, this Sotomayor piece and this excellent Cheney vs. Bush post.

Dick of the Week: Ann Althouse

Never one to let a ginned-up anti-Obama scandal go to waste, Ann Althouse takes this Drudge-pushed photo of Obama appearing to stare at a teenager's ass and gets all Art Appreciation 101 on us and dissects it as if it were a painted masterpiece hanging in the Met, detailing how each gesture and pose is carefully considered and deliberately executed by an artist portraying not just characters but a story. When in reality, this photo is a candid snapshot taken without context from an actual fluid series of events.


Once the contortions of her analysis are complete, A-house throws open the cage of her zoo of PUMA commenters to cruelly ridicule everyone from the totally innocent teen to Obama's wife, Michelle, and their daughters.

Althouse doubles down at the end of her post, claiming to stand by her analysis "even after watching the video."

This video, that shows without any doubt that Obama is simply glacing downward while reaching his hand up and helping the young woman behind him, who is actually the American youth delegate accompanying him, step down from the 18-inch riser onto her mark on the stage.

Stay classy, Ann!

(Yes, I realize this is a stupid story and doesn't deserve to be dragged up again, but once I saw Althouse's take, my disdain for her just took over.)

Brilliant

The newest right-wing tantrum movement is calling for a boycott of General Motors and Chrysler. That's right, buying American is now un-American. Or something.

And guess who is leading the charge:

Limbaugh reassures any GM workers who might be listening that the boycotters aren't angry at them. "They don't want to patronize Obama. They don't want to do anything to make Obama's policies work!" he explains.

Yeah! 'Cause if it's not the assembly-line workers the listeners are furious with it must be the highly compensated—and likely Republican—executives who drove GM into a ditch? What?...it's just that Obama got involved? Well, since Rush and the Dittoheads want him to fail at any cost, sorry U.S. autoworkers, this time it'll be your jobs.

And so goes Ohio... this fat fucking loudmouth is doing a bang-up job leading the Republicans off a cliff.

Stupid Like a FOX

DEALER, NO DEAL
The newest right-wing meme is the conspiracy theory that Obama forced Chrysler to shutter dealers that are Republicans. Why do they think this? Because the list of closing dealers is overwhelmingly Republican. Case closed, right?

Only if you are Michelle Malkin or one of the morning douchebags on FOX.

Nate Silver spends all of five minutes blowing a hole in this garbage:

There is just one problem with this theory. Nobody has bothered to look up data for the control group: the list of dealerships which aren't being closed. It turns out that all car dealers are, in fact, overwhelmingly more likely to donate to Republicans than to Democrats -- not just those who are having their doors closed.

[...]Overall, 88 percent of the contributions from car dealers went to Republican candidates and just 12 percent to Democratic candidates. By comparison, the list of dealers on Doug Ross's list (which I haven't vetted, but I assume is fine) gave 92 percent of their money to Republicans -- not really a significant difference.

There's no conspiracy here, folks -- just some bad math.

More like bad faith. Surely these jackasses are aware dealers are overwhlmingly Republican—they're business-owners after all. They're also overwhelmingly white, middle-aged men in suburban and rural areas...

Silver used political donations to determine party affiliation—searching for auto, car and automotive "dealer" as listed occupation. One of the mouth-breathers crashes the thread and accuses Silver of being disengenuous because his statistics "fail to distinguish between owners and employees..." The fact that those people would list themselves as "salesperson" or "mechanic," and not "dealer" is beyond them.

--

SAVE ME
The worst argument against a Supreme Court nominee ever was made the other day by economist Greg Mankiw. Does the fact that Sotomayor spends most of what she earns say something about her qualifications?

Apparently, the new Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor is an example of the latter [a spender, not scrimper--Mr F.]. The Washington Post reports that the 54-year-old Sotomayer has a $179,500 yearly salary but...

"On her financial disclosure report for 2007, she said her only financial holdings were a Citibank checking and savings account, worth $50,000 to $115,000 combined. During the previous four years, the money in the accounts at some points was listed as low as $30,000."

My grandmother would have been shocked and appalled to see someone who makes so much save so little.

I'm more appalled by a supposed economist passing judgment on someone because of the amount she has in the bank...perhaps she's a generous philanthropist? A big traveler? OR perhaps maybe a single woman with no children and someone who has a lifetime appointment in her career at a big salary, and generous pension and has no need to sock money away for the future like Mankiw's grandmother?

Just wondering...

I was at the counter of a Dunkin Donuts yesterday (NOTE: iced coffee is only 99¢ this month) and I could hear a television over my shoulder...

"Nancy Pelosi and her lieutenants assembled...blah...blah..blah..."

"Hmm," I thought. "That HAS to be FOX News."

It was. And then they trotted out some jackass Republican Congressman to decry "the increase of government in your health care" and is that "what Americans want?"

It was nothing I haven't heard a thousand times before, but it dawned on me that this argument loses what little credibility it had as the number of Americans without any health care coverage at all increases..."Government-run health care for me and my family versus nothing at all? Where do I sign up?"

They are going to lose this argument and so many others because the GOP doesn't feel the ground shifting beneath their feet.

Word of the Day

Attention right-wing assholes and brain-dead pundits:

Empathy ≠ Sympathy

That is all.