Embrace the lunacy!…
Hat tip to commentor Mnemosyne for an interesting analogy from Harry Enten at FiveThirtyEight. “Elizabeth Warren Wouldn’t Be 2016′s Obama, But She Could Be Its John Edwards“:
… Edwards, of course, didn’t win. But he did appear to move the conversation, highlighting the issue of inequality though his “Two Americas” trope. He filled the populist gap and, in doing so, forced the field to the left. The rest of the field came around to Edwards on the economic stimulus, the minimum wage and his reservations with a free-trade agreement with South Korea.
OnTheIssues.org, which ranks candidates’ ideology based on their public policy statements, shows that Clinton and Obama saw their economic liberalism scores rise between January 2007 and January 2008. On a scale of 0 to 100, Clinton became more liberal by 18 points, while Obama’s became more liberal by 10 points. By the end of the campaign, both of their absolute scores matched Edwards’s.
If Warren runs in 2016, she could have the same effect. Like the vast majority of Democratic voters, Warren believes in “equality [and] opportunity” for the middle class and how difficult that would be to achieve. Three-fourths of Democrats think the current economic system is unfair. Just 49 percent of Democrats believe most people can work hard and get ahead. And two-thirds of all Americans say corporations pay too little in taxes.
In other words, Warren would have a receptive audience. She probably wouldn’t win the nomination, but — like Edwards — she could help to shape the policy debate.
I was an Edwards supporter in 2008, precisely because he was the only one talking about economic justice. I sincerely hope Warren won’t leave her senatorial duties to run for president in 2016, not just because she’s my senator but because that’s where she has the greatest scope for her professional expertise. But if she can shift the Overton Window of “acceptable economic discourse” for the eventual Democratic candidate(s), that would be a win-win, IMO.
***********
With all due honor to Brazil making the first goal, an own goal, of the 2014 World Cup… what’s on the agenda as we wrap up this week of weirdness?
Betty Cracker
I love Senator Warren, and it would be great if she could shove the Overton Window leftward. But she’s said she’s not running, and I believe her. I hope someone who throws his or her hat into the ring serves the same function. We’re so much more ripe for an economic populist message this go ’round than last time, IMO.
raven
moon
CarolDuhart2
I would just like for things to go as far left as my childhood-strong support for union jobs and union wages, where there was at least an appreciation for job training leading to jobs that paid well enough not to need assistance.
And a pony.
Comrade Javamanphil
@Betty Cracker: Bernie? I realize all us crazy hippies in Vermont should not be taken seriously by the very serious people in Washington but hopefully the voters of Iowa and NH don’t care what the gang of 500 think about anything.
Betty Cracker
@raven: Wow, great picture!
OzarkHillbilly
Just got done reading the guest post on Iraq from Adam Silverman. We are screwed, sooooo screwed. I would like to think Obama would have the political backbone to follow his brain and tell all his advisers, all of Congress, and everyone in the UN that, No, the US is not going to make it all go away and everyone is just going to have to make do with a little less oil. But he won’t.
Iraq is the gift that keeps on taking. Thanx W, Dicky boy, Rummy, Condy, Colin, and the whole neocon crew really. My life savings in Vaseline is looking more and more like the best investment ever.
Monty
Ancient civilizations (without the internets) utilized a lunar calendar instead of a solar calendar. Indeed, that’s why we see days as cycles of weeks and months.
Also too, seasons.
raven
@Betty Cracker: I got a “bulb” gizwachee for my camera. It allow you to keep the shutter open. Unfortunately I learned this morning that it is NOT the way to take pictures of a bright moon. Like oh well.
raven
@OzarkHillbilly: Hell, we can use Iranian FO’s and bring smoke on these here rebels!
Mustang Bobby
@raven: That was what greeted me as I got out of the car at the office this morning. Beautiful photo.
This weekend I’m going to try to relax, enjoy a car show in a beautiful setting in Coconut Grove, and try not to think about my co-worker who does the same job I do, has been on the job for less than two years (whereas I’ve been doing the same job for twelve), and getting a $10K raise while I got bupkus.
Sometimes sobriety ain’t all it’s cracked up to be.
BillinGlendaleCA
@raven: I got a pic like that, though I didn’t take it tonight. I got a new camera today that replaced my other new camera(I ordered a black one to replace the white one).
raven
@Mustang Bobby: One of the biggest lessons I had to learn when I got sober (21 years) was, as Pete Hamill said “sobriety doesn’t make life any easier, you just live it with more lucidity”.
PurpleGirl
@raven: Lovely. Is the photo one of yours?
ETA: gizwachee great word. Did you make it up?
Mustang Bobby
@raven: You and I went through it at the same time, then: October 1992 for me. And Pete’s spot on, more’s the pity.
Alex S.
At the moment, Hillary seems to be saying what the polls tell her to. She’s looking for the lowest common denominator. I think I actually would like to see a primary chellenge now. I still want her to win, but a long-shot candidate attacking her from the left (Martin O’Malley would be perfect) could adjust her compass. Her never committing to anything in either ideological direction already cost her the nomination in 2008. If I recall correctly, the first crack in her shield of inevitability was her non-answer to the question of drivers licenses for illegal immigrants.
Chris T.
Of course they (corporations) do (pay too little), so of course they (Americans) say so.
The trick is getting them to cough up the dough.
The tax holiday trick (temporarily lowering the rate to encourage corporations to repatriate cash) doesn’t work. We tried that in the 1990s and early 2000s, and the results were pathetic.
What would work is to raise the rates for “next year” now, with numerous loophole closings, so that they do better to take the money back now (and pay, say, an effective 15% rate on it now) rather than waiting (and paying, say, an effective 20% next year).
Republicans keep calling for lowering the nominal rate—the US has a high nominal rate, 35%*, compared to most other developed countries—and eliminating loopholes, but somehow when they actually write up a proposal, the loopholes remain. Because of these loopholes the average effective rate for large corporations is well under the average world nominal rate. But I just noted their real rate, i.e., what they pay on average, is well under half that.
We could use higher marginal personal tax rates, treating dividends and capital gains and especially carried interest as “ordinary income” as well, but that’s another matter…
*35% is the nominal Federal rate; adding state taxes brings it to almost 40%. This is considerably higher than most European countries, which run 20 to 30%. However, as before, there remains a huge difference between nominal rate—what GE, AIG, or Apple might pay if there were no loopholes—and real rate: what they actually pay.
BillinGlendaleCA
Moon Rise in GlendaleCA
raven
@PurpleGirl: Yea, I took it about an hour ago.
Gizwachee was one of my old man’s phrases. Mobistroble was another, I’m pretty sure they were sailor phrases made up to make fun of stuff. My bride looks at me and shakes her head “you have so many sayings”. When you combine growing up in a Navy house, being a soldier, spending years listening to Firesign Theater. Groucho and WC and shooting the rock it can be confusing for bystanders!
raven
@BillinGlendaleCA: suweet
raven
@Mustang Bobby: I can see clearly now. . .
Chris T.
@raven: Yes, the old “sunny 16” rule becomes “moony 11”: http://www.dpreview.com/forums/post/29654249 (also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Looney_11_rule)
BillinGlendaleCA
@raven: I used a Samsung Galaxy Camera 2.
raven
@Chris T.: Now you tell me! :)
OzarkHillbilly
@raven: Very nice. Best full moon photo I ever took was up in the Big Horn mountains in WY. We were some feet above treeline and the fire was burning with my four compatriots sitting around it. Held the shutter for 5 and 10 seconds at various F stops. The best pic showed the fire, the moon, and their four faces with some upper body lit by the fire and floating in the blackness.
One of the best pics I ever took. Gone now. Lost all my negatives in divorce. Really pissed me off at the time, but I let all that anger go. 2 kinds of people in this world: The living, and the dying. Up to us to decide which we are.
And I still have that pic in my memory.
raven
@BillinGlendaleCA: Nice, I have a Canon T3.
raven
@OzarkHillbilly: I run into more people that have lost their photo’s to fire or divorce. Dude from my unit in Korea found me yesterday. He’s looking for somone to help him with an Agent Orange claim. I sent him hundreds of pictures from 2 “yearbooks” I have from 66-67. He writes back and says “yea but I need 68-69. Well damn man!
AnonPhenom
@Chris T.:
We’ve globalized trade, now we need to globalize regulations. Taxes, pollution (carbon!), labor laws, etc…
Chris T.
@AnonPhenom: But ohnoes UN space aliens grabbing guns and using them to probe our bodily orifices, mutilate our cows, and so on!
(Do they use black helicopters to mutilate the cows? Or maybe to probe the bodily orifices?)
OzarkHillbilly
Looking on the bright side, at least we can bury our dead: Venezuelans face shortage of coffins amid scarcity of materials
PurpleGirl
@BillinGlendaleCA: Nice
BillinGlendaleCA
@PurpleGirl: Thanks.
Betty Cracker
@BillinGlendaleCA: So pretty! I saw the moon briefly at dawn as my dogs were dragging me toward the dog park. It was a lovely lemony color like in your photo, but then the clouds obscured it.
Betty Cracker
@OzarkHillbilly: My hope is that Obama will treat the Iraq implosion like he treated Syria, i.e., talk about doing XYZ to stifle the neo-cons while basically doing nothing.
A Humble Lurker
@OzarkHillbilly:
Yeah, like with Libya and Syria and Egypt.
I don’t blame anyone for being pessimistic, but there is precedent with Obama, and he has been given ample opportunities to repeat Georgie Boy’s mistakes and hasn’t. So I myself am not freaking out just yet.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Betty Cracker: It’s sometimes hard to get the color right, that’s pretty much how it looked last evening.
Ferdzy
Feeling passably cheerful this morning. We had an election here in Ontario yesterday and the Conservatives got their arses moderately kicked. The trade off is that we now have a majority Liberal government, instead of a minority Liberal government with the balance of power in the hands of the New Democratic Party (used to be socialists, now just a tiny hair to the left of the centrist Liberals). Oh well.
Tim Hudak, the Conservative leader, was running on a hard-right let’s-slash-everything-and-lower-taxes* platform and apparently there are still enough Ontarians bright enough to see through that.
*some conditions may apply.
BruceFromOhio
It was kind of embarrassing. Here was the southern lawyer with the poofy hair taking anyone who would listen to task for ignoring the growing gap between haves and have-nots and the proliferation of the have-nots, and being visibly engaged about it, but the ‘media’ was more interested in the horse race and the antics of the supporters. I was taken to task for voting for him in the primary (‘wasted vote’, said MrsFromOhio, though later she admitted voting for Hillary) and then the rest of the story arrived. Fucking shithead brought down because he couldn’t keep it zipped, for Gaia’s sake.
It’s interesting that the scores, for whatever they are worth, run counter to traditional campaign behavior: you play to your base in the primary, and then run to the middle in the general. Clinton and Obama appear to have done exactly the opposite for this specific view.
OzarkHillbilly
@A Humble Lurker: It is not direct involvement I fear, it is the appearance of direct involvement along with the throwing of money at a problem that really just needs time to shake itself out. Both of which would just feed the anger and hatred for the US which runs thru all the unrest in the ME. Like Betty, I hope all he does is talk, like you I hope Libya, Egypt, and Syria show a true shift in the paradigm of US foreign policy.
But Dogma is dogma, because it’s Dogma, if that makes any sense. Which of course, it doesn’t. ;-)
Baud
GOP populism
Tommy
It feels embarrassing to say now, but I was an Edwards guy. Pretty proud of it at the time.
Anybodybuther2016
Poor delusional Annie. Elizabeth W. isn’t like John Edwards. That distinction belongs to Hilary. Do you people really believe that “Slick Willie” has kept in his pants since leaving office? She will never be president.
WereBear
@Tommy: He said all the right things. Turned out it was a cynical power grab, but the things got said.
OzarkHillbilly
@Tommy: So was I, but I’m not embarrassed about it. I was supporting a man who was fighting for the economic rights of regular folks not the philandering husband of a woman sick with cancer or anything like that.
Oh, wait a minute….
A Humble Lurker
@OzarkHillbilly: I get you.
Tommy
@OzarkHillbilly: I can at times talk about my mom here. One of the reason I like the guy was Elizabeth. Felt she was a rock star. I liked him more cause of her.
PurpleGirl
@Baud:
What does this even mean? Brat has some very strange theological ideas. I should see if Fred Clark (Slacktivist) has commented on Brat yet.
@Tommy: I was initially for Edwards also, he did seem to understand how the have-nots lived and their problems. It is too bad that he couldn’t control himself better.
Baud
@PurpleGirl:
More Jesus, less regulation.
OzarkHillbilly
@Baud: Less regulation in the name of Jesus? Isn’t that contrary to everything the GOP does which is try to regulate everything as their Jesus would like them too?
WereBear
@OzarkHillbilly: Jesus doesn’t want us to regulate Mammon.
They are buddies.
JGabriel
@Betty Cracker:
It’s not just a hope, though. It borders on necessity. With so many people clearing the field for Clinton in 2016, I have concerns that Hillary will start playing to the right – because who else will the base vote for? – unless there’s a good lefty alternative in the race to keep her focused on progressive/populist issues.
Elizabelle
@raven:
Beautiful. Although I liked your photo last night, with branches, more. More atmospheric.
Happy Friday the 13th y’all!!
Baud
@OzarkHillbilly:
When their Jesus does it, it’s not regulation.
Uncle Cosmo
I was an Edwards supporter in 2008 until the day he dropped out (attending the first organizational meeting in MD literally the night before), sent several hundred bucks to his campaign, & frankly felt like I got my money’s worth for precisely the phenomenon Enten describes: While he was in the race his “Two Americas” theme drove the conversation leftward, & once he was gone all content drained out of the nominating process as the poundits all rushed to turn it into a he-said-she-said horse race.
@Alex S.: I’m not sure that O’Malley is the guy to take on Hillary from portside. MOM doesn’t forget the folks who’ve gotten behind him–& the Clintons’ help was a major factor in his 2006 victory over the vile Rethuglican incumbent Governor. Back in early 2008 I asked Martin who he was supporting for President & he said, I’d have to be a real ingrate not to be for Hillary.
OTOH, the reason Martin needed that help was that 4 years earlier, as the first-term Mayor of Baltimore, this “young man in a hurry” surprisingly declined to run for Governor. I suspect that the big-money bundlers he would have needed to fund the campaign threatened to permanently boycott him unless he deferred to a woman from a high-powered nationally-prominent political dynasty “whose turn it was”–who proceeded to hand the office to the GOP by running what was arguably the most incompetent major-party campaign in history prior to Cantor’s Folly. (IMHO if O’Malley had ever faced off against that candidate it would have been obvious to all within about 90 seconds which one had the “Kennedy charisma”–& he would have gone on to stomp the Rethug in the general.)
I have a feeling the same sort of scenario will play out this time: Martin will throw in with HRC because without the big money bundlers behind her he’d have scant hope of raising the cash for his own national campaign. He’ll angle for the VP nomination, or a Cabinet job in a Hillary Administration, & at worst be poised to pick up the pieces for a run in 2020–he’s young enough (born 1963) to play the long game.
rikyrah
@Alex S.:
Once you got past that she wasn’t exactly ‘entitled’ to the nomination, there was nothing else there.
Suffern ACE
@Baud: wow. Malfunctioning markets are sinful. Inefficient markets are ok as long as one is born again?
amk
@OzarkHillbilly:
Yeah, Obama, that fucking war monger.
#idjit
Morzer
@Suffern ACE:
You can flog a dead market to water, but you cannot make it bow its head and say the words.
The Other Bob
I actually give more credit to the Occupy groups for moving the conversation toward a discussion of economic justice far more than I give credit to Edwards.
Baud
@Suffern ACE:
Markets worked perfectly in the Garden of Eden.
OzarkHillbilly
@amk: You might try reading everything I have said about it before calling me an idjit, idiot. But then holier than thou people only need to know they are holy to know they are holier.
ThresherK
Warren as the new liberal lion of the Senate from Massachusetts?
I’ll buy that for a dollar.
(New England liberal in CT.)
WaterGirl
@raven: I meant to say last night how stunning your photo of the moon was in last night’s post.
lol
Edwards’ problem was that the Two Americas stuff rang unauthentic compared to the campaign he ran just 4 years earlier as a pro-war DLC rising star. He thought he could win the Democratic base by pandering to bloggers and did so. Nevermind that the Democratic base isn’t actually comprised of upper-middle class white guys. And of course, on a personal level he oozed untrustworthiness. There was also that shitty paper-thin foundation he set up to make him look like he was doing something Big and Important but ultimately proved just a hollow as himself.
Edwards got lucky in Iowa in 2004 because Gephardt and Dean tearing each other down allowed him to be second to last man standing. His campaign was just as surprised as anyone else when people started showing up at the caucuses for him. If not for that, there might have been room in 2008 for an economic populist who wasn’t a two-faced fraud.
Betty Cracker
@The Other Bob: Me too. I liked what Edwards was saying in 2008 but recognized it as the rebranding campaign it was. I supported Obama from the beginning in 2008 because, having read his books, I realized that while he was a bit to my right, at least he had genuinely held positions. I’ll take a real center-left politician over a fake lefty who might decide he has to morph into a neo-con to get reelected any day.
WaterGirl
@Mustang Bobby: That really bites about the raise. Is it possible that he was hired in at a really low salary and they used the 10k to bump him up to your level? In any case, with something like that discrepancy in raises (10k him, 0 you) it would probably be worth a conversation with the boss to see what’s up.
If they’re trying to send you a message, it would be good for you to understand what the message is. And if they’re not, maybe it would be helpful for them to understand the message you received. Maybe think about having a conversation with your boss?
In the meantime, screw them, enjoy your car show, and have a great weekend. Living well is always the best revenge.
Yatsuno
@raven: YOU MOONED ME!!!
(too obvious?)
Morzer
@Yatsuno:
Don’t be an ASS!
(probably too simple)
schrodinger's cat
@raven: Great photo. Did you use a telescope or just your camera? BTW which camera do you use?
jibeaux
It’s been six years, and it’s STILL hard for those of us in NC to swallow that people in the rest of the country saw Edwards as a sincere populist. While campaigning for that one-term Senate seat he had, since you have to do SOMETHING before launching a presidential bid, he spoke very consistently how NC needed to stay a “right to work” state to be economically competitive. The man looked at the field, saw an opening to the left, and inserted himself there. What I would like to see in 2016 is someone who says the right things because he/she believes those things.
schrodinger's cat
@jibeaux: He always struck me as a phony and I used to wonder whatever did Elizabeth see in him.
rikyrah
Virginia GOP Blocks Medicaid Expansion After Democrat Resigns
Dylan Scott – June 13, 2014, 9:57 AM EDT
The Virginia legislature passed a state budget that did not expand Medicaid under Obamacare Thursday night, just days after the resignation of a Democratic lawmaker that cleared the way for its passage.
The Washington Post reported that the budget did not include Medicaid expansion — and would make it more difficult for the program to be expanded through other means. It would prevent Democratic Gov. Terry McAuliffe or an independent panel from expanding Medicaid unilaterally under the health reform law.
Medicaid expansion would cover up to 400,000 low-income Virginians.
Republicans now control both chambers of the Virginia legislature after Democratic state Sen. Phillip Puckett resigned this week. Reports had suggested that he stepped down in exchange for a seat on the state tobacco commission and a judgeship for his daughter.
Puckett withdrew his name for consideration for the commission’s job after criticism of the alleged deal, but still resigned — giving Republicans the votes they needed in the Senate to pass a budget without Medicaid expansion. The Senate and House had previously been at a standoff over that key piece of Obamacare, with the former pushing an alternative expansion plan and the latter refusing to consider it.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/virginia-general-assembly-budget-no-medicaid-expansion?utm_content=buffer2571f&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer
Glocksman
I’ve been thinking back on the political campaigns I’ve lived (suffered?) through, and I recall one memorable line from the 1980 (yes, I’m that old) Republican primaries when Bush the Elder called supply side economics ‘voodoo economics’.
How far we’ve come from the days when a major Republican would state a simple truth.
rikyrah
GOP Rep: We’re Not Going To Play Games With The Debt Ceiling
Sahil Kapur – June 13, 2014, 10:06 AM EDT
A Republican congressman is trying to allay fears on Wall Street that House Majority Leader Eric Cantor’s departure may raise the chances of U.S. debt default.
Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) was asked Thursday if Cantor’s defeat at a hands of a conservative primary challenger may cause a return to dangerous brinkmanship over the debt limit that led to a near-breach in 2011.
“We’re going to do everything to avoid that,” the congressman told reporters.
The United States’ borrowing authority won’t need to be raised again until after the November congressional elections — it is scheduled to expire in March 2015.
“The Speaker has made it very clear that we are not going to become the issue in this election [or next election],” Nunes said.
Nunes also warned that “the more exotic” House Republicans “aren’t going to vote for anything, no matter what it is.”
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/devin-nunes-debt-ceiling
scav
Did I like Edwards personally? Nope, the veneer (at least) is useful when considering their electability but I really really never want to have a beer with any politician, ever. Shudder. Knew I was going to vote for the non republican. Had ardent early barackers and feminists (socially all well to the ledt of Hillary) battling it out about my ears. It was a relief to hear some economic speak when everyone seemed to thinking the entire election was going to won one the ‘war’ vote or a rehashed cage match between suffragettes v. abolitionists. My pre-politics watching obsession was the economy and it had been a bloody jobless recession for years already and the housing crash had just more or less really passed some solid inflection points circa 2007ish. Very much appreciated hearing about the economy, even with that idiot hair.
Morzer
http://www.101greatgoals.com/blog/twitter-user-marcello-gets-a-barrage-of-abuse-after-marcelos-own-goal-for-brazil-tweets/
The best denunciation of the wrong Marcelo was probably:
Matt McIrvin
@A Humble Lurker: My concern is more that Obama is not gonna be president forever. I don’t necessarily trust Hillary Clinton to be as restrained, and I certainly don’t trust whatever whackjob the Republicans are going to put up in 2016.
Matt McIrvin
…and as for Warren, on domestic economic policy she’s a thrilling lefty, but on foreign policy she seems to be pretty much Generic Democrat. Which I suspect would disappoint a lot of progressives if she actually became a presidential candidate.
Amir Khalid
I’m rather hoping that Joe Biden will decide to run in 2016. Biden might prove to be Obama’s Johnson.
Amir Khalid
@Amir Khalid:
The undefined commenter at #78 is me. Why I’m undefined, I have no idea.And now my name shows up. FYWP is toying with me.But what I meant to say was that I hope Biden might be a similar successor to Obama that Johnson was to Kennedy — strongly liberal, at least in domestic policy, and able to follow up with some solid achievements of his own.
Cris (without an H)
@Amir Khalid: Whew, I thought you meant Andrew Johnson.
Glocksman
I know some of you gun control advocates will flame me for posting this, but this is an example of what my friends and I did back in the day when I owned a lot of guns (as compared to today when the only gun I own is a Nylon 66 .22 Rifle.
Lonegeekmen
I’m the ‘glocksman’ in the pics, and also keep in mind that I’ve lost 140 pounds since those pictures were taken.
Glocksman
@Glocksman:
And before anyone points it out, I realize I could have been Chris Christie’s body double at the time. :)
Anoniminous
@BruceFromOhio:
That tactic is becoming obsolete. Remember the Romney 49% video? A candidate has to assume everything they say is being recorded.
rikyrah
@Matt McIrvin:
well, that’s one for two.
Because I don’t believe we can trust Hillary Clinton on the domestic OR foreign front.
C.V. Danes
We would be better suited if Warren became 2016’s Pecora. The output of the Pecora Commission led directly to the creation of the SEC, the Glass-Steagall Act, and the Securities Act.
Warren needs to stay right where she is. We will need her in the above capacity soon enough.
C.V. Danes
@Amir Khalid:
I agree with you, but I think Clinton is going to suck all of the atmosphere out of the 2016 season. If Hillary were anyone other than Clinton, I would seriously consider her. But what I don’t want to see is Hillary Clinton, followed by Jeb Bush, followed by Chelsea Clinton, and on and on.
Morzer
@Glocksman:
You could, in fact, have been his double’s double double.
Arclite
“Elizabeth Warren Wouldn’t Be 2016′s Obama, But She Could Be Its John Edwards“
Don’t scare me like that! I thought this was going to be about Warren’s secret affair and love child with a reporter!
Kerry Reid
The greatest difference between Warren and Edwards, of course, is that the latter did fuck-all to support populism while he was in the Senate.