Let Newt Get His Geek On

I didn’t watch the debate last night, but I gather that this fell flat for Mitt Romney:

Asked where he and Gingrich differed, Romney said, “We could start with his idea to have a lunar colony that would mine minerals from the moon. I’m not in favor of spending that kind of money to do that.”

... On moon mining, Gingrich doubled down—“I’m happy to defend the idea that America should be in space and should be there in an aggressive, entrepreneurial way” ...

Amazing—Gingrich not only defended this, he wrapped it in the last refuge of a wingnut scoundrel, entrepreneurialism.

But that’s the thing about people like him: if you have that particular combination of screws loose, yes, you’re going to make manic, half-schizophrenic pronouncements about space colonization and the like, but you’re also going to have the cornered-rat instinct to jujitsu any direct attack on such pronouncements, so the attacker is the only one who winds up flat out on the mat. What I’m saying is that, with Gingrich’s particular brand of crazy, it’s futile to go at him head-on.

Far better to lull him into making even crazier pronouncements on the spot. Try doing it like this:

Romney: “We’ve suffered greatly in the three years of the Obama administration, and, well, it would be nice if we could just go into a time machine and turn back the clock to a moment before all that damage was done. Unfortunately, going back in time is just impossible—right, Newt? It’s really a shame that we can’t reverse all this damage with a time machine—isn’t it, Newt?”

Gingrich: “Well, in fact, Mitt, there’s been some extraordinary work done on time travel at a laboratory in Belarus, and it’s my belief that the United States would benefit tremendously from a massive program of research not only into time travel, but also into related possibilities, including astral projection….”

Now you’ve got him going.

Newt’s going to ambush you (his attack last night on Romney as a would-be career politician who just couldn’t manage to build a lengthy career was, I see, quite effective), and Newt’s primed to rebuff most direct attacks (though attacking him for supporting child labor, as I see Romney did, is a waste of time, because the stance is one of punishing the weak, which means it naturally appeals to the right). In short, I’d say you can’t actually defeat Gingrich—you have to find a way to get him to defeat himself. Which really shouldn’t be all that hard.

(X-posted at No More Mister Nice Blog.)

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Look who showed up

An earlier post:

Around two months ago I started getting calls from a person who works for the state Democratic Party. He told me they think my state representative has the potential to be vulnerable, because of some hazy rumors of scandal or general bad behavior or corruption that (apparently, allegedly) surround him. Pick one: scandal, general bad behavior or corruption. I’m not sure what the caller was alluding to. It’s an overwhelmingly conservative district, so the idea is to have a Democratic candidate on the ballot ready to exploit the possible implosion of the incumbent.

Today’s update:

Well, I gave up on finding a candidate, but another guy didn’t give up, and he found a candidate. I just called the candidate, and he told me why he’s a Democrat and why he’s running.

He’s a Steelworker. He’s been married 32 years and has 4 children. He spent 2 years in the military. He worked 2nd shift his whole life, and only became politically active with the Steelworkers in 2002 when he left the Republican Party because “trickle down wasn’t working”. That’s a direct quote. He’s running now because he thinks this is the “best time” for a Democrat to try, because he acted as a grass roots organizer during the Issue Two campaign and he wants to run on issues important to working people.

I think this is a going to be a lot of fun. Not for him, maybe, for him it’s going to be a lot of work, but certainly for local Democrats.

Because this turn of events is a nice lead-in, and because I was ranting incoherently about it in the comments to mistermix’s post yesterday and have now had some time to think about it, I wanted to address why I get so impatient with broad national theories or studies on politics. I find them reductive and ultimately, narrowing. Me. I do. Understand, I’m not speaking for some larger group here. I have no earthly idea whether this view is shared by anyone else. I suspect it is, but this is not a sweeping statement or a broad indictment.

When I look at “politics”, now or at any other time, I’m looking at what seems to me to a very complex, layered, shifting picture. Maybe I’m wrong about that, and it all can be reduced to a formula, but that isn’t how I see it or approach it. Honestly, if I did see it like that I don’t know that I would bother with it, because if I did see it like that I would eventually decide I probably can’t have any effect on it.

An example of the way I think or look at politics today, December 4, runs something like this: we’ll have President Obama at the top of the ticket, and Sherrod Brown, who ran in ’06 as Middle Class Man, and those two campaigns are going to coordinate, and we’ll have a credible challenger against Latta for the House race, all against the background of the just-completed Issue Two effort, and we’ll have this statehouse race, which could be a really great upset. Oh, and there’s been a steady drumbeat of good news about and around the auto industry coming out of Toledo, so I’m wondering if that helps Democrats running in Ohio. That’s what I think. Today. That’s how I look at it. Sort of a stream of consciousness, and it changes all the time. That’s what’s interesting to me. That’s what keeps me engaged.

So if I read or hear something reductive and final and national, like: “Kay? it’s ALL TRIBALISM”. Or, “Kay, no President since FDR has won the White House with 8.9% unemployment” how that comes across to me is “why bother?”. It sounds like shutting a door. How it sounds to me is that there’s no room to move, there’s no room for the unexpected or intervening events or the influence of a particular candidate or state or local political climate, and those things, the potential for changes at the margins, are the part of “politics” that interest me. The finality (or what I maybe mistakenly perceive as the finality) of sweeping theories or predictions drains all the juice and localness and (appealing!) flat-out weirdness and chaos and unpredictability out of this thing, which is why I find myself yelling “it’s more complicated than that!” in the comments. I want room to move.

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Even with 9.1% unemployment, no one wants this job

Around two months ago I started getting calls from a person who works for the state Democratic Party. He told me they think my state representative has the potential to be vulnerable, because of some hazy rumors of scandal or general bad behavior or corruption that (apparently, allegedly) surround him. Pick one: scandal, general bad behavior or corruption. I’m not sure what the caller was alluding to. It’s an overwhelmingly conservative district, so the idea is to have a Democratic candidate on the ballot ready to exploit the possible implosion of the incumbent.

They needed help finding a candidate. I didn’t do anything about it for a month or more, because I’m not the only person they’re calling, and I was hoping they’d find someone. But they haven’t. They have a week left to find the candidate and do what is necessary (50 valid signatures on a petition) to put her or him on the ballot.

I sent emails on it, but no one ever here responds to a request for help in an email, so I made phone calls last night. No one wants to do this. My “top” pick, a woman I have asked to run before, is a retired teacher and would do it, but she cares for her sick and frail elderly mother and she’s just completely consumed by that. Most of the people I talked to had reasons like that not to run: one woman I spoke with who has four kids literally laughed out loud in a jagged, slightly hysterical way. The people who don’t have crushing, overwhelming family and work responsibilities and might consider running talk about how horrible campaigns are: they won’t have any privacy and half or better of the county will end up hating them. I’m not blaming these people, at all. They don’t want to run for office. I don’t want to run for office, either, which is why I’m asking them.

I bring this up because I think there’s a perception that there are just tens of qualified, wonderful people vying for these slots, and the “candidate” is chosen in a smoke-filled room, after carefully excluding all the liberals and hippies. That may be true for big important jobs, like US Senate or House, I don’t know. Maybe it’s true in liberal areas, where there’s a lot of potential Democratic candidates, but in a conservative area like this it isn’t true at all. In a place like this, they’re contacting clueless people like me in absolute desperation trying to come up with a candidate. It’s really wide open. I’d take a hippie in a heartbeat. So why doesn’t anyone want to try?

John Boehner started in a statehouse, and then:

Ever wanted to know who to thank for House Speaker John Boehner’s congressional career? The late Ohio Republican Rep. Donald “Buz” Lukens was your man. It was 1990. Lukens was in his second term in Congress. The year before, the 58-year-old congressman had been caught on a television network’s hidden camera in a McDonald’s restaurant speaking with the mother of a 16-year-old girl he was allegedly sleeping with. Lukens was soon convicted of paying the teen $40 to have sex with him and wound up serving nine days in prison and paying a $500 fine. That would be his first of two stays in prison, and his second of three sex offense allegations.

Despite the scandal with the 16-year-old, Lukens ran for reelection. He declared his bid for reelection on May 2, 1990, calling the whole debacle a “dumb mistake.” Boehner, who was at the time was president of a packaging sales company, saw his chance. He crushed Lukens in the Republican primary, launching the congressional career that has brought him to the position second in line to the presidency.

According to the FBI report, Lukens told his staffers that the underage girl had given him a fake I.D. that said she was 20 years old. The staffer said Lukens maintained the attitude that there was nothing wrong with what he did. Lukens felt he could have won the election if he had come forward and apologized.“10,000 people voted for a convicted sex offender,” one staffer told an FBI agent, referring to the 20 percent of the vote Lukens received in his race against Boehner.

Maybe Boehner’s not a good or inspiring example. I don’t know that I would actually say “you, too, could end up passing out checks from tobacco lobbyists on the House floor”, but still. These things happen and could happen again.

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“Heaven”, Not Scott Brown’s Description of Elizabeth Warren

Rebecca Traister has a good, long article with a silly title in the NYTimes Magazine:

... Temperamentally, Warren presents as the opposite of certain bombastic and arguably chauvinistic members of Obama’s economic team. Katherine Porter, a former student who is now a bankruptcy-law professor at the University of California, Irvine, said that “a strong epithet for Elizabeth is ‘golly gee.’ ” Warren told me of an afternoon, about 10 years ago, when she picked up her office phone and was shocked to hear a man cursing on the other end. “I thought, Whew! My first obscene phone call!” Just before hanging up, Warren paused. The accent sounded familiar. She put the receiver back to her ear, waiting for the speaker to take a breath before asking, “Senator Kennedy?” It was indeed the man whose old seat she is now competing for, phoning from the Senate cloakroom to report that Democrats had unexpectedly won a fight over bankruptcy legislation. “He was so revved up!” Warren said.

But the expectation that she’s Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle also allows Warren to wield a shiv. Carol Kenner, a retired bankruptcy judge, recalled watching her friend Warren, who went to college on a debate scholarship, fiercely engage another legal scholar who was attacking her. “It’s exercise for her,” Kenner said, “like swimming a faster lap.”

How to sell hope when so many feel hopeless is Warren’s biggest messaging challenge. Her supporters may be willing to forget the past four years and renew their faith in her as their next salvation, but Warren clearly thinks about the dissonance of what happened when the last change-peddlers hit Washington.

“I thought, 2008, that’s it, that is the watershed moment,” Warren says. “We put sensible people in the House, in the Senate and in the White House.” But even with the new leadership, Warren said, “the people who broke the market doubled down on the failed policies. This was not supposed to happen. But it did happen.”

Of course, the Wall Street banksters would prefer to strangle Warren’s campaign in its cradle, and they believe they have the perfect weapon. From an earlier NYTimes article, “Vilifying Rival, Wall St. Rallies for Senate Ally“:

The warning has ricocheted around the financial world in recent weeks, in conversations at Midtown restaurants and Washington fund-raisers, carrying urgent appeals for money from financial executives around the Northeast: The battle to re-elect Senator Scott P. Brown, the Republican from Massachusetts, just got a little more interesting…
More »

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No on Issue Two

I made canvassing calls for We Are Ohio the other night. The ballot issue in question is a “citizen veto” of SB5, which is Ohio’s new union-busting law. Technically, the law hasn’t gone in yet, which is why it’s “NO” on Issue Two.

I don’t love making canvassing calls, but I will do it, and once I get started I generally don’t hate it. We had five volunteers making calls. Three of the five were public school teachers.

I was told my “list” was generally favorable to repeal of the law, and that turned out to be true. I spoke to only one really angry conservative, with the rest of my contacts indicating, with various levels of enthusiasm, that they would vote “NO.

Many of my calls were directed to voters who are 70-plus years old. I’m familiar with addresses in the county where I was working because I worked for the Postal Service there at one time, and these were rural route addresses. Combine “Ohio” with “rural route” and “land line” and I think any voter list would skew older.

When making calls, it seems I always encounter at least one really great person. I talked to Mary, who is 78, and voting no on Issue Two, and she told me “working people have to stick together”. See? Is that so hard? Mary gets it in one try, and she’s not even a highly paid political professional or cable TV star.

The polling on Issue Two is tightening, and the conventional wisdom is that Republicans are “coming home” to former Fox News personality and Lehman Brothers executive John Kasich.

Ohio voters support 51 – 38 percent repeal in a November referendum of SB 5, the law limiting collective bargaining for public employees, compared to 56 – 32 percent in July.

While that’s regrettable, (but perhaps not yet troubling) everyone involved here locally assumed the GOP and their privatization allies would throw giant wads of money at capturing, outsourcing or selling the few institutions, services and assets that remain public. We knew it was coming.

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Early Morning Open Thread: Rosh Hashanah

Via commentor MRK, because it made him smile, as it did me. Shana Tova Umetukah, a good and sweet year, to the believers among us, and may we all be inspired to reflect upon our transgressions and strive for a better tomorrow!

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I can’t stand it, I know you planned it

I guess I’m the type who likes to ask cui bono sometimes. That’s why I could never be a serious person:

Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), vice chairman of the Senate Democratic Conference, believes “some” Republicans “want the economy to actually fail.” Paul Krugman recently said in his column, “[I]t’s hard to avoid the suspicion that G.O.P. leaders actually want the economy to perform badly.” Eugene Robison, a Pulitzer Prize winner, was recently asked whether it’s possible Republicans would sabotage the economy. “Well, let me be honest,” he said. “It has occurred to me that this is a possibility.” E.J. Dionne Jr. and Dan Gross have raised the same concerns.

A few months ago, Kevin Drum wondered whether this will ever be “a serious talking point,” adding, “No serious person in a position of real influence really wants to accuse an entire party of cynically trying to tank the economy, after all.”

It’s a no-brainer, if the economy is bad enough, Republicans have a good chance to win the White House. What’s the downside? Maybe you lose a few seats in Congress.

But Eric Cantor is an honorable man. So are they all, all honorable men.

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Detroit to Ohio

Labor Day:

A crowd estimated at 12,000 people lined up along the waterfront to chant “Obama” and “Four more years. The 60 degree temperature with a brisk wind forced most to their keep jackets tightly zipped. Richard Trumka, president of the AFL-CIO led off the Labor Day speeches, saying the union will work to make sure “That we don’t let Michigan become a right to work for less state”.

President Obama previewed his job strategy at a Labor Day rally Monday in nearby Detroit, saying he will propose infrastructure improvements and middle class tax breaks during an address to Congress Thursday. The event, sponsored by the Metropolitan Detroit AFL-CIO took place in the shadow of GM headquarters on the city’s riverfront. Thousands of union members attended.

This is Motown,” said James Hoffa general president of the Teamsters, “but today this is Uniontown.” He named three battlegrounds in what he called the “war on workers.” One of those battlegrounds, he said, is the effort to repeal Senate Bill 5 in Ohio. The Ohio AFL-CIO is seeking a “no” vote on Issue 2 to vote down enactment of the bill, which was passed earlier this year by the Republican-controlled Ohio General Assembly and signed by Republican Gov. John Kasich. The law, which would roll back some collective bargaining rights for public employees, is set for a Nov. 8 ballot referendum.

And with that, back to Ohio, and this:

Labor Day weekend is the traditional start of the campaign session, especially the paid television spots. Today, We Are Ohio announced that they would use the Labor Day weekend to remind people the reason for the season.

Here’s the ad

What do you think?

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Labor Day (Yet Another Framing Problem)

(Mike Luckovich via GoComics.com)

E.J. Dionne, in the Washington Post, on “The Last Labor Day“:

Let’s get it over with and rename the holiday “Capital Day.” We may still celebrate Labor Day, but our culture has given up on honoring workers as the real creators of wealth and their honest toil — the phrase itself seems antique — as worthy of genuine respect.

Imagine a Republican saying this: “Labor is prior to and independent of capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration.”

These heretical thoughts would inspire horror among our friends at Fox News or in the Tea Party. They’d likely label them as Marxist, socialist or Big Labor propaganda. Too bad for Abraham Lincoln, our first Republican president, who offered those words in his annual message to Congress in 1861…

That the language of Lincoln and John Paul is so distant from our experience today is a sign of an enormous cultural shift. In scores of different ways, we paint investors as the heroes and workers as the sideshow. We tax the fruits of labor more vigorously than we tax the gains from capital — resistance to continuing the payroll tax cut is a case in point — and we hide workers away while lavishing attention on those who make their livings by moving money around.

Consider that what the media call economics reporting is largely finance reporting. Once upon a time, a lively band of labor reporters covered the world of work and unions. If you stipulate that the decline of unions makes the old labor beat a bit less compelling, there are still tens of millions of workers who do their jobs every day. But when the labor beat withered, it was rarely replaced by a work beat. Workers have vanished.

But we are now inundated with news (and “news”) about the world of capital. CNBC and the other financial media are for investors what ESPN is for sports junkies. We cheer the markets, learn the obscure language of hedge fund managers and get to know some of the big investors in off-field interviews. Workers are regarded as factors of production. At best, they’re consumers; at worst, they’re “labor costs” cutting into profits and the sacred stock price…

His colleague Harold Meyerson is more succinct about “The fallacy of post-industrial prosperity“:

Of all the lies that the American people have been told the past four decades, the biggest one may be this: We’ll all come out ahead in the shift from an industrial to a post-industrial society. Yes, we were counseled, there will be major dislocations, as there were during the transition from an agrarian to an industrial economy, but the America that will emerge from this transformation, like the America that emerged 100 years ago, will be one whose citizens are ultimately more prosperous and secure than their industrial-era forebears.

What a crock.

But cheer up, fellow citizens! The non-opinionated part of the WaPo assures us that “Americans… now find comfort in knowing that more than a million security guards — double the number in the nation’s workforce a decade ago — patrol shopping malls and power plants and work through the night to protect public spaces.” The guy guarding the Trump National Golf Club in Loudoun, Virginia, is an ex-Marine armed with a Glock 9mm, Mace, and handcuffs!

Why do I seem to hear the ghost of Jay Gould whispering “I can hire one half of the working class to kill the other half”?

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Sunday Morning Open Thread

The Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial on the National Mall was opened to the public (and general acclaim) last Monday, but today’s planned official dedication had to be rescheduled to “September or October” due to Hurricane Irene. So, in lieu of the usual Sunday morning political-horserace yammer, I give you Roland S. Martin, at CNN:

It’s only fitting that during the week we were to dedicate the memorial in Washington to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., an earthquake would hit the region and the entire East Coast would be bracing itself for a hurricane.

When we think about the enormity of King’s work, in which he gave his life, as well as the many folks who also fought in the civil rights movement, we realize that their actions struck at this nation’s core with a ferocity never seen before…

Across the tidal basin is the Thomas Jefferson Memorial, which honors the man who articulated the vision of America. To the left is the Washington Monument, which honors the man who led the nation in the fight to establish the United States of America. Behind the King monument is the Abraham Lincoln Memorial, dedicated to the man who kept America from tearing apart.

But out of all of these men, it took a King to force America to live up to its ideals. Americans loved to recite the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution, but for many, those were simply words…

What should inspire all who see it is that no matter your station in life, you can make a difference. King was just 25 when he was drafted into the movement.

If there is something in your community that needs to be addressed, do it. Don’t wait. Don’t whine. Don’t complain. Don’t pass the buck.

Just be willing to serve, care and do it out of love and compassion.

The Root has a short history of the monument’s “complicated history” here.

My area (just north of Boston) isn’t predicted to get more than “tropical storm force winds” and some 2-4 inches of rain out of Hurricane Irene, later today. Hope everyone’s come through the storm with nothing worse than a few good stories—anybody want to share theirs?

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This isn’t a poll test

Obama is at it again:

Obama Declares Aug. 26 ‘Women’s Equality Day’

President Obama has declared Aug. 26—which marks the 91st anniversary of the constitutional amendment giving women the right to vote—to be “Women’s Equality Day.”
In a proclamation published by the White House Thursday, Obama said, “I call upon the people of the United States to celebrate the achievements of women and recommit ourselves to the goal of gender equality in this country,”
“The 19th Amendment to the United States Constitution tore down the last formal barrier to women’s enfranchisement in our nation and empowered America’s women to have their voices heard in the halls of power,” Obama said.

Congress decided that August 26th is Women’s Equality Day.

In 1971.

Here is a quiz you can take as part of your celebration. I don’t find test-taking to be very celebratory, myself, but go ahead. You may still vote if you fail.

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Somewhat good news for a Friday morning, or, why professional lobbyists should stick to opining on what they know: lobbying

Where I live, this is good news:

Taxpayers bailed out much of the U.S. auto industry. Now the carmakers might be what saves the nation’s economy from falling back into recession. After a massive restructuring and several high-profile bankruptcies, a leaner, more aggressive auto industry is making a comeback, hiring workers and ramping up manufacturing plants. From a trough two years ago, Ford Motor Co., General Motors Co., Chrysler Group and other auto companies have added almost 90,000 manufacturing jobs, a 14% increase, according to federal employment data.

And it’s not just the Big Three American manufacturers that are thriving. Nissan, VW and other foreign-based firms are expanding in the United States, putting billions of dollars into building and refurbishing plants. Start-ups Tesla Motors in Palo Alto, Fisker Automotive in Anaheim and Coda Automotive in L.A. are hiring and spending hundreds of millions of dollars designing and launching electric and hybrid vehicles. Dealers are having a banner year, making more money per sale than they have in years and hiring back some workers shed during the recession.

The Commerce Department said Wednesday that orders for autos and auto parts jumped 11.5% in July, the most in eight years. That followed an earlier government report on industrial production that showed the auto industry was the strongest segment of the manufacturing economy last month.

This kind of expansion is important to the economy. Including factories, suppliers and dealers, the U.S. auto industry employs about 1.7 million workers and supports an additional 6.3 million private-sector jobs, according to the Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor, Mich. The center said those positions represent more than $500 billion in annual compensation and more than $70 billion in personal tax revenue.

They were heading back into the 13-million range — helped by a wave of new models, low interest rates and improving consumer confidence — only to be upended by the Japanese earthquake in March. Shutdowns at Japanese-owned factories in Japan and the United States created inventory shortages that led to sharply higher car prices, lower demand and hundreds of thousands of lost sales for dealers. But with those disruptions now in the rearview mirror, the industry is looking for sales to improve over the rest of the year.

Back when millionaire media personalities and conservatives were hoping that the auto industry would fail I remember reading lobbyist/unelected lawmaker Grover Norquist opining on the pages of Politico.

Norquist was quoted during that period as (I guess) an expert on the auto industry. Baffling, to me. As far as I can tell the only thing Grover Norquist has ever done in his entire career is pressure elected lawmakers on behalf of moneyed interests. I have no idea why anyone would ask him anything about manufacturing. He’s a lobbyist. That’s what he does and that’s all he’s ever done.

I think if I were interviewing Norquist I’d ask him about the Abramoff Congressional scandal. He might know a lot about that, and his knowledge there might be interesting and informative to readers. But making and selling a tangible product? Nah. Norquist doesn’t know anything about that.

In any event here’s what the wealthy libertarian lobbyist said in 2009:

“This is somewhere in between Baghdad and fixing the flood in Louisiana,” Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, said, comparing the GM decision to major stumbles by former President George W. Bush. Obama “has decided to take this over. He now owns it.”

Here’s now-majority leader John Boehner, another expert on lobbying and not much else, who, incredibly, represents a district in the rust-belt state of Ohio:

“The pattern here is pretty clear,” House Minority leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) said Thursday. “Every time the president makes a so-called tough decision, it’s the American middle class that gets hit the hardest.”

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The 50% Rule

Liberal elites

Mandatory bully pulpit training for our youth

We had a rally to repeal SB 5 last night. SB5 is now Issue 2 on the ballot. That’s the union-busting law Governor Kasich maneuvered through the Ohio statehouse.

First we set a date and find a location. This time, we reserved a covered picnic area at the county fairgrounds. We have an email list of about 60 people. I email those 60 people with the invitation. I don’t find email to be particularly effective for turning people out here, so I then send those 60 an invitation in the mail. I then add about 40 others who are on one list or another. They don’t have internet access or don’t use a computer at all. I send them an invitation too.

At this point, I have a dispute with the local Democrats. They always insist we purchase space in the local newspaper to run an ad for any event. I object to this, because the local newspaper runs what are essentially ads for GOP and Tea Party events for free. This past year the newspaper ran a front-page announcement of an upcoming Tea Party event as news. I’ve been around and around with this newspaper, and I have just given up. The last time I spoke with any of them was November of 2010, where I argued that in the interest of good government alone they should offer us comparable coverage, because every single elected individual at the county level is a Republican and 90% of them run unopposed. A competition based argument, one I thought might appeal to a blatantly conservative newspaper. No dice.

Shortly after I start this fight, I give in and we buy the ad but I do complain about it a lot. I think I’m making progress. Wearing them down. Any year now, I’ll prevail.

We like to have a meal at these things, so we then plan that. This year, we had brats and hotdogs and potluck sides. We have a local Democrat who is a DJ, so he sets his outfit up: music and a microphone. He donates this service. I then find a speaker. This year I invited a We Are Ohio rep and he attended.

We ask for a free will donation to cover costs, and people are always generous. A good turn out is 50%, and we hit that this time, because about 50 people showed up. They all ate and drank and listened to the speakers and the music.

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Run, Elizabeth, Run!

... But I’m not sure whether I’m wishing “campaign for the Senate” or “escape while you still can“!

Elizabeth Warren has a post up on BlueMassGroup which has stirred up the progressives, and their polar opposites:

Coming Home

... Last week, my role setting up the consumer agency ended. My husband and I packed up the car and made it back to our home of 17 years in Massachusetts.

I left Washington, but I don’t plan to stop fighting for middle class families. I spent years working against special interests and have the battle scars to show it – and I have no intention of stopping now. It is time for me to think hard about what role I can play next to help rebuild a middle class that has been hacked at, chipped at, and pulled at for more than a generation—and that that is under greater strain every day.

In the weeks ahead, I want to hear from you about the challenges we face and how we get our economy growing again. I also want to hear your ideas about how we can fix what all of us – regardless of party – know is a badly broken political system. In Washington, I saw up close and personal how much influence special interests have over our law-making, and I saw just how hard it is for families to be heard. I want to hear your thoughts about how we can make sure that our voices –our families, our friends, and our neighbors — are heard again.

We have a lot of work to do in our commonwealth and our country. We need to rebuild our economy family by family and block by block. We need to create new jobs and to fix our broken housing market. We need to make sure that there is real accountability over Wall Street and that the greed and recklessness that created the last financial crisis do not create the next one. We need to restore the hope of a secure retirement and the promise of a good education. We need to stop measuring our economy by profits and executive compensation at our largest companies and start measuring it by how many families can stand securely in the middle class.

I am glad to be back home. And I’m looking forward to discussing with you what we can accomplish together.

Would I love to have Professor Warren as my Senator? Oh, yeah! As soon as she announces she’s in the race, I’ll donate as much as I can afford, and do whatever campaign work my lack of social skills and borderline agoraphobia permits. I’m very happy with all her hard work setting up the CFPB, and would be even happier to see her fighting for the Commonwealth in Teddy’s old seat.

There are a number of Democratic contenders already in the race, but as the NYTimes delicately phrases it, “some state and national Democratic officials say that so far, the field lacks a standout“. I try to stay politically aware, watch the local news at least five nights a week, and yet out of the seven announced candidates I can only name two—the guy who’s in danger of becoming the Massachusetts version of Harold Stassen, and the first-term mayor of a not-large city whose detractors have claimed won by playing up his close ties to Governor Deval Patrick, aka “the Masshole Obama”. Whichever Democrat ends up on the ticket gets my vote, but I’m not the only life-long Dem still waiting for a little excitement. Scotty ‘Cosmo Boy’ Brown has decided he likes the DC limelight enough to put up a real fight—he’s not the brightest bulb in the Senate chandelier, but he’s been crafty enough so far to swing “liberal” when it was essential to avoid angrying up us progressives in the eastern half of the state, without (so far) disenchanting the paleocon boneheads in his caucus. We’ll need lots of money and media attention to combat the advantages of incumbancy and the non-stop Fox-News shilling, and it’s pretty clear Warren has an advantage over the current field, be they never so well-intentioned.

The bitch-du-jour from the Right and its enablers is that, after a mere 17 years in Massachusetts, running in the Commonwealth would brand Warren as a “carpetbagger”, just like Hillary! eleventy-one! As far as I can tell, coming from outside the Massachusetts establishment is a real bonus for any woman hoping to win here. Our elected officials, bless their shrivelled little hearts, are determined to keep the ‘boys’ in the Old Boys’ Network; even among Democrats, between the old-school Catholics and the hardcore working-class dynasts, there’s a real terror of “girl cooties” in our so-called-progressive legislature. Women from either party who campaign for statewide office—Evelyn Murphy, Shannon Doherty O’Brien, Jane Swift, Martha Coakley—are notoriously bad campaigners, but a large part of their inadequacy is that good female campaigners aren’t encouraged in the crucial lower-level offices. Women who aren’t accommodationist, go-along-to-get-along doormats can’t get beyond the school-board level, and women who are sufficiently accommodating only achieve statewide office when they run for the kind of straight-ticket slots (attorney general, lt. governor) where voters are looking at party affiliation, not the individual. Wondering why Martha Coakley performed so badly against Scott Brown is like wondering why the Republicans keep producing African-American candidates like Alan Keyes or Michael Steele: that’s a feature, not a bug.

Does Warren want to get into this mishegas? That’s a different issue. I wouldn’t blame her one bit if, after further exploration, she decides that she’s better off fighting from outside Capitol Hill. She’s not young, she’s never had to campaign before, she’s already got a career that she loves and does well at, and I get the impression that she actually likes her family and would enjoy spending more time with her husband, kids & grandkids. Whatever road she chooses, I’m looking forward to following.

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More and better voters

This sounds good:

A newly released review of a June 27 report by the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC) shows that voter registration application rates at state public assistance agencies have risen sharply following National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) enforcement actions by advocacy groups Demos, Project Vote, the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, and others. In contrast, the overwhelming majority of states not targeted have continued to see a long decline in registration of lower-income residents.

“The new data underscore the effectiveness of enforcement in giving low income Americans a voice in the democratic process,” said Lisa Danetz, Senior Counsel at Demos and co-lead counsel in a settled lawsuit against Ohio. “For example, Ohio topped the EAC list for voter registration at public assistance offices. As a result of our lawsuit, the state institutionalized procedures to offer voter registration. Those procedures will ensure that voter registration does not fall off the radar screen.”Ohio and Missouri topped the rankings in reported voter registration applications submitted at public assistance offices. Both states have settled lawsuits regarding lack of National Voter Registration Act of 1993 (NVRA) compliance, brought by Demos, Project Vote, the Lawyers’ Committee, and others.

They’re suing to enforce the National Voter Registration Act (known as “motor voter”).

I read quite a bit on election law, and “motor voter” is usually portrayed as an idea that enjoyed “broad bipartisan support”. The implication is that Republicans and Democrats linked arms across the aisle and happily rubber-stamped the bill.

Here’s how The League of Women Voters remembers it:

The League’s grassroots campaign to secure national legislation to reform voter registration resulted in 1990 passage by the House of Representatives of the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA), or “motor voter.” Despite strong League lobbying, the Senate refused to bring the bill to the floor in fall 1990.

The effort to pass national motor-voter legislation intensified in the 102nd Congress. In February 1991, the National Voter Registration Act of 1991 was introduced in the Senate. Leading a national coalition, the League carried out a high visibility, multifaceted, grassroots drive, resulting in passage of the Senate bill by both the House and Senate in 1992. Despite League pressure, the President vetoed the bill. An attempt to override the veto in the Senate fell five votes short of the necessary two-thirds majority.

Finally, in 1993, the many years of concerted effort by the League and other voting rights organizations paid off, when both houses of Congress passed voter registration reform legislation. President Clinton signed the National Voter Registration Act in May. The “motor-voter” bill enabled citizens to apply to register at motor vehicle agencies automatically, as well as by mail and at public and private agencies that service the public.

So, like nearly everything else, it was big battle and it took too long.

Here is a report on a study of voting across income levels. I don’t know if it is reliable. If it’s accurate, most of us probably aren’t adequately or equitably represented:

Furthermore, there are enormous disparities that exist in America across income levels in all forms of participation, particularly voting. A study on these disparities found that 86% of people with incomes above $75,000 claim to have voted in presidential elections as compared with only 52% of people with incomes under $15,000. As a result of the participation disparity across demographic lines, politicians are more responsive to the opinions of high-income constituents.

A study of roll call votes under the 107th and 108th Congresses reported that legislators were three times more responsive to high-income constituents than middle-income constituents and were the least responsive to the needs of low-income constituents.

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