The Beginning of the End for Blanche Lincoln

A great, great day for the future of the Democratic Party:

Conservative Democrat Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.), whose obstinacy during the health care reform process was so frustrating to the progressive community, is officially getting a primary challenge.

On Monday morning, Arkansas lieutenant governor, Bill Halter, announced that he would launch a campaign to dislodge Lincoln from her Senate seat. He cited a need to focus on middle class issues, take on Wall Street, and fight back against special interests.

Blanche Lincoln is one of the worst (if not the worst) member of the Democratic Caucus. She was going to lose reelection anyway, so Bill Halter gives us the chance to both upgrade the quality of Senator and a real shot at keeping the seat.

Much more on this race later, but enjoy the the very real possibility that one of the Senate's worst members will be losing their jobs.

11 Dimensional Chess

Rep. Anthony Weiner:

“I’m not sure what we’re doing, and I’m pretty tied in.”

As you may have guessed, he did not get an invitation to today's bipartisan summit.

So Now There's a Plan!

Ten months into the debate, the White House releases their plan for health care reform:

President Obama took the Senate health care bill and stripped special deals and added his preferred compromise for taxing high-end insurance plans, detailing for the first time his preferred approach for finishing the long battle for reform.

The White House just released the Obama plan in advance of Thursday's health care summit, framing it as an improvement to the Senate bill and an ultimate compromise.

The administration is signaling they are prepared to push the plan through reconciliation, talking about the need for an "up or down" vote, and wants the American people to see the negotiations play out on television among Democrats and Republicans.

Obama aides described what they are posting today at WhiteHouse.gov as the president's "take" on bridging the differences between the House and Senate bills passed last year. It's largely been crafted based on negotiations Democratic leaders had with Obama in the Cabinet room before the Jan. 19 election in Massachusetts.

I gotta say, I'm still not entirely sure what is accomplished by releasing this to the public. It seems like it will only piss people off (no public option and an increase in the mandate penalty... succeeded!), which is worth it so that you tell the Republicans that you posted the bill online before the summit?

The summit later this week is another move that I just don't understand. The Sunday shows kept replaying a clip of Obama reiterating that this summit was not a political stunt. It better be a fucking political stunt! If it's not then that means you're reinventing the wheel 10 months in, this time with more Republican advice!

If this were 10 months ago, then great! But showing that the Republicans don't have any ideas on health care isn't going to change anything. They're not in power, and I continue to wonder why the Obama administration doesn't understand that Obama will be blamed/praised for whatever is created here. Saying that we have good ideas but the the other side won't play nice is about as weak sauce as reelection arguments get, and if they haven't figured that out yet then the upcoming slaughter in November might change their minds.

It also seems odd to hold the summit to jump start the debate when lots of real activism is currently taking place in support of the public option, something ditched in Obama's proposal. You'd think you'd want the your base's organizing efforts backing up your plan rather than organizing parallel to it, but grassroots organizing is probably too partisan or something. And a reminder:

A batch of state polls by the non-partisan Research 2000 shows that in multiple states represented by key Dem Senators who will have to decide whether to support reconciliation, the public option polls far better than the Senate bill does, often by lopsided margins.

Here’s a rundown, sent over by the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, which commissioned the polls:

* In Nevada, only 34% support the Senate bill, while 56% support the public option.

* In Illinois, only 37% support the Senate bill, while 68% support the public option.

* In Washington State, only 38% support the Senate bill, while 65% support the public option.

* In Missouri, only 33% support the Senate bill, while 57% support the public option.

* In Virginia, only 36% support the Senate bill, while 61% support the public option.

* In Iowa, only 35% support the Senate bill, while 62% support the public option.

*In Minnesota, only 35% support the Senate bill, while 62% support the public option.

* In Colorado, only 32% support the Senate bill, while 58% support the public option.

Keep calling your Senators and help save them from themselves...

Not Fucking Helpful

Sweet Jesus this is stupid:

President Barack Obama said he doesn’t “begrudge” the $17 million bonus awarded to JPMorgan Chase & Co. Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon or the $9 million issued to Goldman Sachs Group Inc. CEO Lloyd Blankfein, noting that some athletes take home more pay.

The president, speaking in an interview, said in response to a question that while $17 million is “an extraordinary amount of money” for Main Street, “there are some baseball players who are making more than that and don’t get to the World Series either, so I’m shocked by that as well.”

“I know both those guys; they are very savvy businessmen,” Obama said in the interview yesterday in the Oval Office with Bloomberg BusinessWeek, which will appear on newsstands Friday. “I, like most of the American people, don’t begrudge people success or wealth. That is part of the free- market system.”

Obama sought to combat perceptions that his administration is anti-business and trumpeted the influence corporate leaders have had on his economic policies. He plans to reiterate that message when he speaks to the Business Roundtable, which represents the heads of many of the biggest U.S. companies, on Feb. 24 in Washington.

It's great that while unemployment hovers around 10% the administration is trying to "trumpet the influence that corporate leaders have on his economic policies". Paul Krugman's reaction does a pretty good job of summing up my feelings:

Oh. My. God.

First of all, to my knowledge, irresponsible behavior by baseball players hasn’t brought the world economy to the brink of collapse and cost millions of innocent Americans their jobs and/or houses.

And more specifically, not only has the financial industry has been bailed out with taxpayer commitments; it continues to rely on a taxpayer backstop for its stability.

. . .

The point is that these bank executives are not free agents who are earning big bucks in fair competition; they run companies that are essentially wards of the state. There’s good reason to feel outraged at the growing appearance that we’re running a system of lemon socialism, in which losses are public but gains are private. And at the very least, you would think that Obama would understand the importance of acknowledging public anger over what’s happening.

As Krugman says at the end, I'm not sure which is worse: Actually believing what he's saying or thinking that saying it will be helpful politically.

Talking like this is as much political suicide as it is bad economic policy. From the beginning I had close to zero faith in Summers and Geithner, but I thought Obama's political team would be smart enough to not let their sucking shape the administration's overall message. Well, the economy will be front and center and the face of the Obama administration becomes those two fuck ups.

It's gonna be an ugly, ugly November.

Helping Those that Destroyed Reform

Reason #34828 why you should never give money to the DNC: (via Americablog)

Last month, Ben Nelson did a TV ad defending his vote on health care. He talks straight to the camera and disses those "who wanted a government takeover." That sounds like an attack on people who supported the public option, because that's as close as Congress got to a "government takeover." You'll recall that Nelson helped kill the public option in the Senate and the Medicare buy-in (after he'd already agreed to it), insisted on the inclusion of harsh anti-abortion language, and then threatened to join the Republicans in filibustering the conference report on the deal he already cut. That Ben Nelson.

Turns out, though, that it's not a Ben Nelson campaign ad. It's hard to read the disclaimer, but the ad was paid for by the Nebraska Democratic Party. It's one of a series of ad touting Nelson's "courageous" effort to bring down real health care reform. More of the ads can be seen here and here.

So, one wonders, where did the Nebraska Democratic Party get the money to pay for these TV ads?

Today, it looks like we got the answer: the Democratic National Committee. According to the Nebraska Democratic Committee's latest FEC report, it received a contribution of $459,760.00 from the DNC.

And here is example 1A that should be studied when the Democrats get slaughtered next November.

Yes the Senate is structurally problematic and sucks. Yes some Senators represent states far more conservative than others.

But none of those facts justifies Ben Nelson's actions during the health care debate. He is an attention whore owned by the insurance industry. Staying in the news and killing any type of real reform were his only goals throughout the process.

Until the Democratic party stops rewarding it's worst members, it's hard them moving too far in the right direction.

There's No Freeze on Stupid Ideas

Apparently our economic situation is now serious enough that it requires a political gimmick that was laughed out of the room when the McCain campaign gave it a try:

President Obama plans to announce a three-year freeze on discretionary, “non-security” spending in the lead-up Wednesday's State of the Union address, Hill Democratic sources familiar with the plan tell POLITICO.

The move, intended to blunt the populist backlash against Obama's $787 billion stimulus and an era of trillion-dollar deficits -- and to quell Democratic anxiety over last Tuesday's Massachusetts Senate election -- is projected to save $250 billion, the Democrats said.

The freeze would not apply to defense spending or spending on intelligence, homeland security or veterans.

The proposal is in line with a plan floated by Sen. Evan Bayh (D-Ind.), a fiscal hawk, who told Bloomberg's Al Hunt last week that there was a “fighting chance” Obama would propose a freeze in most discretionary spending by the federal government as part of his address.

It's an idea so blindingly stupid that you don't even know where to start. Krugman:

It’s bad economics, depressing demand when the economy is still suffering from mass unemployment. Jonathan Zasloff writes that Obama seems to have decided to fire Tim Geithner and replace him with “the rotting corpse of Andrew Mellon” (Mellon was Herbert Hoover’s Treasury Secretary, who according to Hoover told him to “liquidate the workers, liquidate the farmers, purge the rottenness”.)

It’s bad long-run fiscal policy, shifting attention away from the essential need to reform health care and focusing on small change instead.

I happened to be watching Rachel Maddow's show when she absolutely demolished Jared Bernstein (who happens to be the only economist I really like in the administration) when he tried to defend this insanity:


You gotta feel for Bernstein a bit because you know this wasn't his idea (again, he's a smart economist), and he was sent out there to defend something that cannot defended in any logical way. When looking at the impact, as usual atrios said it best:

I guess the best defense of the "spending freeze" is that it's a cheap political gimmick with little actual impact.

Yep. Engaging in cheap political gimmicks while the economy burns. Voters will love that, just ask John "suspend my campaign until the economy clears up" McCain.

The Lost Decade

What a crappy 10 years:

The U.S. economy has expanded at a healthy clip for most of the last 70 years, but by a wide range of measures, it stagnated in the first decade of the new millennium. Job growth was essentially zero, as modest job creation from 2003 to 2007 wasn't enough to make up for two recessions in the decade. Rises in the nation's economic output, as measured by gross domestic product, was weak. And household net worth, when adjusted for inflation, fell as stock prices stagnated, home prices declined in the second half of the decade and consumer debt skyrocketed.

And Then There Was Liebercare...

Sometime after 7 AM tomorrow, the Senate will pass Joe Lieberman's health care bill. It's pretty terrible (an analysis of the details here) and there's a huge debate within the progressive community over what to do about the bill. The fight isn't over since the bill will go to conference committee and unlike the Senate, the House actually passed a good bill.

We'll see how this turns out. The most likely out come is that the progressives will get rolled by Harry Reid and the White House, and the final bill will look remarkably similar to the Senate bill that will pass tomorrow.

If that's the case, I'd find myself in opposition to the biggest piece of legislation proposed by a president that I proudly worked my ass off to help elect.

Not fun times.

/emoposting

THUNDERSNOW!

It's happening.

Enjoy your weekend

Obama's Presidency Lies in the Hands of Tim Geithner, Ben Bernanke and Larry Summers

I know I've posted a lot on this blog about how much Larry Summers and Tim Geithner suck, but I promise you, it's not without reason.

While health care is front and center at the moment, it's only one of many issues that we hope for Obama to tackle over the next 4 (hopefully 8) years such as immigration reform, labor law reform, climate change legislation and so on.

And while those issues are important, I don't think I'm exaggerating when I say the biggest threat to any of those issues on Obama's agenda is the crappiness of his economic policy, and if you didn't know, this is why:

People's opinions about the party in power are often tied to the economy, and when the economy is this bad, it only becomes more important. The stimulus has helped, but as predicted by "The Group of Economists Who Have Consistently been Right about Almost Everything", it wasn't big enough. Now there's a dual problem of needing more stimulus, while simultaneously fixing the larger problems with the banks.

Geithner, Bernanke and Summer's solution to the credit crisis has been to give the banks huge amounts of free money and risk free loans, assuming that they'll start lending to industries and individuals who will help restart the economy. However, to the surprise of no one, the banks are hoarding that money, and using it to continue taking the same risks that caused the crisis in the first place. Until the banks are willing to lend, the job market will not fully recover and the economy will not turn improve in ways that effect the majority of Americans.

And if that does not happen by 2010... it will not be a pretty picture for the Democrats in congress or any issue we had hoped to address during Obama's presidency. If it doesn't get addressed by 2012, some smart Republican will use the relationship between this administration's economic team and Wall Street to make Obama a one term president. So as said before, the stakes of a policy change here are very, very high.

Two Steps (One likely, one unlikely) that can help limit the damage:

Step 1: Pass a jobs bill, like yesterday. If unemployment doesn't take a downturn by November the Democrats will be slaughtered in the 2010 elections. Passing some sort of jobs bill is fairly likely to happen, since plently of Democrats in the house are shitting themselves as we speak.

Step 2: Clean house with Obama's economic team, and start hiring some of the people who have gotten this thing right. Geithner, Summers and Bernanke subscribe to the ideology that got us into this mess, and more of the same failed ideas and policies isn't going to give us a real recovery. While this may seem like an obvious solution, Obama's continued faith in his economic team throughout several unpopular scandals makes a change unlikely.

The time to make a change is now. While it may sound like hyperbole, the fate of Obama's presidency might very well rest in the balance.

Don't you ever get tired of being wrong all the time?

Bobby Jindal, one month ago today:



Really? Because I'm pretty sure a volcano erupting would definitely be worse than any eruption of spending, any way you slice it.

Wait a minute, what's that you say? A volcano erupted yesterday?

Mount Redoubt Volcano In Alaska Erupts Explosively

ScienceDaily (Mar. 23, 2009) — Alaska's Mount Redoubt Volcano has erupted, spewing ash thousands of feet into the air.

The volcano, 106 miles southwest of Anchorage, erupted explosively on March 22, 2009, at approximately 10:38 PM AKDT, sending a cloud of volcanic ash to an estimated 50,000 feet above sea level. Scientists from the Alaska Volcano Observatory (AVO) are monitoring the volcano closely as the eruption continues.

Ash plumes generated by the explosive bursts are drifting north-northeast. Ash fall has been reported in Skwentna and the Chuitna area.

I've said it before and I'll say it again; you really just can't make this stuff up (via Suril's G-Reader feed, what it do?).

The Train of Thought Lounge: Rise and Fire!

So, I forgot to post a new installment of The ToT Lounge on Friday because I was busy drinking all day and watching the NCAA Tournament. My bad!

Unfortunately, my beloved Terps were bounced by Memphis, although I was very proud of Maryland's efforts in upsetting Cal in the first round. Who ever thought that Gary Williams' job was in jeopardy? Oh that's right... everyone did.

Even though I'm very late with this, today's lounge will honor my favorite announcer in the world, Gus Johnson. Two years ago, the excitable wordsmith and Howard alumnus (Bison!! YOU KNOW!!) blessed the world with some of his most unforgettable calls. So let's relive the magic! After all, it's all that will keep me going until the games pick back up on Thursday.