Michael Cohen in the Guardian makes a persuasive argument that Republicans don’t have much to gain by holding the economy to ransom again during the ‘fiscal cliff’ negotiations:

In the end, neither side has all that much to gain from dragging the fiscal cliff argument out. Now that President Obama has won re-election, and doing short-term damage to the economy is no longer in the political interests of Republicans, the outlines of a budget deal become that much easier to achieve. Moreover, all those House Republicans have to run for re-election in two years – and would prefer to do so in more optimal economic conditions, rather than in an economy undermined by growth-reducing austerity policies.

There were once good political reasons for Republicans to have a dalliance with economic calamity; no longer is that true. And it’s worth remembering that in virtually every single showdown between Obama and the Republican Congress in his first term (from the tax cut showdown of 2010 and the budget battle of early 2011, to the debt limit negotiations in the summer of 2011 and finally the payroll tax confrontation in the beginning of 2012), it has been Republicans who have surrendered, with far less than half a loaf. In its brinkmanship, the GOP likes to dance right up to the edge; they are far less inclined to take the plunge.

I think Cohen is correct in his analysis – Americans believe that President Obama’s economic policies are heading the country in the right direction, and explicitly rejected austerity at the polls in November. GOP strategists know this and will not be keen to shoulder the blame for a break down in the negotiations, making a decent deal for the Democrats a good possibility. It looks like Obama is sticking to his guns on raising taxes for the wealthy, meaning the onus is on Republicans to budge from their previous position on taxation.

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Gawker’s mysteriously anonymous ‘Mobutu Sese Seko’ reminds jubilant Democrats and the liberal media not to proclaim the GOP dead just yet:

There’s a time for champagne, though, and that’s election night. After that, reality sticks its head in the tent, and there’s no bigger or more relevant buzzkill than 2008. In that election, Democrats won both houses of congress, including a senate supermajority, and the presidency. Not only did they defeat a “war hero” and a hot lady, they did so with a goofy older guy who looks like he goes to sleep with a UV light in his mouth to lighten his CRELM TOOTHPASTE gleam—and also a black dude. It seemed as if there couldn’t be a bigger repudiation of the Republican Party and its ethos. Democrats were in charge of everything but the judiciary, riding the high of electing the hitherto racially unelectable.

Two years later, the Democrats had lost the house and significant gubernatorial races, introducing the country to men like Scott Walker or the preposterous mantis-creature Rick Scott—the biggest Medicare fraudster in history, who ran on a platform of government somehow hindering wealth creation, despite all the things he billed it for. The inevitability of Obama’s new leftist ascendancy was crushed by the election of someone like Allen West, basically a whackjob authoritarian-sexting Iraqi torturer whose voice programming got stuck for two years on a “HitlerHitlerHitlerHitler” loop.

The argument is a solid one, but it should also be remembered that the economy was falling off a cliff in 2008 giving Republicans quite a lot of wiggle room to pin some of the blame on Obama. This time around the economy is on the up and the Republicans are in the beginning of what looks to be a civil war between the moderates and the hard Right. Extremists only get attention in times of economic hardship, and as long as the economy keeps picking up jobs, the crazies won’t be anywhere near as relevant.

Having said that, the Democrats should not rest on their laurels and assume long term victory. The Republicans have been brilliant at negotiating in the past, forcing concessions from Obama before talks have even begun. We’re about to witness the big ‘fiscal cliff’ negotiations and it’s probably best to see what the Democrats are able to walk away with before dismissing the Republicans as an irrelevant party of the past.

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I watched as much of the first day of the Democratic Convention in Charlotte, North Carolina as I could stomach, and was left with the following thoughts.

The negative:

1. As always, it was a slick marketing campaign under the guise of a political convention. We heard sound byte after sound byte, skilfully edited video clips with emotional appeals to various Democratic demographics and a lot of idol worship. The whole thing was a gigantic advertisement for Barack Obama devoid of serious substance, not a serious political platform.

2. Not sure if I’m alone here, but I wasn’t blown away with the supposed rising star of the convention Julian Castro. I thought his speech was pretty dull and formulaic, and gushing over his mother in public was pretty cringe worthy (sorry, I’m British – we don’t do that kind of stuff). I really don’t like the way the media labels any ethnic candidate with semi decent oratorical skills as ‘the one to watch’. Ever since Obama propelled onto the national scene, they’ve done this with politicians like Bobby Jindal, Richard Steele, and Cory Booker. It’s pretty offensive and condescending if you ask me – politicians should be judged on their ability, not their ethnicity. And to be frank, I didn’t think Castro was particularly good. Perhaps he’ll get better with time, but he’s no Bill Clinton or Barack Obama.

3. While Michelle Obama’s speech was excellent, it was again another well designed piece of emotional trickery in order to sell Barack Obama the man and brand rather than the actual politician. Politician’s back stories should not be of serious interest to anyone concerned about the state of the country – they should care about their policies.

The positive:

1. Regardless of my cynicism, the Democrats did a much better job than the Republicans did. The event was extremely energetic, well presented and well run. And as Chez Pazienza noted, “The Democrats went out there last night and looked like a party on top of the world. They were focused, energized, determined — and at the same time they seemed as if they were offering the truly American vision that their political adversaries seemed to have a monopoly on for so long.”

2. While they were short on substance, the overall theme was pretty clear – Mitt Romney is running for the rich, and President Obama is running for every day Americans. Sure, this isn’t technically true as both candidates won’t tamper with a system rigged to benefit the rich, but there is a difference between the candidates and the Democrats are marking their territory there. The stories told by Michelle Obama and Julian Castro are in stark contrast to Mitt Romney’s upbringing of extreme privilege, and the Democrats are right to hammer the point home that Romney really hasn’t got a clue.

3. Former Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland had the best one liner I’ve heard in many months: “If Mitt was Santa Claus, he’d fire the reindeer and outsource the elves.”

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The awesome Elizabeth Warren has penned a must read article in Politico on America’s rigged economic system that prevents small businesses from flourishing and allows Big Business to get bigger and avoid paying their fair share of taxes:

If a business takes its profits to the Cayman Islands, ships its jobs overseas or finds a loophole to avoid paying its fair share of taxes, then that business now has a leg up over every small business and start up that can’t take advantage of those loopholes. Sometimes the big can get bigger not because they are better but because they can work the system better. That’s bad for every small business in America.

Asked recently about news that Mitt Romney had money in offshore tax havens, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said, “It’s really American to avoid paying taxes, legally…. It’s a game we play. … I see nothing wrong with playing the game because we set it up to be a game.”

Graham is right about one thing — it’s a game for some. It’s a rigged game that benefits big corporations and billionaires who can deploy armies of lobbyists and lawyers to create those tax loopholes and then exploit them.

It is incredibly sad that Warren stands virtually alone in the Democratic Party when it comes to standing up and for and articulating what she believes in, as most of her colleagues venture further and further to the right in the name of political viability. Americans tend to gravitate to politicians who actually say what they think regardless of political affiliation, so the more Elizabeth Warrens out there, the better. If she beats Scott Brown for the Senate in Massachusetts it should serve as a lesson to other Democrats: That it is ok to actually stand for something.

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Andrew Sullivan: Usually spot on, but misses the mark on Wisconsin (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

By Ben Cohen: The fallout from the bitter recall election in Wisconsin is reverberating around political circles and the media. The Right is claiming victory in an election that they believe should never have happened, and the Left is busy licking its wounds and crying foul play. Depending on who you listen to, the election was a major affront to the Democratic process, or a brave attempt to stop the disintegration of worker’s rights.

Former Bush Republican turned Obama Democrat Andrew Sullivan is taking an interesting and basically centrist position on the election that on the face of it looks reasonable, but really betrays a fundamental misunderstanding about workings of the modern American economy and just how serious Walker’s transgressions were against organized labor. Sullivan’s take on the events in Wisconsin is an important one as he basically represents the intellectual center in America and helps define the parameters of acceptable debate. Given his transformation in recent years, Sullivan’s analysis is usually very astute, but this time his argument is misleading and factually wrong.

In a post on The Daily Beast, Sullivan argued that despite Walker’s extremism, it was wrong of the Democrats to wage war on an already elected official. He wrote:

The Democrats refused to allow Walker to serve his full term and then seek the judgment of the voters. They acted throughout as if he were somehow illegitimate. They refused the give-and-take of democratic politics, using emergency measures for non-emergency reasons. And in this, they are, it seems to me, a state-based mirror-image of the GOP in Washington.

Sullivan contended that the war fought against Walker was a ‘case study in the complete breakdown of our political system, and of public trust’ and accused the Democrats of being just as partisan as the Republican Party.

The first major flaw in this argument is that the Democratic Party largely disavowed the recall election. Obama barely mentioned it at all, and did no campaigning on Democratic candidate Tom Barrett’s behalf. The best the President could do was to send out a solitary tweet the day before the election:

Not exactly a massive show of solidarity. The establishment Democrats clearly sided with Obama on this, allowing Barrett to be seriously outspent and heavily reliant on grassroots campaigning – clearly not enough to defeat the well oiled, corporate funded Republican Party.

The second and most serious flaw is Sullivan’s argument is his comparison between the grassroots campaign that tried to protect workers rights and restore collective bargaining in the state, and the Republican efforts to dismantle organized labor and buy elections.

There is no doubt that the modern Democratic Party has sold out to corporate interests and engages in underhand manipulation to win elections, but compared to the radical incarnation of the Republican Party that no longer disguises its complete subordination to corporate America, they still resemble a functioning political organization.  I outlined in a piece yesterday Walker’s radical legislation against working people in Wisconsin. In short, Walker’s budget repair bill in 2011 saw government workers rights slashed, their salaries decreased, collective bargaining rights vanish and mandatory yearly votes for unions to continue representing government workers.

Andrew Sullivan wrote:

While I don’t see the harm in allowing public sector unions to retain some collective bargaining rights, especially in an era when unions can be seen as institutions putting a break on soaring economic inequality, I also believe there’s a difference between public sector and private sector unions, and that curtailing the massive collective costs that public union benefits place on the public is a perfectly legitimate way to cut spending. It may be vital if we are to regain some fiscal balance.

Taking a mild position on the role of unions in America may seem reasonable, but only in the context of American political culture which is far to the Right of any other industrialized nation. Sullivan’s support of public sector unions retaining ‘some collective bargaining rights’ amounts to nothing when compared to bargaining rights in other countries. Just check out this fascinating report by Krissy Frazao on the RT network that highlights the stunning difference between unions in the US and in Europe. Some key points:

* At least 134 countries have laws setting the maximum length of the work week. The US does not.

* In the US, 85.6% of males and 66.5% of females work more than 40 hours per week.

* Americans work 137 more hours per year than Japanese workers, 260 more hours that British workers and 499 more hours than French workers.

* There is no federal law requiring sick days in the United States.

America does have a deficit crisis, and it does need to be addressed, but to further strip the rights of public sector workers is absolutely criminal. It should be remembered that the deficit came at the hands of the banking system that blew a multi-trillion dollar hole in the economy by speculating on real estate, not government workers getting paid too much. Sullivan is buying into the whole ‘shared responsibility’ meme floating around political punditry that equates the behavior of casino style gambling on the stock market with school teachers educating the next generation of Americans. It is grossly unfair and a complete distortion of the economic fraud coming from the top down, not the bottom up.

Sullivan does a great job of exposing the nihilistic culture of the Republican Party and has forcefully argued to keep them as far away from government as possible. And that is why equating their lunacy with the collective efforts to preserve long fought for labor rights is so troubling to read.

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By Ben Cohen: Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s victory over Barret Tom Barrett last night was another sad reflection of the corrupting influence of money in American elections. Organized labor took on Walker over his budget repair bill in 2011 that saw workers rights slashed, their salaries decreased, collective bargaining rights vanish and mandatory yearly votes for unions to continue representing government workers. They fought a long, hard campaign against Walker, but ended up losing after being outspent 7-1 and being deserted by the Democratic Party.

As Gary Younge writes:

Money matters and the Republicans have a lot of it. Walker outspent Barrett by seven to one, with most of it coming from outside the state. This is a very corrupting fact about American politics, particularly since Citizens United. But it is a fact nonetheless. So either unions and grassroots organisations don’t participate in the electoral process but work outside it to change the debate and mobilize public opinion – like Occupy Wall Street – or they have to find money from somewhere……If progressives are looking for political support they should look down to the grassroots, not up to the Democratic party. Rhetorically Obama was with them all the way. Not only was he all about the audacity of hope. But in his campaign he would quote the late poet and essayist June Jordan, with an empowering message about the need for political activism: “We were the ones we are waiting for.”

Wisconsin radicals could have been waiting for him until the cows in this dairy state came home. He wasn’t coming. The fierce urgency of now had given way to the tepid ambivalence until November. He could have sent Joe Biden as a show of solidarity. Instead they kept their distance.

The fight to defeat Scott Walker was an incredibly important one in American history. It was only the second recall in the nation’s history, and a sign that the labor movement in America was far from dead.  A remarkable grassroots campaign was lead to recall the Governor in an attempt to regain long fought for rights that Walker had cavalierly dissolved under the guise of fixing the state’s budget deficit.

The move to destroy worker’s rights was straight out of Milton Friedman’s playbook -  Walker used a crises to scare the people of Wisconsin, took away their rights and then implemented his own ideologically based economic model on the state. As Naomi Klein noted in her extremely important book ‘The Shock Doctrine’:

The bottom line is that while Friedman’s economic model is capable of being partially imposed under democracy, authoritarian conditions are required for the implementation of its true vision. For economic shock therapy to be applied without restraint – as it was in Chile in the seventies, China in the late eighties, Russia in the nineties and the U.S. after September 11, 2001- some sort of additional major collective trauma has always been required, one that either temporarily suspended democratic practices or blocked them entirely.

For Klein, Walker’s draconian measures in Wisconsin were simply another example of this – a highly undemocratic and manipulative way of forcing through unpopular economic measures without real consent. She told Amy Goodman at the time:

It should not be in any way surprising that we are seeing right-wing ideologues across the country using economic crisis as a pretext to really wage a kind of a final battle in a 50-year war against trade unions, where we’ve seen membership in trade unions drop precipitously. And public sector unions are the last labor stronghold, and they’re going after it……Scott Walker was not elected with a mandate to bust unions and to strip collective bargaining rights. He did not mention that in his campaign. He talked about balancing the budget. He made some vague statements, you know, about shared sacrifice. But he absolutely did not campaign promising to do what he is now doing

Walker’s move to strip collective bargaining rights had nothing to do with the budget deficit – it was simply an excuse to follow through with the economic orthodoxy of his party that has radically changed the face of the country over the past three decades. By vilifying public workers and making them the enemy of economic recovery, he was able to ram through measures that make the long term recovery of the state even more difficult.

The Left’s loss to Walker shows just how badly outgunned the general public are when it comes to the ceaseless assault on workers rights from big money interests. The GOP threw huge amounts of cash at Scott Walker so he could defeat Tom Barrett, and their gamble paid off. It takes an extraordinary amount of organization, propaganda and money to convince regular people that unions are responsible for the nation’s economic problems, despite union membership being at a 70 year low, and despite no evidence that cutting wages leads to any sort of benefit to the economy. It does however, benefit the wealthy, and that is why Walker was able to raise so much money.

The fight is not over, and Wisconsin proved that organized labor can still go to battle and fight hard. They’ll just need more money to actually win.

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Americans have become more politically polarized than at any time in the past 25 years, according to a major survey released Monday by the Pew Research Center.

Pew measured partisan differences on 48 areas that it has tracked since 1987, and the average partisan gap has nearly doubled, from 10 percent to 18 percent. Partisan divisions have grown most noticeably over the role of the social safety net, environmental protection, immigration, and the federal government’s scope and performance, with Democrats moving to the left and Republicans moving to the right.

Nearly all the increases occurred during the presidencies of George W. Bush and Barack Obama.

“Republicans are most distinguished by their increasingly minimalist views about the role of government and lack of support for environmentalism,” the study’s authors write. “Democrats have become more socially liberal and secular. Republicans and Democrats are most similar in their level of political engagement.”

In practical terms, the study does not bode well for Congress’s ability to address America’s problems.

The Pew authors note that views on the importance of environmental protection have “arguably been the most pointed area of polarization.” Twenty years ago, when questions about the environment were first asked, there was almost no partisan difference in views. And as recently as 2003, Republicans and Democrats came in on average 13 points apart on environmental issues. Now the gap is 39 points.

Read more at AlaskaDispatch…

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By Ben Cohen: I went on the RT network yesterday to discuss the insidious effects of Super PACs on the Democratic process with Elizabeth Wahl. It’s a very troubling topic and one that deserves a lot of attention. The decision made by the Supreme court to allow PACs (Political Action Committees) to accept unlimited contributions from individuals, unions, and corporations could have a very far reaching effect on the Democratic process. While these PACs are not allowed to make direct contributions to candidates, they can essentially run their own independent campaigns for whichever candidate they choose.

The fact that wealth in America is so unevenly distributed makes the effect of money in politics and the Super PACS far more dangerous. Wealthy individuals and corporations can run shadow campaigns for candidates that represent their interests, and their resources greatly outweigh those of the general public. Candidates representing the interests of the general population simply won’t be able to raise as much money, and as the evidence shows, those with the most money win.

Here’s the interview:

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Rep. Allen West: Truly dangerous

By Chez Pazienza: Rush Limbaugh is a pompous buffoon — we all know that. When he says something over-the-top, inflammatory and painfully divorced from reality, believe it or not I kind of accept it. I get that there’s an argument to be made that the damage he’s doing through the influence he wields over the Republican party bumper sticker sloganeers and their ostensible leaders makes him a dangerous, dangerous man. But there are plenty of times when I just can’t help thinking, “Really? This is the asshole we’re all so afraid of — this obese, impotent blowhard? This instantaneous-death heart attack waiting to happen? Fuck this guy.” I think this because while it’s true that his microphone has quite a bit of power, and it’s power that can’t really be voted out of office by a suddenly enlightened electorate, he doesn’t make policy in an official capacity. Again, he indirectly influences policy, but he doesn’t make it himself because in the end he’s just a dumb-shit shock jock.

Rep. Allen West, however, is a different story.

I’m not going to bother running down in detail the litany of thoroughly irresponsible and almost incomprehensibly insane things that have spilled out of West’s comic book character mouth since he arrived on the political scene via the Great and Ultimately Short-Lived Tea Party Uprising of 2010 and the shit-kicking dolts in Florida who championed it; we’d be here all day and honestly it’d just make my head hurt. Suffice it to say, almost every time West opens his pie hole, some unabashed gem of paranoia, barbarism, incivility and generally offensive backward-ass thinking makes itself known. It was understood pretty much from the beginning that West is the archetypal right-wing bully, a patriarchal tyrant who believes that he and he alone has been given dominion over the land by the Almighty and everyone else can basically kiss his ass. I imagine him being some unholy cross between Colonel Nathan Jessup, Jack Scagnetti in Natural Born Killers, and Rance Burgess, the sadistic, misogynistic, and ice cold true believing land baron on Firefly.

The short list: In just the past couple of years, West has intoned that guns may be necessary to stand against the liberal onslaught, that U.S. military leaders should refuse the orders of President Obama, that American news agencies should be censored, that Obama supporters are a threat to the gene pool, that progressive women are trying to “neuter” American men, and that Democratic Party Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman-Shultz doesn’t know her place because she refused to show him the proper amount of respect and deference. Now you can add to all of that unmitigated horseshit — commies. Yes, commies.

Last week, at a town hall meeting in Florida, West was asked by one of his mouth-breathing constituents, “What percentage of the American legislature do you think are card-carrying Marxists?” Rather than answer with an entirely appropriate, “What the hell are you talking about? That’s crazy,” West of course immediately came back with — wait for it — “That’s a fair question.” He then proceeded to pull an actual number out of his ass, McCarthy style — an almost comically specific number. “I believe there’s about 78 to 81 members of the Democrat Party that are members of the Communist Party,” he said. So, yeah — the commie infestation is upon us. Let’s throw one more character from pop culture into the “Who Does Allen West Remind You Of?” mix: General Jack D. Ripper, from Dr. Strangelove.

What I want to know is, why is someone not kicking Allen West’s ass all over the halls of the Capitol for saying something so irresponsible and outrageous? Have we really gotten to the point where eliminationist rhetoric is so expected from the Tea Party-worshiping lunatics on the right that calling members of the United States Congress communists barely even registers anymore? Is this how far it’s come? Or is it simply that West is such an ineffectual fringe element within the legislature — one who will likely face an uphill battle for reelection, even in a place as out-to-lunch as South Florida — that nobody really takes a thing he says seriously? At this point, incendiary nonsense out of the mouth of Allen West comes off more like performance art than anything — as if he’s constantly playing a game with himself, seeing if he can one-up his last batshit pronouncement.

Regardless, calling U.S. lawmakers card-carrying communists isn’t something that should go unanswered. Granted, neither is 97% of the crap West has said in the past — but at some point somebody in a position of authority has to decide that enough is enough. I’d love to see it be the voters, but until they get the opportunity to correct their mistake an official censure from the very body politic West claims to detest so powerfully would be nice. Ignoring his psychotic ramblings only goes so far. And it obviously hasn’t given him an once of pause.

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By Ben Cohen: Predictably, the Republicans in the Senate blocked the Democrat’s ‘Buffet Rule’ bill that would tax millionaires at at least 30% of their income. It was predictable because of the Republicans pathological need to sabotage any measures that would help the economy – a worrying trait that is fast making their party completely unelectable.

The Buffet Rule: A gimmick to help the Democrats?

In the short term, the Republicans have gotten what they wanted. They have blocked a bill supported heavily by the President and assured the wealthy that they have their interests at heart. The problem is, attitudes towards the wealthy are changing in America, and kick backs to the rich from the political classes are becoming increasingly less acceptable. President Obama is making this a feature of his campaign as witnessed by the early shots he has fired at Romney. Obama is highlighting his opponents extreme wealth and inability to understand the needs of regular Americans, so every move the Republicans make to stop wealth distribution is another round of ammunition for the President.

The proposed 30% tax on millionaires won’t raise a huge amount of revenue – calculations run at about $47 billion over 10 years, a drop in the ocean relative to what is needed to make a dent in the ever deepening deficit. The Democrats clearly knew this when crafting the bill, but chose to propose it anyway knowing the Republicans would oppose it. They did, and now the Democrats will use it to their advantage.

This really is another example of the GOP cutting off its nose to spite its face. They rejected the bill because they have dogmatically and religiously opposed any tax hike proposed by the President. The tactic has been used to paint Obama as a radical socialist, and it has gone on for years. The Republicans even went as far as to prevent Obama from raising the debt ceiling – a borderline treasonous move that could have destroyed the US economy in a matter of weeks. This behavior has simply gone on for too long, and the public is catching on to their incessant wolf crying and name calling.

The Obama and the Democrats will use the rejection to highlight the increasing extremes the Republicans will go to in order to preserve wealth for the rich, and it will most certainly pay dividends, particularly in election year.

There appears to be a trend happening, and a positive one from the Democrat’s perspective. The Republican Party is now so fractured and dysfunctional that they are incapable of following a coherent strategy. They fight battles by kicking and screaming, winning occasionally in the short term, but losing credibility when it comes to the bigger picture. Obama’s election strategists used the Clinton’s short term thinking to out maneuver them over the long run in 2008, and they will no doubt use a similar strategy to nullify whatever the Republicans come up with for Romney. Obama’s strategy based politics appears to be seeping into the Democratic culture, and it is a positive trend. Republicans can only think in the short term because the nature of their party doesn’t allow them to plan for the future. There are too many competing interest groups with contradictory objectives, so they must fight battle by battle rather than plan for the long war.

Policy gimmicks like the ‘Buffet Rule’ allow Democrats to set the agenda for the 2012 election. The choose the topic and make the Republicans fight them on their ground. Regardless of whether the legislation passes, the Democrats win in the long terms because they are making the Republicans look so bad. It’s a simple strategy, and quite an effective one.

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