Funny

By watertiger, via Thers.

Mets hire Wayne Krivsky as a "special assistant"

Former/sacked Cincinnati general manager Wayne Krivsky has been hired by the Mets to act as a special assistant to Omar Minaya.

When Krivsky was fired back in late April after a 9-12 start, I emailed my Reds fan uncle to inquire as to why. His response:

I think you can explain the Krivsky firing with one word - Mike Stanton. There has been speculation that the owner, Castellini, was really peeved that they had to eat his millions before the season started. And overpaying Patterson, even though he is a Baker guy, probably did not set too well either.

I've got nothing good to say about giving Mike Stanton serious money or (over)paying Corey Patterson, and it was actually made worse by the fact that he's a Baker guy, but the reason Patterson's presence in center was so galling was because of Jay Bruce, and Krivsky was the guy who drafted Bruce. He also knew that current league ERA and strikeout leader Edinson Volquez was someone worth acquiring, even though the purchase price (Josh Hamilton) turned out to be much higher than expected.

Whatever his talents as a baseball executive, it does seem strange that at a time when the Mets seem to be in housecleaning mode, they've brought a guy who was very recently a major league GM into the front office to "assist" Minaya.

Nate Silver has a political blog

Last night I ran across a link to a post at FiveThirtyEight.com, a political blog by Nate Silver. The same Nate Silver who wrote for Baseball Prospectus and designed the industry-leading PECOTA projection system? The same! I'm quite excited. Apparently he blogged anonymously until May 30 of this year, when he unmasked himself as a necessary precursor to getting wider distribution by some big media enterprise or another.

For those who don't know, BP's core product is a quantitatively-oriented baseball analysis, and when you click on one of their player pages you see a lot of charts like the one above.

That's from Milton Bradley's page, and shows the distribution of historical seasons for the players he most closely ressembles, with the y-axis representing playing time (plate appearances) and the x-axis representing quality (in the form of a catch-all offensive statistic they call Equivalent Average).

His political analysis gives the same treatment to polling data. As he put it in the aforementioned post: "What we do over there and what I'm doing over here are really quite similar. Both baseball and politics are data-driven industries." And it's very true, at least if you're just talking about horserace politics. Policy seems to have a way of being less data-driven, but in baseball as in horserace, the key question is Win Expectancy. All subcategories (home runs, steals, white women, hispanic seniors) are all fodder for the overarching question of how likely a given team or candidate is to win.

Having been a BP reader for many years, I have a lot of faith in his quantitative game, and he apparently gives Obama a 76.3% chance of victory. That's slightly higher than I would have guessed, but I don't know how much it fluctuates with new polling data. If it's in there, the new Newsweek poll that has him up by a whopping 15 may be juicing that a little bit.

He's also an Obama supporter, which means to whatever extent there's an editorial slant (and my guess is it will be minimal) it will probably make the blog more enjoyable. So he's in the ol' RSS reader already.

This morning he did a post on yesterday's FISA vote, and found that the 32 House Democrats in districts designated as competitive voted overwhelmingly for capitulation while the rest of the caucus voted 120-82 against. That in itself is not at all surprising. Districts that were competitive in 2006 tend to be pretty darn reddish, and the blue seats tend to be held by Blue Dogs like Shuler, Carney and Ellsworth. The kind of Democrats that electoral pragmatists would have us live with and not challenge from the left.

The more interesting point was relating the votes of this subgroup to Obama's decision to support the bill: "Was he really going to run afoul of the Blue Dogs when they are probably his swing voters in passing some version of national health care legislation?" He also points out that Pelosi herself was very much on board with capitulation, and she's no Blue Dog. So there's the intramural explanation for his position that focuses not on Obama's reluctance to alienate swing voters in November but Congressional swing voters in early 2009, and it gets more appealing as a justification the more you discount November swing voters' awareness of the FISA issue at all.

My problem with it is that it could be used in any circumstance to justify agreement with the right wing of the Democratic party. On any unambiguously liberal legislative effort, the Blue Dogs are going to be the whiny ones who worry about being called Communists. That goes for health care, taxes, Social Security, carbon emissions... you name it. How big a Congressional majority will he need before he'll be comfortable telling the Blue Dog Caucus to get bent? Because that's what it comes down to, for me.

Worse than I expected

Yesterday I wrote that while I hoped Barack Obama would come out against the FISA "compromise" legislation, I didn't think he would do it. Well today he made a statement on the bill's passage in the House and boy did he not do it. It was enough to earn Atrios' "Wanker of the Day", for I believe for the first time ever, and deservedly so.

By way of throwing a bone to his anti-illegal spying base, he acknowledges the obvious:

"There is... little doubt that the Bush Administration, with the cooperation of major telecommunications companies, has abused that authority and undermined the Constitution by intercepting the communications of innocent Americans without their knowledge or the required court orders."

Then he moves on to previous positions he's taken that we agree with:

"That is why last year I opposed the so-called Protect America Act, which expanded the surveillance powers of the government without sufficient independent oversight to protect the privacy and civil liberties of innocent Americans. I have also opposed the granting of retroactive immunity to those who were allegedly complicit in acts of illegal spying in the past."

Operative phrase: "in the past." But if he supports today's bill, it must have some pretty great stuff in it:

"Under this compromise legislation, an important tool in the fight against terrorism will continue, but the President's illegal program of warrantless surveillance will be over. It restores FISA and existing criminal wiretap statutes as the exclusive means to conduct surveillance - making it clear that the President cannot circumvent the law and disregard the civil liberties of the American people."

The thing is, though, that FISA doesn't really need "restoration" as the exclusive means to conduct (electronic) surveillance. It has this thing in it called an "exclusivity provision," so it kind of came pre-restored. And to just about everybody outside the Bush administration, and a goodly number of people in it, including his Attorney General, it was already pretty clear that the president can't "circumvent" it.

It's time to break the news:

"It does, however, grant retroactive immunity, and I will work in the Senate to remove this provision so that we can seek full accountability for past offenses."

Hmmm... Wouldn't a good way of seeking full accountability for past offenses be to oppose any legislation that grants retroactive immunity? I mean that may be a little inside the box, butI think there's something to it.

Anyway as I said I didn't expect him to take a stand against the bill, so I shouldn't act all shocked, but right at the end the statement takes a hard turn from the ineffectual to the pernicious:

"It is not all that I would want. But given the legitimate threats we face, providing effective intelligence collection tools with appropriate safeguards is too important to delay. So I support the compromise..."

Emphasis mine, because it's so awful. The problem, of course, is not that he believes we face legitimate threats. It's that everyone believes we face legitimate threats! After claiming to share the very concerns of the people who oppose the bill, he turns around and depicts the debate over it as being between terrorism believers and terrorism skeptics, with the latter endangering America.

So yeah, wankery indeed. I'm setting pretty modest expectations here, Barack. I sure hope the estimates for political courage don't need to be revised further downward.

Brian Williams to host MTP on Sunday

The LA Times is reporting that NBC anchor Brian Williams will host Meet the Press this Sunday. The president of NBC News says that they are still mulling their options for a permanent successor, and Williams isn't necessarily it.

I really hope it's not. I'm having a hard time putting my finger one really good justification for my dislike of Brian Williams, but the individually insufficient reasons include pomposity, scraping deference to Republicans, overeagerness to ingratiate himself to the audience personally, and make-your-teeth hurt corniness.

Of the frequently talked-about candidates, I have to say Matthews would be my preference. His tendency to say surprisingly sexist and/or racist things is a drawback, to be sure. Still, he's the only other "tough interviewer" in the bunch. Well there's David Gregory, but all the stuff I don't like about Williams applies to him, too, just with slightly less Republican-love and more(!) pomposity. Sometimes I think Joe Scarborough has finally seen the light, but it burns and these days he's too angry to be on camera for very long.

Anyway regardless of the merits Matthews would seem to be the heir apparent and he already does The Chris Matthews show in the slot before MTP. They wouldn't even have to play musical chairs with any other shows.

However it shakes out I hope they give Rachel Maddow a damn show.

"First since Watergate"

So Obama's opting out of public financing. No real surprise here. He had said he wouldn't, but then started raising cash by the truckload and had second thoughts. This is on balance an excellent thing, but it does require giving John McCain a golden opportunity to turn the sanctimony meter to 11.

I doubt that this is going to be a big deal, but it's kind of unfortunate that the AP (no link in solidarity with bloggers everywhere) is running the subhead "First since Watergate" which is prominently featured on Drudge, and which McCain used in his response. It's just bad luck for Obama that the rule happened to have been implemented in the wake of the original "-gate," as what he's doing, even though he said he wouldn't do it, is perfectly legal.

Unlike, say, what John McCain did when he opted into matching funds (to get the money and bypass the signature requirement) and then tried to get out once his campaign was solvent again. His request wasn't granted, but he continued to spend beyond the limit anyway! Sure, Obama didn't do what he said he'd do, and that's bad. But it's absurd that McCain can still play offense on the issue of campaign finance. He may have broken the McCain-Feingold Act.

FISA Capitulation

Well it looks like retroactive immunity for the telcos is locked and loaded, which is great because we really don't want private companies having any qualms about breaking the law if they're asked to do so by the executive branch. We want the rails to be greased the next time an administration decides it wants to completely flout duly enacted laws but needs the private sector's help in doing so.

Greenwald is all over this, as he has been since the warrantless surveillance program was reported by the NYT in 2004, and a lot of people are joining him in calling on Obama to come out and call this the travesty it is. 

I'd love it if he did. I'm betting that he won't. It's completely fucking wrong, and he knows it, but he may not deem it worth spending any capital on. Caring about the preservation of the Constitution has somehow become the province of the lunatic fringe in American politics, as defined as Daily Kos readers and Ron Paul supporters, and Barack's got a general election to win. C'est la guerre.

Mets win?

When I retired for the evening, Oliver Perez had just coughed up the lead and was threatening to put on one of his patented fireworks displays. But lo, it appears that Damion Easley capped a comeback late in the game, and established that Jerry Manuel knows how to win games in a way that Willie Randolph never did... or at least the first part.

I got the happy recap from Amazin' Avenue, which has improved a lot since last time I was posting regularly. I'm a sucker for win expectancy charts.

Menomena: Evil Bee

I discovered this video on pitchfork.tv, a relatively new site which I frequent partly to scout out the fresh idie jams and partly to build up a tolerance for hipster culture, which is becoming a necessity in my neighborhood. A lot of the content they put up is long-form documentaries on bands which are now defunct but, the viewer learns, used to kick 10x more ass than any current bands ever could.

Anyway these guys are good, and it's apparently pronounced "meh-NOM-eh-NUH."

Night of the Long Knives

Well, it's over. The Mets are kind of a dysfunctional organization, as it turns out. They called Willie in for that meeting which they said publicly was largely because of his "they're after me because I'm black" comments. (His most hilarious evidence: Everyone wants Isaiah Thomas fired, too!). They apparently wanted to assure the "white working class" segment of the fanbase that such insolence would not be tolerated, but they also said Willie was staying, even though that was obviously not going to be true if they kept losing on even a semi-regular basis. The headline I saw this morning was "Mets Handle Randolph Firing Like a Bunch of Cowards", which seems right.

Anyway I'm happy about it because I really don't care who the manager is, just as long as I don't have to hear a lot of manager controversy, and I think Willie was kind of a buffoon and not a great tactician.

MN - Sen

TPM has an update. I hadn't realized that Jesse Ventura was thinking of joining Coleman and Franken in a three-way race. If that were to happen, I wouldn't envy Coleman's campaign manager. How do you gameplan for a Senate race against Stuart Smalley and The Body? Talk about uncharted territory.

"Vote for Norm Coleman: No Speedos, No Jokes"

"Coleman: Because Novelty Wears Off"

"Keep Minnesota Norm-al"

So I guess I do envy Coleman's campaign manager. That'd be fun. Of course, he may very well lose. Franken seems to have stubbed his toe pretty badly with this back taxes thing, and yet he's still well within striking distance in a two-man race. Plus, he's a very smart guy, and he can do earnest without seeming like he's really smirking on the inside. So it would be nice if Ventura sat it out, because the race could be pivotal and it wouldn't redound to Al's benefit to have it turn into a full-blown circus.

Wagner and other reasons for despair

Three blown saves in a row? It's not like they were all one run leads, either.

Things are looking pretty bleak. As good as Wright, Santana and Reyes are, this just doesn't look like a team that's woefully underperforming its potential at 31-34. Beltran has spent too much of his career as a Met making outs to think he's a lock to turn things around. Delgado is done. Even with Pedro ostensibly "back," we're relying on Oliver Perez, Mike Pelfrey, and the Brewers' leftovers to fill out our rotation. As for depth at the power positions? We've started Damion Easley at first base, and some guy from Binghamton who I'd never heard of in left field.

And the Phillies are looking pretty good. I'm not saying they can't come back and make the playoffs, but they need vastly improved production from their non-elite players, and I have a hard time seeing it happening.

In short: Booooo!

Robert Byrd endorses Obama

2008: "Barack Obama is a noble-hearted patriot and humble Christian, and he has my full faith and support."

1945: "Rather I should die a thousand times, and see Old Glory trampled in the dirt never to rise again, than to see this beloved land of ours become degraded by race mongrels, a throwback to the blackest specimen from the wilds."

Flip flopper!


(h/t Booman)

Obama's flair

So Obama's decided to start wearing a flag lapel pin. Not crazy about it. He made a point of explaining why he didn't wear one anymore and I was very pleased at the time. Clearly a net negative politically, but consistent with my belief that the flag pins started getting creepy and/or obnoxious in 2003 at the latest. But now he's going to put all that "true patriotism" stuff behind him and do what has to be done to assure the good people of Pennsylvania that he's not a terrorist.

Is it really that bad? Probably not, but it's not as though his campaign is in dire straits. He didn't have to cave, but he did anyway. It's probably not even worth it politically. It makes him look phony, which is something he can ill afford. Plus, should he win, what would he cave on if he were under really significant pressure?

Sad but true

Marc Ambinder: "For enough Democrats, Clinton represents enough change... Obama represents more change, certainly, but the perfect isn't the enemy of the good when there are other factors to consider."

It's frustrating that so many Democrats believe the party's second-most enthusiastic supporter of the Iraq War represents "enough change." It would seem to call into question just how important the war is as an issue, despite all the polls that until recently had it #1. But people seem to think of her as a foreign policy dove no matter what she does. A poll in December found that Democrats in the three early states trusted her the most on Iraq. The most, despite her obviously disingenuous insistence that she doesn't bear any responsibility for enabling it.

How stupid are Democrats? Polls say very.

Foreign investment: Not that bad

A lot of people seem to be under the impression that every time a Middle Eastern sovereign wealth fund buys a stake in an American bank, the baby Jesus cries.

MoDo's column this morning, entitled "Red, White and Blue Tag Sale," is dedicated entirely to the phenomenon:

China and Arab countries have a staggering amount of treasury securities. And the oil-rich countries are sitting on so many petrodollars that they are looking beyond prestige hotels and fashion labels and taking advantage of the fire sale to buy eye-popping stakes in our major financial institutions.

The Democratic candidates were asked about this at their most recent debate in Las Vegas. Here's Hillary Clinton's response:

Brian, I’m very concerned about this... I think we’ve got to know more about them. They need to be more transparent. We need to have a lot more control over what they do and how they do it. I’d like to see the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund begin to impose these rules, and I want the United States Congress and the Federal Reserve Board to ask these tough questions.

I suppose she deserves credit for being the only candidate who actually answered the question, but boy what a horrible answer. The Federal Reserve? She can't possible think it's really their job to oversee who invests in what.

What I wanted Obama (or Edwards, but fat chance) to say was: "You know what? I actually agree with George Bush on this issue. The bigger problem would be if these funds weren't investing in our banks."

It would be perfect for his strategy of rejecting Bush-hatred, and would have the added benefit of being true. These are large stakes, yes, but they are nowhere near controlling stakes. The most recent Merrill placement didn't have voting rights at all. Meanwhile, our banks really need the money. Beyond the losses they've already taken in mortgage-related securities, they are holding other kinds of debt that's insured by companies like Ambac and MBIA, which are in very real danger of bankruptcy.

Demanding "more transparency"? Yes, let's demand that foreign investors undergo an extensive audit before we give them the privilege of putting billions of dollars in cash into our floundering banking system!

For all the hand-wringing about the size and supposedly favorable terms of these equity deals, Citigroup stock is down 50% in the last six months. Sure, if and when the banks recover as they did in 1992, some of that value will accrue to already-rich oil states, but at the moment they are taking a lot of pain.

In short, while it would make sense to regulate outright acquisition of major banks by government-controlled foreign entities, it makes no sense to make it harder for banks to raise capital wherever they can find it. The underlying problem that created this desperate need for capital had nothing to do with swarthy foreigners, and petrodollars look just like regular dollars on a balance sheet.

"Mets New Leaders in Santana Sweepstakes?"

That's the Yahoo headline I've been waiting all winter to see pop up in my RSS reader.

Instead I've been getting steady doses of Angel Pagan news and the thrilling drama of the Torrealba-Schneider musical chairs at catcher (the result of a Lastings Milledge deal which made them look stupid for not dealing him when he was still a glamor prospect).

Our pitching staff as currently constituted is an utter shambles. I'm on record saying that if we don't get Santana or at least two other decent arms, we will struggle to stay above .500 next year. But mostly what we need to do is get Santana. At any cost. This story reports that Omar was reluctant to trade Gomez and Martinez in the same deal. My response to that is "Tough shit." Pedro, El Duque and John Maine just cannot be counted on to hold down the fort.

Just give them what they want.

Clinton wins NH

Oh man. Catastrophe. Utter catastrophe.

Edwards was my first choice but it's over. He needs to endorse Obama. In his concession speech (which was nearly identical to the one he gave in Iowa) said he would stay in the race because too many people haven't had their votes counted... Sure, but hundreds of thousands of people have had their votes counted and it doesn't look like Edwards is going to win the nomination. Frankly he's also starting to disappoint me with this Poor Natalie Whatever-her-name-is schtick. I know it's merely an exaggerated form of his stump speech, but in a concession speech it repeatedly associates him with pathetic victim figures.

Also, is it the best idea to have one of the male actors on "Desperate Housewives" standing behind him? (Note: I only know this because it was pointed out to me.) If I were a right wing pundit I would definitely be coming up with witty jokes like: There are two desperate housewives on that stage! I bet there's something to that effect over on the Corner right now, but I won't give them the traffic.

Just overheard in Hillary's acceptance speech: "I want you to come join us at HillaryClinton.com!" It is to be an internet phenomenon. Look for a dyed-blond Bill under a white sheet screaming Leave Hillary Alone!

This is just utterly effing depressing.

Do you hear that, Mr. Anderson?

UPDATE:

Matt Yglesias passes along one theory: Hillary was disadvantaged in the Iowa caucuses because married women caucus with their husbands, not wanting to have to sit by themselves for hours. Sounds plausible enough to me.

"Maverick No More?"

Interesting that the first major news outlet to display an ounce of critical thinking about the resurgent McCain campaign is the Wall Street Journal.

Obama's Strategy and the Netroots

From Al Gore’s concession of the 2000 election to today, January 5, 2008, I have been awaiting the day of reckoning for the Republican Party. I was sure it would arrive in November of 2004, but it didn’t. The worst president in American history won re-election, and it appears he will serve out his full two terms, leaving the White House in disgrace but without having been impeached. The scope of the devastation he will leave behind is not merely political, economic or social. It is global, and surely would have been interplanetary had the technology been available to him.

He is widely disliked now, yes, but it’s crucial that the most pernicious theories that he relied upon (making them up where necessary) to advance his agenda have been sufficiently discredited to prevent them from becoming permanent fixtures in American government. That’s what needs to happen, and it hasn’t yet. We need to salt the earth that he sprang from so that nothing ever grows again.

Which is why I have to think long and hard about how I could possibly support a Democratic candidate whose stump speech includes the following:

“You know that we can’t afford four more years of the same divisive food fight in Washington that’s about scoring political points instead of solving problems; that’s about tearing your opponents down instead of lifting this country up.”

As Corrente’s Lambert writes: “What’s going on in politics today is a little bit more complicated — and much more important — than a “divisive food fight.” Indeed, the very phrase itself trivializes both the scale of the problem, and the efforts of those progressives who are fighting for solutions.”

It’s been obvious since well before his campaign began that Barack Obama did not intend to reprise Howard Dean’s role as the insurgent firebrand of the liberal base. It was obvious from his world debut convention speech in 2004 that that was not his style.

A few excerpts:

“And fellow Americans, Democrats, Republicans, Independents, I say to you tonight: We have more work to do.”

“People don't expect government to solve all their problems.”

“John Kerry understands the ideals of community, faith, and service because they’ve defined his life.”

As for the speech’s most searing indictment of Bush:

“When we send our young men and women into harm’s way, we have a solemn obligation not to fudge the numbers or shade the truth about why they’re going, to care for their families while they’re gone, to tend to the soldiers upon their return, and to never ever go to war without enough troops to win the war, secure the peace, and earn the respect of the world.

Now -- Now let me be clear. Let me be clear. We have real enemies in the world. These enemies must be found…”

So Obama’s rules for when (not if) we send our young men and women into harm’s way seem to include not lying about why we’re doing so and making sure we send enough of them. With McGovernite pacifism like that, it’s no wonder he felt compelled to make sure everyone understood he wasn’t saying that we have no real enemies in the world.

Of course, those were not his only objections to the Iraq War, but in a speech endorsing John Kerry, it would have done no good at all to call attention to the fact that unlike the candidate he had opposed the war. So while it was much less a call to arms than a call to hugs, clearly nothing in this speech can be used as evidence that Obama was consciously downplaying his opposition to the Iraq War, or distancing himself from antiwar Democrats.

But then in March 2006, and apparently of his own volition, he endorsed Joe Lieberman in the Connecticut Senate primary:

"The fact of the matter is, I know some in the party have differences with Joe. I'm going to go ahead and say it," Obama told the 1,700-plus party members who gathered in a ballroom at the Connecticut Convention Center for the $175-per-head fundraiser.

"I am absolutely certain Connecticut is going to have the good sense to send Joe Lieberman back to the U.S. Senate so he can continue to serve on our behalf," he said.

It goes without saying that most Democrats do not simply “have differences” with Joe Lieberman, but revile him as the Democrat who not only did the most to lend the all-important bipartisan stamp to the Iraq War, but also repeatedly suggested that those in his party who criticized it, or any other measure Bush deemed necessary, were effectively committing treason. Just one example:

“It’s time for Democrats who distrust President Bush to acknowledge that he will be the commander in chief for three more critical years and that in matters of war we undermine presidential credibility at our nation’s peril.”

Yes, Joe Lieberman said that in December 2005, three months before Barack Obama expressed his certainty that Connecticut (Republicans) would “have the good sense” to re-elect him. Despite the fact that Obama himself knew enough not to trust Bush on Iraq before the war’s stupidity had been demonstrated, and before the manipulation of the evidence for it had been fully exposed.

As evidence that Obama was more cynical office-seeker than man of deep conviction, this was stronger stuff than his appeals to unity and bipartisanship, and when he did it I figured he was at least considering a presidential run (why else, Barack?) and highly suspicious that he would be a candidate I’d want to see win.

On one hand, an Obama candidacy would be “serious,” in the positive sense of being shrewdly run and having a measure of support from the party establishment. But I dreaded the prospect of the campaign becoming Very Serious, which in the liberal blogosphere refers to the apparent inability of war advocates to lose their exalted status among elite opinionmakers, no matter how crazy and flatly wrong their arguments or how disastrous the results they help bring about. Examples include John McCain, Michael O’Hanlon, Joe Klein, Bill Kristol, and of course Joe Lieberman. The “unserious” people include the likely suspects: Howard Dean, Paul Krugman, Ted Kennedy, Dennis Kucinich, Russ Feingold, and anyone else who didn’t have the wisdom, foresight, or moral fiber to argue for the invasion of Iraq.

One article of faith among the Netroots, many of whom are about my age and thus have only really cared about the 2000 and/or 2004 elections, is that Democrats lose because they fear the attacks of the Republican machine. They fear being tarred as profligate spenders or soft on defense, so they go to great lengths to emphasize their moderate economic policies and sound tough on defense, which instead of winning them the approval of the Republican machine, only gives it more fodder for its attacks on Democrats as spineless panderers who don’t stand for anything. A less charitable gloss on this tenet comes from Netroots antagonist and notional Democrat Mickey Kaus: “We don’t have to do anything differently to win elections besides be meaner.” Thus, there is a harmonious convergence between our desire to see Democrats win elections and our attraction towards candidates who openly thirst for Republican blood.

Though Obama never appeared a match for Edwards in this department, it wasn’t until fairly late in his campaign that the he first signs of real tension arose. Paul Krugman attacked Obama’s health care plan (or rather, the way he went about defending it), the Obama camp fired back hard, and things developed. Not many liberals, or people in general, know enough about insurance mandates to have a had a real beef with Obama on the subject. But Paul Krugman is one of them, and if he smells a rat, the savvy Democratic primary candidate does not respond by “Fact Checking” Krugman with previous statements of support for his plan and the accompanying charges of hypocrisy/flip-flopping. At least not one who’s at all concerned about pissing off the liberal blogosphere, which loves Paul Krugman, and now actually includes him.

Steve Benen of the Carpetbagger Report wrote on January 2, the day before the caucuses:

“It’s been brewing for quite a while, but over the last couple of days, a lot of prominent Democratic bloggers have been hammering Barack Obama for using “conservative frames” to advance his candidacy. It’s counter-intuitive, of course, given the circumstances — Obama is a top challenger for the Democratic nomination, so one assumes he’d be running to the left, not the right.”

He then lists a series of examples of Obama appearing to run to the right, with their egregiousness measured in Liebermans. He does not include Obama’s 2006 endorsement of Joe Lieberman, which would have presumably rated highly.

There is a popular notion that while Obama might very well be filled with righteous anger at the Bush administration and Republicans generally, his ascent to the presidency requires that he not show it. Because while America might elect a black man, the odds that we would elect an angry black man are not as good.

Though that sounds at least plausible to me, I also think this is a little convenient for the Netroots. It lets us write off a candidate who, by just about any reading of his biography, career, and legislative record, is very much on board with all the remedies to Bush governance we have been asking for. Why? Because his inability to give us all high fives, even though we’re sure he totally wants to, will doom him in the general. Rather than have to take it personally that he speaks of us as a liability to the party (and actually, the country), we get to attribute such comments to racial self-hatred and blame those damn bigots for keeping a good man (who’s surely as mad as we are, deep down) from speaking his mind. Because it couldn’t be that he’s a committed liberal but at the same time disagrees that the road to the White House goes through the Daily Kos straw poll. We know know that Democrats need a fighter. Someone who, to quote Lambert again, “will destroy the Republican brand and cripple the Conservative Movement.”

Mark Schmitt makes the case that Obama is a man of deep liberal convictions but departs from this Netroots orthodoxy that the most effective way to defeat the Republicans and achieve our policy goals is to rally around the blue flag and launch a frontal assault:

“Suppose you were as non-naïve about it as I am -- but your job wasn't writing about politics, it was running for president? What should you do? In that case, your responsibility is not merely to describe the situation exactly, but to find a way to subvert it. In other words, perhaps we are being too literal in believing that "hope" and bipartisanship are things that Obama naively believes are present and possible, when in fact they are a tactic, a method of subverting and breaking the unified conservative power structure. Claiming the mantle of bipartisanship and national unity, and defining the problem to be solved (e.g. universal health care) puts one in a position of strength, and Republicans would defect from that position at their own risk.”

In his book “The Big Con,” Jon Chait describes a poll taken during the Clintons’ effort to reform health care. Every element of the proposal enjoyed majority support when it was presented individually, but when people were asked about the “Clinton health care plan,” support dropped precipitously as the set of people who support the proposals but oppose the Clintons defected.

This is the problem Obama plans to solve. Democrats hold the popular advantage on virtually every major issue, but tribal loyalty makes otherwise persuadable Republicans less likely to give them a fair hearing. So if a Democrat wants to win power and see their agenda enacted, he or she must not present this agenda as Democratic, or its enactment as a Democratic victory. Because even though the brand is on the rebound after seven years of Bush, it’s still the case that Republicans benefit more from party solidarity than Democrats do. Universal health care is now a more mainstream position than it was in 1993, and the best tactic its few natural opponents have is to cast it as a socialist plot by statist Democrats like Hillary Clinton, because Democratic lawmakers want nothing more than to exert control over your medical choices.

Of course, the Republicans are already using that tactic, and have been from the outset. Those attacks will regardless of who the nominee is. But when John Edwards talks about the issue in terms of corruption and greed, Republican voters will naturally rush to their preferred explanation for/defense of the current system: that free markets are the best path to prosperity. Then they will remember why they like Larry Kudlow so much (he makes them feel good about opposing wealth redistribution), and suddenly they find themselves much less concerned about the plight of the uninsured.

And if it’s Hillary Clinton championing the cause, they don’t even have to bother examining their position. There is simply nothing she could do dispel the narrative that she is back for her vindication, to finally triumph over the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy, but this time with the office to herself.

Obama sets himself apart from the other two by offering the whole country, Bush voters and all, the opportunity to claim universal health care as an achievement of bipartisan cooperation. That whole period where Republicans kept insisting that we have the finest health care system in the world and anyone who says otherwise was a Communist? Water under the bridge. Yesterday’s news, even if the current Republican candidate – no doubt a fine man - happens to still be saying it. Barack Obama isn’t in this to score points.

It’s appealing, but there are a couple things about this that worry me. The first one is best summed up by Atrios: People disagree about stuff. For all the broad (but clearly not universal) rhetorical appeal of blaming the country’s problems not on any one person or party, but on partisanship as such, it’s fundamentally dishonest. It implies the existence of a national consensus that, on all the pressing political issues of the day, does not exist. If there were consensus, then by definition it wouldn’t be a pressing political issue.

In practice, the exultation of bipartisanship can go beyond vacuous and become dangerous . It is just a demand made by the majority to the minority that they put aside their objections and get with the program, in the interest of national harmony. Of course, this doesn’t sound so bad when the minority is defending health insurance companies from legislation which will diminish the profitability of their business. But when the Republicans demanded support for the Iraq War, we needed a lot less eagerness by Democrats to reach across the aisle and a lot more eagerness to find out whether it was necessary.

That’s a fairly widely understood problem with Obama’s rhetoric, which most would agree is deployed to soft-pedal the idea that his “bipartisanship” is ultimately indistinguishable from “support for my policies.” But there is a more serious problem that I see this causing for him should he win the nomination: It will be extremely hard for him to beat on George W. Bush. I’m sorry, but that is a promising avenue of attack. He’s a big piniata with lots of votes in him, but Obama’s strategy depends on leaving him alone and telling people just to think about the future. I don’t think Obama will have trouble steamrolling John McCain, but what if he can’t? As soon as he has to go negative, they’re going to call the Hillary play: “What happened to the politics of hope?”

Also, by presenting himself as a uniquely uniting figure (which he seems to be in fact), he leaves himself more vulnerable to personal attacks. If any skeletons get out, we have a problem. His pitch is very high-minded and sanctimonious. I’m sure he’s smart enough to have background-checked himself extensively by now, but if the campaign is going to be all about him and not about the institutional uprising of the Democratic party, he better be so pure he floats.

But it seems to be working incredibly well. Republicans aren’t going after him at all. Edwards is not attacking him from the left, which on the one hand might be a pretty flatttering complement to the expected Clinton attacks from the right, but on the other hand gives the impression to Edwards supporters that Obama is a tolerable outcome.

I’m still supporting Edwards, but I’ve been convinced that Obama’s electoral strategy is sound, doesn’t involve him running away from liberal policies (just liberal advocates), and has a message which will be very tough for any Republican, especially John McCain, to defeat.


“[I]t must be a peace without victory…. Victory would mean peace forced upon the loser, a victor's terms imposed upon the vanquished. It would be accepted in humiliation, under duress, at an intolerable sacrifice, and would leave a sting, a resentment, a bitter memory upon which terms of peace would rest, not permanently but only as upon quicksand. Only a peace between equals can last. Only a peace the very principle of which is equality and a common participation in a common benefit."

- Woodrow Wilson, 1917