While I’m not as fond of Hillary Clinton’s campaign as I am Barack Obama’s, I’m certainly going to vote for the Democratic nominee. If it turns into an exercise of holding my nose because they can’t keep Mark Penn quiet, then I’ll do that and vote for Clinton.

Josh Marshall over at TPM has been highlighting some emails he’s been receiving from supporters of both Obama and Clinton who have sworn off voting for the other candidate in the general. He has a a thoughtful post up reflecting on these kind of emails and the polarization they imply. In particular, I want to highlight this:

That’s not to say that these small differences are reasons to choose one of the candidates over the other. But to threaten either to sit the election or vote for McCain or vote for Nader if your candidate doesn’t win the nomination shows as clearly as anything that one’s ego-investment in one’s candidate far outstrips one’s interest in public policy and governance. If this really is one’s position after calm second-thought, I see no other way to describe it.

Perspective, folks. A McCain presidency, where we continue to spend far above our means for a war that doesn’t serve our strategic interests is the surest way to accelerate and guarantee the end of America’s hegemony in the world.

I’ve said it before, but perhaps not clearly: George W. Bush’s presidency is responsible for the largest decline in American soft (economic) power in a century, at least. We are going to face a decline in our economic power because we can’t spend within our (rather significant) means. The national debt has nearly doubled during the eight years of the Bush presidency, and will possibly cross $10 trillion by the end of his term.

All of this was preventable. All of this would’ve helped mitigate the end of the housing bubble (though that would’ve been severe anyway), and help us deal with more threats around the world, but instead we’ve spent like mad and run up a huge deficit every year. Then, the government has done its best to hide the deficit in off-budget supplemental spending. The reserve then stopped reporting on the M3 money supply measure (removing, from what I understand, one of the concrete accountings of how much we’re issuing in debt).

The next president is going to have a lot on their hands to prevent further erosion of American soft power. Faced with a choice between a Democrat and a Republican, or specifically Clinton/Obama vs. McCain, the choice is clear. 2008 the right vote is voting D.

Kevin Drum is on a roll today. Here’s the money point:

That’s about the size of it. Today’s New York Times explains Mitch McConnell’s “nyet” strategy for making sure that nothing gets done

…

But why does the media have to play along? It’s nice that the Times ran this story, but it would be nicer if the media simply reported what was happening on a regular basis. I’m not asking for special treatment, just headlines that tell us what’s really going on. If Republicans have adopted a strategy of simply blocking every piece of legislation that makes it to the floor of the Senate — and everyone agrees that they have — then we should be regularly seeing headlines that say “Republicans Block ______ ” There’s nothing partisan about this, it’s just a description of what’s happening. If Democrats block things, they can say that too. But unless the press reports this stuff accurately on a regular basis, the public simply has no idea why nothing is getting done.

The Times story relates the tale of one bill where the Democrats gave up and gave the Republicans what they wanted on that legislation and the Republicans reflexively blocked it before realizing what they did. That’s the state we’re in, but you wouldn’t know that from watching the news or reading the paper.

There are days I wish he would run for President. Almost every day, I wish he were on TV more.

McClatchy puts Republican tactics in pictures:

Read the article, and read Kevin Drum’s post, where I found this:

It’s also worth noting why Republicans are filibustering everything in sight. It’s not because it’s the only way they have of blocking legislation they dislike. After all, a Republican is president. The real reason is a desperate desire to kill popular legislation quietly (the press doesn’t spend much time reporting on routine filibusters) rather than force President Bush to kill popular legislation in full public view (the press does report on presidential vetoes). The problem is that the public tends to be on the side of Democrats when domestic issues actually get some attention, so Republicans benefit by keeping their disagreements as low key as possible. The last thing they need is a bunch of high-profile vetoes that would make it crystal clear exactly what they’re fighting against.

In fact, the only way Democrats could get the press to report the obstruction tactics was to hold that all night session. This has been going on for months and that session was the first thing that prompted stories like this. It’s worse than you realize, because this stuff WILL be campaign rhetoric come next November. A typical example comes from my home state, where Republicans used a threat of filibuster to kill a bill by freshman Rep. Joe Courtney because it might’ve helped his re-election chances come 2008.

This is dysfunctional government and it’s the result of Republicans more interested in keeping their jobs and making money than the health of the nation and good policy. They have to be punished for this, and the only way to do that is to put a few more Dem senators in Congress.

I think a small version of this image will become a permanent addition to FM.

We need more Democrats to make this point, to stay on this message, and to then live up to its ideals:

Not since the days of Watergate, when our judicial system and intelligence community were deployed by the White House in the service of partisan politics, have we seen such abuses. And in many ways, what we have seen from this administration is far more extensive than that scandal.

Partisan politics has infiltrated every level of our federal government – from scientific reports on global warming to emergency management services to the prosecutorial power of the federal government itself. Even the Iraq War – from our entry to the reconstruction – has been thoroughly politicized and manipulated.

…

During the 2000 presidential campaign, Karl Rove, George W. Bush’s political architect, often drew an analogy between that election and the election of 1896, in which adviser Mark Hanna joined forces with many of the plutocrats of that Gilded Age and ushered in a 35-year era of Republican dominance – dominance that didn’t end until the election of Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Without a trace of reserve, George Bush and Karl Rove set out to recreate that earlier era of one-party rule. And they pursued their goal by inverting the very purpose of government.

…

Principals and supporters of the Bush Administration have taken to attributing its myriad failures to mere incompetence. This is an ironic defense for an Administration that once touted President Bush as the first MBA President and boasted about a cabinet filled with CEOs.

…

Once the Iraq War was launched, we all knew how important the reconstruction would be to securing the peace. But politics extended to that country’s reconstruction and the examples are truly shocking:

The person chosen to oversee Iraq’s health care system was the community health director for the former Republican governor of Michigan. The man he replaced was a physician with a master’s degree in public health and post-graduate degrees from Harvard, Yale, Dartmouth and UC-Berkeley and taught at Johns Hopkins School of Public Health where he specialized in disaster response.

A 24 year-old with a background in commercial real estate was hired by the Authority to reopen and manage the Iraqi stock exchange.

The daughter of a prominent neoconservative was tapped to manage Iraq’s $13 billion annual budget.

…

The Administration would like the press and public to believe all of this corruption and cronyism consists of isolated instances and one-offs. But I ask you:

Michael Brown. Scooter Libby. Bernard Kerik. Halliburton. Philip Cooney. David Safavian. Lurita Doan. Matteo Fontana. Sue Ellen Wooldridge. Steven Griles. Alberto Gonzales. FEMA. Iraq intelligence. Iraq reconstruction.

This Hall of Shame is no accident and these are not isolated incidences. It’s a pattern of political appointees who put partisan interests ahead of country – and were told to do so.

…

The saddest legacy of the Bush Administration’s six-year trail of cronyism and corruption is that it contributes to the public’s already cynical view of government. This makes it even more difficult for those of us who believe that the purpose of government is to secure a better future for our country and all of its people. Repairing this sorry legacy is the first challenge our next President will face.

It is the saddest legacy, and we’ve even seen it on FatMixx. “It’s politics” is the lazy way out, and it’s the easy way out. It’s not “politics.” As Rep. Emanuel says in his speech, political appointees aren’t inherently corrupt. There isn’t a requirement that they put party over country. The requirement is actually quite the opposite.

Read the rest of the speech. It is the right point to make to the American people and to the world. We must reclaim our dignity as a country and show that we can rise above partisanship when it comes to the key issues of the day.

I just saw on CNN that Bush is now attacking Congress for delaying funding for the troops as they are sending him bills he claims he will certainly veto. In particular, he is apparently now counting the days since he submitted the supplemental funding request for the Iraq war. Oddly enough, the 57 days that have gone by are apparently a terrible delay now, but the 86 and 119 days the Republican-led 109th Congress took in 2005 and 2006 were worthy of praise.

Bush’s speech reeks of the politics he claims Democrats are bringing to the process. While his defense of his position is entirely framed in political considerations, mentioning Democrats in every sentence, the actions taken by Congress actually create policy. They have implemented a policy shift, a deadline for troop withdrawal with ways to extend if necessary. Let’s debate this. Let’s talk about why those conditions are bad or good.

The President isn’t making any arguments defending his veto plans. There’s no attempt to make an argument that actually makes sense. It’s the same fear-mongering he has relied on since he became President. Unspecified harm to soldiers, unspecified risk to the nation, which must be true simply because he has pronounced it so.

As usual, his arguments are dishonest. The troops have funding until mid-summer. They’re not waiting for anything, as our experiences in 2005 and 2006 show. Bush is a hypocrite and a liar of the worst sort. He makes these claims that are so transparently false. He knows people will catch it, so why does he keep doing it? And since he lies so transparently on these simple, obvious issues, why should we believe anything else he says?

Nancy Pelosi isn’t wasting any time in trying to get Congress to be better behaved in 2007:

Democrats will adopt and then amend the House Rules package tomorrow to ban all travel paid for by lobbyists or organizations that employ lobbyists, require the ethics committee to pre-approve travel paid for by outside groups, enact a total gift ban, and require lawmakers to pay the market cost of flying on a corporate jet, said Democratic staffers and officials with government watchdog groups.

And, because they feel they lost the 2003 Medicare prescription drug benefit vote because GOP leaders held it open for three hours, during which they flipped opponents into the “yes” column, Democrats will include a provision in the rules to prevent any sort of repetition, said aides to incoming Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).

Democrats also will eliminate the practices of changing conference reports after members have signed them and excluding elected members from conference committees.

…

Democrats complained vociferously about the House GOP’s tactics during the past four years, such as preventing Democrats from offering amendments on the House floor, excluding them from conference committees, and holding votes open for much longer than the traditional 15 minutes.

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In addition to revising ethics rules, the Democratic majority on Friday will debate and vote on procedural and budgetary reforms — measures to ensure that members have 24 hours to review legislation, earmark reforms and pay-as-you-go requirements — said senior Democratic aides.

There’s more, read the rest.

You’ll hear Republican whining about a “Minority Bill of Rights” which Nancy Pelosi introduced in 2004. The interesting thing is that it includes most of the same language as the Democrat’s larger ethics reform bill. We’ll see if the Republicans line up to support Pelosi’s larger, more comprehensive version this time. As it stands, they’re just whining about getting the same treatment they gave the Democrats without acknowledging their own duplicity in the matter.

I’m actually impressed and the cynic in me is surprised. I believe the Democrats will be better, but if they’re able to live up to the ideals expressed in this reform package, our government will be more open and our nation better for it.

Over at Belgravia Dispatch, Greg has written a piece on what Rumsfeld’s departure might mean for the next two years. Highly recommend reading the whole thing. He’s optimistic, which makes me a feel a little better. Of course, he also predicted, based on rumblings he was hearing inside the Beltway, that there would be a course change after 2004 (he voted for Bush, silly man). That obviously didn’t happen.

From the piece:

Regardless, what we saw yesterday was American democracy at its finest. We saw the public mount a critically needed intervention, because without it a President well beyond his depth would have likely continued to cast his lot with discredited cocksure ideologues and/or Jacksonian nationalists like Rumsfeld. In Gates, we have an anti-ideologue and a realist. In his role with the Baker-Hamilton commission (a welcome dose of bipartisan sanity in an increasingly moronic Washington, media and blogosphere), he will have had access and been influenced by distinguished peers grappling with what to do next in Iraq in a climate characterized by sober appraisal of the national interest, rather than the agenda-driven hysterical harrumphing afoot in all the usual quarters.

There is a final irony worth noting too, perhaps. With pragmatists and Bush 41 alum like Baker and Gates rising to the fore, the son who marched headstrong into Iraq (like the father wouldn’t after liberating Kuwait) is now being forced to lick his wounds and crawl back towards the protective umbrella of his father’s former advisors. Neo-con exuberances, faith-based adventurism, and utopian aspiration passing for persuasive policy are now necessarily going to be relegated to the back-seat, in favor of essentially needed sobriety and realism (Gates is far closer to Scowcroft, say, than ribald fraudster types spouting off endless inanities at NRO and the Standard). While it is true Cheney is still around (one of his father’s advisors too, but a changed man now no longer respected by his former colleagues in Bush 41), he is a much diminished figure who, to boot, just lost his main ally today.

It is, by far, the most interesting development of this week, that Rumsfeld got the boot after the election night “thumping.” Of course, the move, like everything else this administration does, was timed to shift media attention away from election night losses.

So let’s talk about election night for a bit. Atrios points to an article in the Providence Journal about Chafee’s reaction to his loss. I’ll excerpt the same portion Atrios did:

In his first interview since losing the Republican U.S. Senate seat that has been in his family for three decades, Lincoln D. Chafee yesterday said a lot of people had been coming up to him “and saying, ‘We’re sorry you lost, but glad the Congress switched’ ” from GOP to Democratic Party control.

Asked if deep down, despite his personal disappointment about the outcome of Tuesday’s election, he felt the same way, Chafee looked into the TV cameras and said: “To be honest, yes.”

“When you enact a divisive agenda, don’t talk to the other side, I don’t think that’s good for the country,” Chafee said. At least now, “I think the president is going to have to talk to the Democrats. I think that is going to be good for America.”

If you haven’t been following the race in Rhode Island (and who hasn’t, come on), read the full article. Chafee’s situation was similar to Joe Lieberman’s, in that he was challenged in his party primary. Of course, he was actually attacked on purely ideological grounds for not being “conservative” enough. Lieberman was challenged because he’s a stubborn, arrogant Senator who lost touch with the bulk of his party constituents back home.

That’s what was so interesting about this election cycle. While Ned Lamont lost, his campaign was one of the first big national stories that showed that talking about the war and talking about leaving was the right thing to do. The Democrats fielded strong candidates, among them war veterans (the Fighting Dems), and as the campaign season reached the home stretch, pounded the war message home. The Foley scandal pretty much pushed the rest of the undecideds the Democrats got.

The Lamont campaign showed people we could talk about the war and win elections, and while Lamont didn’t win, his campaign pushed that conversation forward. I wish I had been able to do more this summer to help, but with the wedding and football season back to back, it wasn’t meant to be.

I’m happy he ran, and happy to have supported him. He was a good candidate. A local editorial lays out why his candidacy was important, and this letter from a supports seems to summarize my view.

Now that the Democrats have taken control of the House and Senate, their leadership needs to pause before celebration.

I won’t argue that this change of power isn’t a good thing; it is a fantastic thing. Bush, and his attack on civil rights, will at least get more than a cursory evaluation. The shady dealings of the executive branch will finally see a spot light and maybe some of the secrecy of the administration will be lifted. The blindfolded driver of the Iraq war has quit and maybe someone will be able to steer the car out of the ditch. There in lies the rub.

I think it is quite clear this election was a referendum on the Iraq war. The voters spoke…Iraq is very unpopular. The problem is that the Democrats are now in control of the Iraq conflict…except they aren’t. Bush is still Commander in Chief and he believes in the war. Iraq is a mess of sectarian violence with multiple sides and multiple agendas. We can’t pull out without the whole thing erupting and we can’t stay without a huge cost in money and lives. The Dems have two years to “fix” Iraq. I’m not sure it is possible at this point, and certainly not without committing MORE troops to the conflict.

Domestically, Americans still have a fear of terrorism. The Bush administration has used the threat of terrorist attacks in the US as a powerful motivator to convince Americans to back the war. Even mentions of scaling back the War in Iraq yield accusations of being “soft on terror.” I fear that one domestic terrorism incident, something that is all too likely to occur eventually, regardless of Iraq war, will become a backlash against the Democrats in power, resulting in huge losses in Congress and worse, huges losses of civil liberties.

Finally with all the calls of “bipartisanship” I’ve heard over the last few days, I can’t help but laugh. Days ago there were accusations and name calling from both sides. Today, everyone just wants to get along. The problem for the Democratic leadership is that most of the Republicans who were replaced were moderate, left leaning Republicans. Some who replaced them were more conservative, right leaning Democrats…the so called “Blue Dog” Democrats. While the leadership may have the majority by the numbers, they may find that they don’t have the votes when push comes to shove. Not to mention that President Bush still has the golden power of veto.

These are interesting times and I hope, for the sake of our civil liberties, the Democrats are able to fulfill their agenda. I also hope that for the sake of bipartisanship and keeping a hold of Congress, they don’t fall in line behind President’s simple minded view of security and the world.

The Democrats need to take action. I just fear that there is no action that won’t spell disaster. I also hope that I’m just being pessimistic. Fortunately, world events change moment by moment. Tomorrow will likely bring some new event or issue that will be the hot button topic for the next election.

initial reaction, eh. I think I’m too wired into political news to be surprised by this. I also wish they had flipped the order so that they mentioned up front that Bush flip-flopped… the clips go on too long before getting to the punchline.

Hope to see it on TV soon.