Real Withdrawal

Count me among those liberals who don't like the sound of 50,000 US troops in Iraq after the so-called "withdrawal." President Obama has to listen to the military leaders and make tough decisions, and I'll keep supporting him through this, but 50,000 troops in Iraq is 50,000 too much. But then, I don't think that we should have any troops garrisoned in Germany, or Japan. I don't think that present-day Russia could occupy Finland, let alone Poland, let alone Austria; the idea is simply ridiculous. Anyway, Europe needs to handle its own security. North Korea is even more ridiculous to consider a threat. What I want for the USA is what Canada and Australia have: a prosperous Anglophone democracy that is not considered to be, and does not consider itself to be, at the center of world affairs. I don't want to be at the center of world affairs.

Not only that: it's dangerous and against our interests for the US to be the world's biggest arms dealer. We need to get out of the business. Live by the sword...we don't need this. We don't need to be spending more on the military than all of our allies combined. It's time to stand down.

Meanwhile, speaking of arms races, let me address Michelle Obama's sleeveless dress. I know nothing about sleeveless dresses, but I do know what I like. Strong shoulders, strong arms, strong back: magnificent. That's what a First Lady should look like.

Finally, as to taxes: go get those rich people! That alone is worth my vote. Redistribute the wealth! I'm all for it.

A Good Day for Obama

I'm home today and I've had the TV on, first Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner's press conference and then President Obama's town hall meeting in Ft. Myers that just concluded. I'm not going to go into substance, just want to make some observations. I thought Geithner was impressive. He comes across as a hard-charger, and I thought he was surprisingly articulate for someone unaccustomed to public performance (he did use a teleprompter). Meanwhile Obama was great. He's finding his stride. They dominated the news cycle entirely. They're on the offensive. What I liked best was all the explaining, all the respect for the public's intelligence. I'm a little tired of Bush-flaying, time to move on, but compare Obama's performance, with an unselected crowd in a county that voted for McCain, with any comparable performance by Bush. No comparison. Night and day. Smart people: Allah be praised.

Down to the Hard Core

Republicans these days like to claim that the Bush-Cheney administration wasn't really a conservative Republican administration at all, a sweaty, desperate maneuver that may nonetheless serve some function at least by helping some of them go on. The rest of us might do well to note that the last administration was full-speed ahead on tax cuts and deregulation as a way to strengthen the economy for the past eight long years, and that the result of this strategy was ever-more disparity between the rich and what used to be called "the poor" but what we might as well now call "everybody else," and the current position of the economy, butt-up in the ditch. Thus one can only shake one's head in disbelief at the latest soundbite coming from the congressional Republicans, that their stimulus proposal contains "more job-creation" than the Democrats', a slogan based on the entirely discredited notion that giving all the money to rich people is merely efficient administration and not willful sabotage of the government, a project they enthusiastically support when they think no one is listening.

Meanwhile President Obama was probably making a rare slip into snarkyness when he tossed off the line that Republicans shouldn't just sit around listening to Rush Limbaugh, and I imagine Obama regretted his loose tongue this past week as Mr. Limbaugh has enjoyed the (as everyone is saying) "ka-ching" cachet of being singled out in this way. But after a couple days of this, I'm wondering: maybe it's not such a bad idea if the conservative movement is identified in the public eye with Rush. His followers are legion, but not that big of a legion. When he says that everyone is expected to bend over and grab their ankles because Obama is black (and lord knows nobody ever criticizes black people, right?), if everyone else is paying attention we might start to notice that there are bigger legions out there. Limbaugh as titular head of the conservatives: I find that that grows on me.

From Baseball to Basketball

George W. Bush was a baseball president. Understanding baseball was the key to understanding his methods. In baseball you have to maintain consistency over hundreds of innings, racking up statistical victories. Steady relentlessness is everything, and the view is long. Barack Obama is a basketball president. In basketball you set up the play in a fast-moving situation, looking a few steps ahead.

Applying this to the wrangling about the stimulus package, what we have today is a Democratic president who is politically armed to the teeth, with the country behind him, the party heavyweights gathered close, and a legislative majority, and he's the one making nicey-nice and heading up to the Hill. And we've got the Republicans, dangerously exposed and vulnerable, and they're the ones complaining and being obstreperous. That sure looks like a set-up to me.

This isn't 1993

Barack Obama has outlined an ambitious agenda for his first "one hundred days," the initial months of a presidency when new presidents traditionally exploit their mandate, their "honeymoon," and the political difficulty of attacking a president who still enjoys the hopeful expectations of the electorate. This agenda includes closing Guantanamo, drawing down the troops in Iraq, and moving on a much larger bailout of the economy than anyone has ever seen. This week, perhaps because it was felt that something ought to be presented for the gay community to atone for the Rick Warren flap, we hear that Obama intends to rescind the "don't ask, don't tell" policy regarding gay military personnel.

This item invites reminiscence of the early days of the Clinton administration. Clinton tried to establish a gay-tolerant military. He also (with the prominent participation of his wife) tried to move forward on an ambitious reform of health insurance and health care. Notoriously Clinton met with failure on these and other early initiatives. There was even a Time magazine cover of the "incredible shrinking president." Some speculated that he would be altogether unable to govern. Today, mindful of this history, some are cautioning that Obama should go slow. I think that Obama is nothing if not measured, but more importantly there are huge differences in the political circumstances of 2009 as compared to 1993.

Bill Clinton won the election of 1992 by a plurality, splitting the vote with Bush and Perot. He managed to win the Democratic nomination that year largely because more senior Democratic politicians (Mario Cuomo for example) made the calculation that the incumbent Republican would win reelection after Reagan's domination of the previous three elections. Three years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, public confidence in Republican foreign policy was high: "triumphalism" was the neologism of the day. Clinton and his ally Al Gore were Democratic Party upstarts. Their strategy of staking out centrist positions squeaked them into office but did not endear them to the Democratic establishment or to the liberal electorate. They were on their own.

Today the situation is entirely different. The incoming Democrat has been elected with one of the biggest electoral vote margins of modern times. The outgoing administration leaves in public disgrace, with the Republican Party bleeding voters. Both the economy and US foreign policy are widely perceived as in critical condition. Obama has packed his incoming administration with the most powerful Democratic politicians in the country and with officials with deep connections to the Congress. There is token resistance to a stimulus package from some right-wing backbenchers, otherwise everyone wants to get in on the action. Resisting Obama is, for the moment at least, politically unwise in the extreme.

Under these circumstances Obama, if he continues to be as adroit as he has been so far, ought to have little trouble with, for example, closing Guantanamo and reaffirming our commitment to the Geneva Conventions. I'd say he can still pile a little more onto his plate. Here's my suggestion: unilaterally normalize relations with Cuba, rescind the blockade, rescind Helms-Burton. If Obama were to do that, Cuba would be completely transformed within twelve months: no more Cuban Communist Party, no more loss of business to the Canadians, Spanish, Japanese and Argentines that would more sensibly be handled by US farmers and business. I don't see how anyone could stop this.

0-2 for Harry Reid

Harry Reid badly miscalculated when he tried to punish Joe Lieberman for supporting John McCain and for speaking at the Republican Convention. In the end the Senate majority leader had to stand by Senator Lieberman's side before the cameras while Joe smilingly explained that he had been given everything he wanted. This week Sen. Reid appears to have done it again, putting his foot down that Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich could not succeed in appointing Roland Burris to fill the remaining two years of Barack Obama's senate seat, as it now appears he may.

There are two questions with which I am not interested today: First, I don't care to go after Harry Reid except on one particular point. Secondly and more importantly, there is a legitimate issue as to whether Roland Burris is likely to be a good senator, but this issue is mitigated by the fact that a) it's impossible to know such a thing for certain and b) in two years the voters will be able to make the choice for themselves.

I think that the issue with Harry Reid here is an attitude that party bosses in Washington are entitled to power in state politics. On the right the idea of "states' rights" is a shibboleth (not an incoherent one) for conservativism shading off into libertarianism shading off into racist and fascist elements. But progressive political reform also confronts the centralization of power and loss of respect for voters.

The voters of Connecticut, for example, took the really extraordinary step of re-electing Joe Lieberman as an independent after he had lost the Democratic senate primary: as clear a political mandate as one could have. You're welcome to be his ally, or not. In the Illinois case, Gov. Blagojevich is not only under no indictment as this is written, he also continues to be the democratically elected governor of Illinois. His right to a legal process is absolute. The state legislature may or may not be able to impeach him. But all the party leadership in Washington needs to remember is this: the Illinois state government will send their choice for senator when they have determined who that will be. There is a process, and no reason to think that the process needs help. Just as an independent senator doesn't need guidance from party elders.

Bush's Last Day Party

So it's official we're going to have a Bush's Last Day Party at our house on Jan. 20th. I just signed up to make it a host party for MoveOn.org. We already have our life-sized Barack standup for pictures, and I'm devising a "Pin the Donkey on the Ass" game with prizes. Plus beer 'cause Barack is Irish.

Don't Hurt the Shoe Guy

If you threw a shoe at Saddam Hussein your whole family would have been tortured to death. It's really important that everybody gets it that you can throw a shoe at the president of the United States and live to tell the tale. That's why I signed up as a fan of the shoe-throwing guy on Facebook. Today we're hearing reporting that people overheard his being beaten, that he has broken ribs, and so forth. Big mistake. President Bush needs to make sure that the shoe-throwing guy isn't harmed. Unfortunately Bush has spent the last eight years trying to turn the US into Paraguay, so I'm not optimistic.

Caroline, Be a Kennedy, Not a Bush

I always thought it was fitting that George W. Bush was appointed President by the Supreme Court in 2000. It's just so declasse to be elected by popular vote don't you know, so much germ exposure, and do you know some of those people have never even traveled abroad (er...never mind). All the good stuff - RNC chairman, CIA director, baseball commissioner - these are appointive posts.

The case of the Bushies comes to mind this week with the news that Caroline Kennedy has announced that she is actively seeking New York Governor Paterson's appointment to the Senate seat being vacated by Hillary Clinton. It's one thing to announce that one is running for election. That is the first appeal in a campaign of appeals to the voters, who are many. But to announce that one is running for appointment is not an appeal to the appointer, who is one. You appeal to one person, preferably, in person. A public announcement puts pressure on the appointer, enough so that this may have been a miscalculation. Maybe Paterson will feel obliged to decline to appoint her so as not to appear to have caved in. (And Paterson himself has not ever been elected governor: curiouser and curiouser.)

Another curious thing is the kind of boutique nature of this Senate seat since the patently carpet-bagging Hillary Clinton moved to New York to campaign for it in 2001 (granting she did an exemplary job by all reports). Caroline Kennedy is someone who, like Hillary Clinton, might easily be elected to this Senate seat by the voters of New York on the basis of associations, popularity and name-recognition. But as a potential appointee she conspicuously lacks any formal qualifications, and the governor, presumably, is supposed to appoint a professional caretaker (a politically adventitious one of course) to fill the seat until the next election. I think it would be great to have Caroline Kennedy in the Senate, but there are fundamental procedural problems here that she may not overcome.

(Three days later: sure enough, now some are in favor of Kennedy and some opposed: Cuomo had more support in a poll reported on MSNBC last night. So now Paterson will take a political hit whether he appoints her or not, through no fault of his own. If I were him I'd be mad. And I wouldn't appoint her.)

GOP's Last Stand?

The Senate Republicans, in their theological zeal to avoid developing a national automobile industry policy of any kind, have voted to scatter our automobile industry to the winds, and the workers be damned. Make no mistake that under bankruptcy it will be the salaried workers who get the shaft. Pensions, health insurance, stock options and everything else they have will be on the judge's block. It is Republican opinion that bankruptcy is the best way to get at the union, which is obviously the source of all the problems, representing as unions do today some five percent of American workers, and espousing such radical notions as that workers worldwide should not be forced to accept wages reflecting the labor market in, say, Bangladesh.

What is striking is that the Senate GOP makes this stand in the teeth of dire warnings from all quarters: Bush, Obama, Wall Street, Senate Democrats and everyone else within shouting distance have warned of the consequences of abandoning hundreds of thousands of workers and an industrial plant stretching across the Great Lakes. It's almost a ritual flaming out of the Republicans, a kind of noble hari-kari on the ruins of Reaganismo. Because it is now the old guard of the "movement" conservative Republicans in the Senate who will now possibly be remembered as, if not the party that shot down the American auto industry, at least the party responsible for the distribution of suffering when the bills came due: the politically culpable party.

Myths of Chicago

I'm not buying the "corrupt Chicago" line about Rod Blagojevich's outlandish flameout. East Coast elites would not hesitate to point out that Albany is the problem in New York state politics, not NYC. Chicago municipal politics is a stepping stone to national politics in its own right and its elite is a national elite (the Daley family, Jacksons Rev. and Jr.,Harold Washington etc). Blagojevich is a reflection of an old political-machine culture, to be sure, but look to Springfield for the problem and count your blessings that you've got Chicago.

Game of Chance

The recount in the senate race in Minnesota gives me another opportunity to make a point that I thought was important during the Florida electoral debacle of 2000. In 2000 the lawyers for the two parties were quick to step in and define the process as a legal one between the parties: may the best lawyer win. In the end the Supreme Court essentially appointed Bush, acting out of a well-intentioned but misguided sense of duty to resolve the crisis. The issue here as I see it is about who the interested party is, and I would argue that that party is the electorate, not the political parties.

The fact is that in a state-wide vote involving hundreds of thousands and even millions of votes, any margin in the three digits is a statistical tie. In that circumstance there literally is no truth about who won the election. The phrase "margin of error" refers to the logical impossibility of establishing, within such a narrow margin, which candidate actually received the majority of votes. While Minnesota has a good reputation for clean and fair processes, I don't think that a recount process that ignores the problem of the margin of error is in the best interests of the voters, considered generically. The political point is that the interests of the voters considered as a group is not the same as the interests of either of the parties.

Say I voted for Franken (or Gore) and my neighbor voted for Coleman (or Bush). The outcome is a statistical tie within the margin of error. At that point my neighbor and I have an equal right to satisfaction. That is, every voter, granting that the electoral process has not determined the winner (it is a tie), deserves an equal chance of satisfaction as that of every other voter: we are not the political parties, we are sovereign individual voters. The fair thing to do is to flip a coin (or any other equivalently random process). That way my neighbor and I enjoy equal chances of satisfaction, uncorrupted by the vagaries of a highly politicized legal process. It doesn't matter what the parties want: the parties are not sovereign. The voters are sovereign, not at all the same thing. That is why a game of chance is actually the most rational way to decide an election when the vote has fallen within the margin of error.

As of this evening my guy, Al Franken, is up by about 600 votes. Doesn't matter. Flip a coin.

Bring Back the State Department

A perspicuous column by David Brooks in today's NYT inspires me to weigh in at this moment when the incoming administration will have an opportunity to make some basic reforms not only of US foreign policy, but of the foreign policy apparatus itself.
One of the most institutionally destructive episodes in United States history was the evisceration of the State Department in the period from the onset of the Cold War during the Truman Administration through the "loss" of China in 1948 and the subsequent McCarthyist witch hunts for "communists" in government in the early 1950s. The State Department, long a preserve of professional, career diplomats, linguists and scholars, became a favorite whipping-boy of politicians of the time who painted Foggy Bottom as elitist, intellectual, internationalist and not to be trusted. The by-the-numbers worldview of the Cold War painted every regional conflict as a chess piece in a strategic struggle between East and West, and every regime around the world as a proxy of one side or the other. Under those circumstances professional diplomats, always unpopular in an anti-intellectual, populist country, became unacceptably inconvenient as any nuance of understanding was a rough spot to be smoothed and covered over with Cold War rhetoric.
This minimalist worldview led to the partition of Vietnam after democratic processes in that country produced results inconvenient to Washington's Cold Warriors, and to American support for dictators of the worst sort around the world. It also led to the eclipse of the professional State Department in favor of the unbridled Imperial Presidency, with its own in-house foreign policy apparatus under the new, Orwellian language of "national security." Today we are left with a State Department with little or no power compared to the National Security Council and the Defense Department, one that is woefully incompetent in the areas of language and intelligence (broadly construed, as it should be, to include historical and cultural expertise).
Bottom line: US foreign policy has long been politicized, with no independent, professional voices allowed to be heard in the White House.
In an earlier post I recommended that NATO be disbanded as we evolve a new set of trans-Atlantic security arrangements, ones that do not assume a forward role for the US particularly in matters pertaining to European security. I also think that the National Security Council and the post of National Security Adviser are relics of the Cold War era. Let's streamline and professionalize our government and get back to the days when a professional State Department gave advice that was independent and professional (admittedly State like all parts of government has always had a degree of politicization; maybe we can do better).
While we're on the topic, I think that the choice of Hillary Clinton for Secretary of State is a good one. Now the Clinton's fortunes are tied to Obama's, but more than that Obama has put the interests of the country first: far from mixing the message, the presence of the Clintons (plural) as US foreign policy players sends the message to foreign leaders that the US government is unified. That the vice-president-elect is the former chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee amplifies this effect even more.

Barac O'Bama of Moneygall

Cabinetry

Obama cabinetry that is. Obama has invoked Lincoln as an executive role model for forming a cabinet for a long time. Lincoln famously put his chief political rivals in his cabinet - William Seward to Secretary of State, Salmon Chase to Secretary of the Treasury and Edwin Stanton to Secretary of War - as immortalized by a brilliant series of novels by Gore Vidal, a superbly-timed book by underrated public intellectual Doris Kearns Goodwin and books innumerable. There are a number of things to be said for this kind of approach. One's enemies are kept close, their fortunes yolked to yours. Ideally they altogether cease to be enemies as the national project moves forward, but idealizations are idealizations. I wouldn't take either the cynical view or the lotus-eating view. It looks to me that our man is stocking up on political power, both within the Democratic Party and beyond, and in this respect is indeed closer to the Lincoln model than the other model currently on offer, the Kennedy "best and the brightest" model. His cabinet decisions so far have been lining up political heavyweights for the battling ahead.
I think that this a good thing. What I liked about John Edwards 2.0 was his understanding that reform of government policies involving the automotive, banking, financial, insurance, medical, pharmaceutical and oil and gas industries would necessarily involve fights that some would win and others lose, and that some of these antagonists are very powerful and will not concede anything easily. We do need to revalue and reemphasize intelligence and analysis, as the Kennedy brothers consciously tried to do after the sleepy 50s, but the situation calls for some tough political battling, and in turning to Clinton, Daschle, Emanuel and such Obama is clearly shopping for political firepower.
An example of the battle that is unfolding right now is the fight over how to protect the automotive industry. Although many advocates of bankruptcy are sincere in their good intentions for the industry, it is true that taking that course would be hugely advantageous to the stockholders at the expense of the workers. I say, money comes with strings attached. The US does indeed have an interest in a population of several hundred thousands of workers, many of them highly skilled and experienced as machinists, electricians and for many other trades, not to mention a huge physical plant for manufacturing and transportation that extends from western Pennsylvania to Minnesota. Not only that, but auto markets worldwide are expected to greatly expand as demand rises from developing countries in Asia and elsewhere, where most consumers want cheap, efficient, reliable cars. The US ought to do what is in the best interests of the country, and that is to take this opportunity to rebuild the auto industry from the ground up. An American auto industry that had a cultish devotion to energy conservation, minimizing the carbon footprint, capitalizing on waste flows, fuel efficiency and economy would be a very formidable industry internationally. I suspect that it would not be the younger generation of workers who would resist such a cultural shift, but the older managers and owners. Just a hunch. Meanwhile it is an ideal opportunity to design such a retooling and reform with a new labor dispensation in terms of pensions and above all health insurance.
Neither management types nor union types much like this kind of liberal ranting from the blogosphere, I know, but calm down: all of these things can be achieved well short of any sort of nationalizing or union-busting or choose your poison. It is not unreasonable to point out the obvious outlines of a national manufacturing policy, and liquidity should not simply be pumped out into the monetary ocean. Companies that have the will to adapt should be helped. In fact, the US automobile industry has demonstrated great adaptability in the past. At the same time, Obama's need to amass some political authority could not be more clear.

George W. Bush is a True Conservative

"He ran as a conservative," goes the line from the Republican Party apologists, "but he didn't govern as one." All those people who supported him for reelection in 2004 can't wait to throw him over the side now. The claim is that the massive spending and resulting cosmological debt-hole are, by definition, non-conservative. Conservatives stand for fiscal responsibility, right? And if this administration ends in fiscal disaster that means, by definition, that this is a non-conservative administration, right?
Not so fast. Here are three ways in which Bush Administration spending, and the resultant problems, are straightforward products of conservative thinking:
1) The biggest elephant in the room is military spending. All empires, from the Athenians and Caesarean Romans of antiquity to the Spanish and British Empires, have declined when their international commitments, and therefore their military burdens, broke their banks. It's like any other burst of energy in nature, the bubble expands until the energy is spent. There is no sane reason for the United States to sustain the current level of military spending. It doesn't make us safer. We must stand down as gendarme of global security. Conservatives (who have morphed over the decades since WWII into messianic imperialists) simply refuse to face the fact that the foreign entanglements that Jefferson warned about, and the economic and social militarization that Eisenhower warned us about, are not sustainable under contemporary economic reality. Today's conservatives either think that the US can maintain global military supremacy for all time (in denial about the plain fact that all things come to be and pass away), or worse, think that the US is destined to fulfill Biblical "end times" prophecy. George W. Bush isn't their problem, they are our country's problem.
2) Conservatives espouse "fiscal responsibility" in only the narrowest, most selective sense. They mean, for the most part, that the government ought not to fund programs that help the poor, that protect the environment, that support public and higher education, and so on. Pro-business conservatives have an economic model that is predicated on consumer spending. That nice check for $1,200 or so that you got last year? You were supposed to go down to the mall and spend it. That was the idea. That people ought not to consume more than they need, that saving is a virtue, that usury is a moral wrong: none of that is any part of contemporary conservative philosophy. "Fiscal responsibility" is not a real philosophy for conservatives: it's a code for limiting the size and role of government. Thus the question as to whether helping the poor, protecting the environment, supporting education might actually be fiscally responsible policies in the long run has no interest for them. Deregulation of the financial industry is itself a deeply perverse expression of "responsibility," as conservatives seek to lessen, not maintain, financial protection for ordinary citizens. Their resistance to progressive taxation is also not an instance of "fiscal responsibility," rather it is an expression of faith in supply-side economics.
3) The current administration has very self-consciously spent the federal government into the ground, as a way of weakening and diminishing it. Whether or not that is a good goal, consider the hypocrisy of conservatives who now run away from this project, that they supported in the most full-throated way while they were supporting Bush and Cheney through two elections, much as all the macho talk about how the federal government ought not be in the business of paying for regional disasters was forgotten in the face of the Hurricane Katrina disaster. Now they want to tell us that these are not conservative policies after all. Nonsense.

The Amazing Lieberman

I can't say I much care for Joe Lieberman's foreign policy views. He would, by all appearances, gladly court global war and human catastrophe on an historic scale in the pursuit of his support for Israel. He is hostile to any attempt to reach out diplomatically or economically to the Palestinians, whose very existence he questions. He thinks, for reasons that elude me, that escalation of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan would further Israel's interests, and he advocates attacking Iran for the same reason, although what would happen next if the US attacked Iran is anybody's nightmare: it would be a classic instance of the dog catching the car. He is an Israeli defense hawk more belligerent than majority public opinion in Israel itself, sitting in the United States Senate. And he pursues this apocalyptic agenda at the expense of any other political interests he may have: amazingly enough, this is someone who votes with the Democrats 90 percent of the time. You read that right.
Which brings me to my reason for discussing him today: you've got to love the audacious political career that this man has charted for himself. He was Al Gore's vice-presidential candidate in 2000, the first Jew on a national ticket (and a practicing Orthodox Jew at that). In that election, Lieberman's credentials as a foreign policy hawk and (remember?) an avatar of "values" were considered to be an asset to the ticket. And of course he was very nearly elected. Then, by 2006, anti-war sentiment in the Democratic Party had built up such a head of steam that Lieberman lost the Connecticut Democratic primary for nomination to the Senate to the anti-war candidate Ned Lamont. At that point, politics being what it is, his old cronies (ie Chris Dodd) went over to campaigning against him. But wait: the Republican candidate was a disaster, and the meltdown of that campaign freed up enough conservative voters that Lieberman was elected as an independent. That was, I thought, tip-your-hat sort of stuff: now Lieberman could do anything he wanted, and that included continuing to caucus with the Democrats. If that were the end of the story it would be a great story.
But it goes on! Lieberman, caucusing with the Democrats and continuing to vote with the Democratics on most Senate votes, went out on the stump for McCain in the 2008 election. He didn't just say "I support McCain." He traveled around at McCain's elbow for months, whispering handler's instructions in his ear, and the final audacity was to go to the GOP convention in Minneapolis and address the delegates. At which point many Democrats said OK, you've pushed us too far, you're out. But wait: the Dems didn't get the 60-seat majority they needed to have a veto-proof Senate (and there will be battling over filibusters as well). So Lieberman goes on. Harry Reid talked tough about throwing him out as Homeland Security chairman, but when their post-election meeting finally came it was Lieberman who was calling the shots, walking away from the meeting saying that the Majority Leader's propositions were "unacceptable." And there we sit. After all, Lieberman is an independent, and not only that but it was the Party, not him, that declined to put him forward as the Democrat senator from Connecticut. He asked for the nomination.
No, I don't like a messianic Middle East hawk. Don't like that one bit. But the career? Brilliant. At some point you've just got to hand it to the guy.

Inventory of the Goodies

Friday night Sophia went trick-or-treating for the first time, it was great to see her carefully sorting through her bag of goodies like I remember doing as a kid. Last night lifelong liberal Democrats like me got a treat, not a trick, for once and I've done a little sorting today myself.
State by state, the news is better than I thought it was last night. All three contested Rocky Mountain states, Colorado, New Mexico and Nevada, went for Obama. New Mexico was expected, Colorado was in play the whole campaign, Nevada is striking and reflects demographic changes in the region. One of the McCain campaign's scenarios was to flip the Rocky Mountain states, didn't happen. That's a new map, I voted for Jerry Brown in 1992 in the Colorado caucus when Gov. Moonbeam won it, 16 years later we've got a growing, politically fascinating region that the Democrats should fight for. Indiana is maybe the single biggest win for the Democrats, a true upset and Obama did it with increased turnout by urban African-American voters combined with white working class support: it wasn't suburban liberals, it was a brilliant campaign by Obama and the 50-state strategy of the grossly underestimated Howard Dean. Obama won in Florida and Virginia, and appears to have won North Carolina by a slim, 5-digit margin. As recently as August the pundits were out there saying that the Democrats had no chance in Florida. Three big southern states for the black Democrat and his Yankee running mate.
Which brings me to the big picture. This time around, the Democrats won California, New York, Illinois, as usual. They also took Florida. If they can build on the win in Florida, the Republicans are left with: Texas. One big state. And that's not enough. Not only that, but Latino voters went big for Obama. That was a real unknown (like so many things that we could only know by actually having a black candidate for President). There were real indications that Latino voters wouldn't go for a black candidate, that the two ethnic identities could be played against each other (by the Republican Party: who else?). Well no: Latinos went for Obama by 73 percent in Colorado, 76 percent in Nevada, 69 percent in New Mexico, 57 percent in Florida. And have you heard? There are lots of Latinos living in Texas! I've heard it on good authority!

Don't Forget Jesse Jackson, Don't Forget 1988

Watchin' TV and Cookin' Food on Election Night

6:55 PM: Collateral Damage: Pat Buchanan (of course I'm watching MSNBC, I'll flip around later) says that people have invested high expectations in Obama, but do they really know what they're getting in terms of policy agenda? Buchanan's purpose is to question a liberal mandate, but I think also that the fact that the great mass of these people about to vote for Obama aren't political animals means that the McCain-Palin campaign managed to insult a lot more people than they were aiming at with all these attacks on socialism, anti-Americanism and so forth. We were all asked to accept the suggestion that the sitting Speaker of the House, the sitting Senate Majority Leader, and the Presidential and Vice-Presidential nominees of the Democratic Party, as well as large geographic swathes of the country, were anti-American, socialist, etc. Sarah Palin, by the way, advertised herself as the "first Christian" mayor of Wasilla, unlike, say, the Lutheran man she displaced for that position. Bullies insult people, but they need to know when to stop. To put it in terms that the GOP nominee might understand: you were dropping too much ordnance. Too much collateral damage. Sound familiar?
7:39 PM Watch Where You Aim That Thing: Howard Fineman reports on MSNBC that African-American voter turnout is up everywhere that the Pennsylvania state GOP ran Reverend Wright ads this week. (The McCain campaign wasn't running them.)
Indiana (admittedly it's a tiny number of precincts reporting) is going for Obama. Another Pat Buchanan moment earlier today was when he started explaining one possible McCain scenario: "Say McCain wins Indiana and..." Say he wins Indiana? If McCain loses Indiana it's the end of civilization as we know it. Meanwhile I just flipped, as promised, over to Fox and glory be: they're reporting from the same planet as everybody else. Much better graphics, even.
8:24 PM (7:24 Eastern, remember): Both Maine and New Hampshire showing 67% for Obama. Iowa isn't the only place where a whole lot of white people are voting for Obama. New Hampshire is significant as a place that's been very kind to John McCain over the years. Meanwhile Indiana and Virginia are showing for McCain. Maybe deciding to do this running post thing will turn out to be more dramatic than I thought. I hope not.
10:39/9:39 Eastern: Fox has called Pennsylvania and Ohio for Obama. By my calculations McCain can't win without Pennsylvania. Anna K. just called all excited, but also reminding that it's not over. I don't think that any unexpected states are going to flip either way, but Obama is well ahead in Florida, Virginia isn't called yet and interestingly North Carolina is actually looking stronger for Obama than Virginia. Meanwhile Louis Fortuno has won the governer's race here, and that means that the whole university administration will be replaced, which under the circumstances is good news for us professors. I'll stay up a little later but this does look like a wrap - because no surprises either way. Hundreds of thousands of people gathering along the river in Chicago, I wish we were there.
Chris Matthews reports that there are as of tonight no Republican congressmen (or women) in New England. Not a one. Not that Christopher Shays was a bad guy.