I tried to watch the State of the Union Address from a Washington hotel bar last night, but could barely hear it through the noise of drinkers who were completely ignoring the tube. And the fact that even in Political JunkieLand, people were ignoring the speech, probably tells you everything you need to note about the impact of this SOTU.This is at least the second SOTU in a row where the White House kept signalling in advance that Bush was going to unleash some big, meaty domestic proposals. Instead, we got a sentence on climate change, a vague endorsement of better fuel efficiency standards, and a content-free call for reauthorizing No Child Left Behind. The one interesting idea in the speech–for limiting the tax subsidy for Cadillac employer-sponsored health plans and using the savings to subsidize health insurance for everyone else–was offset by dollops of the usual conservative pablum about Health Savings Accounts and medical malpractice lawsuit limits.I admit my attention was wandering during the Iraq sections of the speech, but I heard enough to wonder why the White House thought that repeating the same arguments Bush made during his recent prime-time speech on the subject was going to work any better than it did the first time around.Most of all, the speech reminded me of that moment back in 1995 when Republicans were calling Bill Clinton “irrelevant.” It didn’t turn out that way for Clinton, but it’s increasingly true of Bush.If Bush was largely wasting his breath, Jim Webb’s Democratic Response to SOTU was truly a breath of fresh air. Instead of the usual pallid laundry list of Mark Mellman’s poll-tested bromides about work that works for working families, Webb focused on the two overriding points of difference between Democrats and Bush–the economy and the war in Iraq–and kept his arguments clear and simple. I was particularly impressed by his repeated efforts to turn around the central rationale for Bush’s war policies, arguing that the war in Iraq has been a damaging distraction from the broader war with jihadists, not its central theater.
Month: January 2007
I’m not in the habit of calling people who disagree with me stupid or shallow. But I have to admit the impulse to mutter intelligence-based insults grabbed me pretty hard this morning when I read Liz Cheney’s op-ed in the Washington Post petulantly suggesting that opponents of the administration’s escalation strategy in Iraq just don’t want to win badly enough.An example of Ms. Cheney’s “analysis” is her “refutation” of the argument that the administration is defying public opinion on Iraq:
In November the American people expressed serious concerns about Iraq (and about Republican cor:ruption and scandals). They did not say that they want us to lose this war. They did not say that they want us to allow Iraq to become a base for al-Qaeda to conduct global terrorist operations. They did not say that they would rather we fight the terrorists here at home.
You half-expected the graph to end: “They did not say they endorsed treason.” I felt a lot better about my reaction to the piece when I read Josh Marshall’s take: “Is it just me or does this column read like it was written by someone in junior high?” But Josh also knew something I should have known but didn’t: Liz Cheney is not only a former Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs (one of those titles that remind me of the old Rolling Stones song, “Under Assistant West Coast Promotion Man”), but Dick Cheney’s daughter. And there I was wondering how Ms. Cheney managed to get her gibberish published in the ever-so-picky op-ed pages of the Post.
“How to Speak Republican,” Katharine Mieszkowski’s Salon interview with Frank Luntz, offers a revealing look at how the GOP’s top wordsmith sees their midterm debacle. Asked what he thought were the GOP’s “linguistic mistakes” in the ’06 campaign, Luntz says:
Earmarks became a public issue and they were silent on it. The bridge to nowhere was a complete disaster for the GOP. Not articulating the sense of accountability with Mark Foley and Duke Cunningham and [Bob] Ney. I think that the language that was tied to the policies of 1994 represented politics at its best, and language tied to the politics of 2006 represented politics at its worst.
Asked for some examples of failed language, Luntz responds:
You tell me. What was the Republican message for 2006? I’ve asked congressmen, senators. I even asked the people responsible for creating the message for 2006. What was the message for the Republican Party in 2006? Not a single person can give me an answer. None of them. No one at the Republican National Committee, no Republican senator, no Republican House member, no operative, none of the Democrats, can answer it either. Nobody knows. That’s the failure. So when you say to me, “Give me an example,” I can’t. There’s no message to criticize because there was no message. It was nothing.
Luntz credits Gingrich for giving the Dems their winning slogan “Had enough?” but says they won more because they got a free ride, thanks to GOP ineptitude. He takes predictable pot shots at the netroots, but sees Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama as generally effective communicators. A stickler for oppo research, Luntz says he reads all of George Lakoff’s books and spends “half my time” reading Democratic blogs and studying congress in action on the floor. Luntz also has a new book “Words That Work: It’s Not What You Say, It’s What People Hear,” which probably merits a read by political language junkies of both parties.
Yet, after giving Luntz credit for identifying some key GOP failures in the midterms, absent here is any sense that maybe voters rightly concluded that the occupation of Iraq was a bad idea, based on lies and poorly executed. It’s all about communication. Instead of “surge,” Luntz believes President Bush would have done better using the euphemisms “reassessment” or “realignment.” Thoughtful political communication is important. But at a certain point, using evasive language to describe bad policy is putting lipstick on a pig.
“How to Speak Republican,” Katharine Mieszkowski’s Salon interview with Frank Luntz, offers a revealing look at how the GOP’s top wordsmith sees their midterm debacle. Asked what he thought were the GOP’s “linguistic mistakes” in the ’06 campaign, Luntz says:
Earmarks became a public issue and they were silent on it. The bridge to nowhere was a complete disaster for the GOP. Not articulating the sense of accountability with Mark Foley and Duke Cunningham and [Bob] Ney. I think that the language that was tied to the policies of 1994 represented politics at its best, and language tied to the politics of 2006 represented politics at its worst.
Asked for some examples of failed language, Luntz responds:
You tell me. What was the Republican message for 2006? I’ve asked congressmen, senators. I even asked the people responsible for creating the message for 2006. What was the message for the Republican Party in 2006? Not a single person can give me an answer. None of them. No one at the Republican National Committee, no Republican senator, no Republican House member, no operative, none of the Democrats, can answer it either. Nobody knows. That’s the failure. So when you say to me, “Give me an example,” I can’t. There’s no message to criticize because there was no message. It was nothing.
Luntz credits Gingrich for giving the Dems their winning slogan “Had enough?” but says they won more because they got a free ride, thanks to GOP ineptitude. He takes predictable pot shots at the netroots, but sees Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama as generally effective communicators. A stickler for oppo research, Luntz says he reads all of George Lakoff’s books and spends “half my time” reading Democratic blogs and studying congress in action on the floor. Luntz also has a new book “Words That Work: It’s Not What You Say, It’s What People Hear,” which probably merits a read by political language junkies of both parties.
Yet, after giving Luntz credit for identifying some key GOP failures in the midterms, absent here is any sense that maybe voters rightly concluded that the occupation of Iraq was a bad idea, based on lies and poorly executed. It’s all about communication. Instead of “surge,” Luntz believes President Bush would have done better using the euphemisms “reassessment” or “realignment.” Thoughtful political communication is important. But at a certain point, using evasive language to describe bad policy is putting lipstick on a pig.
Some readers may recall I had a genial if pointed exchange in the cyber-pages of Salon last November with University of Maryland professor Tom Schaller about his hypothesis, broadcast in his recent book Whistling Past Dixie, that Democrats need to not only write off the South, but maybe spit at it now and then.I’ve now engaged in another exchange at Salon in response to a Schaller post spitting at Harold Ford as the soon-to-be chairman of the DLC. This is a less genial exchange, insofar as I think Schaller is abandoning the rigorous empiricism of his case against Dixie, and indulging himself in a predictable, audience-pleasing, paint-by-the-numbers assault on the DLC. You’d think a guy who’s obsessively worried about Democrats playing into implicit southern racism might be impressed by an organization like the DLC choosing an African-American chairman; but no–Schaller comes pretty close to implying that Harold Ford himself is some sort of reincarnation of the Dixiecrats. And then there’s his whole weird thing about Bill Clinton as the reincarnation of Grover Cleveland…. well, check it out yourself.I have to say at this point that I am exceptionally weary about the amount of time I seem to be spending online defending the DLC, and defending the Clinton tradition in Democratic politics. I don’t think the DLC has any sort of monopoly on political wisdom, and I also understand the misgivings many sincere progressives have about Clinton and his legacy. But so long as people keep attacking the DLC and Clinton for things they did not do, do not say, and don’t stand for today, while wilfully ignoring what they did, what they say, and what they stand for today, then I guess I’ll keep on keeping on, at the expense of whatever little bit I can contribute to a common progressive debate. I’m loyal and stubborn that way. I hope you are too.
Just to add a little factual background perspective to the interesting fray on the Netroots and progressives underway at TPM Cafe (featuring TDS’s Scott Winship), we recommend The Audience for Political Blogs” New Research on Blog Readership a study published by Joseph Graf at the web pages of The Institute for Politics, Democracy and the Internet. Among the factoids Graf serves up:
The Regular, daily audience for political blogs is fairly small. We estimate in the millions of readers, not tens of millions.
Nine percent of the survey sample looked at political blogs “almost every day”
Nearly two-thirds, 66 percent, of daily readers of political blogs get most of their national and international news from the internet.
The audience for political blogs is highly concentrated among “dozens of blogs, not thousands.”
One-third of those who read political blogs every day consider themselves “strong liberals.”
The higher traffic political blogs are disproportionately liberal.
Interesting, but no shockers here. The survey had its limitations — respondents in the sample were 7,683 California registered voters who chose to take an online survey, and it didn’t include any insights about developing trends. It would appear that television is still the medium of choice for political information for the time being, given the declining levels of print readership. With the expected merging of television and internet access in millions of homes, it could be a very different picture before too long.
There is mounting evidence that political blogs are finding a more avid audience among opinion leaders and those employed in political work. Henry Copeland reports on recent studies indicating that about 90 percent of “congressional offices” read blogs, and 64 percent of congressional staff readers believe “blogs are more useful than mainstream media for identifying future national political problems and debates.” He notes also that “52% of journalists believe blogs have ‘some to a great deal’ of influence on the way media covers stories.”
Just to add a little factual background perspective to the interesting fray on the Netroots and progressives underway at TPM Cafe (featuring TDS’s Scott Winship), we recommend The Audience for Political Blogs” New Research on Blog Readership a study published by Joseph Graf at the web pages of The Institute for Politics, Democracy and the Internet. Among the factoids Graf serves up:
The Regular, daily audience for political blogs is fairly small. We estimate in the millions of readers, not tens of millions.
Nine percent of the survey sample looked at political blogs “almost every day”
Nearly two-thirds, 66 percent, of daily readers of political blogs get most of their national and international news from the internet.
The audience for political blogs is highly concentrated among “dozens of blogs, not thousands.”
One-third of those who read political blogs every day consider themselves “strong liberals.”
The higher traffic political blogs are disproportionately liberal.
Interesting, but no shockers here. The survey had its limitations — respondents in the sample were 7,683 California registered voters who chose to take an online survey, and it didn’t include any insights about developing trends. It would appear that television is still the medium of choice for political information for the time being, given the declining levels of print readership. With the expected merging of television and internet access in millions of homes, it could be a very different picture before too long.
There is mounting evidence that political blogs are finding a more avid audience among opinion leaders and those employed in political work. Henry Copeland reports on recent studies indicating that about 90 percent of “congressional offices” read blogs, and 64 percent of congressional staff readers believe “blogs are more useful than mainstream media for identifying future national political problems and debates.” He notes also that “52% of journalists believe blogs have ‘some to a great deal’ of influence on the way media covers stories.”
After all the interminable talk about Democratic disunity on Iraq since 2002, it’s worth noting that congressional Democrats are lining up against the Bush escalation plan with impressive near-unanimity. Think Progress is keeping a running scorecard of public positions on the plan among all 535 Members of Congress. At present, of the 282 Democrats in the House and Senate, 210 publicly oppose the plan, 23 are leaning towards opposition, and a grand total of two support the plan (none are currently leaning that way, though 47 have not made any position known, including just one Senator, Blanche Lincoln).Of the two announced pro-escalation Democrats, one name will raise eyebrows: Rep. Silvestre Reyes of Texas, recently appointed chairman of the Intelligence Committee by Speaker Nancy Pelosi. But it should be noted that Reyes voted against the original Iraq War resolution, which probably gives him a bit of slack. (The other announced pro-escalation Dem is Rep. Jim Marshall of GA, who just survived a near-death-experience in a Republican-tilting district in November). If you add in Joe Lieberman as a member of the Senate Democratic Caucus, you still just get three Democratic Members favoring the Bush plan, out of 235 stating a position.Meanwhile, and despite relatively strong support for the Bush plan among rank-and-file Republicans, it’s the GOPers on the Hill who are all over the place. Of the 251 Republicans in Congress, 128 support or are leaning towards support of the Bush plan; 50 oppose it or are leaning towards opposition, and a whopping 73 have not indicated a position. 12 Senate Republicans oppose or are likely to oppose the plan (and 8 others have taken no position), which guarantees a large majority vote for whatever resolutions of opposition the chamber ultimately takes up.
Kagro X has a succinct guide to 11 legislative proposals challenging the Bush/McCain “surge” over at Daily Kos. His wrap-up provides a helpful sense of the range of interesting responses being considered by Dems.
The discussion at TPMCafe on the netroots took a strange turn yesterday, when Scott Winship of Democratic Strategist, a rare post-Clintonian self-described New Democrat, did a post that immediately got demonized and dismissed in a way that failed to come to grips with what he was trying to say.Best I could tell, Scott was suggesting that Netroots Progressives had bought into a revisionist take on Clintonism that was, well, inaccurate and strategically misleading. But partly because Scott plunged into a discussion that had earlier been skewed by Max Sawicky’s blunt argument that the Internet Left was ignorant and ideologically empty, he got definitively bashed, not just at TPMCafe, but over at MyDD, by Chris Bowers, for suggesting that Netroots Lefties didn’t know their history.But in skewering Scott for his alleged disrespecting of netroots intelligence and knowledge, Chris and others didn’t come to grips with Scott’s underlying argument about the anti-Clinton worldview of the Netroots Left. And that’s a shame.There’s little question that many if not most Left Netroots folk buy into the some variation on the following take on the Clinton legacy:1) Bill Clinton got elected by accident (a combination of Bush 41’s political stupidity, and Ross Perot’s third-party candidacy), and then spent much of his first term betraying his core progressive constituency by focusing on deficit reduction, supporting free trade, and refusing to fight for single-payer universal health care;2) After his first-term record discouraged the Democratic base and created a Republican landslide, Clinton got re-elected by “triangulating,” caving into Republicans on welfare reform in particular.3) Clinton’s apostasy from progressive principles led to a meltdown of the Democratic Party in Congress and in the states.4) Clinton’s political guidance snuffed Al Gore’s 2000 campaign, and his “centrist DLC” acolytes led Democrats into an appeasement strategy that killed the party in 2002 and 2004. Moreover, it became obvious that Clintonism represented not just appeasement of the political Right, but a subservience to corporate interests that Clintonites relied on for campaign contributions.5) The revival of the Left and of the Democratic Party in 2006 involved an implicit repudiation of Clintonism.I won’t go into a refutation of these contentions until someone in the Left Netroots openly admits to them. But as Scott suggests, this isn’t a distinctive Netroots take.Throughout and beyond the Clinton years, there persisted an enduring hostility to Clintonism in the establishment DC Democratic Party. It was evident in congressional (especially in the House) Democratic opposition to many of Clinton’s signature initiatives; it got traction in Al Gore’s rejection of Clintonism and everyone connected with it in his 2000 campaign; and reached fruition in 2002, when Democrats went forward with the anti-Clinton, Bob Shrum-driven message that we were “fighting” for prescription drug benefits at a time when the country was absorbed with national security concerns.Indeed, the primacy of Shrum–the only major Democratic strategist with no involvement in either of Clinton’s’ campaigns–in the 2000, 2002, and 2004 Democratic campaigns, is a good example of how the hated DC Democratic Establishment hasn’t been Clintonian for a good while.So: let’s talk more about Clintonism, the Left, the Democratic establishment, and the netroots.Scott Winship is onto something important here, and dissing his views because he seems to be dissing the intelligence or historical knowledge of netroots folk is no excuse for refusing to talk about it.
