There’s been a lot of discussion about the reaction of Democrats–particularly the president and Hillary Clinton–to the Oregon massacre. But there’s been less analysis o the radicalization of Republican views that has made both of them all but give up on any legislative fix to the problem of gun violence. I discussed this at some length today at TPMCafe.

What neither Obama nor Clinton did was focus on begging congressional Republicans to end their total ban on legislation addressing such outrages as the gun show loophole to gun purchase background checks.
Of course, that would have been a waste of time. For even if we are now seeing a polarization of Democratic opinion on guns away from any idea of compromising with a GOP that is totally beholden to the gun lobby, it is a response to an earlier and much more radical polarization of Republicans. And to a remarkable extent, the default position of conservatives has less and less to do with arguments about the efficacy of gun regulation or the need for guns to deter or respond to crime. Instead, it’s based on the idea that the main purpose of the Second Amendment is to keep open the possibility of revolutionary violence against the U.S. government.
This was once an exotic, minority view even among gun enthusiasts who tended to view the Second Amendment as protecting an individual right to gun ownership not to overthrow the government but to supplement the government’s use of lethal force against criminals. Treating the Second Amendment as an integral legacy of the American Revolution appealed to gun rights advocates who sought firm ground against regulations with no possibility of compromise.
But more importantly, it gave a dangerous edge to the claims of conservative extremists–who recently began calling themselves “constitutional conservatives”–that their ideology of absolute property rights, religious rights and even fetal rights had been permanently established by the Founders who added in the Second Amendment to ensure any trespassing on their “design” by “tyrants” or popular majorities could and should be resisted.
Nowadays this revolutionary rationale for gun rights is becoming the rule rather than the exception for conservative politicians and advocates. Mike Huckabee, a sunny and irenic candidate for president in 2008, all but threatened revolutionary violence in his recent campaign book for the 2016 cycle, God, Guns, Grits and Gravy:

If the Founders who gave up so much to create liberty for us could see how our government has morphed into a ham-fisted, hypercontrolling “Sugar Daddy,” I believe those same patriots who launched a revolution would launch another one. Too many Americans have grown used to Big Government’s overreach. They’ve been conditioned to just bend over and take it like a prisoner [!]. But in Bubba-ville, the days of bending are just about over. People are ready to start standing up for freedom and refusing to take it anymore.

Dr. Ben Carson, another candidate thought to be a mild-mannered Christian gentleman, recently disclosed that he used to favor modest gun control measures until he came to realize the importance of widespread gun ownership as a safeguard against “tyranny.”

“When you look at tyranny and how it occurs, the pattern is so consistent: Get rid of the guns,” Carson told USA Today.

Combined with Carson’s signature belief that “progressives” are undertaking a conspiracy to impose “tyranny” via stealth and “political correctness,” one might fear he thinks the time for taking up arms is relatively near, and would be particularly justified if any gun regulations were enacted.
Perhaps the most surprising statement on this subject from a Republican presidential candidate was by a rare figure who dissents from the right-to-revolution talk, per this report from Sahil Kapur at TPM a few months ago:

Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz’s argument that the Second Amendment provides the “ultimate check against government tyranny” is a bit too extreme for potential 2016 rival and fellow Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC).
“Well, we tried that once in South Carolina. I wouldn’t go down that road again,” Graham said, in an apparent reference to the Civil War. “I think an informed electorate is probably a better check than, you know, guns in the streets.”

Graham joked about this, but liberals generally are not amused by the suggestion that “patriotic” Americans should be stockpiling guns in case “they”–it’s not clear who, of course–decide it’s time to start shooting police officers and members of the armed forces in defense of their liberties, which in some cases are perceived to be extremely broad. Indeed, a lot of Second Amendment ultras appear to think the right to revolution is entirely up to the individual revolutionary. Here’s Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa, the darling of the GOP Class of 2014, talking about this contingency in 2012:

I have a beautiful little Smith & Wesson, 9 millimeter, and it goes with me virtually everywhere…But I do believe in the right to carry, and I believe in the right to defend myself and my family — whether it’s from an intruder, or whether it’s from the government, should they decide that my rights are no longer important.

You can wonder, as I often do, how people like Ernst would react to such rhetoric if it were coming from a member of a black nationalist or Islamist group. But clearly, there’s no point in progressives seeking any “compromise” with them on gun issues. They can only be defeated by a true mass social movement supporting reasonable gun regulation. But it’s important to understand that according to the Cult of the Second Amendment, opponents of gun measures have every right to fire back, literally.

The “right to revolution” talk on the Right needs to stop now.

From a Democracy Corps E-Blast:
In May the Roosevelt Institute released its Rewriting the Rules economic agenda crafted by Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz. Since the report’s well publicized release, the Roosevelt Institute has partnered with Democracy Corps to determine whether its Rewriting the Rules analysis and recommendations were actionable in the short and long-term. What it offered sounded like a new common sense: the economy is governed by underlying rules; they are a choice and we have the power to change them. But can this serious formulation win the intellectual argument with elites and the public, can its bold policies win acceptance, can the resulting political messages defeat opponents and energize and motivate a disaffected citizenry? Today, we are pleased to release the results of this first phase of research.
This research is unique because we are not testing policies developed by pollsters or advocacy groups. We tested policies that the Roosevelt economists believe would be effective levers in changing the rules of the economy and producing a broadly shared economic growth. Well, it is now clear, the public embraces that agenda, while the conservative economists’ agenda is barely credible.
After hearing a candidate’s pointed message attacking trickle down economics and promising to level the playing field for the middle class and America, the disengaged get more engaged and voters get more supportive of that leader. But that campaign context understates the possible moment and opportunity. The public is ready to repudiate trickle down economics, the most important intellectual idea since Reagan, and turn away from its attendant conservative policies. It is also ready to embrace the intellectual framework and bold policy options necessary for America to achieve inclusive growth. The scale of support for these disruptive changes suggests we may be going into a distinctive period.
Read the report.
View the presentation.
View the toplines.

Democratic strategist Mike Lux, in his role as president of American Family Voices, has a HuffPo post reporting on his organization’s recent summit of “forward-thinking business leaders and top leaders of the progressive movement in America.”
Lux begins with the observation that “for most businesses in America today, their best prospect at competing with huge corporations who cut insider deals to rig the rules in their favor is to have progressive economic policies win the day.” Conversely, “the progressive movement will not win substantive change in this country without strong and successful business leaders being on our side.”
The common ground between progressives and forward-thinking business leaders has not been adequately-explored, argues Lux. Despite being involved in numerous campaigns against corporations which abuse their workers and consumers, Lux sees a significant potential for coalition building based on common interest. “What I became more and more focused on,” notes Lux, “was a fundamental idea: that the economic policies supported by the progressive movement I was a part of are the exact same policies that would help most businesses in this country.” For example,

Higher wages mean more disposable income for customers. Paid sick leave and decent health care benefits mean more stability in the workforce for most companies. Breaking up the biggest banks and fair rules for the financial industry would mean far more investment and better terms on loans for most small businesses. Better schools mean more productive workers.
Converting to a green economy and making adequate investments in infrastructure and R&D would mean the creation of thousands of new businesses and millions of new jobs, a lot of them high wage. Vigorous enforcement of anti-trust laws and prosecuting businesses that manipulate markets mean that honest businesses can better compete with big corporations who have an unfair advantage.
The federal and state tax, budget, regulatory, enforcement, and contracting policies that benefit a near-monopolistic company like Wal-Mart do not generally benefit local retailers; policies that help the financial speculators and manipulators on Wall Street benefit neither community banks nor the small businesses looking for start-up loans and lines of credit; and the lack of anti-trust enforcement that helps huge corporate conglomerates continue to gobble up smaller companies is the exact opposite of the policies new entrepreneurs need to compete with those corporations seeking to wipe out their competition.

Then there is the thorny matter of how progressives and business leaders too often alienate each other with bad communication:

Activists are used to pushing hard, and that sometimes comes off as purist to businesses with bottom lines. These businesses want to be given opportunities to address and correct perceived problems before being targeted by activist campaigns. Further, business owners want to be engaged in the entire process of activism, not asked to be the face of an issue campaign after the fact: they want to have their perspectives and priorities on the issues involved valued from the very beginning.”
There are some businesses that those of us in the progressive movement oppose on big issues — such as Koch Industries and the other big fossil fuel companies, the biggest financial speculators on Wall Street, Wal-Mart, the big food and agriculture giants…But for the vast majority of small business people and up and coming entrepreneurs, on a great many issues, we are in fact on the same side — or at least should be.

Progressive are quick to target reactionary corporations, but it’s important that progressives commit to supporting those businesses which strive to treat their employees and customers with respect and a genuine concern, says Lux. “Without these businesses speaking out against corporate malfeasance and offering a progressive alternative in the market, we all lose, plain and simple.”
While most progressive activists have no trouble rattling off a list of corporations which deserve to be boycotted, for example, fewer could name those companies, large and small, which are striving to be good corporate citizens and worthy of support. Many more companies have a mix of progressive and reactionary policies requiring a more nuanced analysis.
“We can’t lessen income inequality, and we can’t change the top 1 percent orientation of our politics,” concludes Lux, “without having a vital and growing high road business sector.”
This is a good dialogue for Democrats. The common ground between progressives and socially-concerned business leaders and small business men and women includes a lot of swing voters, perhaps enough to make a transformative difference on election day.

Jeff Spross’s “You know who likes lackluster economic growth? The rich” at The Week explains why “many economic elites actually have a vested interest in anemic job growth and a slack labor market.” This is the kind of unflinching analysis that drives Republican meme-mongers crazy, for they depend to a great extent on the public embracing wholesale one of their most treasured economic myths — that the super-wealthy want shared prosperity for everyone.
After all, the argument goes, the mega-rich have to live in the same world as the rest of us, right? More to the point, broadly-shared prosperity is good for the wealthy too, isn’t it, since they will benefit when consumers have more money to buy their products, correct?.
“Not so fast,” writes Spross. “A dark and unpleasant truth is that many economic elites actually have a vested interest in anemic job growth and a slack labor market.” Spross adds:

To many observers, this probably sounds crazy. Tight labor markets — when the demand for workers has caught up with the supply — are part and parcel of a booming economy. And a bigger pie benefits everyone!…Tight labor markets — when the demand for workers has caught up with the supply — are part and parcel of a booming economy. And a bigger pie benefits everyone!
But this leaves out the crucial issue of worker bargaining power. When labor markets are as tight as they can get — a.k.a. full employment — workers can quit jobs they don’t like and find ones they do like with ease, while owners of business and capital become ever more desperate for adequate labor. This gives workers much more leverage to demand wage increases, so they claim a bigger share of all the income generated in the economy. Which means, by definition, the elite’s share must shrink.

Spross observes, further that “after 1970, full employment disappeared, and inequality took off. The one exception was the boom in the late 1990s — for that brief period, the incomes of the top 5 percent of households, the bottom 20 percent of households, and everyone in between, rose in lockstep.
However, explains Spross, “The main channel is the flow of money through individual companies. Higher wages mean the costs of labor go up, so profit margins shrink and businesses have to operate on much tighter finances. Conversely, after full employment went away, corporate profits boomed. Companies obviously prefer the second scenario. It also means the CEOs, management, shareholders, and investors who own stakes in companies get much bigger payouts from those capital gains.” And,

Full employment also takes power over the business away from owners and management and gives more of it to workers instead. Unions grow and labor movements ferment. Workers suddenly can demand all sorts of stuff, from paid leave to ergonomic work stations to different schedules to better treatment and conditions and on and on. The people at the top lose a fair amount of creative control over the nature and direction of the enterprises they view as theirs. Pride is a thing with human beings, and there’s a reason unions are so hated in certain quarters of our society.
Finally, there’s a lifestyle issue at play. If the incomes of everyday workers go up, then elites’ real incomes must go down. The labor they’re buying is more costly. This completely changes where and how the elite can spend their money, and what they can and can’t consume. The rising “servant economy” rests on a wide relative gap between high and low incomes. Again, we’re talking about sinful, fallen, prideful humans here, who like being able to buy bigger, hipper, posher stuff than everyone else, and who like being able to go to high-end cultural events and work creative jobs and eat nice food while other people do the shopping and cleaning and cooking and driving and child care. Full employment and its impact on inequality has a profound effect on the fabric of our shared lives as they’re actually experienced.

Spross cites key “data signals for gauging the tightness of the labor market. Wage growth is still flatlined at around 2 percent annually, when it should be at least 3.5 percent. Labor force participation is way down, and underemployment is still quite high.” Even more significantly, says Spross,

But maybe the best metric is the percentage of the prime-age work force — too old to be students and too young to retire — that’s employed. That number still hasn’t recovered to where it was before 2008, and that peak was still below where it was before the 2001 recession. The late 1990s boom, while better, was also less impressive that what went on mid-century.

This decline, he argues “is the primary tool by which the American elite gobbles up ever more wealth and power from everyone else. Recessions in the last few decades have been the inflection points for ratcheting up that effect…The supply of work is a collective accomplishment, driven by the feedback loop between consumers and businesses. It’s a question of ecological stewardship and managing aggregate demand, and it implicates macroeconomic policies from monetary policy to taxes to the welfare state to unions.”
Republican economic policies, therefore, are designed to serve their elite contributors who really want “to slow the supply of jobs to a trickle” and keep workers “desperate and forever on the ropes.”
Of course, elaborates Spross, “Elites obviously don’t want to completely tank the economy. But it certainly works for them if it stays modestly stagnant, maximizing the growth of the pie while minimizing worker bargaining power.”
“It’s the Goldilocks principle, concludes Spross. “Don’t run the economy too hot or too cold. Run it just right.”
For the Republicans, cultural wars provide a convenient distraction from this cynical economic strategy. Confuse the public about who the elites really are with peripheral “issues,” so they won’t focus on the GOP’s grand economic strategy, which is to enrich the already wealthy even further by screwing working people of all races. It has served them well and they can not be expected to give it up.
Every election is important to the GOP for consolidating the gains of their strategy. But 2016 looms as a particularly critical watershed year for them, and for America. If they carry the day, they will be able to lock up the Supreme Court for decades, disempower unions and workers even further and elevate the privileges of the wealthy to ever-increasing heights, while expanding the misery index for everyone else. This is why Democrats must unify and bring their ‘A’ game in 2016 — or there won’t be much of a middle class to talk about in 2020.

In “Watching Republicans Flail is Not a Strategy,” Ruth Conniff, editor of The Progressive, reminds Democrats not to get distracted by the GOP presidential candidates’ demolition derby. To thrive in 2016 Dems are going to need stronger messaging of their own. Conniff urges a major change in messaging tone and substance:

“The Republican destruction machine is opening up an opportunity. Democrats and progressives should start talking about what we are for. Here is what we are for: great public institutions that serve the common good.
For decades, a right-wing propaganda campaign has been claiming, falsely, that our public institutions are no good, inefficient and wasteful, and that they should be handed over to private business. Part of the reason that message resonates with the public is that everyone has had a bad experience with bureaucracy; waiting in line at the DMV.
But here is something else Americans know from experience: In the deregulated private market, con artistry abounds. That’s why Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders have struck a chord with their criticism of hucksterism on Wall Street. Credit card companies routinely take advantage of their customers. And millions of Americans know what it’s like to be ripped off by big banks and jerked around by health insurance companies. Fly-by-night voucher schools and shady charter-school operators are cashing in on public education funds by shortchanging students.
If the privatizers have their way, soon millions of Americans will be sending our kids to school at private academies in the same strip malls where we use the privatized postal services, bank at the check-cashing joint and shop at the deregulated rent-to-own shop.
Progressives need to stand up to this dystopian vision with better values: great public schools for each and every child, a well-maintained infrastructure and communities that are a great place to live for everybody — not just those rich enough to send their kids to private schools, buy up the prettiest land and build big walls to keep the rest of us out.
A more positive, generous message leads to more progressive politics.

Conniff notes that the success of the Bernie Sanders campaign shows “progressive politics can still get serious traction in our country.” Instead of allowing Republicans the widest possible latitude in their government-bashing messages, Democrats should boldly challenge them directly with a positive take on the role of government.
Her challenge to Dems to focus their messaging more sharply on “great public institutions that serve the common good” provides an excellent soundbite/slogan for Democratic candidates and campaigns. Much depends on how well they work it over the next 13 months.

Washington Post columnist E. J. Dionne, Jr. calls out Republicans for their shameless pandering to the gun industry and commends President Obama for “politicizing” the latest mass shootings:

President Obama spoke some of the most important words of his tenure last week in response to the mass shooting at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Ore. “This is something we should politicize,” the president said. “It is relevant to our common life together, to the body politic.”
This is something we should politicize. His statement was remarkable for violating the etiquette as to what a leader should say after another slaughter by a deranged gunman and the conventional wisdom about how politicians have to pretend that they are not engaged in politics.
But Obama was forcing us to face reality. It’s politics that has rendered our nation powerless in the face of butchery. There have been at least 142 school shootings since the massacre in Newtown, Connecticut, in December 2012, according to Everytown for Gun Safety, and Congress has done nothing. It’s politics, as Obama said, that makes the U.S. “the only advanced country on Earth that sees these kinds of mass shootings every few months,” and politics that leads our learned legislators to pass laws barring the government from “even collecting data on how we could potentially reduce gun deaths.”
…”Politicize” is the right word for another reason: We will not act until politicians start losing elections for opposing even the most modest gun safety measure. We will not act unless political parties that block action lose their majorities. Yes, I am talking about a Republican Party that has completely aligned itself with the interests of gun manufacturers and gun fanatics.

Dionne cites “the conclusion of a study released in August by National Journal: “The states that impose the most restrictions on gun users also have the lowest rates of gun-related deaths, while states with fewer regulations typically have a much higher death rate from guns.” Dionne adds, “State laws could be even more effective if they were matched by federal laws that made it harder for guns to get into the wrong hands.”
Dionne notes the example of Australia’s former conservative Prime Minister John Howard, who provided courageous leadership for sensible gun control measures, including a ban on automatic and semi-automatic weapons and a major gun buy-back project, after a massacre of 35 Australians in Tasmania. Dionne concludes with a question that demands an honest answer: “Is a dangerous and harebrained absolutism about weaponry really the issue on which American conservatives want to practice exceptionalism?

It’s only one poll, but it has a high accuracy track record and it has Trump in second place among GOP presidential contenders, amid increasing buzz that Trump’s support may have peaked.
Michael Tomasky warns at The Daily Beast: “John Boehner has been far and away the worst speaker of the House of Representatives in many decades, presiding over the two least productive Congresses in modern American history, overseeing those endless and ridiculous Obamacare repeal votes, and most of all not having the stones to bring the immigration bill to the floor. It would have passed any day he chose to let that happen, which at least would have given the newspapers one positive item to include in the lead paragraph of his obituary when the time comes…But from the looks of things, Boehner isn’t going to be holding the worst speaker title for very long.”
At the Times Patrick Healy probes evidence that anger at the political establishment “is also coursing through the Democratic electorate.”
The 2nd amendment to the constitution reads in full: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” But the NRA has only the second half of the 2nd amendment to the constitution emblazoned on the wall in its HQ lobby. (scroll far down to see photo) Hey NRA and it’s GOP minions, is it really OK to sell guns to anyone?
RFK warned about the tragic consequences of firearms anarchy join the U.S. in 1968 — in Roseburg.
Democratic presidential candidate Martin O’Malley gets out front of the the white house aspirants in both parties on gun control in the wake of the Roseburg tragedy. John Wagner reports at Post Politics that O’Malley is calling for “four reforms on the national level: a ban on “combat assault weapons”; a requirement that those who purchase guns get licenses and be fingerprinted; a law making gun trafficking a federal crime; and a commitment from the federal government to purchase firearms only from companies that use “the latest and best safety technology.”
Hillary Clinton is also unveiling a strong gun control plan, while Bernie Sanders is catching some heat from progressives for voting to protect legal immunity for gun manufacturers.
End Cit­izens United PAC targets six battleground house races, reports Kimberly Railey at national Journal.
As Koch brothers get ready to spend $1 billion on 2016, Dems meet to prevent them from dominating the election, Alexander Bolton reports at The Hill

I’d like to add a note to what the previous Staff post had to say about President Obama’s remarks on the community college shootings in Oregon yesterday, as I expressed at Washington Monthly:

It has to be the most candid presidential reaction to breaking news in my memory; Obama even angrily mocked the ritualistic character of his own past reactions to gun massacres.
But the center of his argument is the one I keep making here: America is mainly exceptional among advanced democratic nations not in our personal or economic liberty, but in our strange belief that letting everyone stockpile weapons is essential to the preservation of our freedom, and in the consequences of that strange belief. That’s what the worship of the most extreme interpretation possible of the Second Amendment, fed by the gun lobby and politicians (mostly, though not exclusively, conservatives) has wrought. And yes, it’s something that can make you angry.

Is knowing that in other countries you cannot buy military weapons at all, or if you can you will certainly be subject to extensive scrutiny, the kind of thing that makes you “proud to be an American, where at least I know I’m free!”? I hope not. But the more I hear conservatives tout the Second Amendment as the guarantor of all liberties on the theory that we need to be able to prepare for the violent overthrow of the government if we don’t like what elections or court decisions produce, the more I worry about the exceptional challenges we face in dealing with violence.