House Speaker John Boehner’s inability to secure even one Democrat to vote for his debt-limit bill, not even a single stray blue dog, is a failure of historic proportions that endangers America’ economic security.
Boehner got the votes he needed to narrowly pass the measure, which the Senate quickly smacked down. He knew it was coming, set himself up anyway and then had the predictable tantrum blaming everyone else, leaving political observers to wonder how a guy smart enough to win the speakership could make such a knuckleheaded blunder.
As Lori Montgomery and Paul Kane explained in their WaPo wrap-up:

The change swayed a handful of holdouts, and the measure passed 218 to 210, with every Democrat and more than 20 Republicans voting no. But the episode was a loss of face for the speaker and his leadership team, demonstrating a lack of clout within their own conference. Even their allies in the Senate were stunned.

What Boehner doesn’t get is that Speaker of the House is a leadership post that requires a real commitment to at least some bipartisanship, not just herding Republicans. Partisan rigidity is not part of his job description.
Boehner could have been the hero of this mess by crafting a proposal that would win a healthy portion of Democrats and create bipartisan momentum that the Senate would have to affirm. All of a sudden, he would have looked statesmanlike, the sole grown-up in the GOP room, with the end result that the Republicans get 90 percent of what they wanted. For any prudent leader, that would be a huge win.
But the ideological grandiosity of current GOP leaders is such that anything short of total annihilation and humiliation of the Democrats is unacceptable. I know pre-schoolers who have a more adult vision of conflict-resolution.
So here we are at the 11th hour, with the future of our economic security depending on the maturity and good faith of such luminaries as Mitch McConnell. As for Boehner, smart leaders do sometimes learn from their mistakes, at least those who don’t suffer from rabid egomania. But I’m not betting on Boehner.
The rest of the Republicans, certainly the brighter ones, now have an object lesson in the downside of excessive party discipline. All they have to do is check out the polls (see post below for example) and think about it for five minutes to figure out that the ideological purity thing is not exactly winning the hearts and minds of strife-weary voters. Doesn’t seem like a lot to ask.

A national web survey conducted this week by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner on behalf of Democracy Corps, shows that Independent voters do not trust House Speaker John Boehner and the Congressional Republicans on the debt ceiling and budget deficit debate. These swing voters are tuned in and paying close attention to the debt ceiling debate in Washington and are very concerned about what could happen to the economy should Congress not act.
Most problematic for Speaker Boehner and Republicans is these voters represent a critical bloc that propelled them into the majority last November, but have now turned away from the Republicans. Independent voters supported Republicans nationally by a double digit margin last November, but that support has fallen off during the debt ceiling debate. Independents are extremely negative toward Boehner and just 30 percent favor Boehner and the Republican’s approach on the debt ceiling debate. Boehner’s personal standing is abysmally low with this bloc, including among self-described conservatives.
Equally important, President Obama has a sizeable advantage over Boehner and the Republicans among Independents on who is more concerned with the interests of the middle class, and Boehner is viewed as looking out more for millionaires and billionaires by a huge margin. Independents simply don’t see Boehner as an advocate for the middle class.
President Obama and Democrats have a real advantage as Boehner and Republicans lack credibility among these swing voters as the debt ceiling debate continues.

Last week Rick Perry, said by all to be on the very brink of a presidential campaign, surprised most observers by not only shrugging off New York’s decision to legalize gay marriage, but suggesting people in other states ought to mind their own damn business:

Our friends in New York six weeks ago passed a statute that said marriage can be between two people of the same sex. And you know what? That’s New York, and that’s their business, and that’s fine with me. That is their call. If you believe in the 10th Amendment, stay out of their business.

After a few days of squawking from Christian Right leaders, Perry decided to execute a full flip-flop in a venue most likely to be understood as a capitulation to his theocratic friends: a radio interview by the Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins. Get a load of this exchange after Perkins questioned Perry’s earlier statement:

GOV. PERRY: Let me just, I probably needed to add a few words after “that’s fine with me” its fine with me that the state is using their sovereign right to decide an issue. Obviously gay marriage is not fine with me, my stance had not changed. I believe marriage is a union between one man and one woman….
TONY PERKINS: But when you look at what’s happening on marriage, the real fear is that states like New York will change the definition of marriage for Texas. At that point the states rights argument is lost….
GOV. PERRY: Right and that is the reason that the federal marriage amendment is being offered, it’s that small group of activist judges, and frankly a small handful, if you will, of states, and liberal special interests groups that intend on a redefinition of, if you will, marriage on the nation, for all of us, which I adamantly oppose.
Indeed to not pass the federal marriage amendment would impinge on Texas, and other states not to have marriage forced upon us by these activist judges and special interest groups….
TONY PERKINS: Governor, we are about out of time but I don’t want to put words in your mouth, but I think I hear what you are saying. The support given what’s happening across the nation, the fear of the courts, the administration’s failure to defend the defense of marriage act.
The only and thin line of protection for those states that have defined marriage, that have been historically been defined between a man and a woman. The support of a marriage amendment is a pro-state’s rights position, because it will defend the rights of states to define marriage as it has been.
GOV. PERRY: Yes sir, and I have long supported the appointment of judges who respect the constitution and the passage of a federal marriage amendment. That amendment defines marriage between one man and one woman, and it protects the states from being told otherwise.

Pretty amazing, eh? You need a constitutional amendment to protect Texas’ right to tell New York it’s wrong on same-sex marriage, or something like that. Perkins’ assertion that “a marriage amendment is a pro-state’s rights position, because it will defend the rights of states to define marriage as it has been,” perfectly illustrates the instrumental attitude the Christian Right has towards the supposedly revered U.S. Constitution. They’ll toss it aside in a New York Minute if it gets in the way of achieving their objectives.
It’s kind of funny, if grotesque, to watch Perry anxiously negotiate his way through the humiliation and illogic of this blatant flip-flop under Perkins’ guidance. But it’s yet another reminder that those who think the Christian Right’s power in the Republican Party is a thing of the past really just aren’t paying much attention.

There’s a lot going on this morning, what with stocks sliding in the wake of last night’s debt limit fiasco in the House and a bad GDP report, and people in Washington finally beginning to realize that yes, the Tea Party folk are perfectly willing and able to deliberately wreck the U.S. economy if they don’t get their way.
But because it didn’t get that much attention, and yet it represents a microcosm of the strange new territory Americans politics seems to have entered, I want to mention a small but telling incident from yesterday.
At 4:03 p.m., Sarah Palin did a Facebook post that didn’t explicitly tell Republican House members how to vote on the Boehner plan, but did pretty clearly threaten primary challenges to those who forgot the mandate they supposedly had to turn Washington upside down. It also strikes the classic Palin note of self-identification with right-wing activists in “flyover country” against “elitists.”

I respectfully ask these GOP Freshman to re-read this letter and remember us “little people” who believed in them, donated to their campaigns, spent hours tirelessly volunteering for them, and trusted them with our votes. This new wave of public servants may recall that they were sent to D.C. for such a time as this….
P.S.–Everyone I talk to still believes in contested primaries.

A prediction: If the withdrawal of the Boehner plan last night due to insufficient Republican support turns out to be a big moment in this fiscal melodrama, the Palin Facebook post will get a lot of the credit or blame, depending on your point of view.
If I’m right about that, Palin will have proven once again that for all her manifest flaws, nobody quite knows how to play the media–both the “lamestream” and the conservative ideological variety–quite like St. Joan of the Tundra. I mean, really: the Republican House Study Committee and Jim DeMint managed to badger all but one presidential candidate plus 183 conservative organizations into signing the “cut, cap, and balance” pledge that swore signatories to exhibit unwavering hostility to any debt limit increase plan other than their own. Michele Bachmann and Tim Pawlenty have been careening around Iowa the last week shrieking at Congress to vote down the Boehner plan. Sarah Palin, meanwhile, waited to the very last hour and simply did a Facebook post, yet it’s her intervention that will probably be remembered.
You have to admire Palin’s economy of effort.
UPDATE: Dave Weigel has a good metaphor for Palin’s involvement in the debt limit vote:

Her Facebook note was familiar to anyone who’s put out a call for friends to help him move, and watches one of the friends show up at the last minute to lift one box then dig into the pizza you’ve provided.

Read thither and yon, google all day, and you’re still not going to find a better take-down of the MSM’s proclivity for false equivalency — and the damage it is doing in the current debt ceiling negotiations than Paul Krugman’s “The Centrist Cop-Out” in today’s New York Times. Some excerpts:

The facts of the crisis over the debt ceiling aren’t complicated. Republicans have, in effect, taken America hostage, threatening to undermine the economy and disrupt the essential business of government unless they get policy concessions they would never have been able to enact through legislation. And Democrats — who would have been justified in rejecting this extortion altogether — have, in fact, gone a long way toward meeting those Republican demands.
…Many people in the news media apparently can’t bring themselves to acknowledge this simple reality. News reports portray the parties as equally intransigent; pundits fantasize about some kind of “centrist” uprising, as if the problem was too much partisanship on both sides.
Some of us have long complained about the cult of “balance,” the insistence on portraying both parties as equally wrong and equally at fault on any issue, never mind the facts. I joked long ago that if one party declared that the earth was flat, the headlines would read “Views Differ on Shape of Planet.” But would that cult still rule in a situation as stark as the one we now face, in which one party is clearly engaged in blackmail and the other is dickering over the size of the ransom?
The answer, it turns out, is yes. And this is no laughing matter: The cult of balance has played an important role in bringing us to the edge of disaster. For when reporting on political disputes always implies that both sides are to blame, there is no penalty for extremism. Voters won’t punish you for outrageous behavior if all they ever hear is that both sides are at fault.

Krugman goes on to explain how President Obama bent way over backwards to negotiate with Republicans, inmcluding “a “Grand Bargain” with Republicans over taxes and spending…extraordinary concessions on Democratic priorities…an increase in the age of Medicare eligibility, sharp spending cuts and only small revenue increases.” The President’s concessions were not merely centrist, but “a bit to the right of the average Republican voter’s preferences.” Krugman continues:

But Republicans rejected the deal. So what was the headline on an Associated Press analysis of that breakdown in negotiations? “Obama, Republicans Trapped by Inflexible Rhetoric.” A Democratic president who bends over backward to accommodate the other side — or, if you prefer, who leans so far to the right that he’s in danger of falling over — is treated as being just the same as his utterly intransigent opponents. Balance!
…Many pundits view taking a position in the middle of the political spectrum as a virtue in itself. I don’t. Wisdom doesn’t necessarily reside in the middle of the road, and I want leaders who do the right thing, not the centrist thing.
But for those who insist that the center is always the place to be, I have an important piece of information: We already have a centrist president…

Krugman cites President Obama’s HCR and tax policies as examples and adds:

So what’s with the buzz about a centrist uprising? As I see it, it’s coming from people who recognize the dysfunctional nature of modern American politics, but refuse, for whatever reason, to acknowledge the one-sided role of Republican extremists in making our system dysfunctional. And it’s not hard to guess at their motivation. After all, pointing out the obvious truth gets you labeled as a shrill partisan, not just from the right, but from the ranks of self-proclaimed centrists.
But making nebulous calls for centrism, like writing news reports that always place equal blame on both parties, is a big cop-out — a cop-out that only encourages more bad behavior. The problem with American politics right now is Republican extremism, and if you’re not willing to say that, you’re helping make that problem worse.

In fairness, there have been MSM reporters and editorials that have not been hustled by “the centrist cop-out” and they merit respect for doing an honest job. But Krugman is right that too many others have swilled the pseudo-centrist Koolaid, and now are very much a part of the problem.

This item is cross-posted from The New Republic.
When I last wrote about the schedule of Republican presidential nominating contests back in April, there were two dynamics that appeared to be shaping the calendar: first, the usual “frontloading” temptation of states to run to the front of the line in order to have an impact on the results, which both national parties have been fighting in recent years with less than brilliant success; and second, a more unusual “backloading” phenomenon, where other states were delaying primaries or caucuses for their own reasons, often the money savings associated with holding the contests in conjunction with regular nominating events for down-ballot offices. Since then, it looks like both phenomena have only intensified, with numerous implications for the GOP field. And because the two trends pull in opposite directions, they indicate that the Republican nominating contest will likely play out in one of two remarkably divergent ways: either as a quick victory or as an extended slugfest.
In an interesting joint effort, both national parties have sought in this election cycle to bring order to the calendar by maintaining the privilege of four early states–Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire, and South Carolina–while pushing them to hold their contests no earlier than February. Other states, meanwhile, are being ordered to hold back until at least March or, barring that, suffer penalties (for Republicans, this means the loss of half of a “rogue” state’s delegates). As was the case in 2008, Florida is first on the list of potential scofflaw states; its primary is currently scheduled for January 31, 2012, which, if it stays that way, could influence the First Four states to move their contests up to the beginning of the year or even December of 2011. But in contrast with 2008, where Michigan was Florida’s only partner is defying the calendar, four other states–Arizona, Colorado, Georgia, and Missouri–have positioned themselves to follow the Sunshine State into unsanctioned early contests, with Arizona and Georgia bestowing a single official (Arizona’s Governor Jan Brewer and Georgia’s Secretary of State Brian Kemp) the power to set the exact date.
At the same time, “backloading” pressures are likely to lead several especially large states–e.g. California, New York, and Texas–into later contests. As an added incentive to budgetary concerns, the national GOP has decreed that only those states holding contests after April 1 will have the option of awarding delegates on a winner-take-all basis, traditionally the main difference between Republican and Democratic primary rules. The end result, as recently explained by election calendar guru Josh Putnam to The New York Times‘ Jeff Zeleny, is the destruction of that hardy perennial of state calendar machinations, Super Tuesday, which will shrink from 24 states participating during the last cycle to only about 10 in next year’s contest.
If both these trends play out, it could significantly increase the probability of either a quick victory or an extended slugfest, much like the Democratic contest of 2008. In that fight, Barack Obama came within a few thousand votes in New Hampshire of putting Hillary Clinton’s campaign on life support on January 8, but ultimately had to wait nearly six months (until June 4, to be exact) to claim the nomination.
As for which outcome will come to pass, the conventional wisdom this cycle is that an early knockout is unlikely. At the moment, if you were to take bets among the handicappers of pre-election speculation, the favorite in Iowa is Michele Bachmann; in Nevada and New Hampshire, it’s Mitt Romney; and in South Carolina, it’s probably Rick Perry (if he runs, and it’s looking increasingly like he will). But all three of these candidates are also theoretically capable of an early run of the table. Bachmann, for her part, has been moving up on Romney in New Hampshire polls, and has an ideological profile well-suited for South Carolina. And if Perry competes in Iowa and splits the social conservative vote with Bachmann (and Tim Pawlenty and Herman Cain, if they are still around), Romney will be tempted to contest Iowa–where he continues to do well in the polls–and with his strength in Nevada and New Hampshire, could pull off a trifecta of victories in the first three contests. Finally, Perry’s one-two punch of appeal to social and economic conservatives could make him quickly competitive everywhere, as his recent double-digit standing in national and some state polls even prior to an announcement indicates.
Add in the wild card of several other contests immediately after South Carolina–particularly a Georgia/Florida combo–and one candidate could put the whole thing away pretty quickly. Romney could play well in Florida, while both Perry and Bachmann might have an advantage in deep-red southern states and in low-turnout Caucus states like Colorado. The “clustering” of early primaries where candidates can get fresh bursts of momentum without the massive effort associated with a Super Tuesday-type national event could be crucial in 2012.
If that doesn’t happen, though, the backloading of the calendar after the early flurry portends an extended campaign where the same three candidates have an opportunity to stay alive. Yes, deep-pocketed candidates like Romney and Perry would have superior resources for this kind of extended national campaign (though Bachmann, unlike her 2008 counterpart, Mike Huckabee, is no slouch at fundraising, either). But the decimation of Super Tuesday means that no one will be in the position Obama enjoyed in 2008 of using superior resources to sweep a host of delegate-rich caucuses held on a single day–arguably the crucial factor in his eventual nomination. A candidate like Bachmann, meanwhile, who enjoys iconic status among both Tea Party and Christian Right activists, could, if the money is there, register strong second- or third-place finishes in a lot of states. After April 1, however, that strategy won’t serve her as well if some of those states will be choosing to award their entire delegate hauls to the winner.
The bottom line is that the emerging calendar could produce an early nominee, or could even lead to that rarest of phenomena: a multi-candidate contest that stretches into the late spring. It does not appear to advantage or disadvantage any one candidate, but instead presents a complex strategic challenge to the entire field. In the end, the winning campaign may not be the richest, or even the luckiest, but the smartest.

This item by TDS Co-Editor William Galston is cross-posted from The New Republic.
Raising the debt ceiling is a man-made crisis amenable to straightforward policy remedies. Political will is all that is lacking. Not so the economic crisis that our preoccupation with fiscal policy has temporarily obscured. Two major reports underscore both the depth of our economic woes and our increasing social divisions.
The IMF recently conducted a comparative study of ten post-war economic recoveries seven quarters after the business cycle trough, or recession’s end. Its findings for the United States are stunning. For employment and household finances, the current recovery is the weakest since the end of World War Two. For the business and financial sectors, it’s the strongest. The banks, recipients of lavish public funds and guarantees during the meltdown, are reporting a rapid recovery from their lows in profits, loan charge-offs, and equity-to-asset ratios. Meanwhile, growth in employment, disposable personal income, personal savings and consumption, and total GDP all anguish. Needless to say, investment in structures–residential and non-residential–comes in dead last. Were it not for a strong performance in equipment, software, and exports, the current recovery would barely have a pulse. The IMF study does nothing to weaken the increasingly credible thesis that downturns induced by financial crises differ structurally from those in normal business cycles.
At the same time that the business and financial sectors are becoming decoupled from employment and household balance sheets, gaps among different parts of our population are growing. A report just out from the Pew Research Center shows that while the median net worth of all U.S. households declined by 28 percent between 2005 and 2009, the figure was 53 percent for African Americans and 66 percent for Hispanics. And these percentages mask an even more troubling reality: The assets of black and Hispanic households have just about been wiped out. Median net worth in black households stands at $5677; in Hispanic households, $6235. No doubt this reflects the collapse of the housing market, which has hit areas of Hispanic population growth with special ferocity. But it reflects something else as well–high levels of unemployment. According to the most recent BLS report, the jobless rate stands at 11.6 percent for Latinos and 16.2 percent for blacks, compared to 8.1 percent for whites. Using savings to finance necessary expenses, which most unemployed households are forced to do, rapidly depletes modest asset accumulations in a hurry. Overall, the disparity in household wealth has risen to the highest level on record, wiping out two decades of progress for minority householders.
This painfully slow recovery is rending the fabric of American society. In turn, these growing socio-economic gaps are contributing to the rising polarization of our politics and declining trust in government–developments that will make it even more difficult to forge agreements on the policies we’ll need to get out of this deep hole. No doubt adverse trends in the global economy are making things even worse. But in the end, our economic crisis is a governance crisis. The stalemate over the debt ceiling is a symptom of this systemic fact.

As some of you may have noticed, I’m doing some writing for Salon this week and next (unlike some of their regulars, I don’t take summer vacations), and quickly found myself in a somewhat testy but illuminating exchange with the ever-estimable Glenn Greenwald. My initial piece, a meditation on the divide between elite and rank-and-file progressive attitudes towards the president, and how that played into Obama’s apparent re-election strategy, clearly set Glenn’s teeth on edge. His response made some categorical claims about the empirical evidence of a rank-and-file progressive revolt against Obama, argued that White House indifference to the Left’s disgruntlement with the president is politically dangerous, and in general lamented the tendency of D.C. pundits and Obama apologists to mock progressives and minimize their concerns. He made it pretty clear he included me in that much-despised-by-progressives group.
You can read my response to Greenwald here, and I won’t recapitulate it other than to say I found his empirical arguments for a progressive voter revolt against Obama unpersuasive (and certainly less persuasive than the slam-dunk case he claimed to be so clear that only “willful blindness” could miss it), and his innuendos about my intentions unfair.
If you do not want to wade through all this verbiage, Elias Isquith has a good analysis of the exchange at the League of Ordinary Gentlemen site.
I’d just offer two additional thoughts about the exchange. I objected to Glenn’s suggestion that I was joining the Obama camp and “D.C. pundits” in laughing at progressive critics of the White House for two reasons: (1) it’s not true, and more importantly, (2) progressives need to be able to have discussions of both empirical data and political strategy without impugning each other’s motives. This latter point, as a matter of fact, is one of the foundational principles for this site. Sure, we all have our own opinions and agendas. Yes, it’s human nature to associate someone making a particular argument with others making similar arguments. And often it helpfully simplifies discussions to typecast our “opponents.” But it’s a tendency that we all ought to resist, particularly amongst those who share the same basic values and allegiances, and especially when we are talking directly to each other.
In addition, in the lengthy comment thread to my first Salon piece, a lot of folks strenuously objected to my characterization of progressives outspokenly angry with Obama as “progressive elites” or “liberal elites.” I can certainly understand that objection, insofar as “elite” has a negative connotation and most of the people objecting can’t be described as opinion-leaders beyond their immediate circles. But the whole departure point of my essay was to contrast the exceptionally vociferous and increasingly dominant criticism of Obama among actual progressive opinion-leaders–i.e., “elites”–with the relatively robust levels of support the president continues to enjoy in the actual progressive Democratic voter “base.” Sure, anyone reading progressive blogs with comment threads is aware that there are progressive voters who are very angry with Obama. But empirically speaking, there aren’t enough of them to register strongly in measurements of public opinion. Perhaps it would have been better to posit between “elites” and “rank-and-file” a third group of progressives–say, “activists”–who may through their own political efforts exert an influence beyond their numbers. It’s very difficult, however, to be precise about that, and it doesn’t obviate the point that the “progressive revolt” against Obama has not, so far, spread very far into the electorate.
In any event, this will hardly be the last time this subject is discussed here or elsewhere, and I can only hope such discussions produce more light than heat.

J.P. Green’s post below covered a range voter suppression activities. But now we have a new, particularly disgusting initiative from Wisconsin’s Republican Governor Scott Walker, reports Mike Hall in the AFL-CIO Now Blog:

In May, Gov. Scott Walker (R) signed a Voter ID bill that could disenfranchise tens of thousands of students, seniors, poor and minority Wisconsin voters who don’t have drivers’ licenses or state-issued photo IDs.
Now it appears as if the Walker administration is going a step further to keep voters who aren’t likely to be Walker supporters (see list below) away from the polls. He’s closing 10 Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) offices where residents can obtain the photo IDs they will need before they are allowed to vote. Supposedly, the move is to free up DMV employees to staff offices that will have expanded hours to provide ID services.
But state Rep. Andy Jorgensen (D) says it appears the decisions were based on politics, with the department targeting offices for closure in Democratic areas and expanding hours for those in Republican districts.

As for the old ‘voter fraud’ excuse being peddled by GOP politicians coast to coast, Hall notes that there were more UFO sightings (40) in Wisconsin in 2008 than reports of improper voting (14) — out of 3 million votes cast in that election.
The i.d. law itself is draconian, but the required procedures compound the injustice:

While Walkerites claim that all a person needs to do is head to the nearest DMV and get his or her “free” voter ID, as recent hidden camera video shows, if you don’t specifically ask for a “Voter ID,” you’ll be charged $28, the cost of a regular state photo ID. There are no signs and the clerks are not instructed to ask what type of photo ID a person is after. In effect, that’s a $28 poll tax.

The Wisconsin i.d. law kicks in next year. But Hall points out that “voters will be asked to provide a photo ID but will be allowed to vote without one” in the upcoming recall elections.