The global brouhaha over Pope Benedict XVI’s remarks quoting a fourteenth century theologian who deplored contemporay Islam’s practice of forced conversions has amply illustrated the many false choices that tempt all sides in the religious dimensions of the war against jihadist terrorism.The most obvious malefactors are those jihadists who have rushed to confirm the “insult to Islam” purportedly contained in the Pope’s remarks by sacking churches, burning Benedict in effigy, and otherwise seeking to “conquer by the sword.” They could care less about the actual content of the Pope’s comments; it’s all about seizing on any opportunity to foment irreconcilable conflict between the West and Islam. I agree with my colleague The Moose that Democrats, and all other American and European officials, should denounce such violence categorically.But I don’t agree with those who view this incident as indistinguishable from the earlier dispute over Danish cartoon caricatures of Muhammad, or who consider the non-violent protests against the Pope’s comments indistinguishable from the violent protests in all but tone or degree.The Danish cartoonists were private citizens exercising the free speech rights they enjoy as citizens of Denmark and members of the European Community. Pope Benedict XVI is a head of state, and also head of the largest Christian faith community. He is, moreover, holder of the office which in fact authorized the anti-Muslim Crusades that jihadists so often point to as representing the enduring hostility of Christians towards Muslims. However absurd it may seem to Americans that anyone could fail to understand the vast changes in Vatican attitudes towards non-Christians (and for that matter, non-Catholic Christians) over the ensuing centuries, it’s not completely irrational that Muslims would be a little sensitive on this point.More importantly, it should be obvious that most of the official and non-violent statements of Muslim dismay over the Pope’s remarks are not slightly less rabid versions of the jihadist fury, but something very different: expressions of anxiety about the western stereotypes of Islam as inherently intolerant and violence-prone, and about jihadist stereotypes of malevolent western intentions towards Islam. If, as most Americans profess to believe, moderate Muslim opinion is critical to our success in the war with jihadism, then it’s irresponsible to breezily dismiss moderate Muslim opinion in this case. So does that mean the Pope should be badgered into more fully apologizing for his remarks, even though they have clearly been taken far out of context by his Muslim critics? No, but I think it would be wise of him to issue a clarification that explains the context, and reassures Muslims that they are not the exclusive target of his concerns. From everything I’ve read about Benedict’s speech, he was essentially arguing that violence is incompatible with religious faith of every variety. Perhaps if he frankly acknowledged that Christianity in general, and Catholicism in particular, has been guilty of the same sort of grievous resorts to coercion and violence as jihadists advocate today, his message would carry more moral weight, and create less offense among non-jihadist Muslims. To cite the most obvious example, forced conversions of hundreds of thousands of Muslims (and of Jews) represented a central chapter in the history of Spanish Catholicism. Indeed, the Spanish Inquisition was primarily aimed at rooting out residual Muslim and Jewish religious practices (e.g., refusing to eat pork) among the population that chose to convert rather than leave Spain. A little historical candor, and the kind of collective act of contrition that Benedict’s predecessor so notably exercised with respect to Catholic persecution of Jews, might go a long way not only to end the current protests against the Vatican, but to re-establish the general principle that any faith that tries to “conquer by the sword” is incompatible with its own best traditions, and with civilization itself.

Via Chris Bowers at MyDD, I recently read a Charlie Cook column that said out loud something I have been puzzling about:

As a general rule, election-watchers under the age of 40, regardless of their party or ideology, see the contest for control of the House as fairly close. They foresee Republicans’ losing at least 10 seats, but certainly no more than 20, and they put the odds of a Democratic takeover at 50-50, give or take 10 percentage points. As for the Senate, these observers tend to expect Republicans to lose three or four seats, but probably not five and certainly not the six required for Democrats to take charge.Observers over age 40, meanwhile, tend to see a greater likelihood of sizable Republican losses. They think that the GOP could well lose more than 20 House seats and more than five Senate seats.

This generation gap has been especially notable if you read progressive prognosticators, such as Chris Bowers or Kos. These are people who by and large are completely obsessed with the hope that Democrats will retake Congress. This is largely what they live for. Yet they are very reluctant to predict that their Ahab will indeed slay their Great White Whale. At the same time, nonpartisan and Washington Establishment crystal ball analysts–the very people that progressive bloggers regard as thinly veiled allies of Bush and Rove–are typically suggesting that Bush and Rove’s party is about to get 1994’d. Cook gently suggests that Old Folks remember earlier elections that provide the relevant empircal data for what’s happening this year. Bowers responds by noting that young’uns are fixated on recent elections where the only real pattern was Democratic futility. As an Old Guy who pays a lot of attention to Young Folk commentary, I think both sides have a point. Cook and Rothenburg and all sorts of conventional handicappers are right to examine the historical evidence for what might happen when you have a deeply unpopular president whose party controls Congress, especially six years into a presidency. But Bowers and company have experienced two straight midterm elections that broke all the rules about the performance of the president’s party. Perhaps I’m showing my age here, but I tend to agree with Charlie and Stu and company that it’s hard to find any precedent for a presidential party controlling Congress in the sixth year of an administration that avoids disaster when the electorate is completely sour on the status quo. But we’re in an era when precedents are being broken every day, so who knows?For all the talk about 1986 and 1994 and 2002 as precursors of what might happen this November, I am increasingly reminded of 1980, when it comes to the allegedly slight possibility of Democrats retaking the Senate. That year, there were a large number of very close Senate races: NY, IA, IN, FL, AL, GA, NC, ID, WA, WI, as I recall. Republicans won every damn one of them, thanks to a last minute “wave.” The lay of the land in Senate races this year is strikingly similar. So mark me down as an Old Guy who understands how unpredictable elections have become, but who thinks Democrats are in position, if we don’t make mistakes, to do even better in actual races than our national standing might suggest.

When returns from RI last night began showing that Sen. Linc Chafee was winning his primary over conservative challenger Stephen Laffey, I bet more than one pundit arose from the sofa, cursing, and began rewriting a prepackaged column that paired Chafee’s demise with the Lieberman-Lamont primary in Connecticut as signs of partisan and ideological polarization.Perhaps some Republican chatterers will make the absurd claim that the results show the GOP is more open to centrist candidates than the Democratic Party. My colleague The Moose, an early riser, has already done a post offering a sunnier and more balanced take: Chafee’s win and Lieberman’s steady poll lead as an indie candidate indicate an appetite for centrist candidates across the board, with the different primary results being attributable to the ability of independents to participate in RI primaries. The Moose may well be right that Lieberman’s narrow loss in the August 8 primary would have become a narrow victory if indies could have participated; as always, close races make it possible to point to all sorts of different shoulda woulda scenarios (e.g., that Lieberman would have also won if he had foresworn a post-primary indie race altogether). But I wouldn’t overstate the “closed primary” factor. CT allows indies to switch their registration to participate in partisan primaries right up to Election Eve, and anecdotal evidence this year was that thousands of them were doing just that. But there’s a much bigger difference between the two primaries that should give pause to anyone making comparisons. Throughout the primary contest in RI, Republicans were deluged with polls showing Laffey getting absolutely killed in general election matchups with Dem candidate Sheldon Whitehouse; Chafee, while often trailing, was always close. That’s why national Republicans threw absolutely every available resource into helping Chafee. And by primary day, most of those voting for Laffey did so with an understanding that they might be tossing away a Senate seat at a time when Democrats were beginning to realistically think they could retake the Senate. In CT, by contrast, the implosion of Republican Senate candidate Alan Schlesinger meant that Democrats could cast primary ballots without any real fear of losing a seat. And that’s also why national Dems, even though most of them endorsed Lieberman in the primary, didn’t devote anything like the kind of effort on Joe’s behalf that GOPers made for Chafee (and why a lot of them who have since endorsed Lamont aren’t exactly kicking out the jams for him, either, given Lieberman’s pledge to stay within the Caucus if he wins). So I dunno if the two primaries can be accurately compared; there are too many missing links, or Lincs.

I didn’t get around to blogging about this earlier, given the 9/11 anniversary and such, but I was glad to see someone in the mainstream media took notice of the DLC/Labor event last week, highlighting the DLC endorsement of the Employee Free Choice Act. David Broder devoted his Sunday column to the event, focusing on Gov. Tom Vilsack’s role in making it happen:

When Vilsack became chairman of the DLC last year, it raised eyebrows because unions have been a backbone of his support in Iowa. But he said he wanted to try to heal the breach, and he quickly began a series of private conversations with labor leaders, followed by joint sessions of DLC staffers and union operatives.The upshot was the news conference, where the DLC formally endorsed a bill called the Employee Free Choice Act that is high on labor’s wish list.

Broder is often derided as fatally old-school. But sometimes having a long memory matters. He’s right to suggest that this is an event that would have been hard to imagine not that long ago, and that exhibits Democratic unity across a divide that’s as important as the more recent fissures over Iraq. As Broder put it in summarizing Vilsack’s efforts:

It has a double significance. For Vilsack, a long-shot candidate for the 2008 presidential nomination, it is the strongest proof of his ability to be a successful power broker.And for the Democrats, it holds important potential. For most of the past decade, the DLC and its adherents have supplied the best policy thinking for the party while the labor movement has supplied most of the grass-roots organization and effort.For the first time, you can see mind and muscle working together, a healthy development for the Democrats.

Selah.

In some respects, September 11, 2001 seems like far more than five years ago. It’s hard to remember what it was like to go through airport security before then. And for those of us in politics, it’s even harder to recall a time when national security was an entirely subordinate issue, much less when Republicans were calling for “humility” in foreign policy, and suggesting Democrats were too prone to support military actions remote from direct threats to the United States. But at the same time, we all remember that day with extraordinary clarity. I was at work in Washington, and a colleague called me into his office to watch reports of a plane hitting the World Trade Center. Right after I started watching, the second plane hit, and I knew, like everyone else at that moment, what that meant. Almost immediately, it seemed, another colleague called in to say she was sitting in traffic on I-395 and saw an airliner crash into the Pentagon (thinking–erroneously, it turned out–that her husband was in the Pentagon for a meeting, she was understandably beside herself). And then within a minute or two, we could all see the smoke rising on the horizon from the direction of Northern Virginia. Following some odd impulse, a friend and I went down to the street (Pennsylvania Ave. SE) and stood there just watching the Capitol building, half-expecting it to explode any minute. We finally snapped out of it when the sidewalks filled with congressional staffers who had just been evacuated. I didn’t lose any friends or family members on 9/11, and it’s just one of the traumatic national incidents burned permanently into my memory (others being the Cuban Missile Crisis, the assassinations of JFK, RFK and MLK; the Challenger explosion; Hurricane Katrina; and, as a political junkie, the horror of the Florida recount in 2000). Life more or less returned to normal in New York and Washington within months of the tragedy, and in D.C. we no longer awaken each morning immediately aware of the drone of circling aircraft patrols. But because we are still as a nation grappling with how to respond to 9/11, and to place it in some proper historical context, this particular memory burns bright today, and Lord only knows when it will ever fade from our nightmares, or fail to arouse anger and tears.

A good while back I made a resolution not to blog about blogging more than once in a blue moon, and I’ve kept the resolution well enough that I literally can’t find my last post on the subject, after googling and scanning the site for about an hour. I do recall that this long-lost post explained why I don’t provide comment threads–which some folks consider essential for any legitimate progressive blog–mainly because I literally don’t have the time to read, much less manage, a significant number of comments. But at present, there’s quite a bit of buzz about comment threads in the blogosphere. Much of it is devoted to the recent incident over at The New Republic, which shut down a “culture blog” written by Lee Siegel after he got caught pseudonymously doing self-hagiographical posts in his own comment threads. And there’s continuing discussion (most recently by my colleague The Moose) about anti-semitic comments on progressive blog sites and whether their managers are sufficiently policing them. Siegel’s stunt struck me as reflecting more of a psychological disorder than some sort of massive violation of blogospheric ethics; you have to wonder how many other bloggers have succumbed to the temptation to stuff their own ballot box with self-praise. But it does raise obvious questions about the function of comment threads. Their ostensible purpose is to allow readers to “comment” on primary posts. But as anyone knows who slogs through comment threads, particularly at high-traffic sites, threads typically drift into collateral and then non-collateral topics. And there is clearly a hardy band of frequent commenters who drift from site to site; who know each other’s views; and who often conduct long-running debates that have little or nothing to do with the posts on which they are “commenting.” I have no inherent objection to this practice, but would observe that comment threads in many cases simply offer a way for non-bloggers to blog without the muss and fuss of running a site or creating diaries on the sites that offer them. The topic of objectionable content on comment threads is more important and troublesome. I agree with Kevin Drum that it’s fundamentally unfair to tar whole sites, much less whole categories of bloggers, with occasional disgusting views as expressed in comment threads. The Moose is making the somewhat different claim that blog proprietors aren’t doing enough to rid their sites of anti-semitic comments. I dunno about that. Most of the big progressive sites have an elaborate (and to me largely incomprehensible) machinery of policies and technological tools to police comments threads, and do regularly “ban” posters who violate the policies chronically. But they don’t, and probably can’t, instantly expunge comments that express objectionable prejudices, in part because it’s not always easy to draw the line between, say, objections to the U.S. alliance with Israel, and genuine anti-semitic utterances, even though they may often overlap.As it happens, I once (successfully) urged Josh Marshall to ban a guy from comments at TPMCafe who was constantly popping up (not just there, but all over the blogosphere) to claim that anyone he disagreed with on virtually any topic was, in fact, acting as an agent of AIPAC, a.k.a. “the Israel Lobby.” I contacted Josh after about the fifth time this jerk breezily announced that the DLC existed purely and simply as an AIPAC front. My objection was not exactly that he was expressing anti-semitic opinions, though he likely holds them; it was that his comments weren’t expressions of opinion at all, but completely unsupported statements of “fact” that were actually lies, and had to be either conscious lies or products of a deep delusion, since he had no idea what he was talking about. Seems to me this might not be a bad rule of thumb for the general treatment of possibly anti-semitic content on blog sites. After all, the diseased heart of all classic anti-semitism is the stubborn claim that Jews exercise shadowy and disproportionate influence by way of a conspiracy that has ensnared or corrupted the gentiles who ostensibly are in charge of governments and opinion-leading media. If, God forbid, I were in charge of a comment thread, I wouldn’t have a beef with people who wanted to argue that America’s alliance with Israel is not in our national interest. But there are dozens of reasons for the strong pro-Israeli tradition in U.S. foreign policy–reasons that range from coldly rational analysis to all sorts of ideological and cultural affinities. It would exist if there were no AIPAC, and no high-profile Jews writing about the Middle East. So I’d bounce anybody from a comment thread that resorted to the “Jewish cabal” kind of argument. It’s a short distance from there to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. And quite frankly, that point of view has been aired more than enough over the centuries, with horrific consequences.

It’s been an interesting day here at the DLC. This morning we hosted an event featuring an array of top union officials to announce the DLC’s endorsement of the labor movement’s current top legislative priority, the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA). Speakers at the event included Al From; our chairman, Gov. Tom Vilsack; AFL-CIO president John Sweeney; Change to Win Federation chair Anna Burger; AFSCME president Gerald McEntee; and Steelworkers’ Secretary-Treasurer James English.The EFCA, colloquially known as “card check,” would require recognition of unions as collective bargaining agents if a majority of workers in a particular workplace sign verifiable statements supporting the organization of a union. Under current law, employers can (and generally do) request a formal election before recognizing unions, a requirement that often creates long delays, expensive election campaigns, and, because the penalties for illegal employer activities are so light, all sorts of intimidation tactics against pro-union employees, ranging from firings to threats of layoffs and plant closings. This system has contributed materially to the decline of union membership, despite constant polls showing sizeable majorities of workers would join unions if given a fair chance.The labor movement is making a major push for EFCA this fall, while also seeking to make it a significant campaign issue in Congressional and even state elections. Nearly half of the House, along with 43 senators, are cosponsors, so the timing is right to show a united progressive front on this legislation.As Gov. Vilsack said at the event:

The DLC has come together today with the nation’s top labor leaders to speak with one voice guarding a worker’s right to choose to join a union without fear or intimidation. We believe that worker protection is a concern to all Americans and will work together to ensure the passage of the Employee Free Choice Act. I am pleased we have found common ground on this very important issue and look forward to a productive and on-going dialogue between organizations.

As this last comment indicated, the EFCA endorsement represented the first fruits of a dialogue between the DLC and a broad range of unions on economic issues–a dialogue created by Vilsack along with long-time DLC-supporting unions like the Firefighters and the Sheet Metal Workers (the discussions have also included a recent addition to the ranks of DLC donors, the National Education Association). Having been in some of the discussions, I can tell you that for every issue like trade that divides the DLC from some labor movement representatives, there are quite a few others that unite us, aside from the overriding goal of getting rid of the country’s current economic leadership.And this common ground is not that surprising. Back in 2004, a similar dialogue between the Progressive Policy Institute and a diverse group of union-oriented journalists and policy wonks (convened by Donkey Rising chief Ruy Teixeira and then-PPI veep Rob Atkinson) produced a remarkable joint op-ed by PPI president Will Marshall and American Prospect founding co-editor Bob Kuttner laying out a common economic agenda for the Democratic Party and the country.Regular readers of this blog probably know I love this sort of stereotype-busting development that serves as a reminder of how much progressives, for all their wrangling, have in common. The Marshall-Kuttner op-ed got very little attention; maybe today’s event will be enough of a dog-bites-man story to turn a few heads.

Although Autumn doesn’t officially begin for another two-and-a-half weeks, Labor Day is semi-officially the transition from Vacation Time to the resumption of school, work, and serious politics. On the last point, I intend to blog regularly from now until November about the midterm elections. It is shaping up as a great year for Democrats across the board, and I personally think the abandonment of the all-politics-is-local GOP congressional strategy in favor of a classic Rovian attack on godless pacifist Democrats may well backfire. I may also comment now and then on another obsession: college football. My Georgia Bulldogs won a tune-up game against I-AA Western Kentucky on Saturday, but next week will have to go to Columbia, South Cackalacki to take on the Old Ball Coach, whose Gamecocks shut out Mississippi State in their first contest. Most Georgia fans don’t want to admit it, but Steve Spurrier had a lot to do with the Dawgs’ SEC title last year, mainly because of his upset win over his alma mater, the Florida Gators. This year, the Roosters are legitimate SEC East contenders. Beating them at home would be satisfying in terms of tormenting Georgia’s ancient enemy in the smirk and the visor. But it would also help replicate last year’s dynamic of forcing Spurrier to knock off Tennessee and Florida to complete a successful season. I’m glad Labor Day has come and gone, and look forward to the real autumn season when the heat and humidity retreat and the turning leaves remind us all of the passing nature of life, and its perennial beauty.

I have to admit I was a bit stricken by a question posed at TAPPED today by my young and much esteemed friend Matt Yglesias: “Have I ever mentioned that I hate baby boomers?”Matt was reacting to a particularly confused NYT column by baby boomer Andrew Rosenthal complaining that today’s antiwar crowd does not know how to do protests–an argument complicated somewhat by his use of an antiwar concert by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young to show that the boomer example of how to sing and chant wars away has been lost. I couldn’t agree more with Matt’s assessment of Rosenthal, or with his broader argument that “protest politics,” as opposed to the more conventional kind, is largely ineffective.But I have to say that Rosenthal’s silly claim that boomers were politically superior to their children is no more objectionable than Matt’s silly claim to the contrary. I’m certainly glad that after twenty years of post-boomer coherts of young folks who tended to vote Republican, the arrows turned during the Cinton era and have tilted left ever since. And I am more than aware that boomer progressivism has been vastly overrated; Nixon, after all, carried the Youth Vote in 1972 after the McGovern campaign pioneered direct appeals to first-time voters.But more generally, it’s time to bury the idea that any generation–past, present or future–embodies virtue or vice in any great measure. We all know about the “greatest generation” of WW2, and its contributions to democracy are rightly praised; but I am more impressed with the previous generation of Americans who suffered through the Great Depression. They were just as moral and hard-working as any previous or later generation, but due to forces far beyond their control, roughly one-third of them were regularly unemployed, and an even higher percentage saw their dreams shattered and their lives blighted. Indeed, the example of that generation–along with the hard-working analogous people around the world who happen to live in dysfunctional societies and economies–is the main reason I reject the whole conservative and Republican social and economic philosophy.Virtue and success are not, in the end, identical, or even close to identical. Politics and policy do really matter, in terms of how life is actually lived by most of us. There are no great or lesser generations of Americans. There are just lucky and unlucky Americans, and whatever our generational background, the challenge is to make life a better bargain. I’m happy to be told that my twentieth-century experience makes it hard for me to understand twenty-first century realities. But let’s don’t claim any superiority for any generation, and let’s hope a combination of new and old experiences will help progressives understand the complicated perspectives of an electorate that straddles the centuries.

You have to figure George W. Bush would have preferred to be anywhere else (with the exception of Iraq) today other than in New Orleans. But on the first anniversary of the virtual destruction of a city beloved by the whole world, had Bush been anywhere else, it would have reminded that whole world of his administration’s absence when the levees broke.Now his marginally repentant words in New Orleans will simply be fodder for news reports that not only bring back the horrific images of 2005, but explain to a forgetful nation how bad things still are in the Crescent City. Here’s CNN’s wrap-up on that topic:

Only half of New Orleans has electricity. Half its hospitals are closed. Violent crime is up. Less than half the population has returned. Tens of thousands of families still live in trailers and mobile homes with no real timetable for moving to more permanent housing. Insurance settlements are mired in red tape. The city still has no master rebuilding plan. And while much debris has been cleared, some remains as if the clock stopped when the storm struck.

For more detailed reports on the disaster after the disaster–and the culpability of the administration for failing after its initial failures–you should check out the special section at TPMCafe.com called “After the Levees.” It will likely make you, as it did me, angry all over again.