Now that Howard Dean is certain to be elected the new chairman of the Democratic National Committee, I’ve been getting some emails asking me if I’m going to attack the guy and generally create a new excuse for people to ignore everything else I say. I’m amused that anybody thinks my opinion on this particular subject matters at all, but actually, I’m happy to congratulate the Doctor and wish him the best of luck in a tough, important, and often thankless job.
Like supporters of John Kerry, Dick Gephardt, John Edwards, Wesley Clark, Dennis Kucinich, Joe Lieberman and Al Sharpton, I opposed Governor Dean’s presidential candidacy. (For the record, I was a Kerry supporter from the beginning).
Dean’s candidacy for DNC chair has been a different matter. I did a post back in November wondering why he wanted the job. I also suggested that the DNC was pretty much an empty fortress where there wouldn’t be any resistance to Dean-style ideas about netroots-based fundraising and organizing, or for that matter, a fighting partisan tone (out-Republican-bashing Terry McAuliffe would be a pretty tall order). And I continue to believe that those Deanies who think his chairmanship represents some sort of revolution are going to be disappointed by the warm welcome they will get over on South Capitol Street, where the only heads available to put on a pike will be those of the failed political consultants who have (I hope) received their last checks from the DNC.
But none of that really matters. The Doctor’s campaign for the party chairmanship focused on the need to broaden the party’s financial base, tap the activist energy so evident in 2004, and rebuild threadbare state party infrastructures nationwide. And he has consistently said he won’t engage in policy or ideological fights that will get in the way of that task, usurp the policy-making role of elected officials, or disturb party unity.
So I sincerely wish him well. And I join those Democrats who are steeling themselves to fight against a definite and long-planned GOP effort to drag up and exaggerate every controversial thing Dean said last year to paint Democrats as a party lurching towards the left. I’m sure the Doctor knows he will be playing by a different set of rules than previous party chairs–you might call them Hillary Rules, insofar as every word out of his mouth will be distorted and exploited by the GOP to reinforce right-wing stereotypes. Like Sen. Clinton, he will have to measure his words far more than is rightly fair, and like Sen. Clinton, he might want to throw a few counter-stereotypical comments into his public utterances to surprise people and set the record straight.
Above all, the changing of the guard at the DNC should be an occasion for Democrats to remind themselves they can walk and chew gum at the same time. Yes, we need an energized activist base, but we also need to expand that base into hostile or indifferent territory until we get a majority. Yes, we need more (and more broad-based) money and better mechanics, but we also need a winning message. And yes, we need to reform the party, but that won’t matter if we don’t stand as a party for reform ideas which address the weaknesses (above all on national security, values and culture, and the role of government) that unnecessarily keep voters from supporting our candidates–ideas which enable us to expose the inner rot of the Republican ascendancy.
The DNC’s unique role is to deal with activists, money, mechanics, and party reform, and Howard Dean brings a strong resume and considerable enthusiasm to those tasks. Expanding the base, developing a winning message, and articulating a progressive reform agenda–those are tasks in which all Democrats must participate, and where the main impetus must come far from South Capitol Street, out there in the heartland and its electoral battlegrounds.

The other day I did a long, and probably over-complicated post on the Democratic case for redistricting reform, and observed that more and more Democrats seemed to be interested in making this a nationwide and party-wide agenda-item, instead of just a tactic to be pursued in a fewe states where Republicans have engineered particularly egregious partisan gerrymanders.
Well, this movement from skeptical and conditional to strong and universal support for redistricting reform got a big boost today when the LA Times revealed that California Republicans, especially in the state’s congressional delegation, are really honked off at Arnold for raising the very subject. Kevin Drum of Political Animal read the piece and recanted his earlier skepticism to redistricting reform on the spot.
I generally don’t like it when Democrats define themselves purely in terms of reacting to Republicans. But in this case, it’s probably a healthy development. When a genuine political reform is on the table, and the status-quo GOP is opposing it, Democrats have no reason left for failing to get behind it.

I can’t add much to the DLC’s take on Bush’s budget, other than to underline the cynicism of the administration on this topic. You really get the sense that half of OMB was engaged in an effort to cook the books in the most extravagant way possible, while the other half scrounged around the files looking for every half-baked conservative “savings” idea that’s emerged over the last thirty years. The product certainly hasn’t fooled Democrats, hasn’t fooled the financial community, and apparently hasn’t fooled Hill Republicans, especially the small but noisy band of fiscal hawks to whom this budget was telegraphed as an early Valentine.
But the unseriousness of this budget does raise a broader question that continues to bug the hell out of me: exactly how smart are the Bushies? John DiIulio memorably described the White House senior political staff as “Mayberry Machiavellis.” But with stunts like the Social Security privatization drive, and now this budget, are we seeing the work of the buffoonish Barney Fife or the devious Nicolo?
In a recent post on national security, Mark Schmitt warned Democrats not to fall into the delusion that they can beat Republicans with superior policy stances, because that’s not how the White House plays the game. Big “policy battles,” he suggested, will be won or lost on the basis of big, general themes.
I understand where Mark is coming from (though in a postscript, he had second thoughts and suggested that he might have succumbed to “nihilistic despair”), but I would add another warning: by the very nature of things, Democrats will never be able to out-dumb Republicans, because their message is inherently so simple, while ours is not, precisely because we actually want to accomplish things in the real world through public-sector activism, which is, well, complicated. By the same token, we’ll never be able to out-bribe the Republicans by countering their tax cuts with our popular spending initiatives, because in the end, a politics based on personal, selfish calculation will always undermine the sense of community that is the foundation of progressivism.
If we can’t out-dumb them or out-bribe them, our only real option is to out-smart them in a way that doesn’t make us look like smart-asses, right? And that’s also the principled way to deal with unserious and destructive Republican initiatives, whether they are craftily stupid or just plain stupid. That’s the burden of being the “reality-based community.”
UPCATEGORY: Ed Kilgore’s New Donkey

Like most American observers, I tend to think of any apparent progress towards an Israeli-Palestinian settlement skeptically, on grounds that extremists have crucial political leverage on both sides. In particular, it has seemed apparent that Hamas and Islamic Jihad are only giving the new government of Abu Mazen running room so long as he can secure concessions from the Israelis and the U.S. without seriously impairing their own freedom of terrorist action.
But maybe there’s hope. Check out this piece by Joseph Braude just posted on the New Republic site. It suggests new and potentially important rifts in the “Rejectionist Front” that might ultimately separate Jihadists from their base of support.

Ash Wednesday is two days away, but for right-wing proto-schismatic Virginia Episcopalians and some of their allies in the GOP, the day of reflection and repentence came early, as the Virginia Senate shelved legislation designed to make it easier for parishes to leave the Episcopal and Methodist Churches while taking church property along with them into their fever swamps.
Sen. William Mims (R-Loudon County) pulled the plug on his bill today, complaining all the while that it wasn’t designed to do what it was designed to do.
Word around my own church this Sunday was that Mims’ initiative was being pushed by the powerful Truro Church in Fairfax, best known as the religio-political stomping grounds of Ollie North and (on occasion) Justice Clarence Thomas. Truro has been positioning itself to leave the Episcopal Church for some time, arguing, of course, that the Church has abandoned the selective scriptural literalism which, sadly, passes for the Law, the Gospel and Church Tradition in so many places today.

Adam Nagourney of the New York Times did a broad-brush review today of the widespread interest in redistricting reform across the nation. The piece is especially useful because it (a) makes it clear this movement is not limited to Arnold Schwarzennegar’s high-profile initiative in California; and (b) suggests this idea may be catching on in the way earlier electoral reform efforts like campaign finance reform and term limits did in years past.
Since I am a big advocate of redistricting reform, I’d like to play off the Nagourney article to clarify a few points that have confused the debate on this subject to CATEGORY: Ed Kilgore’s New Donkey
(1) Redistricting reform deals with two distinct but inter-related problems: (a) the increasingly alarming ability of U.S. House members to obtain non-competitive districts, which in turn reduces the percentage of districts “in play,” reinforcing the majority’s ability to retain power (while also increasing the partisan and ideological polarization of that chamber); and (b) the inherent conflict of interest involved in state legislative districts drawn by incumbents themselves.
(2) There are two types of gerrymanders at issue: (a) partisan gerrymanders that maximize the ability of one party or another to harvest a disproportionate majority of seats in a given state; (b) incumbent-protection gerrymanders that simply eliminate competition. After the re-redistricting of 2003, Texas produced a classic pro-GOP partisan gerrymander; Florida and Pennsylvania produced similar results prior to 2002. Georgia prior to 2002 produced a (partially successful) pro-Democratic partisan gerrymander. Meanwhile, California engineered perhaps the most efficient incumbent- protection gerrymander in history prior to 2002, both in Congressional and state legislative seats, virtually outlawing marginal districts.
(3) Two potentially parallel but quite different “reforms” under discussion are: (a) partially or completely removing the power to draw districts from partisan state legislators to “independent” commissions or the courts (the central thrust of the Schwarzennegar initiative, and a feature in many states’ systems at present); and (b) establishing legal conditions for redistricting that either reduce partisanship as a legitimate factor, and/or elevate non-partisan factors like compactness, contiguity, community of interest, or even competitiveness itself (Iowa being the classic example).
(4) Interest in redistricting reform ranges from “good-government” groups and citizen actvists who support it as a matter of principle and would apply it everywhere, and partisans who want to pursue it selectively in states where the other party has obtained a significant advantage in redistricting. A growing number of Democrats appear to be moving from the second group to the first on grounds that the current system is in danger of creating a potentially enduring Republican majority both in the U.S. House and among state legislators.
(5) A complicating factor in the law and politics of redistricting is the Voting Rights Act, especially as applied by the Bush I Justice Department during the 1990s redistricting cycle, which required not only the maximum number of majority-minority districts in jurisdictions subject to the Act, but also the construction of prohibitively large majorities for minority candidates. This meant that Republican voters were spread more “efficiently” across district lines while Democrats were often concentrated in extravagantly safe seats.
(6) There is something of an academic backlash against redistricting reform, best represented by a recent Emory University study that concluded redistricting was at most a minor factor, as compared with partisan polarization and the financial advantages of incumbents, in the decline in marginal U.S. House seats (indeed, this study was rather hastily cited by Ruy Teixeira as “proving” Democrats should not think of redistricting as a problem worth worrying about). A contrary view was presented by Gary Jacobson in an analysis of the 2002 House results. But even if redistricting is not necessarily the primary cause of the plague of safe seats, that in no way suggests it could not be the cure: voters are not neatly, geographically self-segregated into nearly 400 isolated communities characterized by partisan leanings. An Iowa-type system that places a premium on competitiveness could definitely break up the duopoly, especially in larger states.
Sorting through all these issues, the bottom line is pretty clear, at least for me:
* The current trend towards selection of voters by politicians is inherently anti-democratic, inherently polarizing, and inherently corrupting; and if Democrats want to be the “party of reform,” we should embrace redistricting reform as a matter of principle.
* To the extent that Republicans currently control the U.S. House, enjoy a more efficient distribution of voters, and hold, for the foreseeable future, a red state/blue state advantage, redistricting reform is good for “large D” Democrats as well as “small d” democracy.
* If the arduous task of redistricting reform is undertaken, reformers should not stop at changing the identity of the map-drawers, but should push for positive laws that create a larger and more even battleground.

Much as I love college football, the pro game, and especially the insane spectacle of commercialism surrounding the Super Bowl, have always left me as cold as the Lambeau Field turf on which championships were once decided, back in my youth.
I have, however, developed my own Super Sunday ritual: going shopping, especially at those stores where 95% of the normal clientele is guaranteed to be glued to the tube from 3:00 until 10:00. So I am off to Lowe’s shortly to buy bathroom equipment for a small cottage next to our house that my family is slowly renovating. Amidst the vast and empty aisles, I hope to find a cheap but functional sink to buy, and if possible, a truly super price on a toilet bowl.

Aside from Medicaid, another low-income safety-net program that may be in the administration’s sights is the food stamp program. Haven’t heard about that? Well, take a look at the latest leak of soon-to-be-announced initiatives in the administration’s proposed budget, an attack on large farm subsidies.
The Bush budget will apparently include a “cap” on the maximum values of farm subsidies that any one producer can harvest, an idea that will (rightly) get some progressive support. But the proposal will run directly into already-announced opposition in Congress, especially from Senate Appropriations Chairman Thad Cochran of MS, who is mobilizing the powerful farm lobby to defeat it.
And that’s where food stamps come in: Congress organizes its budget and appropriations work by federal department, and by a department-oriented system of budget “functions” that track the jurisdiction of congressional appropriations subcommittees. If the White House and the GOP congressional leadership can succeed in setting lower targets for USDA spending, then farm subsidies will be placed into a direct competition with food stamps for funding. I obviously can’t prove it, but it may well be that the administration is deliberately planning a two-cushion shot to go after food stamps while shifting the blame to Congress.
This stupid budget allocation system, reinforced by the jurisdictional boundaries of congressional authorization and appropriations subcommittees, is why cutting federal spending is almost never a matter of broadly looking across spending categories and separating the sheep from the goats. Instead, it’s zero-sum game in which Hill Barons are provided with some sort of Divine Right share of spending, and then asked to divvy it up among their “constituencies.” If that means screwing food stamp recipients to protect farmers, so be it; that’s a “USDA budget decision.”
And that’s why Democrats should not only play chess rather than checkers in anticipating the likely impact of budget “proposals” that seem to be remote from their dearest priorities; they should also get behind serious budget reforms that end this kind of mindless tunnel-vision that prevents the establishment of real national priorities.

With all the attention being focused on Bush’s Social Security privatization proposal, it’s important for Democrats to keep an eye on a different entitlement program: Medicaid, where there are lots of signs the administration will soon pursue something equally radical.
Making Medicaid something less than a federal guarantee of minimum, defined benefits has long been a conservative goal. Ronald Reagan’s first budget proposal included a “cap” on federal Medicaid payments, which would have basically left the states holding the bag for cost and eligibility increases. It was the one big proposal in the 1981 Reagan budget that was defeated in Congress. But the Medicaid “cap” has continued to circulate on the back-burner of conservative thought ever since. There was a very interesting story in WaPo last week in which the new Secretary of Health and Human Services, Mike Leavitt, preemptively denied that Bush was about to renew the Medicaid “cap” idea. But in the fine print, Leavitt made it clear the foreswearance of a “cap” would only apply to federally mandatory Medicaid coverage, which excludes a whole array of important Medicaid services offered by most states, including prescription drugs, long-term care, and indeed, most services made available to elderly and disabled adults.
Leavitt went on to cite state “gaming” of Medicaid to draw down federal funds, and alleged abuse by middle-class families who hide or shift resources in order to qualify for long-term care benefits, as a big part of the Medicaid cost spiral. But as the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities pointed out in a Feburary 4 report, rising health care (including Rx drug) costs, families losing employer-based coverage, and the aging of the population are the main culprits.
So: expect the administration to propose a Medicaid cap-by-another-name, disguised as some sort of attack on waste, fraud and abuse. And recognize that states are hardly in a position to pick up the slack; any sort of limitation on federal fiscal responsibility for Medicaid will guarantee a significant reduction in services, and another boost in the ranks of the uninsured.
The ultimate conservative plan for Medicaid tracks their main goal with Social Security: making it a defined contribution rather than a defined benefit program. For a glimpse of the Golden Future they desire, look no further than Jeb Bush’s proposal for “Medicaid reform” in Florida, which would basically write checks to private insurers and give them unprecedented latitude over who they will cover and what services they will provide.
If you care about old folks and po’ folks, this is some scary stuff, and a token of how far both Bush brothers are willing to take their ongoing mockery of George W. Bush’s pledge to usher in a “responsibility era.”

After helping pound out the DLC’s take on Bush’s SOTU (to sum it up, we were unimpressed and unintimidated), I had the chance to appear on one of my very favorite NPR gabfests, Warren Olney’s To the Point. My anticipation of spirited warfare was heightened when the producer told me I would be pitted against Cato/Club for Growth chieftain Steven Moore, who is a High Church Social Security Privatizer.
But my bloodlust dissipated when my opening gambit–the absurdity of a president who has deliberately engineered a real and immediate fiscal crisis demanding that Congress show “responsibility” by taking on a dubious and remote Social Security “crisis”–met with basic agreement from Moore, who was as exercised as I was by the casual treatment of the budget crisis by Bush last night. I also got the distinct impression that Moore knows Bush’s SocSec initiative is pretty much for show, since the highest praise he could muster for the purported Privatizer-in-Chief is that he was brave to draw attention to the issue.
Libertarians generally make me nuts, but sometimes they offer a refreshing refusal to completely buy in to the tactical alliance they have forged with a Republican Party dominated by corporate porkmeisters, cultural warriors, and neocon empire-builders.
In case you have an unslaked thirst for essence-of-SOTU, check out Dana Milbank’s painstaking WaPo account of who stood, who sat, who clapped, and who looked like a fidgety nine-year-old at church, during the speech. He also reveals it was Rep. Bobby Jindal of LA, without question one of the smartest people in the GOP, who came up with the purple-ink-stain idea, which gave Republican backbenchers something useful to do other than hooting and hollering at every other Bush line.
Purely in terms of entertainment value, last night’s speech made me long for the days of divided government. One of the most interesting features of Bill Clinton’s post-1994 SOTUs was watching Newt and Al Gore react to the president’s applause lines, right there behind him, like cheerleaders forced to dance and prance on the field ten feet from every play. Would Newt screw up and fail to stand and applaud every time veterans were mentioned? Would Gore remember to nod sagely at the Chief’s wisdom on the full panoply of issues? Watching Cheney and Hastert move sluggishly in tandem last night was not nearly so much fun.