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.

From long experience, I’ve decided that giving my own take on a Big Bush Speech is a waste of space, because I invariably misunderestimate his rhetorical strengths, and know too much about his weaknesses, his record, and the Objective Reality he so often ingores.
So: this time I’ve decided to paralyze my frontal lobes and look at this SOTU from the vantage-point of a professional speechwriter, which is what I used to be. Here we go:
Speech Mission: Re-establish a sense of irresistable momentum for the administration’s foreign and domestic policies, including those that seem to be in trouble.
Primary Message: Freedom works, retroactively validating administration policies in Afghanistan and Iraq, and prospectively validating administration policies at home.
Secondary Message: We are up to great things here, and Democrats are simply obstructing the March of Progress.
Desired Print Lede: “Bush Says Democracy Is on the March.”
Desired Electronic Media Bite: “Two weeks ago, I stood on the steps of this Capitol and renewed the commitment of our nation to the guiding ideal of liberty for all. This evening I will set forth policies to advance that ideal at home and around the world.”
Defensive Electronic Media Bite: “Our children’s retirement security is more important than partisan politics.”
Speech Structure: economy, values, security.
Flyover Country: sections on the economy up until Social Security were standard pablum; values section all pablum; rhetortical weight of speech all about security.
Surprises: several, none of them dramatic: (1) much less on the budget than advertised; (2) an odd specific statement in a generally foggy Social Security section that ultimately, younger workers could divert a full 4% of payroll to private accounts (a high figure even among devoted privatizers); (3) a commitment of real dollars and unprecedented U.S. interest in Abu Mazen’s Palestinian government, and (4) an overdue suggestion that maybe Egypt and Saudi Arabia ought to get with the democracy idea themselves.
Bipartian Grace Notes: limited to former, and some of them dead, Democrats Bush cited as being worried about Social Security solvency. That was it. No acknowledgement of the closeness of the election or Kerry’s quick and gracious concession; no acknowledgement of the legitimacy of any opposition on any issue.
Generally, I thought the speech was pretty pedestrian other than the grande finale about freedom, dreams and threads of purpose. A CNN snap poll showed the public liked it a lot, but I doubt it will change too many minds on issues like SocSec. Pundits will eventually raise doubts about many of the details of the speech, such as Bush’s belligerent and ludicrous claim that his energy bill is essential to the achievement of energy independence.
From a speechwriter’s point of view, however, this verbally challenged man got through another SOTU without inflicting much damage on his various causes, though when you really look at it, his rhetoric continues to represent a fog machine rather than any lighthouse for the truth.
UPCATEGORY: Ed Kilgore’s New Donkey
UPDATE II, THURSDAY: as you can imagine, I was a little suprised to open up the papers this morning and discover that Bush’s speech was ALL ABOUT SOCIAL SECURITY. There’s a simple and rather interesting explanation for that: as a mental health measure, I didn’t watch any of the pre- or post-SOTU media jabbering, and thus was not aware that the administration has released a briefing paper on SocSec before the speech. In other words, the speech wasn’t just “the speech,” but part of a rollout of a long-awaited proposal, or at least the parts of the proposal that the administration was willing to talk about. I felt better about my “mistake” when I read Josh Marshall’s initial take on the speech. Nobody could accuse Josh of letting any Bush comment on SocSec get by him, but he, too, thought the speech underplayed SocSec compared to what we were all expecting.