A remarkable number of kind readers have emailed me in response to my last post, to let me know that Kirby Puckett may have, er, ah, some personal issues that would make him a less than ideal candidate to beef up the Democratic “family values” message. (It’s interesting: I did a long post the same day wishing Howard Dean good luck at the DNC, which you might think would raise an eyebrow or two, and absolutely nobody noticed. But a joking reference to a celebrity or two really lit up the boards. Maybe I should get to work on post exploring the relevance of Prince Charles’ engagement to the Social Security battle).
In any event, I thought Al Franken’s expected announcement that he would run for Mark Dayton’s Senate seat meant I could suspend my “draft a celebrity” search. But now it appears he was just joking.
So now maybe it’s time to think about Minnesota native Bob Dylan. There should definitely be a place in Washington for the author of “Idiot Wind.”

Just when I was getting all excited about launching a “Put a Prince in the Senate” boomlet in MN, an alert reader named Aaron Brethorst reminded me that His Royal Badness (the proper appelation for the Artist Once Formerly Known As Prince) is a Jehovah’s Witness. Among that sect’s peculiar beliefs is a fidelity to the Radical Reformation tradition of refusing to hold public office. (And for those of you who just think of Jehovah’s Witnesses as the strange folks who press copies of Watchtower on you as you race towards your next appointment, they suffered brutal persecution by the Nazis for their defiance of secular authority).
In any event, this deflating news was an appropriate rebuke for my hubristic dabbling in recent popular music culture. I can cite rock lyrics
from the Beatles through Roxy Music and New Wave and up to early Punk with encyclopedic recall. And in part due to my parental responsibilities, I’ve tried to make a Rock Snob comeback with casual mastery of the oeuvres of White Stripes and Sleater-Kinney (both of whom I genuinely like), and have even risked narcolepsy by spending a lot of time in the company of Radiohead and Wilco. But the 80s and early 90s found me listening to NPR more than college radio; I’d rather watch paint peeling than music videos (which to me represent the final victory of the basic this-ain’t-about-the-music ethos of Disco); and thus, I am uniquely ill-equipped to promote Rock Gods of that era for public office.
But as another reader suggested: maybe we should find out if Kirby Puckett is a Democrat!

With the news that Sen. Mark Dayton has decided against running for another term next year, Dems are worried about holding this must-hold seat, and beginning to mull over other potential candidates.
So let’s consider the ideal candidate profile: a Minnesotan with high name ID, smarts, charisma, a good work ethic, appeal across party lines and outside political circles, and enough dough to self-finance a lavish race.
Put it in the computer and you’ve got: that’s right, His Purple Badness, Prince!
Wonder where he is on Social Security? Josh Marshall, call your office.

The Bush administration is conducting quite a tutorial this week in the dark art of cooking the fiscal books.
First, you’ve got the by-now-customary virtuosity with which the Bushies deal with the costs of their tax cuts. Back in ’01, of course, they sold their tax cut package as only costing a little over a trillion smackers by pretending the cuts would expire. Then, suddenly, they treated any suggestion that the cuts would indeed expire as a call for “tax increases,” and also narrowed the budget window so that the visible cost of permanent tax cuts would be vastly lowballed as well. The latest wrinkle in this game is the administration’s proposal that budget rules be changed to estimate the cost of extending or making permanent any and all tax cuts as zero. Quite a sequence, eh? Distort the cost, then minimize it, then officially abolish it. The definitive piece the DLC published opposing Bush’s original tax cuts was entitled “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” and that’s turned out to be a more prophetic title than we imagined.
Now, with the Medicare Rx drug benefit the administration pushed through Congress in 2003, the Bushies couldn’t play exactly the same kind of game. I mean, what’s the point of announcing a new entitlement program if you’re going to pretend it’s only an entitlement for a few years? To be sure, the administration and its congressional allies messed around with the phase-in of the new benefit to hide the true costs. By delaying the full implementation until 2006, they were able to squint sideways at the benefit and claim it just might squeak by at a ten-year cost of under $400 billion, which is all the congressional budget guidelines allowed. And moreover, they hoped to build support for the benefit by putting the easy candy up front–a cost-free drug discount card–hoping seniors would buy into the program before they had to deal with the convoluted, expensive, yet disappointingly stingy premium and coverage system involved in the whole enchilada.
Nobody really believed the original numbers, though the administration went to great lengths to hide internal estimates showing the true cost ballooning like a carbo-loading refugee from an Atkins clinic. This week, almost casually, the administration let it be known that the true ten-year cost of the benefit will come in at a cool $1.2 trillion. If you believe their estimates of premium revenue and of “offsets” from seniors leaving Medicaid for the shiny new Medicare, hey, it’s only $720 billion! Such a deal.
The bottom line is that these folks are resourceful and absolutely shameless when it comes to cooking the fiscal books. And as Rep. Rahm Emanuel of Illinois pointedly remarked at a congressional hearing yesterday: these are the same guys who want us to believe their 50-year Social Security cost and revenue estimates are right on the money.
With this administration, what we need is not so much independent counsels, but independent accountants.

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.