As you may have heard, Barack Obama continued his recent pattern of coded criticisms of Hillary Clinton by denouncing “triangulation and poll-driven politics,” which is being generally interpreted (not least by HRC’s camp) as an attack on her husband’s political tactics and alleged infidelity to progressive principles.
John Edwards has also attacked “triangulation” as part of a broader, yet still heavily-coded, criticism of the Clintons as representing an unprincipled Washington Establishment.
So with HRC’s top rivals both definining themselves in opposition to “triangulation,” it might be a good time to ask: what, exactly, does “triangulation” mean?
Outside politics, “triangulation” is used in geometry, electronics, and gunnery as a general term for locating an object through reference to two fixed points.
In politics, “triangulation” is identified with the 1990s-era international Third Way movement generally, and with Bill Clinton specifically. And it’s pretty much agreed that the term was invented by Clinton advisor Dick Morris to describe the approach used by the Clinton-Gore campaign in its successful 1996 re-election campaign. Indeed, beyond Morris, no one associated with either Clinton has ever, so far as I am aware, used the term; it’s become entirely pejorative.
But what does it mean?
The AP story on Obama’s speech offered this definition: “His reference to triangulation, however, refers to Bill Clinton’s eight years as president when some advisers urged him to make policy decisions by splitting the difference on opposing views.”
Aside from the questionable suggestion that “triangulation” preceded and succeeded Dick Morris’ brief tenure as a Clinton strategist, I’m reasonably sure that anyone connected with Bill Clinton would angrily reject the idea that “splitting the differences” between the two parties was the essence of Clintonism. But the same argument has raged with respect to the related concept of “The Third Way,” which critics from both the Left and Rightviewed as an effort to appropriate conservative policy ideas and political messages, but whose advocates always maintained was an effort to refresh the Left with new policy ideas while refusing to concede whole issue-areas to the Right.
Going to the source himself, Dick Morris did an entire chapter on triangulation in his 2003 book, Power Plays. Here’s how he defined the term he made famous, as explained in a review of the book that I wrote at the time:

“The essence of triangulation is to use your party’s solutions to solve the other side’s problems. Use your tools to fix their car.” Clinton, Morris shows, adopted the longstanding conservative goal of welfare reform as a top item on the Democratic agenda, but developed progressive policies, including higher funding for child care and stronger financial support for working families, to pursue that goal.

So according to Morris himself, triangulation isn’t about compromising on principles or policies, but about preempting conservative wedge issues by addressing them through progressive policies.
It’s no accident that Morris uses welfare reform as an example of triangulation. And so would many Democrats who prefer the pejorative definition of triangulation. Clinton’s 1996 decision to sign welfare reform legislation that a majority of House Democrats had voted against was at the time interpreted by some as a surrender to Republican principles and priorities, and by others as a redemption of his 1992 promise to “end welfare as we know it,” after a reshaping of the legislation (he vetoed two previous versions) to reflect much of his own approach to the issue. The real argument isn’t about Clinton’s subjective intentions, but about whether you think accepting a time limit for public assistance represented an unacceptable betrayal of progressive values, as some of Clinton’s own friends and advisors said at the time (though many have since recanted given the success of the initiative, and Clinton’s efforts after 1996 to eliminate some of the original bill’s restrictive provisions).
Another example of Clintonian “triangulation” you often hear of was his famous statement in the 1996 State of the Union Address that “the era of big government is over,” which a lot of conservatives treated as an ideological victory. But was it? Is “big government” essential to progressive governance? Or was Clinton’s argument that smaller but more efficient government was actually progressive defensible?
And a third example often cited was his advocacy for trade expansion, and particularly NAFTA (another issue where he was opposed by a majority of House Democrats, and by the labor movement). But whether NAFTA was right or wrong (and if anything, Democratic unhappiness with the agreement has increased since 1994), it’s hard to describe Clinton’s position as a “triangulating” surrender to the Right, since he was continuing a pro-trade Democratic tradition that dated back to Martin Van Buren, and included virtually every progressive luminary of the past.
What I’m driving at here is that differences of opinion about “triangulation”–its definition and its propriety–often come down to differences of principle, not differences between principled and unprincipled people. All of Clinton’s supporters and critics would agree that the conditions under which he governed–facing, for six of his eight years as president, a ruthless congressional Republican majority that eventually sought to remove him from office—excused some tactical flexibility. But is that all he represented?
In the end, maybe it no longer matters. Even if Obama and Edwards are attacking a disputable definition of triangulation that may not be historically accurate, I think we’d all agree that we don’t want a Democratic nominee for president who is unprincipled and entirely poll-driven. That’s why I agree with those who encourage HRC’s critics to get more specific, drop the code words, and take on her actual policies as evidence of her actual philosophy. And that’s particularly true of a candidate who has previously defined himself as representing a new generation of progressives who want to get over the tired arguments of the 1990s.

Democrats are raising some richly-deserved hell about Bush’s behind-closed-doors veto of legislation to increase funding for The State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP). The bill would have increased the number of impoverished children covered from about 6.6 million children to more than 10 million.
Democrats are now organizing to override the veto. MyDD’s Todd Beeton reports that More than 200 “Rallies For Our Children’s Health” protesting the veto have been scheduled around the country by unions and progressive groups. The legislation passed the Senate by a veto-proof majority, including some conservative Republican Senators. But the bill is believed to be about 15 Republican votes short of the amount needed to override his veto in the House by the October 18 deadline.
An ABC News/Washington Post Poll conducted 9/27-30, found that 63 percent disapproved of Bush’s “handling of health care,” respondents favored Democrats “to do a better job of handling health care” by a margin of 56-26 percent and 72 percent supported the SCHIP increase (25 percent opposed), even when told that “opponents say this goes too far in covering children in families that can afford health insurance on their own.”
In other words, it is hard to imagine a more vulnerable veto for Dems to attack.
Glenn W. Smith, blogging at George Lakoff’s Rockridge Institute web pages, has an interesting idea — publicly asking those voting against the expanded SCHIP coverage to explain their vote to children “who cannot afford treatment for whooping cough or measles, luekemia or juvenile diabetes.”
In addition to the usual neocon ideologue drivel about “federalizing health care,” Bush argues that we can’t afford to insure just 3.4 million additional poor children this year, which would cost about $7 billion yearly, or about the cost of 41 days of the Iraq War. As Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee Chairman Senator Edward M. Kennedy put it “Today we learned that the same president who is willing to throw away a half trillion dollars in Iraq is unwilling to spend a small fraction of that amount to bring health care to American children.”
Crediting Bush with fiscal responsibility on this issue is a huge stretch, explains blogger Hale “Bonddad” Steward in his HuffPo post, noting that “total federal outlays have increased from 18.5% of GDP in 2001 to 20.3% in 2006. That’s some fiscal prudence….Discretionary spending increased from $649.3 billion in 2001 to $1.016 trillion in 2006. That’s a 56.47% increase.”
Tobin Harshaw has a New York Times article revealing the lame white house rationale for the SCHIP veto. He quotes a white house source echoing Bush’s explanation the bill is a bad idea because it would raise (cigarette) taxes to add some adults and middle class kids to the coverage. Harshaw also quotes a Heritage Foundation blogger arguing that the bill favors “wealthier” states and another blogger complaining about the bill being funded by a cigarette tax hike of 39 cent per pack.
But don’t expect much GOP dissent among the GOP presidential candidates. As John McCain said in a CNN interview, “Right call by the president.” McCain also referred to the cigarette tax as a “phony smoke and mirrors way of paying for it.”
This is a good fight, well worth the Dems’ maximum firepower, and DCCC Chairman Chris Van Hollen has called for a district-by-district campaign to hold the R’s accountable, and radio ads are already running. Even if we fall short of the 15 Republican House votes needed, the override effort will dramatically brand the Democrats as the party that actually does something to help uninsured kids. Dems must make it loud and clear that health care for all kids is a critical element of real national security, and that this bill is a very modest beginning in that direction.
Every Republican opposed to the override should be cornered on their vote and called to explain the morality of denying less than 4 million poor kids decent health care at a cost equivalent to the cost of just 41 days of the Iraq war, while every member of congress has their families covered at tax payer expense. The squirming of GOP Presidential candidates under such intense scrutiny should make for entertaining YouTube clips.

MyDD’s Todd Beeton reports on the DCCC’s impressive radio ads and robo calls nailing 8 House Republican incumbents for voting No on SCHIP expansion. Most of the ads link their votes against SCHIP expansion to the House members hypocritical vote in favor of their generous health care plan for themselves, an issue which resonates strongly with many voters. For example, this one against FL-24’s GOP Rep. Tom Feeney:

Did you know Congressman Feeney gets health care at taxpayers’ expense, but Feeney and Bush are blocking health care for 10 million uninsured children? Tell Tom Feeney to put families first

A clever way to bring combined focus on two unpopular Republican votes. For more on the ad campaign, check the DCCC article on the ads here. See also Ted Kennedy’s post at HuffPo noting that taxpayers cover 72 percent of health care premiums for members of congress and the President.

At the start of school last year, a black freshman at Jena High School in Louisiana asked his principal if he could sit beneath a tree, which was reserved by tradition for white students only. The administrator told the student he could sit where he pleased, and the freshman and his friends ate their lunch in the shade. The next day, three nooses hung from the tree, and ever since, the small town in LaSalle Parish has been ripped apart.
Things came to a head when six black teenagers were arrested and charged with assault and then attempted murder after a fight with a white student. Last week in Jena, more than 10,000 people, some of whom drove throughout the night, showed up to protest the arrests.
You’ve probably heard about Jena by now. But when the story first broke, there was little or no mention of it in the major precincts of the progressive blogosphere (including, just to be clear about it, this one). At Facing South (the blog for the Institute for Southern Studies), Chris Kromm did a post last Thursday, the day of the Jena march, that notes the lack of comment. His quick survey looked like this:

* DailyKos features a handful of posts about injustice in Iraq today — but not a single entry on its main page, or even its user-generated “diaries,” about this important case.
* TalkingPointsMemo, a favorite of the DC wonk set, is similarly incensed about foreign policy, but apparently not about racial justice in the South — nothing there either.
* Long-time progressive blogger Atrios doesn’t have a lot of posts up, but found time to touch on Paul Krugman, Iraq and the state of the Euro — but not this major issue.
* Surely TalkLeft — which has positioned itself as the leading progressive blog about criminal justice issues — would have something? Think again — not a single mention, not even in the quick news briefs!
* What about another progressive favorite, FireDogLake? A rant about Republicans being “little bitches,” but nothing on the Jena 6.
When the Jena 6 does make an appearance on progressive blogs today, it’s little more than a passing nod. Huffington Post has a blog post buried below the fold; ThinkProgress gives it a two-sentence news brief.

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Anyone paying much attention to comparative politics has probably noticed that organized bloggers and their readership–i.e., the core of the “netroots”–has played a much more prominent role in U.S. politics, especially on the left side of the spectrum, than in other highly “wired” countries. There are numerous possible explanations for this example of “American exceptionalism,” including the relative weakness of institutional parties in the U.S., which creates a more decentralized political environment.
One explanation may be derived from differences in the legal regimens affecting the blogosphere. While there have been plenty of political efforts to marginalize bloggers in the U.S. (most recently by Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly, who tried unsuccessfully to make the YearlyKos event radioactive), the one truly significant action restricting blogospheric expression has been the U.S. military’s decision to block service members’ social networking sites and blogs due to security and bandwidth concerns
This relative freedom from regulation may be the exception rather than the rule.
Allison Hayward, a Professor of Law at George Mason University, has posted an unpublished manuscript of her research on government regulation of political blogs. Hayward compares the regulatory regimes of the United States and Germany for clues as to how the legal foundations of political speech may affect the development of internet advocacy. She sees this cross-national study as essential to understanding the present and future of the internet as a political tool because of enormous growth in foreign web traffic ( almost 70% of all content is now written in a language other than English), as well as the international nature of the web as a medium that transcends geographic and political boundaries.

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The Republican presidential candidates are all on the Web. Fine. Most of them have even taken the first, halting steps into the brave new world of social media. They have MySpace pages, load video up to YouTube, and control their Facebook profiles. That’s delightful — probably even good for democracy. But as of yet, you haven’t seen one of them (who isn’t named Ron Paul) embrace the change that the Internet has wrought.
Joe Trippi believes that is going to hurt them badly in the general election.
In a video recorded by a blogger for TechPresident (which does a terrific job chronicling the ways in which technology is transforming presidential politics) the current Edwards strategist and former Dean guru sounds off in a segment that strikes me as particularly unguarded, and interesting.

Read more…

Driving out of Nashville yesterday, I surfed the radio, looking for something other than bad music or right-wing political commentary, and happened on a syndicated BBC show discussing the death of the great Swedish filmaker Ingmar Bergman (his Winter Light, the tale of a Luthern minister losing his faith, is one of my very favorite movies). Some film critic came on, and suggeseted that Bergman’s period of popularity peaked in the 1960s because his bleak and emotional themes tapped anxieties spurred by the nuclear arms race, the war in Vietnam, and battles over gender and sexual issues.
Hmmm. A disastrous war. Nuclear fears. Culture wars. Sounds like it’s high time for a Bergman revival.
I soon tired of the next BBC story, having to do with horse carts creating traffic congestion in Bogota, and started listening to sports talk stations. Despite the efforts of hosts to get callers talking about the death of–no, not Ingmar Bergman–former pro coaching genius Bill Walsh, most of the gabbing revolved around the perennial sagas of Barry Bonds’ ascent towards the major league home run record, and Michael Vick’s descent towards disgrace and perhaps the slammer (the latter story is on the front pages of the Atlanta newspapers just about every day). As you may know, public reactions to both controversies have largely broken along racial lines, much like the O.J. Simpson case.
On the other hand, it’s worth noting that the longstanding racial disparity in assessments of George W. Bush’s presidency is steadily being healed, with black and white Americans coming together in disdain for the man. In this one sense, and perhaps only in this one sense, he’s redeeming his pledge to be a “uniter, not a divider.”

Today’s big news so far is that the Senate decisively rejected a cloture motion on the immigration reform bill, ending the debate, in the Senate at least, until after the next general election.
The margin was pretty stunning: 46-53, or fourteen votes shy of the 60 necessary to cut off debate. And even though (annoyingly) the Post article linked to above suggested the bill was killed off by attacks “from the left and right,” it’s clearly GOP support that collapsed. Democrats (including their leader, Harry Reid) supported cloture 33-15, while Republicans (including their leader Mitch McConnell) opposed it 37-12; the two independent split, with Lieberman voting for cloture and Sanders against it. All the Democratic presidential candidates in the Senate (Biden, Clinton, Dodd, Obama) voted for cloture, along with 2004 nominee Kerry. With Sam Brownback, an earlier supporter of the “grand bargain,” voting “nay,” John McCain stands alone, more than ever, in the Republican presidential field.
Presumably, the House won’t volunteer to shut down its phone and email systems by taking up any immigration bill, now that it’s clear the Senate’s done for the time being. But the issue is obviously not going away. Even as they high-five each other for killing “the amnesty bill,” conservative pundits and activists are already talking about next steps towards an “enforcement first” policy (check out the ongoing discussion at National Review’s The Corner for details). And newly emboldened by their Senate victory, anti-immigration conservatives are not likely to be satisfied with fences or border control money or other such amelioratives. If not in the Senate or House, then in the right-wing blogs and on talk radio, we will soon see an effort to make mass arrests and deportations, along with big-time employer sanctions, a limus test for Republican candidates for president and for Congress in 2008.
What Democrats do about all this, other than standing back and watching the carnage, is an open and important question. The Senate bill certainly had obnoxious features (most notably the whole guest worker abomination) that legitimately led some Democrats to oppose it and to help, in a small way, to kill it off. But if the Right takes over this issue in the Republican Party against an increasingly marginalized George W. Bush (not to mention a politically doomed John McCain) and tries to draw the lines as pro- or anti-“amnesty,” Dems will need to explore their own “grand bargain” to provide mercy and a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants along with a serious look at fixing the broken process for legal immigration.