To a remarkable extent, the day-after commentary about the unanimous Republican vote in the House against the economic stimulus package has credited or blamed this development on Rush Limbaugh. Politico is actually devoting its rountable-format “Arena” today to the proposition that Limbaugh has become the de facto leader of the Republican Party. And earlier this week, Georgia Republican congressman Phil Gingrey was forced to make a humiliating retreat and apology after criticizing Rush’s attacks on the GOP leadership for insufficiently robust opposition to Barack Obama.
In a separate development, House Republican conference chairman Mike Pence refused in a media interview to take any issue with a newly notorious Limbaugh comment that Americans have to “bend over, grab the ankles, bend over forward, backward, whichever” because Obama’s “father was black, because this is the first black president.”
This is all pretty interesting, if depressingly familiar. In the wake of their drubbing last November, the one thing Republicans generally agreed they needed to do differently was getting hep to new media–you know, social networks, twitter, blogs, YouTube, etc. But now here we are in the first big decision-moment of 2009, and the GOPers are still taking their orders from that big mouth on the AM radio dial.

In a post yesterday about the anti-abortion movement, I made passing reference to an article by Peter Beinart arguing that Obama might be presiding over an end to–or at least a pause in–the culture wars of the last couple of decades.
This is actually a proposition that merits its own discussion. Has the Cultural Right begun to run out of steam? Will the economic crisis radically reduce the salience of issues like gay marriage or abortion or church-state separation? Is there something about Barack Obama’s style and substance that tends to calm the cultural waters? And what if any accomodations should Obama or progressives generally make to neutralized culture-based opposition?
The first three questions are rather speculative and also perhaps premature, but I’d answer them “some,” some,” and “a little.” The last question is the real kicker, and the key thing here is to define who, exactly, we are talking about neutralizing or persuading.
There are millions of Americans who think any form of legalized abortion is incredibly abhorrent, with some consciously comparing it to the Holocaust, which implies an active obligation for resistance. There is no imaginable accomodation, compromise, or gesture compatible with a basic pro-choice position that will ever, ever satisfy these people. Even if they were offered a “compromise” that eliminated what they are always screaming about as an outrageous extension of the original Roe v. Wade holding–the “health of the mother” exception to the general permissability of prohibitions on post-viability abortions–serious right-to-lifers don’t really care when an abortion is performed, after the moment of conception, so they’d pocket the concession and start moving the goal posts towards a total abortion ban of the sort that most Republican pols already support.
But millions of other Americans, however they choose to identify themselves on the abortion issue, are discomfitted by the idea of “abortion on demand,” particularly late in pregnancy, and these folks might well be assuaged by accomodations to “pro-life conscience” and to scruples about “partial-birth abortion,” or by “abortion reduction” strategies that involve expanded contraception availability and better health and economic options for women. Every progressive will have to decide for him or herself whether such accomodations or compromises are worth any sacrifice of pro-choice principles, but it’s equally clear that (a) they may well have a payoff in the mushy middle of abortion opinion, and (b) they won’t have any real effect on the hard-core Right-to-Life constituency, or its clerical leadership.
Let’s bring this sort of calculation to bear on an immediate decision that Obama and progressives will soon have to make: the perenially pending Freedom of Choice Act, which Obama has cosponsored, and has promised to sign if Congress passes it. As I noted yesterday, FOCA has become the central base-motivator for anti-abortionists who consider it the final, fatal step towards abortion-on-demand, with no wiggle room for late-term abortion restrictions or the sort of waiting-period or parental notification requirements or harrassment of abortion providers that have represented the small but symbolic trophies of the Right to Life movement in recent years. The very estimable Damon Linker, a mighty warrior against the theocons of America, suggested earlier this week that enactment of FOCA would produce a dangerous radicalization of the Cultural Right, and perpetuate the culture wars for another generation.
But as I noted yesterday, the odds that Congress will send Barack Obama a FOCA bill that abrogates existing law on late-term abortions or the most frequent state harrassing tactics are extremely slim. Much more likely, if FOCA advances at all (not a good bet) is a bill that really does just codify Roe v. Wade and ensure that in the remote event it is ever overturned, there will be a federal law in place that preempts state efforts to actually ban pre-viability abortions. Would such a FOCA anger the hard-core right-to-lifers? Sure, but they will be angry at anything other than a radical restriction of abortion rights. Would it galvanize the mushy middle on abortion? Hardly, since big majorities of Americans favor a basic policy of legalized abortion prior to fetal viability with a health exception for abortions after that stage of pregnancy–the fundamental thrust of any FOCA likely to ever become law in the foreseeable future.
Shifting from abortion policy to same-sex marriage and GLBT rights, you might initially think that this is the strongest ground for the Cultural Right, and certainly a tempting issue to “take off the table” for progressives who want to tamp down the culture wars, particularly in the South, the Midwest, and the Interior West. After all, every poll shows (in sharp contrast to the data on abortion) unmistakable demographic trends that virtually guarantee a future defeat for the Cultural Right on every issue related to this subject. But that’s in the future, and the single biggest difference between the abortion and same-sex-marriage issues is that the status quo, and thus inaction, is basically benign on the former and malign on the latter from a progressive point of view.
And that in turn is why the passage of Proposition 8 in California last year was such a big and tragically avoidable disaster. For the first time in the recent history of anti-gay-marriage ballot initiatives, Prop 8 overturned established same-sex marriage rights, however brief. Reversing that setback in California or elsewhere is important not just for the people directly affected, but in terms of the dynamics of the issue. Unlike abortion, same-sex marriage does not command active and perpetual resistance from those who strongly disapprove of it on religious grounds. Even if you think same-sex marriage represents the triumphal return of Sodom and Gomorrah, that’s fundamentally different from the Holocaust that Right-to-Lifers see in legalized abortion. Once same-sex-marriage proponents learn how to decisively refute the specious but potent arguments that letting gay folk enjoy equal rights will impinge on the free-speech rights or religious prerogatives of traditionalists, and once same-sex marriage becomes–as legalized abortion has become–part of the landscape, this issue should rapidly lose political salience.
The third big culture-war issue, church-state separation, is one on which Barack Obama can probably make the most direct and immediate progress. Remember that this is the same man who has strongly supported a continuation of federal “faith-based organization” policies, has reached out to all sorts of religious folk in his campaign and his inaugural events, and who also gave a shout-out to “nonbelievers” in his inaugural address. He’s a pretty good validator–as Bill Clinton might have been if not for the furor over his sexual behavior–of the very old and once invincible idea that believers can and should be comfortable with a continuation of the ancient American tradition of church-state separation as a protection of, not a threat to, religious liberty.
The bottom line on this vast and complicated subject is that the “culture wars” will never die in the fever swamps of the Right where they were nourished if not conceived, particularly on the abortion issues; that protecting the cultural status quo is a vastly more powerful position that progressives should aspire to occupy; and that the critical plurality of Americans are happy to declare a truce in the culture wars so long as progressives don’t behave like conquering secularist radicals.
I’m basically with TAPPED’s Tim Frenholz:

Unlike some liberals, I think people who feel differently deserve a certain amount of respect. But they don’t deserve to have a veto over other people’s rights. If that makes the religious right angry, well, that’s what happens in a liberal democracy.

To use two biblical metaphors, it’s time for cultural progressives to separate the wheat from the chaff, and the sheep from the goats. The Cultural Right as we know it has to be defeated, even as its troops are offered consolation in the form of convincing refutations of their more lurid assumptions about the motives that we, their enemies, actually harbor. But the vast cultural middle of the American electorate, which is neither fish nor foul, nor is hot nor cold, on hot-button issues can be convinced that Barack Obama and the progressive coalition he represents are faithful to the American values they embrace.

TDS has been following the race for the chairmanship of the Republican National Committee as offering important insights into the conservative zeitgeist these days, with its steadfast and increasingly strident claims that there’s nothing wrong with the GOP that an ideological turn to the Right can’t solve.
As the RNC vote draws nigh (it is scheduled to occur on Saturday), the zaniness is getting even more intense. Check out this exerpt from a WaPo analysis by Perry Bacon, Jr., on the state of the chairmanship contest:

Party activists coming to Washington say they will focus on restoring what they describe as the GOP’s core principles. Even many of Duncan’s backers support the anti-bailout resolution, which could be before the full RNC tomorrow.
“People in this country are more conservative than what has been shown,” said Cathie Adams, an RNC member from Texas. “Republicans have lost because we were playing the me-too game of growing government.”
RNC members, who include three representatives from each state, frequently criticize Bush’s “compassionate conservatism,” particularly his efforts to make it easier for illegal immigrants to become citizens. And while usually not naming Bush, all six RNC candidates have also emphasized the need for Republicans to push for lower federal spending. [Ken] Blackwell has been the most explicit, likening Bush to former president Herbert Hoover for advocating policies that increased the size of government.

As Bacon’s full story richly documents, the GOP’s “core principles” now seem to include a semi-universal view condemning not only the Bush-led autumn financial bailout, but “compassionate conservatism,” the stimulus package, and anything other than an actual reduction in the size of the federal government. But leave it to Ken Blackwell to refute charges of Republican “neo-Hooverism” by attacking the memory of Herbert Hoover as a guy that caved in to the godless liberals of his day and failed to honor Republican “core principles.” By all accounts, Blackwell is unlikely to win the RNC chairmanship, but he may well best represent the ideological dispositions of latter-day conservatism.

Today the House is scheduled to vote on the economic stimulus package. It is almost universally expected to pass, though yesterday’s vote on the rule for its consideration was a little dicey, with 27 Democrats (including 24 of the 52 Blue Dogs) voting against their leadership and the administration. The unanimous GOP vote against the rule wasn’t that unusual, but the number of Republicans voting for final passage may not be much higher.
According to Jared Allen of The Hill, a larger defection of Blue Dogs on the rules vote was headed off by a letter from the President to House Appropriations Committee chairman David Obey supporting a return to pay-as-you-go budget rules for future legislation once the stimulus package is enacted. That pledge wasn’t a big surprise, but its timing indicated nervousness about the earlier indications from Blue Dogs that they’d give Obama a pass on the usual budget hawkery for purposes of enacting the stimulus package.
It’s pretty clear by now that the GOP case against the stimulus package is going to be less about its overall size or its necessity, and probably less about spending-versus-tax-cuts than earlier propaganda hinted, and more about “frivolous spending” or “expansion of big government” or “pork.” The idea is that this isn’t an economic stimulus package at all, but decades worth of pent-up “liberal” policy changes. And that’s why GOPers are focusing on family planning money and “welfare” and reseeding the National Mall. It’s an effort to do the same number on Obama as Republicans did on Bill Clinton in 1993 with his “stimulus bill,” which may or may not have funded a municipal swimming pool somewhere in Texas, and in 1994 on the Omnibus Crime Bill, with its famous “midnight basketball” provisions.
It’s anybody’s guess whether these attack lines will get any serious traction with the public, or sway any moderate-to-conservative Democrats in the Senate. The Senate will almost certainly conduct some surgery to remove spending categories that are particularly subject to parody (as happened in the House at the last minute, when “reseeding the Mall,” and, more controversially, Medicaid contraceptive services were deleted). But the odds that something pretty close to Obama’s original proposal will be enacted remain very high.
Progressives need to remind the consumers of Republican attacks on the stimulus package that including popular policy changes that also boost the economy is both efficient and desirable–a huge “two-fer.” It’s also worth remembering that the closest thing structurally to this bill in recent American history was the gigantic Reagan budget and tax packages of 1981, which included a vast array of conservative-oriented policy changes in the guise of boosting the economy while reducing the budget deficit (both of which it failed to do). The budget portion of the Reagan legislative offensive was enacted via a floor substitute in the House that virtually no member of Congress had read. Compared to that vast and hastily-drafted hodge-podge, the Obama stimulus package is a paragon of clarity and transparency.

It drew considerable attention last week when President Barack Obama waited until a day after the annual anti-abortion March for Life in Washington to reverse the so-called “Mexico City” or “gag-rule” executive order that banned U.S. funding for any groups that promote or provide abortion services overseas. Even among intense right-to-lifers, this was regarded as a shrewd move by Obama that denied to the January 22 marchers a much-needed focal point for their protests.
I think they’d better get used to it. While there’s no reason to think that Obama has or will changed his strongly pro-choice views, he’s also made it clear that he doesn’t want his presidency, and particularly the first phases of his presidency, to become overshadowed by culture-war issues like abortion. Indeed, some observers, like Peter Beinart, believe the Obama presidency will signal the end of this latest, sexuality-centered phase of the culture wars.
Whether or not that happy development materalizes, the Cultural Right has some real problems. On the gay rights/gay marriage front, generational change virtually guarantees an eventual defeat for the Right. And on abortion, serious right-to-lifers know their window of opportunity to overturn abortion rights via the Supreme Court closed, perhaps for a long time, with Obama’s election.
Given the impossibility of a constitutional amendment to restrict abortion, that leaves them with the bleak prospect of going back to the long-term drawing board, and gnawing away at the right to choose through narrow and symbolic statutes and/or harrassment (legislative and otherwise) of abortion providers.
Not surprisingly, anti-abortionists are trying to keep morale up by rattling hobgoblins–conjuring up threats of radical “pro-abortion” activity that must be fought immediately, which is more satisfying than the thankless and almost certainly futile task of trying to convince a majority of Americans that abortions should be outlawed. (It’s the same impulse that leads conservatives generally to manufacture the bizarre “fairness doctrine” conspiracy theory.) The preferred hobgoblin of the right-to-life movement is the Freedom of Choice Act, a bill that President Obama cosponsored as a senator, and that doesn’t appear to be very high on the administration’s list of initatives.
The basic idea of FOCA has always been to codify Roe v. Wade as a federal statute, so that if Roe is ever overturned there will be a national pro-choice policy instead of a crazy-quilt of 50 state laws, some of them highly restrictive or even prohibitory. Activists on both side of the abortion barricades, of course, naturally tend to dramatize more immediate, short-term developments, so FOCA has gradually come to be viewed through the prism of its possible impact on non-fundamental but symbolic issues like so-called “partial-birth” abortion bans, and the variety of harrassing techniques states have devised over the years, such as waiting periods and parental or spousal notification laws. (Any FOCA provisions that actually conflict with current law would, of course, almost certainly be eliminated before it could pass both Houses of Congress). Accordingly, anti-abortion leaders disengenously talk about FOCA as though it represented a vast expansion of abortion rights, and use Obama’s cosponsorship of the bill as Exhibit A in their scare-the-troops case that the new President wakes up every morning wondering what more he can do to promote what the National Right To Life Committee calls “Obama’s Abortion Agenda.”
The latest skirmish in the abortion cold war involves the inclusion of language in the House version of the economic stimulus package that allows states to provide contraceptive services to Medicaid beneficiaries. Republicans are complaining that it illustrates Democratic efforts to toss stuff into the package that has nothing to do with the economy, but there’s no question they are also trying to get the Cultural Right (some of whose shock troops oppose contraception generally, while others think many contraceptives are actually abortifacients) engaged in the stimulus battle.
But like Lucy removing the football each year as Charlie Brown approaches it, it looks like Obama will deny conservatives a clear target, by urging House Democrats to remove the family planning language from the stimulus bill and moving it as separate legislation.
In the absence of an realistic strategy for achieving their real goals, anti-abortionists can be expected to continue efforts to paint Obama, Democrats, and pro-choice Americans as aggressive radicals who won’t stop til infanticide and euthanasia are legal and widely practiced. But it’s beginning to look like Barack Obama won’t be an easy president to invidiously stereotype.

Nate Silver’s fivethirtyeight.com post “Obama: More Political Capital Than Reagan?” compares President Obama’s approval and disapprovall ratings with those of other recent Presidents shortly after their respective inaugurations. Obama tops all but JFK, as Silver explains:

Obama’s initial approval rating, indeed, is the highest of any president since Kennedy. His initial disapproval rating, meanwhile, is about half that of his two most recent predecessors, although higher than that of Eisenhower, Kennedy, Nixon, Carter, and G.H.W. Bush, all of whom began with disapproval in the single digits.

Silver goes on to favorably compare Obama’s numbers with those of President Reagan, including a 68 percent initial approval rating for Obama, compared to 51 percent for Reagan. He notes also that Obama’s political capital is strengthened by his 65 seat advantage in US House seats “controlled” over Reagan, and a six seat advantage in the Senate, even though Reagan had a slightly larger margin of victory (Reagan’s 9.7 percent, and 7.3 percent for Obama). Silver adds:

Reagan won considerably more electoral votes in 1980 than Obama did in 2008. As measured in percentage terms, his margin of victory over Jimmy Carter was larger than that of Obama over John McCain. On the other hand, Obama won a lot more popular votes than Reagan did. He also won a higher percentage of the popular vote, and his margin of victory was larger than Reagan’s in absolute (rather than percentage) terms.

It’s an interesting comparison, especially for Dems who can remember how Reagan steamrolled Congress and cut the legs off the trade union movement. Silver wonders whether Obama’s “post-partisan rhetoric” is a factor in his high approval numbers, and if the debate over the stimulus will undercut Obama’s leverage in the polls. No doubt many progressives are wondering if the comparison suggests that Obama’s tax cut proposals are conceding more than necessary, and if he could invest substantially more in job-creating infrastructure upgrades.
At the same time, Obama’s advisors, many of them Clinton Administration veterans, remember the political debacle that ocurred when the First Lady led the campaign for a big package of health care reforms. Overreaching can be as damaging as timidity.
But I would contend that Obama also has a potent secret weapon that argues for a more aggressive reform agenda: the “movement” that elected him. More than any President, perhaps ever, Obama has awakened a genuine grassroots movement, with record numbers of citizens involved in his campaign at the street level. But can he convert these campaign workers into lobbyists for a strong reform agenda? It’s never really been tried on the massive scale I’m envisioning here.
Certainly the Obama campaign has mastered the new tools of political organizing to an unprecedented extent, and he can reconnect with his activist base within minutes of launching a lobbying campaign. Think of FDR’s fireside chats, in streaming video on millions of monitors across the nation, 24-7. Think of TR’s bully pulpit on electronic steroids. Think of MLK’s call to his troops to “make politics a crusade” answered en masse by a new generation of citizen lobbyists. Sure, it would take a lot of commitment and energy to make it work. But given all that is at stake, the real shame would be in not trying.

There was a little incident late last week that’s been bugging me, because it nicely illustrates the problem folks have with the very different contexts in which the word “bipartisanship” is used. You may well have seen the story in Politico in which President Obama, after listening to congressional Republicans complain about the size and structure of the economic stimulus package, seemed to have tartly put them in their place by reminding them that “I won” the election.
Before you could say “Aha,” observers from both left and right drew attention to this alleged slip-of-the-mask that some hoped or feared showed Obama’s real attitude towards bipartisanship.
Said Chris Bowers at OpenLeft:

Good. This is the sort of language that disarms Republicans, and there won’t ever be a better time to adopt it. I would perfer if he talked like this in the open, but President Obama still deserves credit for this. Here’s to hoping that this signals the end of watering down the stimulus in order to appease Republicans for aesthetic purposes, and the start to a new era where we just don’t give a damn what Republican leaders think.

You can read a similar take at the influential conservative site Red State:

Bipartisanship under unified Democratic rule means this: Congress writes the bill, and Democrats ask Barack Obama to rope in some Republicans without having to make any changes. And why should they back a bill that they had no hand in writing? Because he won.
And this from the people who accused Bush of refusing to take Democratic input and compromise!

Well, maybe that’s where the partisan debate is ultimately heading. But for the sake of accuracy, it’s worth noting that the context of Obama’s “I won” remark wasn’t a general call for GOP input, but a specific Republican demand that Obama replace the refundable tax credits of his “Make Work Pay” plan with across-the-board and unrefundable income tax rate cuts, as an account in the New York Times of the meeting in question makes clearer:

At issue is Mr. Obama’s proposal that his tax breaks for low- and middle-income workers, including his centerpiece “Making Work Pay” tax credit, be refundable — that is, that the benefits also go to workers who earn too little to pay income taxes but who pay Social Security and Medicare taxes. Republicans generally oppose giving such refunds to people who pay no income taxes.
“We just have a difference here, and I’m president,” Mr. Obama said to Mr. [Eric] Cantor, according to Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff, who was at the meeting.
Mr. Emanuel said that Mr. Obama was being lighthearted and that lawmakers of both parties had laughed.
Mr. Cantor, in an interview later, had a similar recollection. He said the president had told him, “You’re correct, there’s a philosophical difference, but I won, so we’re going to prevail on that.”

In other words, congressional Republicans were trying to revive a debate that was fully litigated during the presidential campaign. The “Make Work Pay” credit was the centerpiece of Obama’s tax plan, and the argument that refundable income tax credits for working Americans who pay high and regressive payroll taxes is actually “welfare” became a shrill and frequent talking point for the McCain-Palin campaign, not to mention every right-wing gabber on the planet. It should also be remembered that the same tired argument against refundable tax credits was once repudiated by both George W. Bush and John McCain when it was advanced by Tom DeLay.
So of course the President wasn’t going to consider for a moment going along with this Republican “suggestion,” which reflected not only a “philosophical difference” between progressives and conservatives, but a subject that has truly been resolved after extended public debate and an election.
The idea that this represented some sort of crossing of the Rubicon by Obama, who has finally recognized (or revealed, depending on your point of view) the futility of bipartisanship in every sense of the word, just isn’t supported by what actually happened.
If, on the other hand, congressional Republicans persist in making their primary “input” a series of recommendations that Obama and Democrats admit the folly of their thinking and turn their backs on everything they were elected to do, then they should be allowed to howl in the political wildnerness at a safe distance, and “bipartisanship” should be limited to such rank-and-file Republicans out across the country as might be convinced to leave them behind.

As the stories about the Bush family’s move to a new house in an upscale neighborhood in Dallas, Texas begin to fade from the headlines, there is one fact that should not be allowed to pass without mention. It’s now increasingly clear that the Bush family is going to simply dump and abandon the so-called “ranch” in Crawford. No keeping it around for sentiment’s sake, not even for occasional week-end escapes from the big city. Nope, they are just going to sell it off and walk away.
But, wait a minute. Didn’t the hard-working, rural values embodied in that “ranch” play a critical part in shaping Bush’s character? That’s certainly what the video shown at the 2000 Republican convention said. Weren’t all those afternoons Bush spent “clearing brush” at the “ranch” the dramatic visible evidence of his continuing authenticity and spiritual bond with the “real” America even while in office? That’s certainly the spin Bush’s press people trotted out again and again during the course of his presidency. Remember all those press events with photographers dutifully snapping the pictures of Bush wiping his forehead with his work gloves to underscore his continuing ties to the rich Texas land and to all sons of toil?
But now we’re all supposed to just quietly accept that – oh yeah – it was actually all just a complete fraud and a scam. Progressive journalists did point out from the very beginning that the so-called “ranch” had been purchased in 1999, right before the Bush campaign got started and therefore had absolutely no role in shaping Bush’s character. They also noted that there were just 4 or 5 lonely looking cows around, far too few to have any practical or commercial function. Without any real cattle ranching or agriculture actually being practiced, there was really no reason to ever clear away any brush. Some independent journalists even had the temerity to note that the bales of straw lying around so authentically (presumably to feed the nonexistent herds of cattle) were artfully placed to conceal the condensers for the central air conditioning system.
As an article in the Texas Observer noted:

In 1999, using profits from the sale of the Texas Rangers, Bush purchased 1,583 acres near Waco, Texas, that he calls a ranch, despite the fact that it lacks any livestock other than four or five cows, hardly enough for a stampede or a cattle drive. In fact, according to Revolution of Hope, the 2007 autobiography of Vicente Fox, the former president of Mexico, Bush is a “windshield cowboy,” more comfortable roaming the prairie by Mustang than by mustang, and terrified of horses.

Most Americans, however, never got a hint of all this. For eight years the American mainstream media dutifully went along with the fraud, writing fawning captions for picture after picture of Bush with the jeans and work gloves and the sunset in the distance. No one in the official press corps had the guts to put down their foot and say plainly:

This is total bullshit. This so-called “ranch” is nothing but a stage-set designed for photo-ops. It’s no more authentic than the phony villages and collective farms to which the Soviets used to take western observers, to show them the happy, satisfied Soviet workers. We are being treated like sheep, morons and children and we’re all going along with it without a peep.

Yes, yes. I know. I did get the memo. The Obama approach is look forward and not back. But that memo applies to how Democrats should treat ordinary folks and their elected representatives. There’s nothing in the memo about giving the mainstream media a free pass for acting like PR auxiliaries to Karl Rove.
And it’s important because the Republican PR machine will be back before we even turn around. In 2010 there will be new “ranches” and fabricated biographies and Hollywood stage sets designed to portray Republicans as “real folks” and “sharing the values” of the “real America”.
But this time Democrats should be ready. We should issue a not- so- polite warning. People in the media who are too lazy, weak or submissive to stand up and challenge cynical PR manipulation when its shoved in their faces should be prepared to be treated by Democrats with the contempt and condescension that they will so very richly deserve. Allowing oneself to be manipulated by the powerful hasn’t somehow become OK in the internet age, just because a degree in journalism costs more than it used to and the private job market sucks. There used to be something called journalistic integrity. There used to be something called shame.

I’m liking the latest fund-raising email I got from the DSCC. (See full text after the jump) Instead of a dreary old politician begging for money, it comes from a top actor, Morgan Freeman, with a thoughtful appeal, based on a sober recognition that,

…We’ve only taken the first step. As President Obama said on election night, “This victory alone is not the change we seek – it is only the chance for us to make that change.” In many ways, our work didn’t end at the ballot box, it began there….That is precisely why we need your support – not just on the eve of an election, not just when the airwaves are crammed with negativity, and not just when the sense of urgency is palpable.
We also need your support now, at the beginning of a long journey together to reclaim and rebuild the American dream. It will be a difficult slog measured in months and years — but the journey will be worth it if, in the end, we are able to say that we have left a better country and a safer world for our children.

Freeman goes on to ask for a “click here” contribution to the DSCC. The wise oracle of many a good film, Freeman has to be the perfect choice to make the pitch for long-haul party-building. You can almost hear his mellifluous baritone working the room.
Freeman’s letter got me thinking that now, while hopes are at an all-time high, really is the time for the Democratic Party to aggressively recruit celebrities for fund-raising promos. And it’s not just about money. It’s also a great time to get celebrities and other public figures on record as supporting the Democrats as the party of hope. Despite all of the GOP whining about Democrats and Hollywood, I’m struck by how little we have used performing artists to raise consciousness and funds directly for party-building, as opposed to supporting candidates. There’s never been a better time, while Obama rides the high tide of popular good will. No doubt many celebrities who may have been a little reluctant to “out” themselves as partisan Democrats are more comfortable with the idea now.
Freeman may be in a minority in his profession, in that he gets it that Obama isn’t going to be able to pass much legislation without a few more Democratic Senators, or at least that a couple more senators could make a huge difference in America’s future. But there must be others. Let’s not miss the opportunity for a full court press in recruiting them. It’s not likely that we will see a better time.
And speaking of a full-court press, think about how limp the Democratic effort to tap the appeal of professional athletes has been. Obama’s cred ought to provide unprecedented leverage for promos from the top NBA super-stars, with professional football all-pros and baseball all-stars not far behind. Who better to get the attention — and support — of millions of young people?
I’m not saying here that celebrities are the key to success in long-haul political organizing. But in this culture particularly, they do command a lot of attention, and Dems would be negligent if they don’t make the most of it.
In The Shawshank Redemption, Freeman’s character, Red, tells Andy (Tim Robbins), “Hope? Let me tell you something, my friend. Hope is a dangerous thing.” Very true. But when it is backed up by organized action, hope can also be a powerful force for positive change.

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It was just a little joke. But it also lead to a teachable moment for those seeking insights into Obama’s style of presidential leadership.
Asked by the President to administer the oath of office to incomming senior staff members yesterday, Vice President Biden cracked wise “Am I doing this again? Oh! For the senior staff. My memory’s not as good as Justice Roberts’ … Chief Justice Roberts.”
Most politicians would have responded with a collegial chuckle or at least a little grin. President Obama’s reaction, however, could fairly be described as chilly (see here) . No smile, just a pat on the back urging his wayward veep to get back on point. Obama’s unspoken message was “this is the peoples’ business, Joe. Put a lid on it.”
Suffice it to say that the era of frat boy humor in the white house is over. It was a little incident, but what impressed me about it was how it revealed Obama’s sense of propriety. He is always alert to what is going on around him, and smartly avoids unnecessary controversy. Had he responded in a more typical way, yukking it up with Biden, some reporter might have twisted it into a ‘President Disses Chief Justice’ distraction du jour.
Obama is not a stiff. He knows when to relax and have a little fun, as was indicated by his question to the crowd at one of the inaugural parties, “Have I got a good-lookin’ wife?”
It’s not a put-down of Biden, who has impressive qualifications to assume the presidency if need be, a major reason why Obama chose him as his running mate. The other being that President Obama clearly values his expertise, particularly on foreign policy and wants him near. It’s just a very different style of leadership. The incident suggests that our new president has a seriousness about his responsibilities, large and small, that hasn’t been seen in the white house for many a year, which should be a great asset for getting things done.