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- The health-care summit, rather than being an informative policy debate, has instead put on display an uncomfortable truth about the presidency of Barack Obama. On the one hand, as Jon Chait remarks off-the-cuff, Obama is a remarkably cogent communicator, and despite my allegiance to the "structural factors" view of elections, I can't help but believe that this ability of the president helped him win. On the other hand, this view of Obama as a high-minded political reconciler clashes against the universe we actually live in, where, as Chait says, somebody needs to point out the unseriousness of the Republican caucus and the fecklessness of the Democratic majority. Instead we've got the president we deserve, not the one we need.
- Speaking of structural factors in elections, let's add Alan Abramowitz's analysis of the midterm elections to the mix. Abramowitz is predicting that Republicans will likely pick up 37 House seats in November not because of the economy or disillusionment with the Democrats or feelings about the direction of the country but because Democrats are defending over 50 seats, many in conservative districts. That is, accumulating the largest congressional majority in 30 years came at a price, and 2010 is when the bill is due. I would only add that Democrats did, however, take these seats in 2006 and 2008 for a reason, and that reason was a rejection of Republican governance. So while the structural factors guarantee that Democrats will lose some seats (around 20, according to Abramowitz), these seats are susceptible to macro-political factors as well.
- The updated results of this John Sides chart showing that self-identified conservatives by and large don't want to cut much in the way of spending is hardly surprising. I had wondered why "foreign aid" and "welfare programs" were omitted from the original, knowing in my gut that those have long been conservatives' white whale of "wasteful government spending." And this underscores how destructive the Republican approach to politics really is. They are perfectly happy to exploit this "cut taxes and spending" sentiment, even though they're only interested in the former in practice. And while they're too cowardly to actually try to gut the welfare state, they love boasting about their "limited government" credentials. Their indifference to the country's actual problems is repulsive.
- Remainders: Nate Silver on the powers of incumbency; this headline could very well describe the public's relationship to most pieces of public policy; I still can't believe the GOP's contempt for constitutional mandates is not getting more attention; Marco Rubio likes spending other people's money; Hillary Clinton struggles to explain the undemocratic Senate to our allies; I have no idea why anybody would want to read any of Ms. Quinn's columns, but this is a start; Newt Gingrich strives to raise the bar for hyperbole; Daniel Foster has an extremely loose definition of "Newspeak"; Sen. Jon Kyl lets the poor needlessly suffer so the rich can be slightly richer; I'm sure glad pseudo-science wasn't on the curriculum back when I was in school; and Americans across the political spectrum should be able to agree that America has the craziest nutjobs with the greatest media megaphone.
--Mori Dinauer
