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- I haven't read Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson's new book on the rise of the business lobby, Winner-Take-All Politics, but if Kevin Drum's nickel summary is accurate, the book offers a compelling narrative about America's long march to income inequality. And it is a narrative -- the reason Republicans were able to adopt the mantle of populism is because Democrats stopped fighting for the working class.
- Various news sources are reporting that quirks in state-level election law could yield a lame duck Congress where Democrats are down by two or more votes immediately following Election Day. But the assumption here is that Congress has special powers during this period under which the institutional constraints we've seen over the past two years no longer apply. Sure, there will be Senators inclined to vote their conscience since they won't have a job come January, but the idea that lame-duck sessions are inherently game changers is just a right-wing talking point.
- Credit to Daniel Larison for having the tenacity to plow through the absurdity that passes for "analysis" from Dinesh D'Souza (opening sentence: "Barack Obama is the most antibusiness president in a generation, perhaps in American history"). Larison does this because such infantile arguments and beliefs need to be countered -- a laudable sentiment -- but shouldn't we also be asking why Forbes would publish an essay that would come back with "please rewrite" scrawled across it in any college course? Or why D'Souza was recently hired as president of King's College in New York? Or why someone so distant from reality could be paid handsomely to work at a think tank? I don't think "wingnut welfare" adequately captures the severity of intellectual rot permeating modern conservatism.
- I will be taking an absence from the Lightning Round for the next week and a half, but TAP's fantastic staff will be on hand to continue this feature. Until then, Remainders: The DNC disputes that Organizing for America is a shell of its former self; the country would be better off if more Republicans didn't have to run for re-election; Carly Fiorina hangs out with 46 Tea Partiers in Marin County, California; exactly, we can't address waste and corruption in government until we know exactly where the waste and corruption is occurring; and Jay Nordlinger thinks Sharron Angle telling prominent Hispanics in Nevada to go to hell would be "helpful politically."
--Mori Dinauer
