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Lift every voice and sing

Lift every voice and sing
Till earth and heaven ring,
Ring with the harmonies of Liberty;
Let our rejoicing rise
High as the listening skies,
Let it resound loud as the rolling sea.
Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us,
Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us,
Facing the rising sun of our new day begun
Let us march on till victory is won.

Thanks, Shepard Fairey, for the poster. Thanks, James Weldon Johnson, for the song. Thanks, Barack Obama, for the inspiration.

But I won't be worried long

Yes, I admit it, I'm a worried man. There's the crazed and sexualized campaign: bomb bomb Iran and a whiter shade of Palin, terrorists and angry old men and ignorant pit bulls with lipstick. There's the punctured biosphere: extermination of 25 percent of all mammals, our near relative the gorilla leading the way. There's the plunge to a four-figure Dow, to say nothing of the inscrutably balanced but strangely threatening Tao. A worried man, that's me.

But I won't be worried long. Today, 29 days before the election, Barack Obama moved into a winning position in electoral-college votes. That cautious statistician Mark Blumenthal over at Pollster.com now shows the preternaturally calm senator ahead of his erratic rival 296 to 163 (26 more than enough to win), cruising along on a 7-point lead. It's enough to allow even a worried man to exhale. And perhaps to exclaim in Bahasa Indonesia "WADU!"—which is, being interpreted, "WOW!"—as my granddaughter Micaela did last week in Bandung. Look at this, Micaela!

That's a dynamic map, you know, so by the time you see this post, Senator Obama may well have picked up another state or two. Hope, you know, and change, that's the mantra, the magic map responding to our every fervent wish.

The next state to move from yellow to blue may be the Old Dominion, two polls today showing startling Democratic leads of 12 and 10 points. I attribute it all to Ralph Stanley, the great Virginia banjo picker and singer—best known to us urban types by his contributions to the Coen brothers' movie O Brother, Where Art Thou?—who has endorsed Obama in a radio ad for the folks in Roanoke and Bristol and points in between, delivered with all the weight and grace of his 81 years.

So if Ralph isn't worried any more, I won't be either. We've got a long road ahead, those 29 interminable days, but (thanks to Kathy G.) here's a much younger Ralph and his brother Carter showing us the way (that's Tao to you).

Keep the faith, as we were taught. Finish the course. I'm off to Reno this weekend, knocking on doors for the party of hope. I won't be worried long. WADU!

McCain's legacy: mooseburgers for all!

John McCain learned his cynical irresponsibility from George Bush, who once said, "History. We don't know. We'll all be dead." And when we're dead, we can't be held responsible. Anyone who's still hanging around after that is on his own, here in the Ownership Society.

McCain's choice of Sarah Palin exposes the real engine that drives his campaign of honor and glory: it's nothing more than a narcissistic lust for power, underlined by his astonishing unconcern for the country after he dies. McCain wants only to reign, and he does not care what happens to the rest of us when his strutting hour upon the stage is done. Let them eat mooseburgers!

Minette Marrin is a conservative American, long resident in England, whose heroine is the British bulldog Margaret Thatcher. She is appalled at McCain's hypocrisy (via Juan Cole):

Would you give power of attorney over your entire life to someone you had only met once, or possibly twice? Of course not. You would give the matter and the person very serious consideration. Yet McCain in effect is offering power of attorney over all the affairs of the United States and over all Americans, including me, to a woman he had barely met. I myself wouldn’t hire a house-sitter on such scant acquaintance.

Palin herself may not know what a vice-president is for, but McCain surely must.…

I had thought that McCain was, for a politician, an honourable man. Certainly honour is one of his top selling points. But who can think so now? In choosing a woman he doesn’t know or understand, purely for electoral advantage, he reveals a dishonourable lust for office, a disrespect for women generally and a dishonourable indifference to the future of his country. After all, if this known unknown woman does become president, it will almost certainly be because he himself is dead - quite possible given his age and health - and past caring.

Though he didn’t know Palin personally, he must have known a few facts about her. He must have known that she compares feebly with previous vice-presidential candidates. Her education is minimal, her real political and managerial experience very slight.… Being a vice-president is not just a matter of PR and homespun rhetoric, or used not to be.…

In short Palin is an ill-educated, inexperienced hypocrite. The Republicans are trying to sell her to the voters as something she isn’t, and McCain hardly cares what she is. It’s a bad day for my native land.

And mine. John McCain may think he's immortal and therefore that he is not placing us in danger. Alternatively, he may wish ill on the country he thinks has not sufficiently honored him and consider Sarah Palin an appropriate punishment.

Or he may already be past caring.

These are the times that tax men's souls

Under the feckless reign of George Bush, the US has fallen deeper and deeper into debt. We fight expensive wars, subsidize Exxon, and spend vastly more every year than we take in. We pay for our profligacy by borrowing money from the Chinese instead of taxing the rich. John McCain, George Bush, and all their well-connected friends pay less than their fair share, despite the enhanced opportunities they enjoy. The United States government cannot continue down that path.

The government of California cannot, either. Five years ago, Arnold Schwarzenegger juked his way into office, pretending to be a realist while slashing $4 billion a year in vehicle registration taxes, taxes that are required to provide the services Californians need. He has continued to play games with the state's finances every year since, selling bonds to pay operating expenses and avoid any tax increases. After his latest ploy, mortgaging the state lottery, was rejected by the legislature, he did finally propose a tax increase, but it's a one-percent rise in the sales tax that would fall disproportionately on poor and middle-class citizens.

Brad DeLong points out that we cannot continue forever to live beyond our means, expecting the services of government while dunning our grandchildren for the costs. After eight years of Republican no-tax fundamentalism, we have few choices now, and they do not include the option of reducing taxes even further on those who receive the most from society. As DeLong writes, we must "raise taxes to cover … the long-run fiscal gap …, and so bring the federal budget back into balance over the long run." All realists agree, even the most conservative:

As the late Milton Friedman liked to put it: to spend is to tax. If the government buys things, it must get the money to buy them from somewhere. It can get the money from three places. It can tax. It can borrow--but then the borrowing has to be repaid with interest, and the more is borrowed the higher the interest and the worse the value the taxpayers ultimately get for their money when they are taxed to repay the borrowing. Or it can print the money and so inflate the currency--but that too is a tax, and an especially unfair, painful, and destructive one, as lots and lots of people victimized by inflation find their wealth doesn't buy what it used to and what they expected.

[Raising taxes] is not optional--not, that is, if we want to continue to have a rich country in the long run. And the politicians who have told you that [it] is optional from Ronald Reagan to George H.W. Bush to Robert Dole to George W. Bush and now John McCain are not your friends, or America's friends.

DeLong has much more to say. Read it all here.

Hillarious!

This tone-deaf video is proof positive that the Hillary Clinton campaign has lost its way. Who among you sings like that, dances like that, thinks like that? Montana wheat farmers who yearn for the days of disco? The inner-city gangbangers of Bangor, Maine? Santa Fe seniors nostalgic for the Beatles? All would be disappointed.

It is as though Senator Clinton saw the will.i.am/yes.we.can video and said, "Make me one like that. But nicer. And whiter. And with better music.… Oh, yeah, and shoot it in color!" And lo, they rocked.

Scooter, voting, and fairness in Lake of the Ozarks

Because I like to think well of my countrymen, I prefer to believe that George Bush got into the White House by fooling them about his real intentions. If only they had known, if only they had understood a little more about his competence and his worldview and his intended policies, they would never have given him enough votes to slide by in 2000, and certainly not enough votes to win outright in 2004.

But many Americans didn't know. Three years ago, when I was canvassing for John Kerry in the conservative western suburbs of St Louis, one angry woman stood on the steps of her mobile home and told me that she was voting for Bush because Teresa Kerry planned to force all states to make gay marriage legal. She knew it was true because she had read it in four different places on the internets, and Teresa had enough money that she would have been able to get if off the internets if it weren't true. We did not have a productive conversation. Despite my best efforts, in that trailer park and elsewhere, Bush won the 11 electoral votes of Missouri.

But times change. Since 2004, the drip, drip, drip of information has opened many an eye to the administration's mendacity and incompetence, and a few big-picture events have broken through the media camouflage protecting Bush. The abandonment of New Orleans, increasing chaos in Iraq, and now the unfair release of a criminal from prison because he is the president's friend—each of these stories has awakened a few more oblivious voters from their slumber, and if Bush were running for office today, he would not find enough friends in Missouri to host a barbecue at any trailer park in the state.

Well, perhaps I exaggerate. But not by much. All you've got to do is consult the internets. I ran across some really interesting information about the state of Missouri voters' minds in 2007 at an unlikely website called Lake Expo Online, which exists mostly to carry ads for harmonicas and fishing boats and clothing-challenged boat parties around Lake of the Ozarks, in the deeply conservative south-central part of the state. Steve Thomas, a very good writer who describes himself as a loyal, lifelong Republican, has reached the end of his rope, and he tells the story of his disillusionment in a column titled "The way it is: Typewriters hurled over Scooter Libby fiasco." Loyal no more. "When the New Orleans levees gave way," he writes,

I didn’t want anything more to do with the Republicans. So I declared myself an Independent and have been so since. It was hard for me to walk away from a party that had been my political home since my youth.

Now Bush has commuted the jail sentence of former aide Scooter Libby.…

Libby should have gone to jail, period. He was found guilty, sentenced by a judge and his bid to put off his jail time during appeals was rejected by a panel of judges.…

Unless all men are equal before the bar of justice, no man is equal before the bar of justice. The commutation of Libby’s sentence undermines the faith of the American people in the system of justice, underscoring a growing perception that this nation is increasingly unequal, that there is not one American dream but instead many American nightmares, that we are no longer a nation where competition and compassion can coexist in a unique if sometimes uncomfortable fashion.

Instead we are faced with some ugly questions and answers.

Thomas goes on to pose some tough ones about Iraq, the military, trade policies, the working poor, and the fairness of the legal system. And he quotes Theodore White on the idealistic myth that has bound Americans together: "that all men are equal before the law and protected by it; and that no matter how the faith may be betrayed elsewhere, at one particular point—the Presidency—justice will done beyond prejudice, beyond rancor, beyond the possibility of a fix." No more. That myth is kaput.

Thomas also quotes Hunter Thompson, who considered seriously, on a similar occasion—when he heard that Gerald Ford had pardoned Richard Nixon—that he should fling his typewriter through the nearest politician's front window and "flush the bugger out with an act of lunatic violence then soak him down with mace and run him naked down Main Street in Aspen with a bell around his neck and black lumps all over his body from the jolts of a high powered 'Ball Buster' cattle prod." Hunter Thompson reconsidered, and though Thomas is tempted too as he checks the heft of his old Selectric, he thinks a lot of his neighbors around Lake of the Ozarks, even the politicians, might agree with him:

Mob bosses will admire Bush’s loyalty to a closed-mouth soldier and petty criminals may well want to do better than small crime because they’ll realize that big crime pays big dividends.

Pass a bad check and go to jail. Attempt to subvert the justice system and never see the inside of a cell. Thanks a lot, George Bush.

Yet a small part of me won’t give up on our country. I think it can be brought into a better future with a healthy application of more democracy via the ballot box. I don’t know who will get my vote in the future, but I won’t surrender to the anger and cynicism that grip me right now.

Having said that, I will confess that I plan on cleaning my old Selectric. I want to rid it of the dust and grime acquired by sitting unused on a shelf. That way I can be prepared for whatever else may come because I cannot, in good conscience, hurl a dirty typewriter.

It's all about fairness. If people feel the government is cheating them, or treating other people better, they don't like it. That's as true in Missouri as it is in Massachusetts, and Bush's Republican Party is on the wrong side of the equation. It's also true in Virginia, as Tim Craig and Jennifer Agiesta write in the Washington Post today. The Old Dominion, which has not supported a Democrat for President since 1964, is now ready to do just that by a margin of 40 to 33 percent. They add: "When asked to name the worst president since 1960, 46 percent of the state's independents cited Bush. No other president was mentioned by more than 15 percent of independents," and the president's disapproval carries over to the GOP in general.

This erosion of Bushophilia in formerly red states has been going on for some time. (Last year, SurveyUSA showed that Bush had a net positive approval rating only in Utah, Idaho, Wyoming, and Oklahoma.) That's why so many Republican incumbents lost in the 2006 congressional races, and that's why Harry Reid is beginning to think the Senate may now be ready to pass a bill to force withdrawal from Iraq. Drip, drip, drip. Perhaps they will even be ready to override a veto. Carl Hulse and Jeff Zeleny report in the New York Times:

In the first round of debates about the war, there was Democratic anxiety about appearing unsupportive of the troops, and Mr. Reid sought to keep a tighter rein on his colleagues who were pushing for the strongest antiwar legislation. But in the shifting environment, Democrats are newly emboldened.

Mr. Reid said he now saw ending the war as a moral duty, and even if the Senate again falls short, he said, he would turn again and again to Iraq until either the president relents or enough Republicans join Democrats to overrule Mr. Bush.

“I think that each time these people vote to continue what’s going on in Iraq it is a bad, bad move for them and a worse move for our country,” Mr. Reid said.

When the voters in Lake of the Ozarks are mad enough to hurl their typewriters, those Republican senators may decide it's time to commence some real deep soul-searching. Let's hope so. We could use a little more fairness in the US of A, and the threat of a ballot-box revolution may turn out to be even more powerful than a flying typewriter.

[Cross-posted at Scholars & Rogues]

Discredited government and the 2008 election

George Bush has done his work—with a little help from Dick Cheney, as the Washington Post series this week has made clear—and he has almost certainly changed the political landscape for decades. His arrogance and incompetence have so thoroughly discredited the Republican Party that Democrats start the 2008 races with a huge advantage. Most Americans are now ready to vote for a Democratic candidate for president—any Democratic candidate—and to solidify the party's control of Congress.

But one troubling factor remains: In the process of discrediting his party and conservative policies, Bush has also, in the eyes of many voters, discredited government of any stripe. While Iraq, New Orleans, and a hundred other scandals all happened under Bush's watch, some voters interpret these failures to mean that we can't trust government to do anything right. Democratic government, Republican government, it doesn't matter that much—by this reading they're all inefficient, feckless, and self-serving. You know, politicians, they're all just politicians. And that's a reading Republicans would like to encourage.

But for the moment, more mud is sticking to Bush and his friends. Voters' favorable views of the Democratic Party have grown especially rapidly in the last few months, as shown in this graph of Democracy Corps polls (with warm feelings toward the party in red, cool in yellow):

Young Americans in particular are disenchanted with Bush and his party, according to this week's New York Times poll. Among voters age 17 to 29, 54 percent plan to vote for a Democrat in 2008, and only 28 percent approve of Bush's job performance. It's not just that young voters have strong party preferences—they also favor progressive policies. The poll shows they support abortion rights and gay marriage, they have a more welcoming stance toward immigrants than older Americans, and "62 percent said they would support a universal, government-sponsored national health care insurance program." That's good news for Democrats in 2008—and probably well beyond, since people tend to establish their voting patterns when young and change very little as they age.

Democracy Corps has also conducted a new survey of battleground races in the 70 congressional districts likely to determine control of the House of Representatives next year, and the results are surprisingly positive. Stan Greenberg and his pollsters write:

Democratic congressional candidates in this named ballot hold on average a 9-point lead in these districts that actually supported the Republican candidate by 1 point in 2006 and President Bush by 8 points in 2004. That means the center of the battlefield has shifted as much since 2006 as it did in the lead up to it.

If Democrats hold on to that lead through November 2008, they will retain almost every one of their House seats and probably gain a significant number of Republican seats. That's a big if, of course. Many events will intervene, possibly even another 9/11-scale attack, and it's not easy to predict how Americans would react to that, whether they would blame the Bushites for more FEMA-like incompetence or, as in 2001, rally round the leader.

For the moment, Iraq looms over everything. To escape the charge that all politicians are incompetent, Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi must peel off enough GOP votes to achieve some visible movement there in the next few months, removing troops and beginning to wind down the war. There are some hopeful signs in the latest comments by senators Lugar and Voinovich. Domestic issues, too, may turn out to be more important than in 2006, especially since the rightward march of the Roberts Supreme Court calls for legislative countermeasures from Congress. But Democratic majorities are slim, and Bush still wields the veto pen, so it's entirely possible that Reid and Pelosi may be able to accomplish very little. As Greenberg writes in The American Prospect:

In all likelihood, we are going to have a year of gridlock going into the presidential election, which will only increase voters' frustration with government. The longer people see their real problems going unaddressed by the two main parties, the greater the likelihood that the electorate will fragment, and an independent and anti-politics candidate will emerge.

In any case, Democrats cannot rely on hatred of Republicans as their sole winning strategy. They must also restore voters' faith in the ability of government to solve problems, to work properly again as a means of implementing progressive programs. As Greenberg puts it:

In their breathtaking incompetence and comprehensive failure in government, Republicans have undermined Americans' confidence in the ability of government to play a role in solving America's problems. Democrats will not make sustainable gains unless they are able to restore the public's confidence in its capacity to act through government.…

The problem -- the very substantial problem -- is that conservatives have failed in ways that have undermined Americans' sense of collective capacity. Their failure has communicated not just their own incompetence, but also the message that government in general is incompetent. By failing so dramatically, conservatives have created a significant roadblock for Democrats: They have undermined people's faith in the very instrument that we as progressives want to use to solve problems.

The 2008 election may come to represent a sea change in American politics, a return to government for the people rather than for the corporation. But that change is far from certain, whatever the polls say today.

[Cross-posted at Scholars & Rogues]

Extrapolating to zero Republicans

All statistics are created equal, but some are more equal than others. Nevertheless, whatever numbers you consult, the rapid erosion in Republican power is undeniable.

Take that Newsweek poll to the right. Now that George Bush's approval rating has fallen to 28 percent, we may calculate, as Mark Kleiman does, that the Bush swoon has been at a steady rate of 12 percent per year ever since we all went nuts with fear in September 2001. There was one significant uptick when Iraq was invaded, but then the drip-drip-drip of recognition resumed, as an average of one percent of voters each month saw the truth. Extrapolating from that trend, we may confidently predict that by January 2009 only 8 percent of Americans will approve of the outgoing president.

But Michael O'Hare calculates that the numbers are even worse for Bush:

When he went down 12 points from 80 to 68, it meant that about 15% of his supporters left the building. But the last twelve points, from 40 to 28, represents not only almost a one-third loss of his support, but loss from what were presumably the most dedicated fans among the starting group.

So the number of Bush Republicans may be zero by the time Barack Obama (with Republican votes) moves into the White House.

Similarly, I calculate that by late August enough Republican congressfolk will be ready to vote for troop withdrawal timelines, and Nancy Pelosi will have a veto-proof majority. How do I come to that conclusion? Simple. On April 25, the conference report on Iraq funding and withdrawal passed the House with 218 votes. On May 2, seven days later, the attempt to override Bush's veto of that same bill attracted 222 votes; four House members changed their minds in one week. At that rate, it will take only 17 more weeks to reach the magic veto-killing number of 290. By August 29 (give or take 24 hours), two-thirds of the House will be ready to vote for withdrawal, and Bush will have no choice but capitulation.

Given the foolishness of such exactitude, it's surprising that GOP House leader John Boehner came to almost the same conclusion. Yesterday he said, "By the time we get to September, October, members are going to want to know how well this is working, and if it isn't, what's Plan B?" That's pretty close—September! I'm almost tempted to think there's more to such numerical fun and games than we thought.

To stay on the safe side, however, perhaps it's enough to say that Bush's support is crumbling, but we don't know how many more Republicans will defect, or when. All else is wishful conjecture. It was Mark Twain in Life on the Mississippi who pointed out the dangers of extrapolation (hat tip to O'Hare):

In the space of one hundred and seventy-six years the Lower Mississippi has shortened itself two hundred and forty-two miles. That is an average of a trifle over one mile and a third per year. Therefore, any calm person, who is not blind or idiotic, can see that in the Old Oolitic Silurian Period, just a million years ago next November, the Lower Mississippi River was upwards of one million three hundred thousand miles long, and stuck out over the Gulf of Mexico like a fishing-rod. And by the same token any person can see that seven hundred and forty-two years from now the Lower Mississippi will be only a mile and three-quarters long, and Cairo and New Orleans will have joined their streets together, and be plodding comfortably along under a single mayor and a mutual board of aldermen. There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.

All right. Let's just say that now we have the wind at our backs, but that the wind could change. That Republican count may never reach zero—I'm sure Karl, Laura, and Barney will always remain loyal.

[Cross-posted at Scholars & Rogues]

The Year of Living Truthfully

In today's lie-polluted sea of political discourse, Elizabeth Edwards's frank acceptance of mortality and her candid preference to continue to live her remaining life fully constitute a bracing splash of truth. After Edwards's Stage 4 cancer diagnosis, Katie Couric on 60 Minutes obtusely reminded her that she was "staring at possible death," and Edwards replied, "Aren't we all, though?" She and her husband John decided to tell the truth about the disease and yet to proceed with his presidential campaign, considering that it will be a good way to spend their energy and time, as much time as she has left. That's admirable—and more authentic than anything we're used to hearing from politicians.

In the New York Times, Frank Rich writes that she herself deserves to be president (link here, unfortunately behind a subscriber wall):

People admired her before she was ill for the same reasons they admire her now. She comes across as honest, smart and unpretentious — as well as both devoted to and independent of her husband.…

It’s been a steady refrain of her public comments that “we’re all going to die” and that she has the right to make her own choice to fight for her husband’s candidacy even as she fights for her life. There are no euphemisms or equivocations in her language. There’s no apologizing by either Edwards for the raw political calculus of their campaign plans. There’s no sentimental public hand-wringing about the possible effect her choice might have on her children. The unpatronizing Mrs. Edwards sounds like an adult speaking to adults.…

In a political culture where nearly every act by every candidate and spouse is packaged to a fare-thee-well for the voters’ consumption, the Edwardses’ story by definition will play out unpredictably in real time, with a spontaneity that is beyond any consultant’s or media guru’s control. Here is one continuing familial crisis that cannot be scored with soothing music to serve as a Hallmark homily in an inspirational infomercial at the next election-year convention. The Edwardses’ unscripted human drama will be a novelty by the standards of our excessively stage-managed political theater and baffling to many in its permanent repertory company.

That’s one reason it will be good for the country if Mr. Edwards can stay in this race for the duration, whether you believe he merits being president or not. (For me, the jury on that question is out.) The more Elizabeth Edwards is in the spotlight, the more everyone else in the arena will have to be judged against her. Next to her stark humanity, the slick playacting that passes for being “human” and “folksy” in a campaign is tinny. Though much has been said about how she is a model to others battling cancer, she is also a model (or should be) of personal transparency to everyone else in the presidential race.…

[John McCain and Hillary Clinton] want us to believe that they are speaking in a direct, unfiltered manner, but so far their straight talking, even without Elizabeth Edwards as a yardstick, seems no more natural than Cheez Whiz.

Rich also has good words for the candidate, praising John Edwards's devotion to both his wife and to the country. He points out that, whatever the small-minded Couric may imagine, it is possible to run the country while dealing with a family crisis:

Would it be better if he instead ran the country at the same time he was clearing brush on a ranch? Polio informed rather than crippled the leadership of F.D.R.; Lincoln endured the sickness and death of a beloved 11-year-old son during the Civil War. In the wake of our congenitally insulated incumbent, who has given our troops neither proper armor nor medical care and tried to hide their coffins off camera, surely it can only be a blessing to have a president, whether Mr. Edwards or someone else, who knows intimately what it means to cope daily with the threat of mortality. It’s hard to imagine such a president smiting stem-cell research or skipping the funerals of the fallen.

Indeed, of all the reasons to applaud Elizabeth Edwards’s decision to stay in politics, the most important may be her insistence, by her very action, that we not compartmentalize the harsh reality of death and the imperatives of public policy, both at home and at war. Let the real conversation begin.

Whatever the current resident of the White House may think, life is not a fraternity prank, responsibility is not a joke, and war is not a game.

Impeach George Bush.

Update, 4/1: With his usual percipience, Andrew Sullivan writes in the Times (London) of the candor now expected about disease, and how Elizabeth Edwards measures up but Dick Cheney doesn't. He concludes, "[A]s Philip Larkin put it, with his usual precision, days are where we live. And I want to be alive when I die."