Afternoon coffee at the Last Manatee-Fall Edition

I decided to clean out my junk e-mail file this morning. 840 out of 850 were offers for Viagra and Cialis. Several of the remaining 10 were offers from Russian women. And only three were travel ads. It's not coincidental that I discovered the last time I did this that all sex e-mails were generated because of 'cookies" left by rightwing web sites.

On the book shelf this morning are two dreadful reads. The first is Dinesh D'Souza's The Roots of Obama's Rage, Regenery (2010). Dinesh channels his inner V.S. Naipul but only comes up with his own racism. Our President can't be understood unless you understand he's a Luo tribesmen with an anti-Colonial mentality. Dinesh travels territory I remember so well--Franz Fanon and Amilcar Cabral--and only comes up with something truly incomprensible. P.S. I voted for Obama particuly because of his Luo background. I always found the Luo to be one of the best technocratic tribes in Africa. And we sure needed one. Dinesh seems a little confused about the United States' historic attitudes toward colonialism. Born in Mumbai, D'Souza forgets that we didn't look kindly even on British colonialism.

The second is Tears of a Clown: Glenn Beck and the Teabagging of America by Washington Post's Dana Milbank (Doubleday, 2010). Apologies to Dana. Dreadful should refer to the subject. Milbank takes you on a tour of Beck's fixation with Woodrow Wilson, Adolf Hitler, and Barack Obama as well as his dependence of Mormonapocalyptic thinking and John Birch Society conspiracy theories. Thrill to the government's plan to put all conservatives in FEMA camps and the imminent demise of the United States because progressives are planning their Reichstag moment. The book raises the issue of what today's writer should focus on. Was it the advance to get one's kid through college? Was it that this would be an easy bestseller? But I wonder whether someone with Dana Milbank's talent should really exhaust his energies with this guy. I know it's very tempting. Anyone reading this blog knows I spend too much attention on this lunatic.

Shame on White women. The Christian Science Monitor reports that the enthusiasm gap among Democrats is rapidly ending. African-Americans and Hispanics are roaring back to levels usually unknown in mid-terms. The younger voter is coming back. But the one sector of our society in both parties not enthused by the elections are the White women. If there is one election where women's rights are truly threatened, it's the 2010 midterms. Reproductive rights, even the use of birth control, mammograms (unbelievably),single women teaching in schools, equal pay for equal work, childcare, child nurition, child healthcare--let alone adult healthcare. This is all up for grabs this year. Democrats are beginning to run ads against the slew of candidates against rape in the case of incest and rape--a no brainer in the rational world. You don't have to be enthused, just vote.

The DNC reported its monthly take, which was its best month so far--topping $16 million in small donations, 90% of which are $25. But the shadowy non-profits are laundering over $100 million from unknown donors. This is several times the amount in past elections thanks to the Citizens United decision.

James Clyburn's House numbers are Democrats retain with 234. That's like 30 more than Nate the Great. Clyburn pointed to several unexpected Democratic pick-ups in the offing. Keep that number in mind, knowing that he has to put the best spin on it.

Queen Meg canceled her next debate with Governor Moonbeam. She is following this year's Republican tradition of avoiding debates, especially if her polling goes down every time she opens her mouth.

I received another fund-raising letter from Sharron Angle this weekend. It said that Jim DeMint would be there for her when she comes to Washington. How horrifying is that! The neo-confederate (that's not a smear but an accurate description) DeMint this past week declared himself King of the United States. He wants prior approval of every bill before the Senate or he won't allow it to be debated or discussed. In a sick way, he can do this through a misuse of Senate rules. So we don't even have to a filibuster threat anymore.

Meanwhile Super-Christian Tom Coburn has put a hold on the $1 billion aid to Haiti because he fears that $5 million might be wasted. I guess he changed his mind since the Iraq War which saw billions on pallets disappear into the Mesopotamian night.

Remember how in Iraq and Afghanistan we were supposed to increase the ability of the State Department and USAID to handle post-war issues to faciliate a drop in our military presence. Apparently, Congress didn't get the memo--Republicans are trying to gut such aid because they still don't like the State Department or USAID. For once, Michael Gerson wrote a sensible column explaining how counterproductive such actions are.

You'll recall my cheers when Obama's Justice Department decided to settle the Indian Trust case, which has gone on for a generation. Big problem, the Senate doesn't want to pay. Well, not really, Senators have told Indian groups they want to pay but it's combined with the settlement of the claim by African-American farmers, which also has gone on a generation. The Senators told the Indian groups they didn't want to pay the black farmers because they thought too many of the cliams were fraudulent.

It used to be that the debate over minimum wage was whether to raise it or keep it at the same level. Now we have a new talking point--eliminate it. This is sweeping tea baggers and candidates like Linda McMahon in Connecticut. Joe Miller in Arkansas argues it's unconstitutional. I guess he never heard of the "general welfare" wording in the Constitution.

And Senator Feingold really is in political trouble.

Unfinished Business

DADT--Despite Lady Gaga's valiant effort in Portland, Maine, it looks like the GOP will filibuster the entire Defense Appropriations bill to block the repeal of the gay ban. Leading the charge will be Country Last John McCain, who had said during the presidential campaign he would drop DADT if the military agreed--which, with the except of the new Marine Corps commander, they have. The situation is rich in ironies. The allegedly strong defenders of national security would basically de-fund both wars over an issue the federal court has already ruled unconstitutional and the House has already passed its repeal. Then again, with the momentary blip in the Washington media about how friendly to gays the GOP has become, it has to be noted that the court case, which finally doomed DADT, was brought by the Log Cabin Republicans, who are honoring Senator John Cornyn of Texas with their Barry Goldwater Award.

In the end, Barack Obama may have to do a Harry Truman and revoke DADT through executive order as Truman did with racial discrimination in the military.

The Prop 8 Case. Here the the poor 9th Circuit Court is rummaging around for anyone with standing to defend Prop 8 after Vaughn Walker ruled it unconstitutional. Rumors have one town in California trying to recruit a religious Right group to argue the case. Frankly, I don't know whether that would pass the smell test of "having standing."

Sharia Law--Eugene Robinson did an excellent job in blasting Newt Gingrich's speech at AEI, where Leroy raised the new Red Scare of a leftwing conspiracy to get Sharia Law accepted in the United States. In defense of Leroy McPherson, he was coming off a chest-pounding speech at the Value-Less Summit, where the grifters of the religious right eat this up. But Gene put this away in today's column with a calm, eloquence. There existed only one case in recent memory in America where a local judge sided with a Muslim husband over the issue of forced sex with his wife. But on appeal this ruling was over-turned. That is the extent of the threat to America. It's sort of like "terror babies" or "death panels".

Roger Cohen also had an excellent op-ed in today's Washington Post, which simply says that given the GOP candidates this year Republicans are simply not fit to govern. Full stop. You don't need to read the piece.

If you sense that Democrats seem to be a nicer breed of candidate and grounded in reality, you might want to thank Howard Dean's work as DNC chair when he created the 50-state strategy, which believed that no seat was unwinnable. Last night, Howard Dean appeared on the Rachel Maddow show and said calmly that the Democrats would keep both the Senate and the House. He said that President Obama was key and has to keep on the campaign trail. He went on to say that what we are seeing now are the last gasps of the extreme right. He said that the younger American is not homophobic, racist or anti-immigrant and that they will be around in 2012. While you can write off Dean's comments as a good soldier for the party, I was surprised by his calm assurance. He claimed the reason for holding both the House and the Senate was that the Democrats had better candidates and that the average American still knows who got them in the mess.

For a counter opinion, Michael Gerson writes today that the Republican tide is growing as for example the bad fate of Democrat Ellsworth in Indiana and sinking polls in Pennsylvania. Frankly, I'm reading very different polls from Pennsylvania, which actually show the Democrats having a shot at the state house, which I had written off, and winning swing seats, which Republicans need to win to capture the House.

Howard Dean mentioned something else. He said that the Health Reform Bill puts Republicans in a bind. For example, they must tell their base they will repeal. But on Thursday, key provisions of Healthcare kick in--no more rescissions, no more lifetime caps on payouts, no more prohibiting insuring children with pre-existing conditions, and parents can keep covering their children until 26. If President Obama spells out these changes in everyday language, the pressure tightens the bind on the GOP. Howard is right on this.

The Washington Post wrote a front page piece today on how the Tea Party was now a movement raising millions and going to field get out the vote efforts. I even received a call from the DNC about this. The actual problem appears to be a massive effort by the Tea Party and the GOP at voter suppression. This has become clear in Wisconsin, for example. There the Tea Party wants to act as election monitors and challenge voters. Because of the nature of state laws, the GOP and the Tea Party people can actually challenge voters who mail in votes,etc. This is a tactic called "caging voters" and preventing their votes to be counted. As to real Get Out The Vote efforts, it is true the religious Right and the Tea Baggers have purchased very expensive IT systems but their problem is that their average constituent is over 55 and appears at this time to be severely limited technically. In other words, it looks like a very expensive waste of money. Also, the Tea Baggers were to hold a national convention in Las Vegas, but had to cancel.

I get the sense the Nate Silver is pondering his predictions this morning with his comments on recent polls coming from swing seats, which show Democrats in comfortable leads. He is raising questions about how useful the generic vote polling is to determining the final election. He appears to be watching some of the polling I have been watching. For example, there are a handful of House seats in New York,where the constituency is historically Republican but which in 2008 went Democrat. They appear to be staying that way for now. Likewise, three seats in Iowa show Democrats holding them, when the mood in the state has tilted Republican. Chris Van Hollen continues to release internal polls on so-called contested House races, which show Democrats with surprising strength. That 43 number looks very daunting from a Republican perspective. Yesterday's Gallup poll shows Democrats with a 1% edge on Republicans in the generic poll. Normally not great news, this marks another indicator that the Democratic Party may be coming out its summer slump.

If you want to follow Christine O'Donnell's silliness, I recommend Think Progress' piece "The Old Adventures of New Christine", which documents her obsession with sex, gays, God, religion and popular culture. To her credit, she knows that Sarah Palin become a millionaire grifter by advocating these nutty things so she really has made a great career move. However, the recent poll on the Delaware race puts Coons in a commanding position and shows that only 33% of those in the state believe she is qualified for public office.

Barbara Boxer appears to be following her past pattern--bad polling in the beginning of the campaign and widening the distance at the end. She has hit 50% against Carly Fiorina. However, Governor Moonbeam has been running a below the radar campaign. I guess he figures that Meg Whitman's incessant ads will turn everyone off in the end. Queen Meg has obtained the Guinness Book of Records for personal spending on her campaign--surpassing the $120 million mark.

Republicans will be releasing their new Contract with America on Thursday, the same distance from election as their 1994 effort. So far, it's unclear how they are going to deal with the whole tax and deficit issue. President Obama in the last few days has hammered how irresponsible keeping these tax cuts are. Vast majority of Americans in poll after poll after poll agree with the President and are against the tax cuts for the rich. And how are the Republicans going to reconcile their repeal of Healthcare with their "pretend" concern with the national debt. Any tinkering with the Healthcare issue will vastly increase the national debt as several CBO reports maintain.

Then we come back to the social conservatives and the Religious Right. Rachel Maddow did a good service by pointing out that the tea baggers are almost all culture warriors being absolutist against women's choice, anti-gay, against immigrants and anti-anything but Christians. On real economic and political issues, they basically subsume corporate agendas and whatever the Koch brothers funnel to their front organizations. But they simply don't believe any of these things. Their real goal is parallel with the ambitions of the Religious Right. Even Rand Paul, Mr. Libertarian, has been campaigning hard among the Christian Right as opposed to his real anti-government constituency. Since the Christian Right were allowed under Bush-Rove to gain a strangehold on the Republican Party,it is inconceivable for me to believe they can abandon their base. In fact, there has been backlash against Mitch Daniels and others suggesting the GOP abandon these issues in a time of economic hardship.

Ann Coulter was right when she criticized Tan Man Boehner for claiming earlier this summer how large a Republican victory would be, saying that anything less would be considered a loss. I agree. The media narrative has been set--this is a tsunami election and if the Republicans don't win then heads should roll. In fact, people are aleady starting this mantra among House Republicans, who view Boehner as lazy and someone who should not allowed to speak after 3pm.

I'm currentlyagnostic about how much the media really affects our elections. I didn't believe they did in 2008 and I'm beginnning to believe we are going to see the same non-effect this year. One dirty secret among the networks is that all of them were in terrible financial shape until the 2008 primaries and the elections generated revenues to keep them afloat. So they stayed with their winning formula. Then CNN tried to poach the FOX audience by hiring more conservative types to report on politics. This hasn't quite played out as well for them. But it's all business. Unfortunately, I believe they have played an unhealthy role in giving the Teabaggers the media attention they so desire. These people are American Idol wannabes. Politics is nothing but television anyway.

In the end, this year's election comes down to the rational reality-based candidate against the paranoids,psychopaths, meglomaniacs. Forget liberal or conservative. The conservatives vanished into the swamp of lunacy.

Finally, if you are concerned about the deficit, then let's have all the tax breaks expire. This morning's Washington Post shows that if they did expire, our deficit would essentially evaporate.

Friday Night Politics at the Last Manatee

Well, President Obama did it now. Tonight he hosted an iftar dinner to celebrate Ramadan, something President Bush did also but this will be forgotten. And he came out in full support of religious freedom, even citing the real Thomas Jefferson as opposed to David Barton's mythical creature, and supported the building of the Islamic Center near--sort of near--Ground Zero. As to be expected, it was an eloquent statement. So let the hysteria continue. Some 100 religious leaders a few days ago came out slamming the Islamophobia surrounding the Ground Zero project. But over 70% of Americans oppose the project, according to a CNN poll. Will this be the attacking rabbit of the Carter years?

Today I listened to the roundtable on the Diane Riehm show where all the news commentators basically said that the situation was dire for Democrats. One reporter was asked by Diane why after all the accomplishments of Barack Obama were journalists so hard on him. The answer was that they simply reflect the public opinion polls. An odd thing for a journalist to confess. The rest of the panelists chimed in that there was a sense in the Spring that the economy was poised to begin a robust recovery and when that didn't happen everyone's mood darkened. One other journalist said that this all comes at a bad time for the Democrats because now is when the opinion of the electorate solidifies. They likened the situation to the mid-term in Reagan's first term when unemployment reached 11.5% and he had cut taxes. Even though people felt money in their pocket, the Republicans lost 28 seats in the House. The commentators said that people have not felt the benefits of Obama's policies yet.

They went on to cite the NBC/Wall Street Journal poll about how Democrats have lost their competitive edge on major issues and that the Democratic Party approval rating is 33%, the lowest since July 2006. What they didn't comment on is that the GOP approval rating was 24%, the lowest ever recorded by pollsters Hart and McInturff. Don't you have to beat something with something? If the Republican Party still existed as a party,I think the panelists would be right. But it doesn't. And that should give some hope to Democrats. In the same poll, the GOP had a huge generic ballot edge in the South--52 to 31% but didn't lead anywhere else in the country. This was an area, the pollsters concluded, was "where you have whiter and older voters". The Republicans, according to this poll, are clearly a Southern Party, no longer a national party, which doesn't bode well for their future.

Now referring to an older post of mine, I wrote that the 2008 election showed that Republican congressional districts had become more Republican and Democratic districts more Democratic. My concern at the time was that we had become a more polarized society politically than ever before. That means the Republican side becomes even more right-wing, as the last 18 months have shown. But does that polarization simply work against Republicans actually gaining significant victories in both the congressional and senator races?

Add to this the other issue of organization. The Republican Party organization is in utter disarray. Witness how the chosen candidates in Nevada, Kentucky, Colorado and even Utah lost to Teabaggers. While the Obama campaign was decentralized, you can't say the Republicans have adopted the same strategy by their competing organizations and money sources. You have internal fighting between the Karl Rove parallel RNC and groups such as the Club of Growth, which Mike Huckabee tags the Club of Greed. The other disadvantage Republicans have is they are at a disadvantage in terms of money. Every time someone like the Chamber of Commerce annouces it will spend some $75 million to elect Republicans, the number is matched within a day by the Democrats.

Whatever happens in the mid-terms, this notion that Obama's popularity is sinking continues to be the most annoying meme in the media. At his first mid-term, Reagan had sunk to a 35% approval rating. President Obama has continued to maintain approximately the same approval rating all year. In the same NBC/Wall Street poll, they were other questions asked about President Obama's likeability, etc, soft questions. But they reflect for me the degree to which he maintains considerable political reserves. When Democrats attacked George W. Bush and pointed to then mediocre approval ratings, he retained enormous percentages in terms of likeability, which held him up until he fell to his low approval ratings in the last two years of his Presidency.

PPP just came out with its periodic 2012 Presidential survey. At this stage, they have Obama at a 47 approval--48 disapproval rating. Sounds bad except when you compare it to all the leading Republican presidential contenders--none of whom reached 40% approval and all had substantial disapproval ratings, some fatally so. In head-to-head contests, President Obama bests every one of them now. So it's really how you compare things. Obama has roughly a 20pt lead in approval rating over any Republican congressional leaders.

Even Hapless Harry Reid in the NBC/Wall Street poll has only a 10% approval rating. He has a slight edge on Afghanistan and Pakistan. Yet, Reid today in Nevada is polling at 47.5% and has a four point edge over Sharron Angle. If he ran against someone normal, he would be toast.

In Colorado, it looked like Republicans this year would easily pick up the state house and a Senate seat. The Democratic candidate looks like he's going to win a landslide because of the lunatic Republicans selected and the renegade candidacy of Tom Tancredo. After a bruising democratic primary, Michael Bennet woke up and found himself against Ken Buck, a loony tune character, on the Republican side.

Yet the West will be tough this year for Democrats. They only have a one point generic lead on the Republicans in congressional races. In Washington state, Patty Murray will again face a well-financed Dino Rossi in a nail-biter. Republican hopeful Chris Dudley running for Oregon Governor seemed competitive but his tax issues and other problems seem to be sabotaging his effort.

Democrats seem to be forfeiting a real chance to take out Senator Burr in North Carolina. The problem Elaine Marshall has is the lack of cash to define Burr. She is a capable candidate with state-wide name recognition. But so far Burr can come home after the Senate break and actually tell voters he is for extending benefits to the uemployed while he filibustered against every attempt in the Senate and voted against extending benefits at every opportunity. It seems to be a Republican trait this year to return to the homes district and tell voters the opposite of what you really did.

Republicans are banking on California as a sign of their success this year. Right now Carly Fiorina, the disgraced CEO of Hewlett-Packard, has opened a 5 point lead against Barbara Boxer. Meg Whitman is a point ahead of Jerry Brown, who still hasn't begun to campaign yet. AFL-CIO chief Richard Trumpka arrived today in California to blast both Republican candidatesas two "clueless CEOs".

Trumpka went on to say," So in the elections for governor and senator, who do Republicans throw at the problem? Two clueless CEOs: Meg Whitman, who was too shady even for Goldman Sachs; and Carly Fiorina, who laid off 30,000 Hewlett-Packard employees, shipped jobs overseas, got fired--with a $20-plus million golden parachute--and was labeled one of the worst CEOs of all time." "How about Carly Fiorina--who calls offshoring jobs "right shoring"? She actually said that."

President Obama is scheduled to make several campaign stops during the August break to shore up Democratic candidates, including stops in Washington and California.

And what about the anti-incumbent fever? We have had more primaries and the number 90% of incumbents re-elected still holds. Yet even during today's Diane Riehm show, the panelists all talked about the anti-incumbent fever sweeping the country.

The White House has distributed a memo done by President Obama's pollster Joel Benenson, which claims the negative public opinion of the Republicans would forestall a "wave" election, which the GOP would need to win back both the House and the Senate. Basically, both parties have the same disapproval rate but the Republican approval rate is the lowest in history. The Republican approval rate has worsened since the last mid-term election in 2006. Benenson argues that Democrats today look about the same as they did in the summers of 1998 and 2002, neither of which were "wave" elections.

One interesting little thing has emerged as people contemplate Tan Man Boehner as Speaker of the House is that even Republicans are circulating the gossip that he tends to cry in his speeches late in the day, which they suggest is caused by his drinking. This is beginning to make the rounds on the internet.

A secret weapon that Democrats still have is the whole tax issue, something they haven't played well yet. In 2008 Obama took the tax issue away from the Republicans and they didn't even know it. When I asked republican strategists about this, they didn't even know what I was talking about. Obama promised tax cuts to everyone earning under $250,000 and he has delivered. But the Democrats seem to step on this message. But now in front of the nation, we have the issue of the Bush tax cuts. Ezra Klein produced a graph for the Washington Post comparing Democratic and Republican tax plans. Everything looked very similar until you reach the graphic about people earning over $1 million a year. The comparison then ends with the Republicans giving these high flyers over $106,000 in tax breaks, a dramatic huge circle distorting the whole graphic. The Democrats should just show this as often as they can.

The CBO also has done a list of all the things one can do to stimulate the economy. The least effective thing on their long list is to give tax breaks to rich people. Since every Republican has gotten this talking point about the Bush tax cuts and appeared on national television arguing it, the Democrats should just wrap it around their necks along with every jobs bill they either opposed or killed.

Then we reach the situation where the Republican Party has come out now as explicitly the party of white, older men. Even the white women campaign against women's rights. have we come to the point where we can coin the term "self-hating woman"? But in the mid-term the White position can be strong. Older white tend to vote more often and they now seem to be the only demographic Republicans actually have a lead. There is a perverse logic of Republicans running in the mid-terms against President Obama, despite the fact he is far and away more popular than any Republican in the land. He only won 43% of the white vote in 2008 and Democrats have not won a majority of white votes since LBJ. Republicans are banking that the Obama voters can not be mobilized to come out in any significant number so that the election really comes down to a fight between white voters. That's why they feel they can play the immigration card even though only 7% believe it is an issue--this is their wedge issue and can move enough voters in a low turnout election in their direction.

The risk of them doing this is considerable in Florida, Texas, Nevada, California and Colorado. The overt anti-Hispanic sentiment of the GOP has galvanized the Latino community,who will likely vote in greater number this year than normal. Even people like Karl Rove and Jeb Bush know that for the long-term prospects of the party this is suicidal.

The other self-destructive tendency of the GOP this year is their frontal assault on Social Security and Medicare. Because people like Pat Ryan are advocating massive restructuring of entitlement programs, older Americans are correct to be anxious about their security in a time of deep uncertainty. Social Security today prevents some 19 million people from slipping into poverty. This year the usual reassurance from Republicans not to touch these programs doesn't feel or seem credible. And this will erode their advantage among older Americans.

The unknown know will be the political efforts of the 99ers, people who have been unemployed beyond the time of their benefits. They are organizing in the thousands and on the internet they are nearing about 1 million. Today they held a rally on Wall Street. Many of these people were reliable Republican voters, who have become disgusted by the party's attack on them as some sort of "welfare queens".