I don’t understand how Conor can say this with a straight face:

You’d think after rightly complaining about the Bush Administration’s unprecedented irresponsibility for eight years, leading Democrats would understand that we’re trapped in a terrible hole, but instead they just keep digging, figuring that while they’re in power, why not lobby for a massive new health care entitlement, game its scoring to make its cost seem more palatable to voters, and pay for it by pretending that it won’t cost any more than what we currently spend. […]

Republicans may be full of it when they promise that if returned to power they’ll cut spending and pay down the debt, but at least they recognize the need for those measures, and that they’re an appropriate priority.

The reflexive, evidence-free dismissal of the CBO scores (High Broderism at its finest) at the beginning of Conor’s post is enough to convince me that he isn’t actually interested in hearing liberal ideas for bringing the United States back on a firm fiscal footing. That said, it’s worth reminding Conor that in the three decades since the Republican Party became the dominant political coalition in American politics, the deficit has been reduced exactly once, and that was during Bill Clinton’s presidency. All three Republican presidents of the “conservative era” – Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and George W. Bush – were responsible for significant increases in the deficit, and in the case of the latter, a tremendous increase in the overall national debt.

Here’s a graph that illustrates the point (I found the data here):

Moreover, it’s not even really accurate to say that Republicans recognize the need to reduce spending, and Democrats don’t (by implication). The Obama administration’s central conceit on health care reform has been that absent systemic change in the way we deliver and pay for health care, the United States is facing fiscal ruin. As such, the only real requirement the administration has for health care reform – as per Peter Orszag – is that it “bends the curve.” We’ve heard more about cost controls and deficit reduction from this Democratic administration than we did in eight years of the previous Republican one. Indeed, if there’s been anything notable about nearly every major Democratic policy proposal we’ve seen this year, it’s that both congressional Democrats and the White House have been adamant that they pay for themselves at least in part.

I hate to be super partisan about this, but it’s one of those situations where you can’t actually avoid it. The simple fact is that while neither party is perfect, Democrats at least have something of a claim to the mantle of “fiscally responsible.” President Clinton was the first president in a generation to balance the budget, and President Obama’s economic team shows an obvious concern for the long-term fiscal viability of the United States. They’re just also concerned about not letting the United States fall into economic ruin, hence the various stimulus-related deficits.

On that note, I want to make one last point: when considering Republican and Democratic deficits, you can’t make a one-to-one comparison without also thinking about the actual content of spending. Or, to borrow from a post I wrote a long time ago at my own blog:

Spending trillions of dollars financing a massive reinvention of our transportation infrastructure – an unquestionable public good – is a lot different then spending trillions on say, video games. Which, while awesome, aren’t exactly a wise investment (I’m looking at you Atari Lynx and Sega Game Gear). The real measure of fiscal responsibility isn’t deficit spending as much as it is the return on said spending. If President Obama’s spending puts the country on a sustainable fiscal footing in the long-term, even if it is significant, it will be far more “responsible” than President Bush’s comparatively smaller, but overall disastrous, spending.

Hey kids, just a heads up – I’m guest-blogging at Spencer Ackerman’s digs.  So for those of you who can actually tolerate my blogging, head over there for today.

This Gallup poll has gotten a bunch of attention, and I figure it’s worth posting here:

Yesterday, Ruth Marcus (or rather, whoever writes her subheadline) called the House debate over the health care bill a “GOP blizzard of untrue statements.”  And for good reason. The Republican argument against the bill amounted to a series of incoherent tirades denouncing the health care bill as an apocalyptic threat to everything good and decent about America.  Hell, I half-expected someone in the Republican caucus to describe Speaker Pelosi as the “beast from the sea” and an “abomination of desolation.”

Which is a nice way of segueing into this point: although the formal term for what happened on Saturday is “debate,” you’d be hard-pressed to describe anything that happened on Saturday as an actual debate.  A debate – as far as I understand it – is supposed to involve reasoned arguments and shared facts.  If I were in a debate about Darkwing Duck’s crimefighting ability, for instance, then my opponent and I would have to agree on certain basic facts; that there is indeed a superhero called Darkwing Duck and that he is St. Canard’s resident caped crusader.  If my opponent dismisses those easily verifiable facts, and instead insists that Darkwing Duck is a masked beaver, then well, we can’t really get anywhere.

This is basically where the country has been since the health care “debate” began.  Democrats and liberals have offered proposals and ideas, and Republicans have responded with either outlandish misrepresentations or outright lies.  Contra most of the mainstream pundit world, there hasn’t actually been much of a debate, and consequently the American people really don’t know much about what’s going on.  Which is why I’m skeptical about surveys like the one above; in a rational political culture, where debates were open and constructive, that poll might actually mean something.  As it stands however, that Gallup poll only shows two things: Americans are still anxious about health care reform and Republican demagoguery is depressingly effective.

Andrew Sullivan on his intellectual consistency:

I was appalled by the anti-Semitism buried within ANSWER – the left-wing equivalent of the Tea Party peeps – their paranoia and their ad Hitlerum daffiness. I railed against “the intolerant, extremist and reactionary forces behind an unhealthy amount of the anti-war movement.” I argued that they were not offering any serious proposals to address the actual problem – Saddam’s WMDs. In many ways, my critique of the far left then is identical to my critique of the far right today. And the critiques both come from a small-c conservative perspective.

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Note: This was a shitty movie.

So, if Memeorandum is any indication, a few conservative bloggers have taken to mining fourth-rate dialogue from third-rate science fiction movies in order to make an absurd point about how a modest package of insurance reforms amounts to an attack on liberty itself.

I asked something along these lines on Facebook yesterday and in light of the apoplectic conservative reaction to Saturday’s vote, it’s worth posing these questions to the linked bloggers (if they are paying attention, of course).  In what way does the health care bill constitute “socialism” or an attack on our “liberty”?  How does the contents of the bill limit your freedom of action or restrict your ability to pursue your own comprehensive conception of the good?  And, assuming you’re not similarly opposed to Medicare and Social Security, how is the health care bill categorically different from either of those programs?  Finally, I also think it’s worth asking if you have a solution.  If agree that there are serious systemic problems with our health care system, then are there any reforms you think would address – or at least mitigate – the problems of overconsumption, high cost, and inadequate coverage?

If I had to hazard a guess, I’d say that neither blogger has a real answer to any of those questions.  For all of their bleating about how Saturday’s vote dealt a Mortal Kombat-esque fatal blow to “liberty,” I doubt either blogger even has a reasonably well-thought idea of what liberty is.  Indeed, I think it’s entirely fair to say that “liberty” for these folks is anything they really like and tyranny, by contrast, is anything that makes them feel sad and/or knocks them off of their (poorly) self-constructed pedestal.

Also, what John Cole said.

I agree with conservatives like David Horowitz and John Hinderacker; in light of the shooting at Ft. Hood, we need to reassert and protect our values.  The question of course, is the who we’re protecting our values from.  Hint: it’s not Muslims.  But first, a few quick points about Muslim-American attitudes:

1. Muslim-American are overwhelmingly happy with their place in the United States:

Back in 2007, the Pew Research Center released the first comprehensive survey of Muslim-American attitudes.  According to the survey, nearly eight out of ten Muslim-Americans say that they are happy with their lives in the United States.  To break that down a bit, 24 percent of Muslim Americans would say that they are “very happy” with their lives, 54 percent would say that they are “pretty happy,” and only 18 percent would say “not too happy.”  Among the general public, those numbers are 36 percent, 51 percent and 12 percent respectively.  Which brings me to my next point…

2. Most Muslim-Americans see no conflict between religious commitment and living in a modern society:

63 percent of Muslim-Americans say that they see no conflict between being a devout Muslim and living in a modern society.  What’s more, a strong plurality of Muslims (43 percent) say that Muslims coming to America today should adopt American customs.  By contrast, only 26 percent say that they should remain distinct, and 16 percent say that they should try both.  Indeed, reading through the report, the vast majority of data suggests that on the whole, Muslims are glad to be in the United States and happy with the opportunities the country provides them.

Unfortunately, a good majority of Muslims are also worried about various forms of discrimination, racism, prejudice and stereotyping.  19 percent of Muslims say that they are worried about discrimination/racism/prejudice, 15 percent are worried about being viewed as terrorists, 14 percent are worried about ignorance of Islam, and 12 percent are worried about stereotyping.

This is a really important point.  Contra the Hinderaker’s and Horowitz’s, we have absolutely nothing to fear from the 2.5 million Muslims who call the United States home.  It’s to our credit as Americans that we have built a society where people of different religious beliefs and cultural traditions can live and work in peace without fear of harassment.  Insofar that we should worry about anything, it’s those who would ostracize Muslims and use the weight of the federal government to isolate them.  Anger and hostility breed hatred and extremism, and if we want to remain a society committed to tolerance and mutual respect, then we should work our hardest to marginalize anti-Muslim voices.

New York Times:

The nation’s top military officer said Wednesday that he expected the Pentagon to ask Congress in the next few months for emergency financing to support the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, even though President Obama has pledged to end the Bush administration practice of paying for the conflicts with so-called supplemental funds that are outside the normal Defense Department budget. The financing would be on top of the $130 billion that Congress authorized for the wars just last month.

This exchange between Rod Dreher and Ta-Nehisi Coates on the basis of opposition to same-sex marriage is interesting, if only because it provides another striking example of how ones identity has an incredible impact on how one views the world and other human beings.  That is, it’s pretty easy to believe that bigotry drives political action against same-sex marriage when you yourself belong to a minority group that was a regular target of disenfranchisement (or worse) for more than a century.  That said, while I see where Dreher is coming from, if Pew has their numbers right, the data is firmly on Ta-Nehisi’s side:

49 percent of Americans believe that homosexuality is “morally wrong,” while only 9 percent view it as morally acceptable.  35 percent say that homosexuality isn’t a moral issue at all, and 7 percent say that it depends (and I’m not sure what that means, at all).  Broken down by age, the numbers tell a familiar story: a solid majority of Americans 50 and older view homosexuality as morally wrong (about 53 percent), whereas only 38 percent of the 29 and younger crowd feels similarly.  Surprisingly (to me at least) a slight majority – 51 percent – of Americans aged 30-49 view homosexuality as morally wrong.  Though if disaggregated, the number of people who disapprove of homosexuality might be greater at the end of the age distribution.

If there’s any takeaway from this, it’s that we really should stop underestimating the extent to which raw prejudice drives political decisions.  As Freddie remarked on Twitter recently:

It has become impolite to say so, in either direction, but never doubt many in this country hate and fear gay people.

The corollary to this, of course, is that in a country where a near-majority is morally opposed to homosexuality, it is ridiculous (and almost cruel) to expect gay people to rely exclusively on legislatures as they fight to secure their rights as American citizens.  And that’s especially the case when you realize that when legislative efforts are successful, there is almost always an immediate effort to rescind or overturn the legislation.  The simple fact is that if current demographic trends hold true, a majority of Americans will eventually support marriage equality.  In the meantime though, I think LGBT activist groups should take a page from the Civil Rights Movement and again begin focusing their challenges on the courts.  It simply doesn’t make any sense to rely on the generosity of the majority (indeed, if black people did, segregation would have lasted for a whole lot longer).

I live in Virginia (albeit one of the commonwealth’s few liberal strongholds*) and got my start in the blogosphere as a Virginia politics blogger, so if you’ll forgive me, I’m going to indulge my roots a little with a quick post on yesterday’s election.  As far as I can tell, the conventional wisdom about yesterday’s election is that it represents a “shot across the bow” from independent voters worried about heavy spending and deficits.  The election wasn’t a referendum on President Obama’s performance, but it was a sign that independents are increasingly uneasy with the liberal direction the country is taking.

As you can probably guess, I think this is complete bunk.  For starters, self-described “independent” voters are often anything but; when pressed by pollsters, most independents will admit to leaning in one direction or another.  In Virginia, it seems that most independents lean to the right – a poll from this summer suggests that the vast majority of independents identify as either moderate or conservative.  If you were to ask independents who voted in yesterday’s election whether or not they supported John McCain in last year’s election, I’m fairly confident that a solid majority would say that they did.  In fact, if you were to ask yesterday’s voters whether they supported John McCain, a majority would say yes – 51 percent, in fact.  The problem for pundits trying to argue that the election was indicative of a broader national trend is that those who turned out to vote were older, whiter and more conservative than the average voter, and certainly the average Obama voter.  Here’s a quick graph I made using the exit poll data:

The vast majority of the electorate was older and white, the overwhelming majority of whom supported McDonnell: 67 percent of all white voters went for McDonnell, and the total is similar for voters aged 45 and older.  What’s more, 34 percent of total voters were white Republicans and 25 percent were white Independents, the vast majority of whom supported McDonnell.

To keep this analysis short, insofar that this election is indicative of anything it’s of stuff we already know: that the majority of voters in off-year elections are old, white and conservative, and conservatives are super-energized.  I doubt that even a super-competent campaign could have turned out enough young and minority voters to help Creigh Deeds overcome this kind of demographic disadvantage.

* The People’s Republic of Charlottesville

Update: What the readers request, they shall receive! Here’s a graph made with data form the 2008 Virginia exit polls:

The differences are immediately apparent.  For starters, white voters – while still a large majority – aren’t an overwhelming majority.  What’s more, the percentage of older white voters is significantly lower in 2008 than in 2009, with the difference made up by more younger white voters (a near-plurality of whom supported Obama).  Minority voters, who make up a large chunk of the Virginia electorate in 2008, gave the vast majority of their votes to Obama.  Above all though (and what’s not in the graph) is the fact that in 2008, 37 percent of voters were self-identified Democrats, in stark contrast to yesterday’s contest, where only about 20 percent of the electorate identified with the Democratic Party.  Again, comparing 2008 to 2009 is about the same as comparing apples and oranges, but far less delicious.

Rep. Virginia Foxx thinks that the health care bill is “worse than terrorism“: [Read more →]

At the risk of sounding overly nitpicky, I think E.D. is being a little imprecise when he attributes minority voting preferences to simple “populism”:

I think a lot of minority voters aren’t so much “progressive” as they are in favor of more direct government assistance, something Democrats have promised to do better than Republicans.  A lot of minorities and union members also happen to be staunch social conservatives.  Support for things like gay marriage is very low among black and Hispanic populations.  Union members and minorities just have populist tendencies when it comes to economics.

Two things: first, E.D. is underestimating the extent to which minorities (and particularly African-Americans) have a fairly strong ideological commitment to an activist federal government.

At least in the post-war era, the federal government has played a critical role in advancing and protecting the civil and economic rights of racial minorities. Not surprisingly, at least among African-Americans, this has had a pretty significant impact on black political thought.  Generally speaking, African-Americans take a positive view of the federal government, and as Reihan pointed out in our podcast, this makes them more likely to find some form of liberalism salient.  It’s also worth noting that insofar that African-Americans/minorities more generally are socially conservative, the focus isn’t really on gay marriage or abortion (which is what E.D. seems to be suggesting) as much as it is on family stability and community development, which has a different set of political implications.

The other piece is that E.D. is definitely underestimating the extent to which respect has a significant impact on minority voting.  Simply put, even if Democratic policies had a negligible effect on the material well-being of minority voters, I still think that you would see large-scale minority support for the Democratic Party, if only because Democrats are the party that takes minority concerns seriously.  More often than not, Republicans are either dismissive of or actively hostile to minority interests.  With that kind of record – and a relatively friendly Democratic Party – it really shouldn’t come as any surprise that minorities are reliable Democratic voters.

At least among liberal bloggers, it’s become a matter of conventional wisdom that Congress – and particularly the Senate – is fundamentally broken.  Matthew Yglesias regularly points out our system’s absurdities, and various commentators have written very smart posts about our system’s complete inability to adequately address long-term challenges.

Here at the League, Mark Thompson has written a great post detailing both a serious problem with our institutional arrangement and its potential solution.  I’m not going to do much block-quoting (though I recommend reading the whole thing), but it suffices to say that Mark wants to make the presidency and Congress more accountable for their failures.  That is, as it stands, even though legislation originates in and is written by Congress, the outsized role of the presidency means that in the public eye, it’s the president who is to blame for failed or ineffective legislation, even if the prerogative lies with the legislature.  Mark’s solution then, is to nationalize elections for the Speaker of the House, in hopes that having a nationally recognized leader of the House would focus criticism where it rightly belongs.  Here’s Mark in his own words:

The most obvious reason why this proposal would greatly reduce regulatory capture and the growth of Executive Power is that it would give voters someone to hold accountable specifically for the passage of legislation. Under our current system, narrow local interests are able to turn national legislation into little more than a giant rent-seeking operation, while the scope of the legislation becomes severely watered down. There is no one to hold accountable for this – if your district gets none of the rent-seeking, you have to be content with “well, it’s better than nothing,” or “well, at least my Congresslizard voted against it.”

Mark’s diagnosis focuses on the problem of accountability and I understand why: as long as its virtually impossible to hold Congress responsible for its failures, we will continue to play this silly game where we pretend that electing a new president will have some measurable effect on Congress’ ability to pass actual legislation, rather than the thinly veiled-giveaways to corporate or parochial interests that passes for legislation.  That said, I’m not sure if increased accountability – through Mark’s solution or any other – should be our first concern.  Before we try to steer Congress towards greater accountability, I think we should first attempt to steer Congress towards greater responsiveness.  That potentially far-reaching legislation is nearly always tamed and de-fanged is partially (or even mostly) a product of the huge number of veto points that exist within our system, including extra-constitutional requirements like the filibuster.

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