Why Republicans pack the house

Another Republican doesn't want an open town hall meeting. That's because they understand these meetings as theater for the cameras, not for the attendees. The people who go and ask questions or simply listen are extras in the production of stage-managed news.

Democrats may believe that facing flesh and blood voters of all political stripes exhibits their virtues in a democracy. Republicans know that having nameless people shout down Democrats in public perversely harms the Democrats. Even if those nameless shouters are obvious teabagger wingnuts.

So Republicans pack the house so that they can pack the House. It worked in 2010.

Shorter Boehner

It's the President's fault that the House Republican caucus won't compromise on anything.

In a letter sent out earlier to House lawmakers, [Speaker John Boehner] blamed Obama for the deterioration of the talks, saying that the president insisted on including tax increases.

“It became evident that the White House is simply not serious about ending the spending binge that is destroying jobs and endangering our children’s future,’’ Boehner wrote. “A deal was never reached and was never really close.’’

“In the end, we couldn’t connect,’’ he added. “Not because of different personalities, but because of different visions for our country.’’

Holding one of our federal government's three main political institutions, the Republicans want to make radical changes in an 80-year-old vision of the country. And they'll hold their breath until they turn blue to do it, ignoring the damage to the economy that they will do.

Of course, it has been obvious to me for three and a half years that they were willing to sabotage the economy for political gain. The oblivious voters rewarded the screaming infantile Republicans in 2010. Why would they be measured, mature, and responsible now?

It's going to be a long downhill ride.

Recounting past tales

Where is all the conservative bloviating about election theft in Minnesota this cycle? Oh, right, their guy, Tom Emmer, is behind this time, behind by almost 9,000 votes.

When Al Franken and Norm Coleman were nip and tuck, Minnesota wingnuts screamed that Franken and the DFL were stealing the election. No amount of transparency in the recount - not even posting every single contested ballot on line - could allay their hysteria.

Now, however? The Republican-desired recount is not a mugging at all. In fact, important GOP officials still can't stop fighting the battle of 2008, even as they follow the Democrats' example to keep recounting in 2010:

State GOP chairman Tony Sutton jumped in: "We are not going to get rolled this time."

Sutton is morally stunted. He can't even apply the golden rule, can't see his opponents as justified in the Senatorial recount, all the while having totally signed onto this recount even though it is much less plausible that it might change the Election Day outcome.

Oh, and this time, Tim Pawlenty (R-me, choose me!) expects to remain governor for the duration of any recount. And maybe during any lawsuit filed by Emmer, too. So that he can govern in a term to which he was not elected with the now-Republican state legislature at his side.

"I don't think there's any downside to keeping this recount going on as long as possible," said a high-level Republican operative who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "If we keep the process going, there are opportunities for us in the upcoming legislative session."

I've said it before, but it bears repeating:

• Democrats want to count (and recount, if necessary) the votes and let that determine the winner.
• Republicans want to win and the hell with the will of the people.

Republicans think elections are casino games, they are the house, and they should win all ties. And all races anywhere close to a tie. Maybe even all races that they just imagine they should win.

And the hell with democracy.

Wicked busy

Normal posting should resume soon. I've been wicked busy - as we say in the blessedly true blue state of Massachusetts - and I'm still tired and scattered from the Democratic Party GOTV effort over the past four days. (Yes, the coordinated campaign wanted Friday too, which would have been a fifth day. I just couldn't give it to them.)

I did work 35 hours over two days, and I blasted through election day on one hour of sleep, which is undignified for someone my age. I only bonked once, in the early afternoon when I needed to improvise past the breakdown of computerized turf generation, and my sleep-deprived brain balked. But we cut down the door lists manually and, by mid-afternoon, had most of our lists back out in the hands of volunteers to call and canvass voters who hadn't cast their ballots yet.

It was worth it. We won here with Rep. Jim McGovern and Gov. Deval Patrick against the standard Republican extremist Marty Lamb (buh-bye) and a stealthier, more corporate (and admittedly sane) Charlie Baker, while Democrats all across the middle of the country got whacked. Nearly all the local Democratic legislators won re-election too.

So I can exhale with satisfaction, not just relief, that this election is finally in the books.

Collecting lawn signs from around town tonight required no thinking, just a little animal navigation, and that was an enjoyable relief.

Biased observation

On the campaign trail in the early hours this morning, I saw yet again that conservatives are churlish. Not all of them of course - like John Stuart Mill on Conservatives and stupidity, I'm far from tarring conservatives as universally churlish.

But if you meet someone on the campaign trail who gives you the finger or who speaks harshly to you, it's almost always a conservative. And the teabaggers are the worst. Civility is a virtue that they wish to be practiced by the other side.

In 2010, there's more bile and anger around than at any time since the last time the right wing organized massive resistance.

Hobbeson's choice

Click image for full Rob Rogers/Pittsburgh Post-Gazette cartoon.

Antidote

(h/t EricLykins on KnoxViews)

Stupid and ugly election

Linky love...

As for us Democrats, in the last two cycles we elected the first female Speaker of the House, had the first competitive female presidential primary candidate, and elected the first black president. We saved our country from Great Depression 2.0, began winding down a senseless war, passed sweeping reforms that will begin the long overdue process of overhauling our health care and financial systems, made college more affordable for millions of students, and passed the largest middle-class tax cut in U.S. history.

So we got us some progressive change - some of it half-assed but change nonetheless - in spite of the just-say-no obstructionists who want to stop all progress and angry mobs who want to "take our country back." To 1861.

Go. Read.

But they're not coordinating

The Republican web of lies and smears is sustained by a web of so-called independent groups. They even have the nerve to call themselves "non-partisan."

Yeah, like the Swift Boat Liars were in 2004...

(h/t Mark Sumner on DailyKos)

It is what it is

Like it or not, election day gives an answer. It did in 2008, and belligerent wingnuts never accepted the result. In six days, it will in 2010, and I'll accept the result, though not for a femtosecond its wisdom.

Nationally, voters are poised to bring back the jackass Republican policies that in 8 years screwed America up completely - unjustified war on lying pretexts in Iraq, torture as an instrument of policy, financial deregulation that led to the meltdown, huge spending and tax cuts for the very wealthy that turned a surplus into a raging deficit.

We Democrats only had 2 years to fix that legacy of complete failure, which is incredibly unfair (but fair don't goddamn enter into it). We failed because we were too timid. We should have rammed the whole package of liberal reforms down their throats. We should have mocked their screams and smacked around their immense lack of insight.

But the revenge of the morans [sic] will be a fact. And, as a liberal, I deal with reality, rather than bullshit conservative fantasy.

The TV-driven fad of angry stupidity will bring back exactly the same Republican Bushist policies that created our serious problems. Still, wingnuts are going to win nationwide. Congratulations, idiots, you will win.

The returning Republican policies are based on obviously idiotic principles.

• The wealthy don't get enough rewards to keep them working (if you can call creaming off all the best tidbits working), even though their share of the pie has grown to the point where the top 20% own 84% of America.
• Public borrowing, even at microscopic interest rates, can never lead to a larger economy - even though private borrowing to advance private interests is a common and orgasmic fetish of the right.
• The only positive thing that government can do is to lower taxes and reduce the deficit (yes, two contradictory thoughts at the same time), even if conservatives are never willing to name spending cuts that they would make to balance any budget.
• Financial institutions that have just brought America to the edge of the precipice of depression can be trusted - constrained by the "free" market - to not do it again. Because every John Galt is perfect. (Though egoistically amoral in the original...) Never mind the experience of 2008, which would make wingnut heads explode if they didn't have Barney Fag to blame.
  
• America is a Christian nation, never mind that the Constitution says, "no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States," and the Bill of Rights says, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion."
• Freedom means liberals can't make snide comments about wingnut bullshit.
  
• IOKIYAR!
  

Keeping the Senate in Democratic hands hardly even matters, though I believe it will happen. The cowed remnants of a 60-seat, then 59-seat, majority that couldn't even pass a public health care option will not kill the filibuster, no matter how richly it deserves to join legislative appointment of Senators in the ashcan of history. Republicans will filibuster any judicial appointment who even hints of the center, much less the left, never mind two-plus centuries' precedent of advise and consent.

These so-called conservatives are actually radicals. Their rank and file don't realize it, but their objective is no less than the return of aristocracy.

So the wingnuts will have a lot to celebrate, even though the triumph of ignoramus Teapublicans that they celebrate will be a disaster for America. Check back in two years, six years, ten years. It may be too late for the noble American experiment in liberty and self-government.

On a smaller scale, I'll have some wins to celebrate too. At least half of the various districts for which the Venn diagram includes my small precinct will choose good judgement over inchoate outrage at sincere and well-reasoned Democratic efforts to help, most of which have succeeded, even if they were not successful enough.

But then, I live in Massachusetts, where reason, though not ascendant, still has a fighting chance.

Sea to shining sea

Some of the people all of the time

Click image for full Bruce Plante/Tulsa World cartoon.

Straight from the horse's ass

Orrin Hatch sent me a letter on behalf of the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC). Here's why they want my help:

[The Democrats] oppose all the values and principles you and I share.

I've said many times that Republicans are against the Constitution and the rule of law. I just never thought they'd come right out and say it. And it's flabbergasting that they have finally admitted that they are opposed to women's rights, minority rights, and equality under law irrespective of social class.

What are these radical Republicans running against? Hollywood, labor, environmentalists, and peace activists! Sure, they throw in some derogatory modifiers, but that's their plan:

• Fascist realist art
• Corporate dominance
• Even more ill-advised deregulation
• War

They are running in favor of:

• Permanent tax cuts that favor the rich
• Anything "tough"
• Ben Tre reform of Social Security and Medicare

Here's part of the NRSC survey:

The highlighted Republican take on the Democratic platform is mostly a tissue of lies.

• The tax "increase" is allowing the awful Duhbya tax cuts to expire, and the GOP exaggerates the amount because the Dems will keep part those cuts.
• Cutting the defense budget has to happen at the end of the wars (though I will concede there is some accuracy to this one item).
• Gay marriage only undermines heterosexual marriage in the fever swamp of the homophobic imagination.
• Republicans are completely untrustworthy on Social Security. They want to destroy it as a social insurance program and give its revenues to Wall St. They also provide no plan to fill the revenue gap for those who are already receiving payments.
• It's Republicans who are blocking U.S. energy independence. Democrats are blocking U.S. oil-ocracy.
• UN control of the war on terrorism? Where do they even get this stuff? Answer: They make shit up to keep their choleric base frothing at the mouth.
  

Ironically, the letter - which the GOP has cannily kept hidden - accuses the Democrats of dishonesty! Par for the course...

Lessons from the Coakley campaign

First, a disclaimer: I wasn't an insider in Martha Coakley's ill-fated campaign. I wasn't even a well-placed outsider. I supported Michael Capuano in the primary, mostly as a voter, and then I did a little volunteering for Coakley at the tail end of the general election. I am not a big shot, and this is merely my educated speculation.

Everyone thought this was going to be a base turnout election. I made that mistake, and it appears that Coakley's campaign did too. Their tactics were pitched at voters who know what they want; both their media ads and their direct mail - between them, practically all of the campaign - told the Democratic base not to elect a scurvy Bushist Republican.

Non-base voters are the muddled middle that the two major parties typically squeeze at the end of a general election. This middle isn't so much moderate as clueless. It's composed of people who don't pay much attention, don't ferret out actual facts from obvious bullshit when they do hear something that sounds relevant, and can't make up their minds in any lasting way about politics. About them, Abe Lincoln said, "God must have loved the common people; he made so many of them." Most of them are middle class, working class, or poor. And someone famous - apparently Josh Billings instead of Mark Twain or Will Rogers, who often get credit - said something like, "The trouble ain't that people don't know enough; it's all they know that just ain't so."

Base voters are ideological voters. You're not going to lose them to the other candidate. You're at risk for losing them to apathy. Coakley was really at risk of losing them to the temptations of the sofa or the coffeehouse on a cold January day without enough motivating daylight. To win, she apparently thought, she needed to get her ones and twos off their duffs and to the polls. I don't blame her from thinking that; I did too.

How do you deal with a strategy whose assumptions prove false? You have to keep taking data, and Coakley didn't. Contrary to post mortem claims, they had money to keep polling. They just chose to spend it on media.

After you've taken data, you have to be prepared and willing to change strategy. That's hard and messy, and people who still believe in the old strategy get bruised egos. So what.

More important than just polling the horse race, you have to poll who's going to show up. Sure, everyone models their view of the likely voters. Something happened in this election that obsoleted those models, and a nimble campaign would have been able to adjust from turning out the base to the real fight this turned into. The problem for Coakley was that the persuasion universe turned out to be much larger than she anticipated.

Coakley tried to improvise an effective field operation. Her campaign failed. In my area, her organizer simply wasn't up to the task, and he was a terrible listener, besides. It's not that unusual in the trenches to meet a twenty-something who thinks he knows your territory better than you do, but it really hurts when you're improvising.

Nearby, a friend reported that the campaign repeatedly failed to return his calls seeking to volunteer. I was able to help him help them, but most people don't have a friend who's tapped into the activist networks and email lists.

It turned out that all those hokey visibility events, where average people stand on street corners with signs waving to motorists, matter. They may not win any votes, but they keep votes from hemorrhaging away when the momentum shifts. They put a human face on the campaign, which otherwise is slick ads and disembodied and increasingly annoying voices on the phone. I previously wasn't sure of the worth of visibility events, but now I am. Standouts keep leaners from shifting. Coakley didn't do standouts.

The same logic works for lawn signs. Neighbors influence each other. Coakley never effectively delivered lawn signs and didn't seek locations.

As a bonus, signs and visibilities are cheap and easily delegated.

On the up side, saturation phone calls and ads did drive turnout. Whether they drove positive votes is another question. Both campaigns used them intensively. Both would again.

It's hard to research races that are close enough to matter. I'd like to know when phoning reaches the point of diminishing returns. My ear tells me it was the Saturday before the election, but it would take a very brave campaign to turn off its GOTV phone banks that early, even in a few test precincts.

And, of course, no matter what your lead in the polls, you can't take any time off the campaign. OK, Christmas day. Maybe.

Land of opportunity

America, where every plutocrat can rework his (or her!) image to wear a flannel shirt, drive a good ol' pickup truck, and act real folksy - while the cameras are on, anyway.

The newsreader on WUMB this morning related Scott Brown's claim that the people of Massachusetts voted to end partisan gridlock in Washington. Huh!?

If so, they bought a pig in a poke, which wouldn't be surprising given their eagerness to buy into the obvious bullshit of political image-making. What they're going to get for their well-earned and better-fanned outrage is sand in the gears. And those gears weren't working very well already.

Win some, lose some

The dog still has to be walked, the driveway still has to be shovelled, the dishwasher still has to be loaded. And it is a beautiful night outside.

Most voters don't vote ideology. They vote for change when they hurt, and they vote for safety when they're afraid. Right now, they hurt.

Never mind who made them hurt. They don't analyze. Martha Coakley didn't give voters much to vote for, and they forgot the last time a handsome Republican fooled them into thinking he would keep their interests close.

And, sure enough, there at Scott Brown's victory party: Mitt Romney. The people of Massachusetts will soon start to learn for better or for worse about Brown's sincerity. I expect the worst.

Meanwhile, Brown captured a mandate. Killing the current health care bill - if he can get sworn in time - may actually do the Democrats a favor. It's not a very good bill.

Hating the phone

People hate political phone calls, especially in a competitive environment. The two hours that political calling might in an extreme case take out of their lives in any single election season is too big a price to pay for self-government. Watch the season opener of 24? Sure. Take thirty 4-minute phone calls? What an outrage!

People will tell you they don't like your call because they might be on the line when a call comes in to RSVP for a child's birthday party, but that's really just a lame excuse. Political calls seldom last more than a few minutes, and the very same people are often more than willing to give you down the road for calling them, and it can take a while to get all their frustrations off their chest.

Still, the truth is that people hate political calling. There is no doubt whatsoever that some voters will go to the polls for a spite vote against whoever's campaign called them the most. They will of course blame a campaign's allies (SEIU, OFA, DNC for Coakley; RNC and a host of dressed up health insurance companies for Brown), who can't legally coordinate their calling.

Campaigns need to figure out:

• how to eliminate duplication of calls - autodialers don't yet work any better for political calls than they do for selling timeshares
• when to stop calling because they've gone past even diminishing returns to the point at which they're actively alienating supporters
• how to bypass the phone altogether for channels that people will accept - no, mass media ads are not the answer; they're only a little better

Research needs to be done on different phoning strategies, but that requires a much more sophisticated operation than what now exists on the Democratic side. We need to pick well-modelled bellwether precincts and treat them differently to see which strategy gets the best results in turnout and margin of victory.

I've long thought that we need to push our organizing back down to the street level, back to old methods that rely on delivering the message through neighbors. It's a lot harder to tell someone you know to go to hell (well, not for one of my neighbors) than some stranger on the phone.

In the end, though, the phones and the saturation of media ads worked. We don't know here just before 7:00 p.m. whether they worked to increase either candidate's share of the vote, but we already know that they drove turnout to huge levels for a special election with only one race on the ballot on a snowy January day.

Glimmer of hope

CNN reports:

"Turnout has been pretty good," said Brian McNiff, a spokesman for the office.

The noon report from Boston showed 55,309 voting so far - a number that is just 3,000 under the turnout for the 2006 midterm election.

Since the 2006 mid-term was also a gubernatorial election and thus relatively high-turnout, this number suggests hope for Martha Coakley. Maybe all those annoying phone calls from both sides (oh, and from insurance companies for Brown) did their job of driving less-than-impassioned Democrats to the polls.

It's especially hopeful that turnout is coming from Boston, where Coakley has to have a large majority. Turnout is also large in the small exurb I live in, where Brown will definitely win.

ED in Massachusetts

We Democrats need some voter Viagra to get turnout up this Election Day. Instead, we have snow. Conventional wisdom suggests - and history confirms - that low turnout is good for Republicans and that bad weather is bad for turnout.

Martha Coakley managed to stop the bleeding over the last week. The real question is whether she stopped it in time. The snow bodes ill for her, but we'll see just how effective her field operation has been over the past few days.

I know this: When you're phoning people who think Ted Kennedy opposed the health care bills now before Congress and who are still inchoately incensed about welfare, you're scraping the bottom of the barrel. So maybe we did reach everyone we could possibly reach.

I was optimistic yesterday. Today? Not so much... But like everyone, I'm just making a wild-ass guess, like Nate Silver, although his models put the odds 3:1 in Scott Brown's favor.

No shame among the affluent

Scott Brown is running a commercial that features this line straight out of the candidate's mouth:

I love this ole pick-up truck. It's brought me closer to the people of this state.

It reminds me of Lamar Alexander's plaid shirt. He had a pick-up, too. That's just how stupid Republican strategists and candidates think people are. I hope they're wrong this time.

Update (1/11): Fixed quote.