David Vitter watch, day 717

The response of conservatives to sexual misconduct in their leaders is objectively pro-hypocrisy:

[W]hile Vitter, Ensign, Gingrich and perhaps Sanford have been able to retain their positions and political viability, the same cannot be said for the most recent offenders on the progressive side. Neither Eliot Spitzer nor John Edwards, each among the most promising figures in the Democratic Party, will ever be a candidate for public office again, although their misbehavior was no worse than what their Republican counterparts did.

Not to mention, pro-adultery.

Chalk up another

How long before the frothing quivering off-their-meds segment of the greater wingnut population adds Frederick Baron (R.I.P.) to the John Edwards suspicious death list? You know they're keeping one just in case he resurrects his political career and they need to do a Clinton on him.

Dispatches from clueless-land

CNN missed the 2000 McCain experience so much that they commissioned Bob Greene to tour on their own leased bus. So far, the results of Greene's conversations with ordinary Americans have been, well, to call them ordinary would be an insult to ordinary people.

Mainly, Greene's interviews have been with people who don't have a clue about anything. For instance, today we hear from a woman in the age of expensive gasoline who drove five hours for a meal of "throwed rolls" (pronounced "thowed" for those of you not born, as I was, in the Cape Girardeau broadcast area). At least she cares a little about politics, unlike some previous interviewees. She wants to change completely how we elect leaders so that we can take all of them. Mitt Romney and John Edwards can compare hair products, I guess, but that's about all they have in common.

If she has a real idea, let her try to pass it. But no, she's just carping out vague dissatisfaction signifying nothing.

Anything to avoid learning

Big media personality Gwen Ifill is now in the sights of the right. Big deal.

Ifill is hardly a reliable liberal. In fact, she's only reliable at playing that vital Beltway game of speaking troth to power.

Ifill moderated the 2004 debate between Darth and John Edwards, and she once appropriately enforced the rules against Darth using tones that the vaporous wingnut punditry found insufficiently respectful.

But these are facts, and facts don't matter. This new, trumped-up bullshit controversy is about giving weak-minded people excuses to discount the obvious inadequacy of Sarah Palin. It's an attempt to lower expectations by the tried-and-true Republican means of patronizing the voting public.

Cindy could date a married man

... but Elizabeth Edwards is obligated to air John's dirty linen in public. The witless level of double standards in political "journalism" is staggering.

Side note: David Vitter watch, day 411. Quick, can some AP hack please ask his wife what she knew and when she knew it!

Update (8/27): So. This little item is very popular. So is this one. What they have in common is candidates' wives and thoroughly vapid coverage from the media. But the reason that the media delivers so much drivel is partly that we keep clicking on it.

Items about substance, even if snarkily phrased, get much less attention and comment. War? Who cares? We want to know about the sex lives of politicians! Sad but true.

A pundit gets the values of journalism

Pundits usually make their livings with heavy breathing on the latest hot story of the day, but Roland Martin gets news values right:

We should forget the nonsense about the competitive pressure to break the story.

The rules are simple: Either you have the facts or you don't. If you do, you run with the story. If you don't, you leave it alone.

Sadly, few news people exhibit this any more.

Likability

Joe Klein actually owns up to this voluntarily:

I never much liked John Edwards as a politician...and I guess we now know that he's a heel as a human being, too.

This is the quality of our political press. Who they like is what's important.

Hey, what do we need the pundits for? We can all tell who we like.

Pry on rumor, sell out news

Our news media would never, ever report a story about sex and an American politician. They're far too... Uh.

• Bill Clinton
• Eliot Spitzer
• David Vitter
• Vito Fossella
• Larry Craig
• John McCain
• Newt Gingrich
• Bob Livingston
• Mark Foley
• Henry Cisneros
• Gary Condit
• Bob Packwood
• James Marzilli
• James McGreevey
• Gary Hart
• Wilbur Mills
• Wayne Hays

The American media will always report on sex and politics. It's the part of politics that they're most interested in.

Drudge got the blue dress right, and now the National Enquirer got Rielle Hunter right. In the 1990s, the political press corps "learned" to take every bit of Drudge's bullshit RNC propaganda as something to investigate. Will they now take every tabloid headline of the Enquirer as the paid-for scent of new salaciousness?

If the media would substitute one scandal source for another, this might actually make us better off. Whatever the Enquirer's cash-based sins against the remnant norms of American journalism, at least it's an equal opportunity scandal monger, much different in that from Drudge's clear bias.

That Pollyannish outcome is unlikely, to say the least. The media will instead add an additional source of prurient interest. Oh, there's just so much fact-based, in depth reporting, we can surely spare some of it for yet another time slot for political Jerry Springerism.

From now on, all rumors, all the time.

Update (8/11): Ruben Navarrette Jr. ascribes selective memory to the wingnuts.

Update (8/18): Roger Ailes pwns the wingnuts who think Edwards got a pass because he's a Democrat, first with tabloid assignments, then with this:

Or you could, you know, report on the Bush Adminstration's lies about WMD in Iraq, 9/11, illegal eavesdropping, torture, illegal political firings at the Justice Department and other topics that don't involve one-(right) handed typing.

Thanks again, Gary Hart

What I want to know: Did the tip to the National Enquirer come from a Republican source? Rielle Hunter herself? Someone on the campaign? A member of the public?

Of course, if I were a Republican operative (shudder!), I'd launder my tip through, say, the bellhop at the Beverly Hilton. I'd be a nameless guy in the bar telling the witness how the Enquirer pays cash for good tips. No fingerprints.

I have no evidence, but it's a dirty game. If Duhbya would lie about everything, but especially about war-making in Iraq, and McCain would give up all his principles (torture? o.k.) to achieve the nomination, it's hard to imagine that no one is surveilling their opposition looking for salacious stories just like this.

This is how the game is played now, as sad as that is and as doomed as perhaps our democracy is because of it. Somehow though, I doubt that the Democrats are smart enough and bloody-minded enough to know this and act upon it. They really need to have some deterrence to show the Republicans: "You out any affair that Obama has had, and we'll out any affair of McCain's. Do we have an understanding?"

David Vitter watch, day 393

Jack Cafferty asks whether John Edwards's political career is over due to his now-admitted affair.

David Vitter still sits in the Senate after, uh, employing sex workers. (Hey, did he pay their employer FICA, or were they claiming to be contractors?)

I think most of us now agree that we'd be better off if Duhbya had screwed some person instead of every goddamn thing he touched.

West Virginia mountain momma

Hillary is still making the case for her electability. This is a pitch for the superdelegates to change or to change back.

Ironically, long ago and far away (in a galaxy much like our own), it was her lack of electability that concerned me. She was the only candidate for President I had ever heard of who had negatives above 50% among likely general election voters. I didn't think there was any way she could possibly change that after sixteen years in the national limelight.

Nonetheless, electability is an unpredictable commodity. The pundits can't predict much of anything, but their collective record on electability is even worse than usual. Here in Massachusetts, Deval Patrick was unelectable - too liberal for a state with an established practice of countering our thoroughly Democratic legislature with a Republican governor. He won anyway.

In joining the Patrick campaign early, I gave up on the fine gradations of electability that had made me support Shannon O'Brien over Robert Reich in 2002. In 2006, it worked, and I'm hoping for more of the same in 2008.

For President, I initially supported John Edwards. He had broad appeal, true, but he was also the most liberal candidate in the race. He wanted to restore the middle class and restore the Constitution. He had the good health plan that Hillary has since adopted (and it's better than Obama's). Above all, he knew that we are in for a bitter, dirty fight to recover the American economy and American democracy from deeply entrenched plutocratic interests who are perfectly represented by the Bushists.

When his Democratic primary electability was conclusively disproven, I had to pick between the two remaining viable Democrats. Obama, for all his sweetness and light, is the more likely candidate to move the Washington conversation back toward the pragmatic liberalish center of American voter views. Hillary botched Iraq - and still botches it. Obama is of the two the less establishment figure. Hillary would be like Bill before her a President of small measures and triangulation. She would also be instantly pinned down by the next Richard Mellon Scaife funding right-wing scandal-mongering, though that will probably be true for Obama, too, as it would be for any Democrat (other than a false one such as Zell Miller or Joe Lieberman).

Obama is much less likely than Hillary to go along to get along with the Bushist destruction of the Constitution. He's more likely to accomplish large things - peace, universal health care (even half a loaf), investigations of the Bushist depredations, a charismatic appeal to our better natures.

Of course, the electoral map worries me, even if yesterday's result in Mississippi-01 should give us all heart. Current polling suggests another 2000 election, with the Democrat winning the national popular vote while the Republican wins the Electoral College.

But it's May. Think of how many races have reversed in the six months before the election. Last night, I saw Obama on TV making the point that McCain is another four years of Bush. If he'll keep hitting that vulnerability even moderately hard, McCain is toast. So, Barack, go for it!

Democrat to be named later

On the upside, the Super Tuesday message from Democrats may be that the whole Bill Clinton fiasco in South Carolina reminded them of the downside of the huge itinerant soap opera that the Clintons are. Though much of that is not their fault, it's still true, and maybe Democrats are ready to take a chance on someone else. (Who could that be?) I know I am.

Obama's weakness is still that he's inexperienced. There's just no getting around that fact. I'd love to see him announce the intention to appoint Al Gore as his chief of staff, but that's just a blogger fantasy with about as little likelihood as finding a pony in Iraq.

Obama's nomination against McCain has a downside. There are still a bunch of old white guys who wouldn't admit to racism but who would hesitate to vote for a black man. Of course, it's also true that many of them would hesitate to vote for a woman. Hell, even John Edwards wasn't going to win many of these guys.

What to look for on Super Tuesday

Imagine Ted Baxter reading this: As the votes roll in across this great nation, you'll know it's a good day for John McCain if Mitt Romney fails to hold Massachusetts. Hillary Clinton should also do well there, having fired back at Ted Kennedy's endorsement of Barack Obama with a Kennedy endorsement of her own - Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

And blah, blah, blah...

Oh, yeah, turnout! What's the turnout going to be like?

Please, please, please, let an underdog win somewhere, so we can use our canned Super Bowl analogies. (Shh, we can always say that Mike Huckabee wanted to be the New York Giants today but couldn't quite put together the power rush.)

And now, the latest update on Natalee Holloway and the dirtbag van der Sloot... (I'm totally up to date on that because I spent a couple hours in a pizza place that had Headline News on, and -- barf!)

What to look for on Super Tuesday: the votes. They come in plenty fast these days (most of the time).

No one needs a bunch of well-turned-out vacuous news commentators to predict the outcome with 35 seconds left in the fourth quarter (ha!), hypocrites all for caring about John Edwards's haircut when they have stylists on staff. We can all wait for actual news.

Meanwhile, as they media bloviators are forced to wait along with the rest of us, could they cover Duhbya's irresponsible budget and the FBI's request to tag us all with biometrics when we can't even agree to tag explosives? How about some coverage of that?

Looking on the bright side

Most people who run for office don't want to be issue candidates. They want to win, not move the conversation. John Edwards wanted to win but he exited as an issue candidate.

Paul Krugman bids Edwards a fond farewell by explaining how Edwards actually did move the conversation. All that effort and sacrifice had good effects on the Democratic Party. Now maybe, it will have good effects on America, indirect though they may be.

Krugman does miss with this:

It’s true that Mr. Obama has tried to work some populist themes into his campaign, but he apparently isn’t all that convincing: the working-class voters Mr. Edwards attracted have tended to favor Mrs. Clinton over Mr. Obama.

This should have been true. Edwards was the candidate who gave the working class a seat at the table, and he did get some union support because of it. But the truth is that Edwards was more popular with liberal, educated, relatively affluent white guys like me, and there just aren't enough of us to win any vote.

Image used without permission. If they mind, I'll take it down!

Of pizza and roadkill

Massachusetts Senate President Therese Murray says I should support Hillary Clinton because she's a woman. Now that my man John Edwards has bowed out of the race, why not?

The problem with Hillary is not that she's a woman. The problem is that she's a difference-splitting, triangulating centrist. She and Bill too have pounded on the door for admission to the club instead of pounding the door down. They continue to do this even after the club viciously hazed Bill - really, both of them - for eight solid years.

Even after David Broder's famously bitchy, "They came here and trashed the place, and it's not their place," the Clintons still want to be the token trailer trash (well, Bill anyway) who get invited to Kennebunkport with the swells. They don't get the fact that they're the token minority in the all-white fraternity and that everyone makes fun of them, even to their face. Or maybe they get it, and they just sit there and take it because they like the attention.

I know that practically everyone in Democratic circles has agreed to look back on the (first?) Clinton administration as the golden age, but it wasn't that great. Sure, compared to Duhbya, Bill was a great President, but that's like saying week-old frozen pizza is better to eat than week-old roadkill in July. Is that really the height of our ambition?

The Republicans are actively evil, while the Democrats dither and compromise. Of course, I'll support Hillary if she is the nominee. No more roadkill! I even like Hillary better than Mike Gravel (maybe he's out of the race but the media skipped his press conference), but she has just moved up one notch to second.

American government needs big changes. Ron Paul would try radical change but in a completely bassackwards direction. Of those candidates who remain, only Obama is at all likely to deliver those big changes - and even he is not very likely to manage it.

Unshared prosperity

The Washington elite, press and politicians, don't usually get just how divided the country is by Republicrat economic policies that beggar the poor and the middle class to keep the financial markets in gravy. That way, they can fling off a few inconsequential (to them) campaign contributions to keep the cycle rolling.

This report hooks readers with race:

Mr. Mattingly added that, in a county where the large businesses are run by white men and “ancient parochial attitudes” persist, voter enthusiasm for Mr. Obama had a logic that went beyond simple loyalty.

But class is the underlying fact made visible by skin color. This is why Democrats must be class-conscious, why I support John Edwards, and why I prefer Obama to Hillary, even if a Clinton supporter gave this perfect quote:

“She’s about better pay and education for the kids,” Ms. Willis said.

Update (4/16/2011): Minor edit to clarify.

Sunday comics - Cheshire candidate

Click image for full cartoon from Beth Cravens.

But I said something really nice about him, too!

Dan Balz of the Washington Post is one of those bullshit Washington political reporters who won't touch anything of substance about politics as long as there's a horse race story to tell. Horseshit, more like it.

The tone and upshot of the story shows that it has one audience, John Edwards. Its whole point is when are you going to triage yourself out of Obama's way?

The story contains all the elements of Beltway bloviation:

• The airy refusal to acknowledge the press's own role ("Edwards is the forgotten man")
  
• The pretense of insight on the part of the reporter (whole damn piece)
  
• Rampant use of conventional narrative ("angry populist of Iowa")
• Ha-ha stereotype ("Southern-fried" - aside: when a Yankee uses Southern-fried, it's an insult; not a serious social problem, but akin to calling Hillary the little woman)
• Retrospective out-size claims of importance ("everything on the line in Iowa, a state that was a must-win contest for him")
• Fox-perfected "some say" with not a single quote ("has offended many Democrats")
• Vacuous authenticity claims ("shift from optimism to anger as the sign of an opportunistic politician" - aside: if you're not angry after 7 years of Bushism, you've probably already had a lobotomy)

One reason newspapers have fallen on such hard times is that we readers are firing their asses, since their product is so insipid and inconsequential. Oh, and self-important, I almost forgot that.

Middle class help, part 2

In pretending to be a reporter (though not pretending to be unbiased), I've described the way John Edwards has outlined the problems facing the middle class and his proposals for helping improve their (our) job prospects. Should I say that this is the last in a series and hope for a Pulitzer? Sure, when the ice cap melts, uh, when the ice cap refreezes, ok, when hell freezes over.

What does JE say about his other goals after good jobs? Goal number 2 is a secure retirement. For this, he proposes:

1. Portable retirement accounts that supplement Social Security, not the foolish unfunded accounts that Republicans want to use to destroy Social Security.
2. Support through law and "small amounts of aid" to families whose homes are in danger of foreclosure (but no bailout for the financial speculators). Further re-regulation that learns from all the so-called innovative finance that was designed to enrich the finance companies with no thought for responsible lending. It also learns the fundamental lesson of the crash of 1929 (and this is my gloss on the subject): Financial wizardry is usually intended to move great piles of money from the populace into the pockets of the self-styled wizards.
3. Re-regulate abusive credit practices. See item 2!

Most professionals already have portable retirement accounts. Duh, they're called 401(k)s. Yes, there are others. JE's proposal democratizes them and even matches funds at the low end of contributions. Can you imagine a society which really saves, invests, and owns assets all the way down to the hard-working people in the low end of the middle class? That's where I want to live.

Predatory lending has been a concern for JE for a while. Even though he voted for the 2000 bankruptcy reform, he was out of Congress for the 2005 abomination and objected to it, at least by 2006.

The rugged Republicans always whine about consumer protections against predatory lending. The debtors agreed to the terms - why shouldn't they be held to them? They're grown-ups, aren't they? Well, yes, and there is a balance to be struck. Flippers who hold seven mortgages and got caught holding real estate? Sorry, you lose.

But why is it that Republicans' claims of principle suddenly become silent when a hedge fund needs to be bailed out? They would claim it's danger to the economy at large that demands their willing intervention in capital markets and that it's merely coincidental that those interventions make billions for their core constituency on Wall St. And, yeah, they also have a bridge to sell you.

The problem is that ma and pa trying to make payments on one of today's complicated mortgage products to keep a roof over their heads just aren't big enough to rise to the Republicans' attention. They don't make political contributions, either.

Ma and pa still matter, not just to their kids, but also to the larger economy. Even if it wasn't right to show many of them some mercy on moral grounds, it would still be right on the grounds of self-interest. We've spent a lot of our children's inheritance already by sucking equity out of our homes, and there's no getting that back. We Jiminy Crickets are going to have a hell of a hangover that only time and hard work will - or should - cure. But letting the coming recession (did you hear it here first?) deepen, because the hard-hearted (and hard-headed) Republicans want to punish some little people, is monumentally stupid. JE may not use that sort of rhetoric, but he's not rushing down imbecile lane either.

Turns out this won't be the last in the series. I went on waaay too long yesterday, so I'm going to leave the other two Edwards priorities, relieving pressure points and universal health care, for other days. And if I have the stamina, I may even get into Obama and Hillary. I know, no threats!

Middle class help

John Edwards has done a pretty good job identifying the problems facing the middle class. But what does he propose to do about them? The mainstream media is all over that question, hot damn!

Oh, right. They're saving their precious typing power for haircuts or Hillary sobbing like a toddler (they wish!) or Obama's middle name (or maybe his ears). Yup, they know substance when they see it. Maureen Dowd, now there's substance. Something's gotta make her voice that squeaky.

Or Chris Matthews, there's a guy who's insightful. In sight, full ... of Grey Goose, anyway.

Hey, if all the Heathers want to do is act like they're still trying to crash the cool clique in high school, I can give some sass back to 'em.

Seriously, I come not to praise the media but to bury them.

Edwards has many serious proposals that actually would help the American middle class. That's most of us, isn't it? Or do we just want to go ahead brown-nosing the rich, since after all their shit don't stink?

Here are Edwards's four main goals for the middle class:

1. Good jobs
2. Secure retirement
3. Relieve pressure points (he calls it "Remove the burdens")
4. Universal health care

About as apple pie as it comes. A Republican could pay lip service to the first three and would even bloviate some market-love about privatized universal health care. (The lapdog media would of course be too impressed with the GOPer's power tie to note the utter hysterical bullshit of that claim.) As usual, it's the details that matter, that separate hype from reality.

To encourage creation of good jobs (all pols like to say create instead of facilitate, but I don't have to join them), Edwards wants to put tax money into capital and training for renewable energy. Edwards also wants to fund innovative research.

Is this a good idea? The free market has had thirty years to solve our oil addiction, and GM and Ford are still pushing suburban assault vehicles that could house a family of four in many places in the world. And of course, any Republican who doesn't want to be drummed out of the club has to defend that market outcome. "I may not drive what you drive, but I'll defend to the death your right to drive whatever 7000-lb. vehicle you want." Not exactly Voltaire.

Government research grants have historically led to many innovations - and by no means just Tang. The Dupont family likes to forget how much of their bread and butter was actually funded by the government. Many innovative materials came out of military contracts and NASA. Don't forget the Internet, though of course that's a mixed blessing, since lots of outsourcing relies on the net. The basic research that led to the computer revolution and to the biotech revolution was essentially all done under government contract and then later refined and productized by industry. Transformative technologies are expensive to get off the ground, and they don't always succeed, but seed money can make the difference between an economy that grows and one that withers into neo-feudalism, where the rich make money with money and the rest of us flip burgers.

On trade, Edwards is not a protectionist, but he's also not a fool for "free" trade. Like Paul Krugman, Edwards knows that free trade agreements such as NAFTA have bad consequences and provoke a race to the bottom. He wants trade agreements that serve all Americans, not just the financial interests that are looking for cheaper labor, not matter the cost to people, their careers, product safety, or the environment. The global economy is here to stay, but there's no reason besides hard-hearted elitism that the middle class should be so badly hurt by it. We have a government to smooth out the bumps.

One of the vilest effects of the U.S. tax code is that it encourages American executives to outsource. They get huge incentive packages for sending our jobs overseas. The only reason we're not in the streets over this one is ... I can't think of one. Is TV too entertaining? Or is much of even the Democratic Party too bought? (The Republicans, of course, want to retain this incentive for their people, the rape and pillage CEOs.)

Edwards also wants to raise the minimum wage. Republicans of course want to eliminate it so that people can live in the penury they by God deserve. Think about this: The current federal minimum wage is $5.85/hour. That multiplies to annual wages of $11,700. Who could possibly live on that? (And these are the people whose wages suffered most importantly under the 1983 deal to prepare Social Security for us boomers, the deal the Republicans now want to stiff us on.)

He wants to reform the tax code to reward work. Man, now that's communist! The Bushists think that we shouldn't tax the big money. What they claim is that the rich make the economy grow for the rest of us, but that stuff that's trickling down on us is not money. Tax rates on the wealthy have been much lower this decade than last - which economy was better for the middle class?

I'd make the Paris Hilton tax my first objective. There's no way these would-be celebrity aristocrats should get their massive and undeserved inheritances without a big bite. Maybe they'll have to get real jobs; wouldn't that be tragic. But Edwards doesn't mention that, emphasizing rough income tax and capital gains parity.

Edwards would help aides in nursing and teaching move up the career ladder. I find this proposal curious and unexpected, but he says that health care and education are both growing rapidly. Upward mobility is a key part of the American dream.

JE would also go back to an enforcement environment that would prevent the emasculation of unions that is so popular with CEOs who want to write contracts for themselves that legally loot companies, all the while complaining about how greedy unions are. I once worked for a company that was acquired. The outgoing CEO left with almost $300 million, good payment for running the stock into the basement. If he had given up just 10% of that, he could have doubled the severance packages of all of the 2500 people who lost their jobs.

And the Wall Street Journal quails at the thought of class warfare. Oh my, my angina's acting up, I'm feeling faint, fetch me a brandy, boy. Buddy, the class war has been going on for three decades, just with one side sitting on its hands. That's why the CEO society that Duhbya touted and that Mitt Romney still represents is a fraud on the American middle class. Look at how Duhbya bought it with his $100 mess of pottage.

Only John Edwards would even try to change that.

Hell, that's only item one. A real journalist could get articles out of this for a whole month without ever having to write "margin of error" or "electability" or "fundraising event". I'm not holding my breath.