New Sand Castles on the Right

One thing you can't say about the right-wing is that they're not boring. In the two weeks since the election, they've developed several new rhetorical sand castles to deny any significance to their defeat. Some of them would sound almost plausible if the right hadn't claimed that Bush's two percent win over Kerry was a landslide. Here's a partial run-down.

The Six-Year Itch. This is the idea that two-term administrations normally lose a lot of seats in Congress during their sixth year and that Republican losses were about the same as average. But it doesn't quite work. Two of the administrations cited, FDR's and Lyndon Johnson's, were working with huge Congressional majorities which shrunk in their sixth year but were far from disappearing altogether. The other case was the Eisenhauer administration, but Eisenhauer's losses might be considered a re-affirmation of the long-ruling Democrats rather than a repudiation of Eisenhauer. To the contrary, the 2006 election was a decisive repudiation of the Bush administration for its failures in Iraq, the Republican Congress for its endless scandals, and the right-wing for carrying the Republican Party's water.

Republicans Got Away From Principles. Under Bush, the Republicans have not only not been the party of small government, they engaged in significantly more domestic spending than the Clinton administration. According to current Republican commentary, this means that Repubicans were trying to buy re-election rather than govern according to principles. What the right doesn't acknowledge is that their principles are costly. To get tax cuts and other controversial bits of legislation through Congress, the Republican leadership had to bribe both moderate Republicans and some conservative Democrats to get their votes. There was no way around it. They had to give out tons of pork. Otherwise, they wouldn't have had a governing majority at all. David Stockman had to do the same thing to get Ronald Reagan's first budget passed. It's a curious irony, but the Republicans will always practice very big government as long as they are so devoted to the right-wing ideology of small government.

Conservatism Didn't Lose. According to the right, Heath Shuler of North Carolina is the poster boy for the new Congress. Because Shuler and a couple of guys from Indiana are more conservative than Nancy Pelosi, there wasn't an ideological shift in Congress. That's a big mistake because there has been a profound shift away from moderation. Because the GOP beat up so badly on Democratic moderates in 1994 and 2002, the Democratic caucus is much more liberal than it was when Bill Clinton became president. I seriously doubt that Nancy Pelosi will have to use her whip skills to get minimum wage legislation, medicare reforms, and repeals of oil company tax breaks passed in the upcoming session.

Leaving Iraq Would Be Worse. The right has finally gotten around to admitting that the situation in Iraq is a disaster. But, they insist, things will get that much worse if American troops are withdrawn. Of course, it's increasingly hard to see how things can get much worse. Yesterday's gruesome attack on Shiite Sadr City in Baghdad was followed by today's even more vicious revenge attacks. Our 15,000 troops in Baghdad aren't making any more impact on the sectarian conflict than Paris Hilton and Kevin Federline are making on the history of music. Likewise, a combined American and Iraqi operation has taken five months to retake half of Ramadi. Michael Fumenti of the Weekly Standard finds reason for hope in the painfully slow progress and exults that the patrol he was embedded with captured three suspected "bad guys." But three bad guys a day doesn't keep the spectre of failure away. The American mission in Iraq is looking more futile all the time.

Bush, Perle, and Other Vacancies at Reality Hotel

In some ways, the rift between the Bush administration and the neo-con promoters of the disastrous Iraq invasion is a mirage. Bush, Cheney, Perle, and Frum might not be doing lunch anymore, but it isn't like the neo-cons are checking in to Reality Hotel either.

President Bush and Dick Cheney are convinced, maybe fanatically convinced, that staying in Iraq at all is a victory over the insurgents. To the extent that I can translate this for people who have contact with reality, this means that Bush believes that the "terrorists" expect the United States to give up on the occupation and leave. Therefore, keeping the American military in Iraq constitutes victory. As George the First said the other day, his son isn't going to cut and run.

Neo-cons may be criticizing the occupation at this point, but they haven't left la la land either. Sure, Richard Perle concedes that the occupation has been a failure, but he argues that the administration should have adapted his original position of handing Iraq over immediately to exile leaders like Ahmed Chalabi after Saddam was removed. By "exile groups," Perle of course means the secular Iraqi groups as opposed to Shiite groups like SCIRI.

Like there was a chance that would have worked!

The Iraqi exile groups had no armies, no police forces, no financial assets, and no constituency in Iraq. Handing the country over to them would have been an even bigger disaster than the American occupation.

Neo-conservatism has always been a delusional state of being. The only difference between the Bush administration and their current neo-con critics is that they're now attached to different delusions.

Why I Like Santa Better

I like Santa Claus a whole lot better than Jesus. I know that the figure of Santa Claus is too commercialized in the United States, but I also believe that the deification of Santa is one of the really good things about American society. At a time when our workaholism gives us all a lean, hungry, and cynical look, it's a wonderful relief to contemplate Santa's boundless generosity, bottomless well of happiness, and most pleasing plumpness. Santa's become even better over the last few decades as naughty/nice lists and the specter of coal have faded into cultural memory.Santa is also one of the few white European figures who translates easily into other cultures. In our pale-faced household, we have a black "Rocking Santa" figure who sings “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” in Peggy Lee's voice. Multi-racial, transgendered--Santa makes is an extremely flexible symbol of a giving spirit who demands nothing in return. We also have a "Saxophone Santa" and the Christmas season doesn't really get under way until he belts out a couple versions of "Jingle Bells."

To the contrary, I really don't understand the appeal of Jesus. Although I had a half-hearted Christian upbringing, the Jesus story is becoming increasingly less attractive and plausible as the years go by. Where Santa is a carnivalesque figure of fun, merriment, consumption, and over-consumption, Jesus strikes me as an essentially Lenten God of suffering, self-denial, and other-worldliness. How many gods condemn human happiness with the finality that Jesus condemns laughter in Luke. “Woe unto you that laugh now! For ye shall mourn and weep.” (Luke 6:25). How many would tell their followers to hate their fathers, mothers, wives, children, or brothers, “yeah and his own life also?” (Luke 14:26) In many ways, Jesus is the pre-eminent Western god of violence against self. Of course, it is not hard to understand why we identify so much with Jesus in the United States. Given the unhappy, over-extended character of so much of our lives in the United States, most of us chronically feel like we're bearing our own cross. However, just like I often hope for a better society, I also hope for a better god--a god who represents a joy that is not contingent on walking through the valley of the shadow of death.

The other extremely unattractive element in the Jesus story is the weird narcissism of the Christian God. Where most gods are adjuncts to family, clan, and nation, the Christian god needs men and women to love him more than they love anything else in the world. Doesn't Jesus call on people to put him before their families and everything in their earthly lives? Why? Why have a god who needs so much? Why have a God who cooks up the unlikely plan of tearing his substance apart in order to create a "son" who is man, god, and spirit all in one. Why make the gruesome sacrifice of that son into the key evidence of the God's "love" for humanity and human kind's only hope for escaping an eternity of suffering? I'm not sure there's much difference between the Christian God's killing of his son to demonstrate his love for humanity and John Hinckley's shooting Reagan to demonstrate his love for Jody Foster.

Moreover, isn't there a big element of petulance in throwing into the flames of hell anybody who doesn't believe the whole implausible story? I know that lots of people like a little sadomasochism with their narcissism and neediness. After all, Mel Gibson isn't the only action hero who is a macho version of Jesus.To the contrary, Santa Claus does not demand that we love him in return. Santa gives and gives and gives without expecting anything in return. I’ve seen conservative columnists refer to people as worshipping Santa. But that’s precisely wrong. Worship is an exchange relationship in which people pray to, praise, and reverence the god in exchange for the god’s favors. Santa is one of the few divinities who give to us without demanding anything in return. It’s this spirit of generous freedom that carries the most promise of “peace on earth, good will among men.”

School Daze

The White People's Party--The College Republicans of Boston University are offering a "whites only" scholarship and argue that they are focusing attention on the inequities of affirmative action.

Yeah, right. And Trent Lott was satirizing Strom Thurmond as well.

Race neo-cons like William Bennett have been pushing "color-blindness" as a moral position on race for years. But the color-blind ideology is mostly just a politically-correct fallback position for white bigotry. Once segregation was over, the same people who engaged in various kinds of abuses against African-Americans began to adapt the language of color-blindness as a new code for expressing their racial hostility. Complaining about affirmative action began to replace complaining about black "ingratitude," black "trouble-makers," and blacks "staring" at white women.

The Republican Party is troubled by the development and has already disaffiliated one group of College Republicans for adapting the "whites only scholarship idea." However, the Republicans have taken advantage of racist, anti-immigrant, and homophobic bigotry for so long that they can't shake the reality that they've become the "white people's party."

Iraq: Withdrawal as a Time-Buying Strategy

Bigger than 9-11--According to the UN, 3709 civilians were killed in Iraq last month--more than were killed at the World Trade Center, Pentagon, and Pennsylvania combined on 9-11. The U. S. occupation of Iraq may turn out to be the biggest terrorist bonanza in history.

Make It Matter or Move Them Out--There are 15,000 American troops in Baghdad and 20,000 in Anbar. The American military command is at least four months into its enhanced operations in Baghdad and still hasn't figured out a way to make American forces relevant to the sectarian battles between the Shiites and Sunni insurgents. If American troops can't be made relevant to the situation in Baghdad, they should either be redeployed back to Anbar or sent home.

The Crunch--Likewise, there are not enough American troops in al-Anbar to defeat the Sunni insurgents and global jihadis. That's been the situation for at least 18 months. It's getting pretty close to crunch time in Anbar. The current stasis in which the American military is only "contains" a slowly gaining insurgency is unsustainable. American public has lost patience with the war and the Bush administration will probably initiate a general withdrawal of combat troops from Iraq before the 2008 election.

The difficulty with al-Anbar is two-fold. If the U. S. withdraws, there is a real possibility that global jihadis will establish Taliban-type regimes in Anbar cities and start using them as bases for attacks on the West in general and the U. S. in particular. At the same time, the only way that the U. S. could subdue Anbar completely would be to put America on a war footing, re-institute a draft, and dramatically increase the number of American troops in the region.

Buying Time? But do we need to subdue Anbar to prevent terrorist initiatives against the U. S.? Not necessarily. If the U. S. withdrew it's troops from Iraq, it may be that a combination of Sunni insurgent groups and tribal militias would prevent the jihadis from using Anbar as a terrorist launching pad. Right now, nobody knows how the relations between global insurgents, nationalist jihadis, and the tribal structures would play out after an American withdrawal. The situation might take months or years to shake out completely.

In this sense, an American withdrawal from Iraq might be viewed in terms of preparing for future conflicts. Perhaps it would be best to put the U. S. on a war footing anyway as a way to prepare for extended conflict in Iraq if it looks like global jihadis are gaining the upper hand or if there is going to be a wholesale sectarian genocide. That certainly would mean reinstituting a draft of young men and women to increase the number of troops and raising taxes to support an enhanced military. It would also mean retraining the entire military apparatus, especially the high command, for political, humanitarian, and occupation duties as well as traditional warfare.

The U. S. was not ready for a war on terror when we were attacked on 9-11. Perhaps a withdrawal from Iraq would allow us to buy the time needed to get ready.

Optimism for the Dems

The Constitution of the U. S. was established in order that the federal government could "form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."

The question for the Democrats in Congress is how are they going to further all the goals for which government was established in the United States. Do seeking articles of impeachment against President Bush, re-establishing the draft, and pushing for national health care "promote the general welfare" in any way?

All other things being equal, the answer would be yes. But, all other things are not equal. The U. S. has a strong activist right wing and pursuing an aggressively liberal agenda at this time would lead to the re-establishment of a Republican majority and more wars, higher deficits, the privatization of social security, abridgement of free-speech rights, and other disastrous consequences.

As long as the right-wing is a political threat, the most important way that the Democrats can serve the "general welfare" is to prevent the Republican Party--the party of the right-wing--from regaining majorities.

Given this consideration, Nancy Pelosi's extremely modest agenda is the best course for the Democrats. Pelosi wants to "raise the minimum wage, cut interest rates on college tuition, expand stem cell research, and make health care more affordable." That isn't going to do much to make the United States a better place to live, but success in pursuing this agenda would enable the Democrats to prevent the right-wing from making the U. S. a much worse place.

Right now, it looks like the Democratic leadership will have success getting this agenda through Congress and onto President Bush's desk. If she accomplishes this much, Pelosi will be doing the country a real service.

The Blair Truth Project

Yesterday, Tony Blair let it slip that the invasion of Iraq was a "disaster." Blair's press people say that it's disingenuous to conclude that Blair actually meant what he said.

But what would happen if people in the Bush administration slipped into "truth-telling" mode.

Alberto Gonzalez would have said, "of course, the Patriot Act, warrantless wiretapping, and data-mining are threats to freedom in the United States. I'm a threat to freedom in the United States."

And Dick Cheney would have countered, "not as big a threat as me."

George Bush would have gone on, "you don't understand that people in my administration and a lot of conservatives in general don't like freedom in the United States. Yeah, flying the flag is great, but elections, political dissent, opposition parties, poplear culture, the right to free speech, and the right to privacy--we don't believe in that anyway. That's the purpose of the war in Iraq, to get rid of all this freedom stuff and get back to the good old days like when I was a kid. "

Too bad it's been suchh a disaster."

Signing off from Philly--only a sixteen hour trip back to Morehead.

Against "Bo-stalgia"

You have to give Bo Schembechler and his doctors credit. Having lived 37 years after his first heart attack, he was a miracle of modern medicine and the determination to live that makes it possible for modern medicine to work.

But that doesn't make Bo Schembechler a great football coach.

Schembechler was to football what General Motors was to cars. General Motors thrived for decades because their only competition was Ford. They didn't have to innovate; they didn't have to streamline; they didn't have to care. After all, they could sell 50,000 units of anything at a good profit. GM wasn't a very good company but they didn't have to worry because they could make a lot of money anyway.

Schembechler didn't have to care either. At a time when the Big Ten was the Big Two and the Little Eight, he was in the ideal position of not having to worry about competition. Sitting on prime football recruiting grounds in Michigan and Northern Ohio, Schembechler was always going to have big-time players. Likewise, Ohio State was the only team that Bo had to take seriously every year. As a result, Bo didn't have to worry about keeping up with new defenses, wishbone offenses, or innovations in the passing game. All Bo needed to do was line up his big, fast, and talented players against the smaller and slower guys at Northwestern and Illinois and call the same run left, run right, and run between the tackle plays he had always called. He won every time. Bo didn't need to worry about Ohio State either because Woody Hayes was just as committed to the stale old ways as him.

In many ways, Bo and Woody were like Bear Bryant and the last generation of segregation coaches in the South--great coaches as long as they didn't have to play outside their particular little sandboxes. Likewise, just as the continued idol worship of Bear Bryant masks a deep nostalgia for segregation among Southern whites, the urge to glorify Bo Schembechler masks a longing to return to the days of effortless domination.

It's unfortunate. If there was anything admirable about college football in the seventies (and that's a big "if" given the huge recruiting scandals), it would have to be found in the Southern Cal, UCLA, and the wishbone teams out of the Southwest. Those were the teams that moved the game forward while the work of Darrell Royal, Barry Switzer, John McKay, John Robinson, Terry Donohue, Dick Vermeil, and Bill Walsh turned Bo Schembechler into a nostalgia item long before he retired.

Philadelphia Blogging

I've been in Philadelphia since Wednesday with a student honors conference. I haven't gotten any sleep to make up for the fifteen hour train ride from Kentucky.

But . . . here we go!

Gotta Love Philly. It's just a relief to see so many people who aren't white and straight. Morehead is 98% white. In Center City Philadelphia, there can't be more than 6 whites out of 10 people you see. And a lot of the white guys are gay, especially in the area near the archives where there is a mostly gay gym.

But who said that ethnicity is everything. Not me. Morehead State University is a real "trudging" kind of town. Students move with about as much enthusiasm as the guys playing concentration camp prisoners in Nazi movies. Outside campus, there's a kind of Eastern Kentucky "I'm not in a hurry because I don't want anybody to know that I give a shit" depression and slowness. In Philly, the only people who have that determined slowness might be sitting beggars. Otherwise, there's a bounce and energy to movement that puts a little more bounce into my step.

Gotta love it.

Baghdad on My Mind

Escalating Irrelevance: American troops raided the homes of al-Sadr's aides today as part of their effort to break into the civil war between the Shiite milita death squads and the Sunni insurgents. As the street war in Baghdad escalates, so does the irrelevance of the 15,000 American troops in Baghdad.

Falluhahs as Far as the Eye Can See: "Solving the civil war" this way a losing proposition anyway. Sadr's Mahdi Army and SCIRI's Badr Brigades can be defeated, but only at the cost of turning Baghdad (and several other cities) into another Fallujah or Ramadi.

The Best Bad Solution to Date: I'm beginning to think that the best bad solution is for the U. S. Military to give up Baghdad to the Shiite death squads and focus their efforts on clearing as many insurgents as possible from Anbar before the whole revolting mess causes us to withdraw.

Out of Our Leagues: Pres. Bush has been out of his league ever since the insurgency took route in 2004. But the situation is so bad now that the entire U. S. political apparatus is struggling to find its footing. Michael Kinsley points out in Slate that the Baker/Hamilton Commission isn't likely to come up with anything very fruitful. Maybe it's time to start planning for the bad consequences of failure.

A Pox on Both Their Houses

John Murtha vs Steny Hoyer for the Majority Leader in the House. What an awful choice!

Murtha is a card-carrying member of the Republican culture of extortion. Before he became an anti-war hero, Murtha made a living coercing Democratic reps into voting for bad Bush administration legislation in exchange for earmarks.

Hoyer isn't any better. As minority whip, he used a lot of his press availability to talk about the Democrats' need to be more like the Republicans.

All of this illustrates the weakness of the House Democrats--a thin leadership bench, the poor public relations skills, and the legacy of kowtowing to the right wing. That's why it was important to elect more Ned Lamont types to Congress--Democrats who wanted to act like Democrats instead of Republican wannabees.

Wait a minute. It's time for liberal bloggers to start "carrying the water," to use Rush Limbaugh's phrase, for the Democratic leadership.

Murtha vs Hoyer--two great statesmen and patriots. You couldn't ask for better men.

The Weekly Standard Tries Reality

William Kristol and Robert Kagan try reality in the Weekly Standard online. Leaving the dumb assumptions, deceptive historical analogies, and ad hominem attacks aside, the neo-conservative stalwarts make a determined empirical case for increasing the number of troops in Iraq. It's too bad that Kristol and Kagan decided to try reality so late in the game. Still, their analysis is worth taking seriously.

Kristol and Kagan's idea is that 50,000 more American troops would be needed to stabilize Baghdad and then they could engage in clear and hold operations in Western Iraq. If we withdraw over the next two years, the authors argue plausibly that President Bush would handing over both a genocidal ethnic cleansing and a series of al-Qaeda havens to his successor.

They've not so plausible when they suggest possible invasions by Iran and Turkey. Who besides the Bush administration would have enough hubristic stupidity to occupy Iraq now?

Still, the American military now has almost 15,000 troops in Baghdad. Fifty thousand more would increase the number to 65,000.

Would they have a chance of success?

Probably not.

The problem is that stabilizing Baghdad would mean launching an invasion and occupation of Sadr City, the slum stronghold of Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army. While defeating the Mahdi Army wouldn't be that much of a problem, attacking Sadr City would be a serious problem. Al Sadr and the Mahdi Army have become a major pillar of Nouri al-Maliki's Iraqi government. Attacking Sadr City would weaken Maliki, weaken the Iraqi military and police forces (many of whom would fight with al-Sadr), and make the Iraqi government much more dependent on the American military.

Likewise, once American troops occupy Sadr City, they would have to hold it against a large, determined, and trained (largely by the Americans) Shiite resistance movement. Kristol and Kagan think that the 50,000 American troops could move on to Anbar once Baghdad was stabilized. It's more likely that the U. S. would need the 50,000 troops to hold Baghdad and 100,000 more troops to perform operations in Anbar--50,000 to clear out the insurgents and another 50,000 or more to occupy and hold the Sunni cities.

The problem here is that raising the number of American troops from 150,000 to 250,000 or 300,000 would require the Bush administration to put the United States on a war footing. The Bush administration did not have the credibility to do this in 2003 when it was first needed. As last Tuesday's election shows, the Bush administration has far less credibility with the American public now.

A new administration would have to be in place before any big increase in American troop levels could be contemplated. Even then, it's not very likely that the American military could stabilize Baghdad or the country as a whole.

The Spleen in the Mirror

Ann Coulter's post-mortem on the "pathetic gains" of the Democrats is so spiteful that you can imagine her telling the Democrats to "shove their victory down their whiny little throats."

But if Coulter wants to understand the election, she should look in the mirror.

The voters held President Bush and the Republican Party in exactly the same kind of contempt that Coulter feels for the Democrats.

The Strongest Contender: Hillary!

One of the curiosities of political discourse is the mainstream media's continued silence over the presidential prospects of Hillary Clinton. Every poll for at least the last eighteen months has shown her as the leading prospective Democratic candidate for the presidency and a strong contender with any Republican.

Yet, while the media has showered attention on Mark Warner and Barack Obama, there have been almost no stories about a prospective Hillary candidacy from the mainstream media--nothing on Hillary as being the first female favorite for a party party nomination, no evaluationg of Hillary's qualifications, and no puff pieces extolling her Chicago roots, Methodist training, or her steadfastness during the Monica Lewinsky scandal . Hillary gets a lot of "mentions" as the leading contender, a polarizing figure, and liberal in the stories about other candidates. But the mainstream media seems to have an embargo on directly addressing Hillary's candidacy.

However, it's clear from the polling released by Newsweek that Hillary will be a very strong contender for the presidency. According to the survey, Hillary's numbers are about the same as Rudy Giuliani and John McCain's.


Hillary Clinton: Strongly likely--33%, Somewhat likely-- 20%, No Chance-- 45%
Rudy Giuliani: Strongly likely--24%, Somewhat likely--30%, No Chance-- 32%
John McCain: Strongly likely--20%, Somewhat likely --34%, No Chance-- 32%

The conventional wisdom is that McCain would beat Hillary Clinton head to head because of her huge negatives at 45%. However, the number of voters either likely or somewhat like to vote for Hillary is over 50% and she has a significantly stronger base of strong supporters than McCain at 33-20. That means that Hillary will have an easier time raising money than McCain and that she'll be better protected against the consequences of whatever gaffes she makes. That would be tough for McCain because his volcanic temper means that he would make more gaffes than the highly self-disciplined Sen. Clinton during the course of a tough campaign.

Moreover, McCain has been faltering lately. McCain's strong public support of President Bush and the war in Iraq has put him in a difficult box. Supporting the unpopular president weakens his appeal among the overall voting public, but abandoning President Bush would be very unpopular with hard-core Republican primary voters and make him vulnerable to right-wingers like Mitt Romney and Sam Brownback. Indeed, Fox published a poll a couple of weeks ago showing Hillary beating McCain 51-45 in a head-to-head match-up.

Right now, Hillary Clinton is the best positioned of all the serious 2008 contenders. Perhaps it is time for the mainstream media and Democratic elites to look more optimistically at her chances.

Is Pelosi Presidential?

One of my retired friends watches a lot of TV and says that he thought Nancy Pelosi has seemed "presidential" in the broadcasts he's seen since Tuesday.

My friend's a moderate to conservative Democrat who's a very religious Bible Belt guy.

Maybe Pelosi will be a more appealing face for the House Democrats than anyone thought.

If Karl Rove's Genius?

What was the impact of Karl Rove's micromarketing, get out the vote operation on Tuesday's elections?

It's actually an important question that should have a big impact on Democratic thinking over the next two years.

Let's consider the consequences of Rove's operation having a big impact. If Rove's 72 hour plan had a big impact, it means that Rove's still a genius, but it also means that the Republicans were in danger of losing by even bigger margins. As it was, the Democrats got a 53-47% majority of the vote, picked up 6 seats in the Senate, and gained 30 in the House. If Rove's operation had a four per cent impact, that means that the Democrats were within striking distance of a 57-43% margin. That would have meant picking up 40-50 seats in the House, and having a real working margin in the people's chamber.

The implication for the Democrats is that they should bust their butts to match the Republican GOTV effort in 2008 and should do their best to motivate the liberal activists who would be expected to do the grunt work.

What if Rove's efforts had little impact and the Democrats would have made the same gains anyway. That means that the Democrats can feel pretty comfortable about their own GOTV operation and can focus on solidifying their nice 6% in a year when the Republicans probably won't be putting up a strong presidential contender.

The Democrats are in good position now whichever way you slice it. However, if the genius of Karl Rove's ground game was the only thing that prevented a Democratic landslide in 2006, then it's time for the Democrats to get a lot more aggressive about pursuing big majorities in 2008.

Taking Up the Limbaugh Challenge

Today, Rush Limbaugh challenged the mainstream media to start speculating about how the Republicans could make a comeback.

But I've beaten him to the punch.

As I said yesterday, the key to any Republican comeback is understanding that the Republicans are a natural minority. If they are going to make a comeback, the Republicans have to create appealing new wedge successors to gay marriage, keep feeding red meat to the right-wing attack media, and raise obscene amounts of money to keep their smear campaigns going.

Otherwise, the right-wing political machine might fall apart, leaving the Republicans scrambling to maintain their viability as an opposition party.

The Cold Hard Facts of Bi-Partisanship

It's 2000 all over again with a lot of talk about bi-partisanship between the Bush administration and the Democratic leadership in Congress.

But, believe me, bi-partisanship is not going to happen and its not going to happen because the Republican Party can't afford to have it happen.

The cold hard fact is that the Republicans are a natural minority party and have been so since the Great Depression and the New Deal.

Of course, the Republicans used to be a minority party because the upper and middle classe whites they represented were smaller than the Democratic constellation of the working class whites, blacks, liberals, and the South. Things have changed dramatically since the seventies, but the Republicans still emerge with a minority. Now, its because their Southern and rural base is declining. Urban areas like Phoenix, Denver, and Las Vegas are mushrooming while reliably white Republicans are leaving places like rural Colorado, Nebraska, or North Dakota and are being replaced by Hispanics and telecommuting Californians. That's why the Democrats are becoming more competitive in Colorado, Arizona, and Nevada and why the "natural base" of the Republicans is beginning to shrink back to depressed farm areas and the old Confederacy. The Republicans still control most of the land, but a majority of the people are leaning toward the Democrats.

Consequently, the Republicans don't have many options. I guess one can imagine that the Republicans can give up their base and try to out-Democrat the Democrats like Schwarzenegger is doing in California. If Bush does try to do bi-partisanship this is exactly what activist conservatives will accuse him of doing. However, given the hostility of blacks, hispanics, and independents to the right-wing, this doesn't seem viable. And it's not like the administration has any bi-partisanship skills to start with.

No, if the Republicans hope to win elections outside their Southern and rural base, they have to keep diggging deeply into their traditional bags of tricks. Even then, the Republicans are in a tough spot. Perhaps most importantly, the Republicans need to come up with a new stream of wedge issues to turn independents and traditional Democratic constituencies against the Democratic leadership. There are some candidates out there--mostly warrantless wiretapping, anti-immigrant proposals, support for Bush judicial nominees, and attacks on gay marriage. Maybe Republicans could rally around McCain's idea of putting 100,000 more troops on the ground (They could call it "Really Winning") and challenge the Dems to either put up or shut up on Iraq. However, the Republican think tanks haven't developed much in the way of new wedge ideas since privatizing Social Security and invading Iraq. The Republicans have both the presidency and an extensive communication apparatus in Fox and talk radio for promoting divisive new ideas. They just don't have the ideas to work with.

The Republicans also need to engage in a relentless demonizing of Democratic Party and liberal personalities as a second method for turning independents and traditional Democratic constituencies against the Democrats. Here, they are on stronger ground. Fox News, right-wing talk show hosts like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity, and religious and conservative activist groups are just as committed to demonizing the Democrats as ever. Limbaugh is especially skilled at micro-analyzing Democratic documents and events to reveal the inevitable hypocrisies, absurdities, and self-contradictions. Likewise, Bill O'Reilly will continue his one-man cultural war and Ann Coulter will show as much contempt toward liberals as humanly possible. But if the conservative media is going to have any success at this game, they need the Bush administration to continue to feed it the red meat of creative new wedge issues. If the Bushies go bi-partisan, the talk show zealots won't want to, or be able to, help them.

The third dimension of any Republican come-back would have to be relentless negative advertising against the Democrats on every important issue before Congress. Every debate would have to be a hundred million dollar debate like the health care debate in 1994. One Republican tactic has been to be so aggressive that a battle-weary public is willing to go along with them just to bring the issue to a close. Perhaps the Republicans would have to go to the mat on every issue in order to make a comeback. But the Republicans could only enhance the present permanent campaign if they had even more obscene amounts of money than they have now. Really obscene money hard to raise when the Republicans don't have the leverage to extort it from business.

The Republicans have little choice. Their only chances for success are either continued hyper-aggression or waiting for the Democrats to blow it. However, I've never felt that waiting was part of the right-wing game.

Kentucky Might Avoid Embarrassment After All

If the Democrats get a majority in the Senate, Kentucky Republican Mitch McConnell will NOT become the Senate Majority leader. The whole country can breath easier. Now that Tom DeLay is out of politics, McConnell is the leading practitioner of the politics of extortion in the United States. As outlined in a recent newspaper expose, McConnell's office and affiliates are famous for hitting up potential corporate donors as legislation affecting them is being considered. It would have gotten a lot worse if McConnell became Majority Leader. The apparent success of the Democrats has saved the nation, the state of Kentucky, and probably McConnell himself from a lot of scandal and embarrassment.

RSI Gets Close

No one got the election more right than Red State Impressions. I had the Dems gaining 25 in the House and six in the Senate. The current numbers have the Dems up 28 in the House and up four and ahead in two in the Senate.