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July 09, 2008

7/9: Third-Rail Politics

It seems like every day the netroots are chastising the national political press for being insufficiently critical of John McCain. Yesterday we observed that liberal bloggers were angry that the press wasn't devoting more scrutiny to McCain's pledge to balance the federal budget by 2013 -- a pledge that has been met with skepticism by economists. Today, the netroots are upset that journalists aren't mentioning McCain's recent remarks about Social Security, in which he said, "We are paying present-day retirees with the taxes paid by young workers in America today. And that's a disgrace. It's an absolute disgrace, and it's got to be fixed." Some liberal bloggers are arguing that McCain doesn't understand how Social Security works, since younger workers have been paying for retirees' benefits since the program's inception. Other bloggers are claiming that McCain is deliberately criticizing Social Security's "pay-as-you-go" funding mechanism because he wants to privatize the system.

It remains to be seen whether journalists will take the netroots' advice and devote more attention to McCain's brush with the third rail. In the meantime, liberal bloggers are urging Dems to use McCain's words against him. Mark Kleiman writes: "Every Democratic speech between now and November should include the sentence 'John McCain said Social Security is a disgrace.'"

MCCAIN: This Won't Play Well In Florida...

Liberal bloggers are slamming McCain for calling the current Social Security system "a disgrace" because current workers pay for retirees' benefits:

"I'd like to start out by giving you a little straight talk. Under the present set-up, because we've mortgaged our children's futures, you will not have Social Security benefits that present-day retirees have unless we fix it. And Americans have got to understand that.

Americans have got to understand that we are paying present-day retirees with the taxes paid by young workers in America today. And that's a disgrace. It's an absolute disgrace, and it's got to be fixed."

  • Obsidian Wings' hilzoy: "The fact that we are paying present-day retirees with the taxes paid by workers, young or otherwise, is not a disgrace, or a scandal, or a new development. Social Security has been funded this way since its inception. The first person to receive monthly benefits, one Ida Mae Fuller, had worked for three years, and contributed all of $24.75 to the Social Security Trust Fund. She lived to be 100, and collected $22,888.92 in benefits. Did the Social Security Trust Fund found that money under its pillow? Somehow, I don't think so. Younger workers paid Ida Mae Fuller's pension. Workers who were younger still paid those workers when they retired. And even younger workers, like me, are paying for their Social Security benefits. This is not a disgrace; it's the way the system operates. And it's certainly not a sign that we've mortgaged our children's futures, or that something has to be fixed."
  • TPM's Josh Marshall: "People say a lot of things about Social Security -- a lot of it nonsense. But I haven't heard something like this in a long time. John McCain says that Social Security, as originally conceived more than 70 years ago, is an 'absolute disgrace.' [...] It's really a disgrace? That's how the system was designed to operate. And it's served as financial bedrock of retirement security in this country for going on a century."
  • Kleiman: "McCain said that the Social Security system is 'an absolute disgrace' because it pays current pensions out of current earnings. [...] Every Democratic speech between now and November should include the sentence 'John McCain said Social Security is a disgrace.'"
  • Mother Jones' Nick Baumann: "McCain's [George W.] Bush-echoing attack on Social Security isn't just radical. It also contradicts his campaign's stated position. McCain's website says he supports 'supplementing the current Social Security system with personal accounts.' There's nothing on the website about how the current system is a 'disgrace' or how the way it is funded has to be drastically altered. But that's what McCain was saying in Denver."
  • Firedoglake's Scarecrow: "Earlier McCain said he supports private accounts, but only as a 'supplement' to Social Security, not as a substitute. That official campaign statement was apparently crafted to make it sound as if McCain was not endorsing the unpopular Bush/Republican proposal that did partially substitute private accounts for Social Security. [...] But McCain's statement on Monday shows he's either misleading voters about his underlying support for substituting private accounts for Social Security or he's proposing 'fixes' without understanding his proposal undermines Social Security's most fundamental feature. Either way, he just grabbed hold of America's riskiest third rail with both hands."
  • The Atlantic's Matthew Yglesias: "It seems that [McCain] decided that peeing on the third rail was a good idea."

MCCAIN II: Why Isn't This A Story?

Liberal bloggers are upset that the press isn't paying more attention to McCain's remarks about Social Security:

  • MyDD's Josh Orton: "This could ruin him. As most everyone who earns a paycheck knows, young workers pay into the program, and retirees collect the benefit. McCain is saying that Social Security is a disgrace because it works the way it's supposed to. [...] McCain, like [Barack] Obama, travels everywhere with reporters. All the time. But yet I haven't heard a single cable news anchor mention this story -- that McCain called Social Security an 'absolute disgrace,' have you?"
  • Obsidian Wings' publius: "Social Security is one of the most successful, efficient, and politically popular government programs in history. John McCain -- candidate for President -- said yesterday that the funding mechanism behind this wildly successful program is an 'absolute disgrace.' (And that's the charitable interpretation). Anyway, since McCain feels pretty strongly about this injustice, I'm hoping that an intrepid member of the press corps will ask John 'Details' McCain a simple question: 'You said that the way Social Security has been funded for the past 75 years is a "total disgrace." In your view, how exactly should it be funded?' And if he starts mumbling about private accounts and market returns, the reporter should follow up by asking how he intends to cover the resulting gap. Inquiring Floridian minds want to know..."
  • The American Prospect's Dean Baker: "Of course present-day retirees have always been paid their benefits from the taxes paid by current workers. That has been true from Social Security's inception. Some folks might have thought Senator McCain's description of Social Security as a 'disgrace' was worth a mention somewhere in the media, but the NYT, Washington Post, WSJ, and USA Today don't seem to have noticed. It's not like he said 'bitter.'"

MCCAIN III: Tim Russert Would Have Loved To Have Asked This Question...

Now that Iraq's Prime Minister and national security adviser are both insisting on a timetable for U.S. troop withdrawals, liberal bloggers are asking McCain if he still shares his 2004 position that the U.S. should leave Iraq if the democratically elected gov't of Iraq asks the U.S. to leave. Here is the relevant passage from McCain's 2004 interview with ex-CFR Chairman Peter G. Peterson:

Peterson: "What would or should we do if, in the post-June 30th period, a so-called sovereign Iraqi government asks us to leave, even if we are unhappy about the security situation there?"

McCain: "Well, if that scenario evolves than I think it's obvious that we would have to leave because -- if it was an elected government of Iraq, and we've been asked to leave other places in the world. If it were an extremist government then I think we would have other challenges, but I don't see how we could stay when our whole emphasis and policy has been based on turning the Iraqi government over to the Iraqi people."

MCCAIN IV: You're Killing Us, Johnny!

Liberal bloggers are criticizing McCain for making a joke about killing Iranians with cigarettes:

"Presidential candidate John McCain, who once sang in jest about bombing Iran, on Tuesday reacted to a report of rising U.S. cigarette exports to the country by saying it may be 'a way of killing 'em.'

[McCain] was responding to a report that U.S. exports to Iran rose tenfold during President George W. Bush's term in office despite hostility between the two states. A rise in cigarette sales was a big part of that, according to an Associated Press analysis of seven years of U.S. trade figures.

'Maybe that's a way of killing 'em,' McCain said to reporters during a campaign stop in Pittsburgh. 'I meant that as a joke, as a person who hasn't had a cigarette in 28 years, 29 years,' he added, laughing."

  • Kleiman: "That John McCain: such a kidder! Isn't the thought of a bunch of Iranians dying of lung cancer from American cigarettes just HIGH-larious?"
  • Firedoglake's Attaturk: "How many flippant statements has John McCain made now about killing Iranian citizens? There was last year's 'Bomb bomb bomb bomb Iran'. Both jibes accompanied by McCain's patented creepy giggle."
  • Yglesias: "John McCain once again 'jokes' about his desire to kill Iranians. This time, the joke is a little bit more of a real joke, but the targets of his lust for killing foreigners are clearly ordinary Iranian civilians. If a major Iranian political leader were to repeatedly joke about bombing the United States and killing Americans, you can just imagine the shit-storm about how Iran isn't a normal country with normal interests, that it's run by irrational fanatics, appeasement won't work, etc."
  • BooMan: "This isn't a matter of whether someone has a sense of humor or not. These jokes aren't funny. Whatever laughter they produce is strictly of the 'uneasy' or 'awkward' variety. [...] John McCain is harming our foreign relations with not only Iran but the entire international community."
  • Atrios: "I've long appreciated the fact that when you speak in public a massive amount inevitably some stupid shit is going to come out of your mouth, which is why 'gaffe' focused political journalism is bad. There are obvious exceptions, of course, like 'Macaca' which actually tell us something about the candidate. But when it comes to joking about killing Iranians...just what is the joke? I appreciate that it was a failed attempt at a joke, but the underlying premise is...it would be funny to kill Iranians. That's some straight talk we can believe in, my friends."

OBAMA: Speaking In Tongues

Conservative bloggers are criticizing Obama for making the following comments about bilingualism:

"You know, I don't understand when people are going around worrying about, 'We need to have English-only.' They want to pass a law, 'We want English-only.' Now, I agree that immigrants should learn English. I agree with that. But understand this. Instead of worrying about whether immigrants can learn English -- they'll learn English -- you need to make sure your child can speak Spanish. You should be thinking about, how can your child become bilingual? We should have every child speaking more than one language.

You know, it's embarrassing when Europeans come over here, they all speak English, they speak French, they speak German. And then we go over to Europe, and all we can say [is], 'Merci beaucoup.' Right?

You know, no, I'm serious about this. We should understand that our young people, if you have a foreign language, that is a powerful tool to get a job. You are so much more employable. You can be part of international business."

  • NRO's Jim Geraghty: "Obama seems to be conflating demands for English-only curriculum to hasten the assimilation of English as a Second Language students with opposition to foreign language courses. I have never encountered anyone who demanded an 'English-only' Spanish lesson. [...] Maybe in the circles Obama travels in, every immigrant has learned English, or is well along the way. But a walk down the street in many neighborhoods across the country reveal that quite a few immigrants not only haven't learned it yet, but they live and work in separate, out-of-the-spotlight enclaves in which they never need to learn it, and will never need to learn it. It's a formula for cultural Balkanization."
  • NRO's Jonah Goldberg: "If Obama honestly thinks the argument against bilingualism has anything to do with the importance of teaching kids a second language, he really has no idea whatsoever what the argument is about. More likely, this is his way of sounding like a brave-truth-teller by offering a 'criticism' pretty much every middle class parent already agrees with and deflecting an issue that might put him crosswise with Democratic Hispanic activists and other multiculturalists."
  • Hot Air's Ed Morrissey: "I agree that everyone should learn a foreign language. I spoke French for a while, and I know a little Spanish from growing up in Southern California, and I studied Irish for several years. The study of foreign language not only broadens one's cultural perspective, but it also helps in understanding one's native tongue. However, to argue that Americans should learn Spanish as a higher priority than insisting that immigrants learn English is nonsense, and Obama's argument for it is a giant non-sequitur. It carries a strong whiff of America-bashing, too."
  • Right Wing News' John Hawkins: "Obama starts off this clip by opposing English as an official language, seems to emphasize that teaching kids Spanish is more important than teaching them English, and then says Americans are an embarrassment because they only know one language when they go to Europe. It may be one of the most grotesquely arrogant, out of touch displays that I have seen from someone running for President in the last decade."
  • The Weekly Standard's John McCormack: "So if Obama is embarrassed by Americans who can't speak French or German or Spanish, is he embarrassed by immigrants to the United States who can't speak English?"

NRO's Victor Davis Hanson adds: "Obama's previous idealization of minority-theme charter schools and the need for more 'oppression studies' are precisely the sorts of therapeutic curricula that ensure Americans are not getting classical instruction in languages and literatures. We still await his visit to an inner-city school where he might lecture the student body and faculty that more Latin, French, math, and Shakespeare would do more to make students competitive in an increasingly tough, global job market than thousands of hours of oppression studies and victimization classes."

OBAMA II: Addressing The Critics

Yesterday, Obama addressed complaints that he was "shifting to the center":

"'Look, let me talk about the broader issue, this whole notion that I am shifting to the center,' he said. 'The people who say this apparently haven't been listening to me.' [...]

'I am someone who is no doubt progressive,' he said, adding that he believes in universal health care and that government has a strong role to play in overseeing financial institutions and cracking down on abuses in bankruptcies and the like. [...]

'I believe in a whole lot of things that make me progressive and put me squarely in the Democratic camp,' he said. But, he noted, he does not believe that the active hand of government is a replacement, say, for parental responsibility in education. [...]

Voters should understand, he said, that they rarely will find themselves in 100 percent agreement with him. 'But don't assume that's because I'm just doing it for "political reasons,"' he said. 'That just means we disagree.'"

Obama's online supporters were pleased by his remarks:

  • Open Left's Chris Bowers: "This is positive for several reasons. First, and most obviously, Obama self-identifies as a progressive twice in this speech. While it is not a replacement for standing up for progressive policies, it is still important for a Democratic nominee to publicly identity with an ideological term associated with the American left. This strikes me as quite novel, as least in recent decades. Second, Obama also self-identifies as a Democrat, rather than his typical post-partisan rhetoric. [...] Third, the speech is actually directed at what Obama calls 'my friends on the left.' I can't remember a Presidential nominee specifically courting left wing voters and activists before. Honestly, I really can't. This is a sign of increased respect and being taken more seriously. The Obama FISA group played an important role in this regard. Fourth, Obama says, bluntly, to take him at his word. Since it is now vogue to believe that Obama has secret plans to stand up for left-wing policies that differ from his public statements, it is nice to have confirmation from Obama himself that we should stop believing in such secret plans."
  • The Carpetbagger Report's Steve Benen: "I can't help but think the hyperventilating in some corners has become wildly excessive. On some issues (gay marriage in California, reforming the bankruptcy laws), Obama has moved to the left. On others (Iraq, death penalty, faith-based programs), he hasn't moved at all. He switched gears on public financing, but that was pragmatic, not ideological. Obama is wrong about the FISA 'compromise,' but one issue, albeit an important one, is not evidence of 'zigging with the kind of reckless abandon that's guaranteed to cause disillusion, if not whiplash'. In fact, one of the great ironies of the last couple of weeks is that there's been hysterical cries about Obama 'moving to the middle' without him really moving much at all. In some ways, this is actually the best of all possible worlds -- voters (most of whom consider themselves moderates) are being told that Obama is angering liberals by campaigning as a centrist, while at the same time, Obama is just about as progressive as he was before."
  • The Atlantic's Andrew Sullivan: "[Obama] is largely where he has always been, as he points out. He's a very pragmatic liberal and committed Christian. Given all he's written and said these past few years, nothing in the last month or so is out of place, it seems to me. But I'm not sure the criticism from the left and right -- eerily similar to the criticism of [Bill] Clinton from both sides in the 1990s -- is bad for him. It's probably great for him. He has many of Clinton's virtues -- immense intelligence, political ruthlessness -- and none of Clinton's vices -- a lack of core values, indiscipline, a bad marriage of convenience."

OBAMA III: Methinks Thou Doth Protest Too Much

Conservative bloggers, on the other hand, remain convinced that Obama has indeed been trying to move to the center:

  • Commentary's Jennifer Rubin: "It starts to sound goofy and delusional when Barack Obama goes into his 'I am not reversing myself on a list of issues' spiel. [...] For starters, it's patently false. Second, there isn't a media outlet or pundit -- whether in praise or criticism -- which agrees with the 'I am not a flip-flopper' defense. To the contrary, they are all writing and talking about the massive shift in policy positions which is underway. Third, shifting on a host of issues and then denying you are shifting is the personification of Old Politics. It really is going to be hard to roll out the next 'Change We Can Believe In' banner with a straight face."
  • The Weekly Standard's Jaime Sneider: "Obama wants his supporters to believe his shifts reflect something other than political expediency. If only they didn't have transparent hack flip-flopping written all over them. Take FISA reform. Obama now says, 'Given the choice between voting for an improved yet imperfect bill, and losing important surveillance tools, I've chosen to support the current [FISA] compromise.' During the primaries, however, he pledged not only to oppose such a bill, but to filibuster it. Obama Spokesman Bill Burton said at the time, 'To be clear: Barack will support a filibuster of any bill that includes retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies.' Note the 'To be clear.' Pretty devastating stuff, huh?"
  • The Next Right's Jon Henke: "Obama is just playing Hope-A-Dope with the electorate, promising a shiny new leader to replace the soiled leaders of the past. Unfortunately, he doesn't appear to be doing much about the muck in which they all fight."

OBAMA IV: Rasmussen Poll = Bad News For Barack

Liberal bloggers are arguing about a new Rasmussen poll which finds that "[Obama] has done a far more effective job than [McCain] in recent weeks moving himself to the middle in the minds of voters...The Democratic candidate is viewed as a political moderate by 27%, up from 22% three weeks earlier, while McCain is seen as a moderate by 23%, down from 26% in the survey at the beginning of June."

Some liberal bloggers think this poll proves that Obama's perceived shift toward the center has failed to help him:

  • Open Left's Chris Bowers: "Now that Obama is perceived as moving to the center, while McCain is still perceived as conservative, Obama's poll numbers should improve, right? Wrong. According to the daily tracking poll from the same polling firm, Rasmussen, the campaign has not changed at all as a result of Obama being perceived as less liberal. [...] So, while there has been substantial movement in how liberal Obama is perceived as being, and even though McCain is viewed just as conservative as ever, there has been no movement whatsoever in the national matchup. This is very strong proof, even scientific, that Obama's move to the center has not won him any votes, and that the perceived change in the ideological gap between Obama and McCain did not impact their relative vote share."
  • TalkLeft's Big Tent Democrat: "Ras does not publish crosstabs, but I would bet dollars to donuts that most of the folks who now perceive Obama as 'less liberal' are liberals themselves. It seems to me all Obama has accomplished with his 'move to the middle' is anger the Dem base, created a 'flip flopper' meme and changed the terms of the debate to one where the Dem position is the 'Far Left' one. So Obama has ceded important ground on issues and gotten no help at all (indeed, it likely will hurt him in the longer run) politically. Hell of a move there Obama campaign."

OBAMA V: Rasmussen Poll = Good News For Barack

Other liberal bloggers believe that the new Rasmussen poll is good news for Obama:

  • Daily Kos diarist kubla000: "Personally, I believe Obama isn't actually moving to the center. His centrist policies on display the last two weeks are not new policies but rather the moderate side of the candidate in full display. And today, Rasmussen shows that this message is actually breaking through. [...] Obama was on shaky ground at one point not long ago, with a substantial amount of support coming from Moderates and even Conservatives [who] already viewed Obama as liberal. Those voters may be sensitive to the charge, which will be made eventually, that Obama is a Leftist Radical. People like Pat Buchanan expound that this is the only charge against Obama that will work; rather than the recent charge by the GOP that Obama is a typical Politician carrying party lines. I agree with Pat. [...] Hence, the moderation is necessary in order to create cognitive dissonance when the message becomes the [Sean] Hannity line that he's a Radical Liberal."
  • FiveThirtyEight's Nate Silver: "The salient fact here is not necessarily that Obama is perceived as more moderate than he once was; that's pretty much what you'd expect. Rather, it's that he's somehow managed to make McCain seem more conservative. Presently, 28 percent of voters describe McCain as Very Conservative, whereas only 19 percent did a month ago. It may be the case that the McCain campaign's inability to define their candidate has left him relatively unable to carve out his own ground; voters are defining him solely in relation to Barack Obama. [...] As I argued last week, I don't think this is necessarily a strategy designed to maximize one's number of electoral votes, but rather one's chances of winning the majority of them. This is a risk-averse maneuver, designed to blockade McCain from certain tactical options that he might have wished to take later on."
  • MyDD's Josh Orton: "As much as I'd like to believe that Obama's recent triangulation hasn't been effective, I'm just not sure these numbers prove it. As we've looked at before, the strategy for Obama is a multi-state/multi-path tour to the nomination. Exactly which blocs of voters are we talking about? In which states? I could just as easily argue (I won't) that since he's clinched the nomination, Obama's 'tack to the center' has preserved his 'bump' in the very same Rasmussen tracking poll, even when many expected it to be temporary. Or I could just question the overall conventional wisdom about Obama 'moving to the center' by pointing to his trip to Georgia today where he proposed revamping the terrible bankruptcy bill from 2005. Point being, I guarantee that the Obama campaign doesn't gauge the success or failure of messaging by the rise and fall of top-line national tracking polls -- this is a state-by-state, constituency-by-constituency race."

Daily Kos' Markos Moulitsas isn't sure that this poll proves anything: "I think Obama was fine before his capitulation on FISA, and that his mainstream Democratic positions were mainstream American positions. I also think Obama is talented enough that he could've sold his mainstream politics to the American people. This debate is almost academic. If Obama improves, is it because Obama is 'moving to the center', or because people are tuning in and preferring him to McCain? Is it because Jeremiah Wright is a distant memory almost forgotten by everyone? Is it because gas prices are going up and jobs keep getting lost? There's no way to quantify the reason Obama goes up and down, and I doubt the majority of people follow each policy pronouncement for where it sits in the 'middle'. Like I said, Obama was already in the middle. All his maneuverings at this point are merely political (avoiding attack ads), rather than ideological."

THOUGHT OF THE DAY: The Election Will Polarize Around Obama

The Next Right's Patrick Ruffini:

"I have long ago stopped worrying about the massive activity gap that surrounds the two candidates for President. Obama is getting a lot more attention that McCain, but as we saw, with Wright, [William] Ayers, and 'bitter/cling,' it's not invariably good attention.

It's probably not a wise use of the McCain campaign's time to try and dominate the news cycle and the public consciousness in the same way Obama does, but rather to ensure that in an election that can easily be summed up as Obama vs. Not Obama, Not Obama wins the narrative. [...]

The 2008 election will polarize around Obama in the same way that 2004 polarized around Bush. That's because Obama is a cultural icon. But so are Tom Cruise and Britney Spears. The danger to this celebrity strategy is that it's rendering Obama's trump card -- partisan contrast and 'Bush's third term' -- irrelevant. Once someone is knocked off a pedastal as high as Obama's is, the fall is so hard that it doesn't matter that 'the other guy is worse.'"

LEST WE FORGET: Nunn Better

The New Republic's Christopher Orr makes the case for ex-GA Sen. Sam Nunn as Obama's VP (h/t Ezra Klein):

"As someone who worked as an editor [at The New Republic] for several years (and elsewhere for many more), I can say that often one of the most tiresome chores the job entails is coming up with headlines, and there is no better friend to the beleagured headline-writer than someone whose name is easily punned. Nunn is a treasure trove in this regard. Though the magazine has already titled one piece (by Mike [Crowley] of course) 'Nunn Sense,' we've barely scratched the surface. In addition to 'Nunn Better' and its infinite variations ('None Wiser,' etc.), there are the equally adaptable 'Nunn Too' options ('Nunn Too Soon,' 'Nunn Too Pleased').

There's 'Flying Nunn' if things go well, and 'Nunn the Less' if they don't; 'Second to Nunn' if he bristles at taking orders from a one-term Senator and 'Singing Nunn' if he gets called to testify before Congress. For Agatha Christie fans there's 'And Then There Was Nunn,' and for Monty Python fans, 'Nunn Shall Pass.' And if, as Mike hopes, a combination of Nunn on the ticket and Bob Barr's candidacy help put Georgia in play, the 'Barr-Nunn' headlines pretty much write themselves."

Posted by Ian Faerstein at July 9, 2008 01:15 PM



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