October 28, 2008

10/28: Red Scare

Yesterday we reported that conservative bloggers were buzzing about a 2001 audio clip (which was heavily promoted by Matt Drudge) in which Barack Obama discussed the failure of the Supreme Court under Earl Warren to pursue "redistribution of wealth." In the past 36 hours, this audio clip has become the focus of the conservative blogosphere, conservative talk radio, and FOX News, and it has received over 1.8M YouTube views. This entire episode illustrates the considerable influence of what Jonathan Martin describes as "ye ole right-wing apparatus" (or which one Daily Kos blogger describes, less charitably, as "The Axis Of Weasel"). It appears that Drudge was once again the instigator of this frenzy; Mark Halperin observes that Drudge has been on an anti-Obama tear lately.

We've said it before, but we'll say it again: many conservative bloggers appear absolutely terrified by the prospect of an Obama Presidency. These bloggers don't think of Obama as your standard liberal Democrat. Rather, they view him as a "European socialist" who seeks to implement a "radical transformation...in our national political and economic structure". Liberal bloggers believe that their conservative counterparts have lost their marbles and don't understand the difference between a progressive tax and Socialism. Other lefty bloggers believe that conservatives are deliberately pushing intellectually dishonest arguments because they're desperately trying to stop Obama's momentum.

OBAMA: The Latest Manufactured Outrage

Liberal bloggers are arguing that Obama's 2001 comments are not the least bit controversial and that conservatives are deliberately distorting them:

• Mother Jones' Kevin Drum: "I see that Drudge is blaring a headline about how Barack Obama believes it's a tragedy that the Supreme Court hasn't confiscated all your money and given it to poor people. Turning on the TV, I see that Fox New is all over it too. So is John McCain. Clearly, the guy's a total socialist. Except, you know, he's not. The whole thing is based on a distinctly academic radio panel Obama was part of seven years ago, and over at the Volokh Conspiracy even conservatives Orin Kerr and David Bernstein aren't buying this nonsense. After all, Obama specifically says in the interview that it's a mistake for liberals to rely too heavily on the courts, rather than on public opinion and the legislative process. And supporting a progressive income tax or equal funding for school districts is hardly a sign of incipient socialism. [...] Is this really the best McCain can do?"
• Daily Kos' georgia10: "Fresh off of breaking the 'story' that a McCain volunteer was 'mutilated' (er, scratched) by a big, bad black man (er, herself, really), Drudge continues his decent into the absurd and the McCain campaign is again willing to join him in the nosedive down the rabbit hole. [...] The 'tragedy' [that Obama mentioned] wasn't that the Supreme Court did not, as Drudge screeches, pursue the 'redistribution of wealth.' In fact, he states that the 'tragedy' was that the civil rights movement, in seeking equalizing policies, focused too much on courts and not enough on political and community organizing. In other words, the Drudge/McCain/Fox 'News' hype of this story is as painfully desperate and transparently faux as a backwards 'B' scratched into the face of a McCain volunteer by her own hand."
• The Washington Monthly's Steve Benen: "Now, I've let my subscription lapse on Republican Talking Points Weekly, but shouldn't conservatives agree with Obama had to say? Obama may have used a few big words, but his argument included some basic ideas that Republicans need not find controversial -- the courts have never played a role in improving economic conditions of working Americans, and the left should look to policy makers, not judges, to address economic inequalities. Over-reliance on the courts, Obama said, is a mistake. And yet, the three-headed McCain/FNC/Drudge monster is just shocked by what Obama had to say, pointing to his remarks as evidence of, well, something nefarious. It's not quite clear what. [...] That McCain/FNC/Drudge are hyperventilating today says more about their desperation than Obama's ideology."
• TAPPED's Mori Dinauer: "A 2001 recording of Obama discussing 'redistribution' in the context of a purely academic discussion of the role of the federal courts has become the latest evidence of the Democrat's socialistic tendencies, blares the Drudge Report, National Review, and the McCain campaign. Of course, if you actually listen to what Obama is arguing, he's generally dismissive of the idea of using the courts to enact a policy agenda, preferring instead to use the good old fashioned -- dare I say conservative? -- option of letting legislatures hash it out."
• Think Progress' Matthew Yglesias: "The more robust liberal jurists of yesteryear believed in affirmative economic rights. Barack Obama was on Chicago public radio back in 2001 and said he disavowed those views. [...] This should all be clear enough, but a lot of the right-wing, led by the McCain campaign and the Drudge Report, have decided that it would be good to pretend that Obama said the opposite of what he said. So we get a series of posts by Mark Levin dedicated to that idea. But the text is clear -- Obama thinks you could come up with a rationale for affirmative economic rights if you wanted to, but that it would be a bad idea to do so. On this topic, the right would do well to take 'yes' for an answer."

OBAMA II: His Secret Communism Has Been Revealed!

Many liberal bloggers are mocking the recent conduct of the conservative media:

• dday: "I fully expect one last-minute 'Shocking revelation!!! Must credit Drudge!!!eleventy!1!' for each remaining day until the election. John McCain has run his entire campaign from news cycle to news cycle, and so they'll grasp on to whatever they can manage to find. Today's big hit is a 2001 interview with Barack Obama about the civil rights movement, where he lamented the movement's propensity to lean on the courts to mandate changes as opposed to building social change from the bottom up within local communities. That's pretty much all he said, but because he used the words 'redistribute' and 'wealth' every conservative in America figures they've cracked the Da Vinci Code and revealed Obama for the Maoist-Leninist-Marxist-Communist-socialist that he is."
• Sadly, No!'s D. Aristophanes: "Eat your heart out Eugene Debs and break out the vodka rations, comrades! Because Barack Obama's Communist agenda has been caught on tape! So says the wingnutosphere, and they are never wrong!"
• Oliver Willis: "Did you ever think that the entire conservative movement would be reduced to pointing to chopped up audio on a Youtube video as their lodestone pointing to the secret communism on the left? Well, that's where they are today."
• Mark Kleiman: "Is this really the best the wingers and their tame press and their adopted candidate can do in the way of an Obama scandal?"

Liberal bloggers are also criticizing McCain after the GOP nominee accused Obama of being in favor of "redistributing wealth":

• TPM's Greg Sargent: "Not to belabor the point, but unless McCain plans to disband the entire Federal government and amend the Constitution to ensure that it can never gear up again, he too is running for the post of 'redistributionist in chief.' If McCain doesn't think the job of President entails drawing up budgets that determine how the citizenry's tax money should be spent, he should say so. It would certainly be newsworthy. Again: This is yet another silly stunt from a candidate who is suffering badly from what might be called the 'Seriousness Gap' between himself and his opponent. I'd really be interested to see detailed polling on whether the electorate is buying the argument that Obama harbors the shadowy socialist and redistributionist leanings that McCain and Sarah Palin are alleging."
• The New Republic's Jonathan Chait: "Need I point out that literally having every any government at all involves taking somebody's money and giving it to somebody else? Even the more restrictive definition of redistribution -- using government to create a less unequal distribution of wealth -- has been going on for a century. If McCain is really opposed to redistribution, then that means he thinks the rich should get back a dollar in spending for every dollar they pay in taxes."

OBAMA III: What's All The Fuss About?

While most conservative bloggers are savaging Obama for his 2001 comments, several conservative law bloggers are siding with their liberal counterparts in arguing that Obama's comments are not particularly controversial:

• The Volokh Conspiracy's David Bernstein: "There is no doubt from the interview that [Obama] supports 'redistributive change,' a phrase he uses at approximately the 41.20 mark in a context that makes it clear that he is endorsing the redistribution of wealth by the government through the political process. What I don't understand is why this is surprising, or interesting enough to be headlining Drudge. [...] At least since the passage of the first peacetime federal income tax law about 120 years ago, redistribution of wealth has been a (maybe the) primary item on the left populist/progressive/liberal agenda, and has been implicitly accepted to some extent by all but the most libertarian Republicans as well. Barack Obama is undoubtedly liberal, and his background is in political community organizing in poor communities. Is it supposed to be a great revelation that Obama would like to see wealth more 'fairly' distributed than it is currently?"
• Ann Althouse: "If [Obama's comments] alarmed you, chances are, you are not a law professor. Let me tell you that, in this radio interview from 2001, Obama is making the most conventional observation about the limits of constitutional law litigation: The courts will recognize rights to formal equality, but they hesitate to enforce those rights with remedies that become too expensive or require too much judicial supervision and they resist identifying rights to economic equality. Such matters are better handled by legislatures, and courts tend to defer to legislatures for this reason. Obama was not showing disrespect for constitutional law in any of this. More radical law professors would criticize the courts for not engaging in more expansive interpretations of the Equal Protection Clause and for failing to provide much more expensive, invasive remedies. He did not do that. He accepted the limits the courts had recognized and advised against the unfruitful pursuit of economic justice in the judicial forum. It's a political matter. That is a moderate view of law."

These conservative law bloggers are also criticizing Drudge for distoring Obama's comments:

• Althouse: "Drudge is linking to the video clip with the headline '2001 OBAMA: TRAGEDY THAT "REDISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH" NOT PURSUED BY SUPREME COURT.' No, no, no, no. That is absolutely misstated. Shame on Drudge! [...Obama's] saying that civil rights activists made a tragic mistake by fighting for their cause in the judicial forum. It's part of his separation-of-powers point. Changes that involve complex economic choices need to be made in the political sphere. He never says he wishes the courts would have done more. He acknowledges the limitations of law and courts. Let's play fair people. Words have meaning. Read carefully and don't distort."
• Bernstein: "Drudge's headline suggests, wrongly, that Obama states that the Supreme Court should have ordered the redistribution of income; as Orin says, his views on the subject, beyond that it was an error to promote this agenda in historical context, are unclear."

Not surprisingly, Obama's legal advisor Cass Sunstein also defends Obama's comments: "In answering a caller's question, [Obama] said that the court 'is just not very good at' redistribution. Obama added, with approval, that the Constitution 'is generally a charter of negative liberties.' Obama's principal claim -- about the institutional limits of the courts -- was made by many conservatives (including Robert Bork) in the 1960s and 1970s: Courts should not attempt to guarantee 'positive' rights, or interpret the Constitution to redistribute wealth. Obama is squarely rejecting the claim that was made by many liberal lawyers, professors, and judges at the time -- and that is being made by some today."

OBAMA IV: America, Prepare For Red Dawn

Conservative bloggers continue to blast Obama over his 2001 comments:

• RedState's Pejman Yousefzadeh: "Obviously, this seriously damages any and all incentives to work hard and to be successful. Under an Obama economic plan, one could work less and then wait for wealth redistribution to make the difference between a lower and an augmented standard of living. There is no way to overemphasize just how radical a transformation this would be in our national political and economic structure. [...] How any of this is different from 'From each according to his ability to each according to his need' is beyond me."
• Power Line's John Hinderaker: "Not too many years ago, a Presidential candidate who explicitly advocated taking your money and giving it to someone else, on the theory that you have too much and it would be nice if he had more, would have been a dead duck. Whether most Americans now understand either the terrible unfairness or the social and economic consequences of Obama's leveling instinct is not so clear."
• Michelle Malkin: "'Change We Need' = Less change in your pocket. 'New politics' = old, failed redistributionist politics. 'Obligations...to...one another' = From each according to his ability... [...] 'Higher purpose' = 'Reparative economic work' and 'redistributive change.'"
• RedState's Brian Faughnan: "In the wake of Obama's statement to Joe the Plumber that America is better off if we 'spread the wealth around,' Obama has tried to argue that he is not a socialist. But he puts the lie to the claim here, when he made pretty clear that wealth redistribution to bring about social justice is exactly what he was aiming for. [...] Obama's words are quite clear: he laments that the civil rights movement missed the mark in looking to the courts to order income redistribution. He thinks that's the work of legislatures -- with the necessary cooperation of the executive, of course. And now Barack Obama wants to be the executive, working with the liberal leaders of Congress."
• NRO's Victor Davis Hanson: "[Obama's] past views, his tax plan, and other spontaneous offerings ('Spread the wealth around') are a fair enough representation of a European socialist view of how to take money from higher wage earners and redistribute it to the less well off, apparently on the twin premises that one's income is really property of the state, and, that the mechanism by which a market compensates people is arbitrary and unfair and in need of 'redistributive change.' This view is shared by former associates like [Jeremiah] Wright and [William] Ayers, Obama's parents, and almost everyone in his circle in Chicago."

OBAMA V: Maybe An Ideological War Isn't The Smartest Idea...

The Atlantic's Marc Ambinder thinks the GOP might be making a mistake by turning this election into a referendum on economic liberalism:

"Whether or not the [David] Frums of the punditosphere are correct, it might be dangerous for the Republican Party to elevate the stakes for this election to a death match between competing ideologies. If Barack Obama's victory is as decisive as it is shaping up to be, the Democrats can justifiably claim that conservatism itself has been rejected as a political and governing philosophy. In the closing weeks of the campaign, as the Republican ticket continues to run against the very idea of progressive politics, they are sowing the seeds of the post-election realignment narrative."

Many liberal bloggers agree with Ambinder:

• Ezra Klein: "Conservatives may end up ruing this descent into ideological war. Two months ago, it wasn't exactly clear what an Obama win would 'mean.' But as McCain has worked to transform this election into a referendum on liberalism, it's increasingly becoming...a referendum on liberalism. [...] If Obama wins, it's going to be very easy for folks to claim that the old conservative pressure points of taxes and government have dulled, and we're entering an era in which economic instability and widening inequality necessitate a more assertive role for progressively-conceived governance."
• MyDD's Todd Beeton: "The conservative movement folks still believe, you see, that America is, at its core, a conservative nation, so they truly think that if the fight is on this turf, they will win handily. What they don't seem to get is how spectacularly this could backfire on them and on the future of conservatism (unless that's already an oxymoron.) This is one attack on Obama that we should all welcome."

STEVENS: Down The Tubes

Liberal bloggers are happy that AK Sen. Ted Stevens was found guilty on seven ethics counts, both because they (a.) dislike Stevens, and (b.) believe that this conviction increases the likelihood that Dem candidate Mark Begich will win Stevens' Senate seat:

• Obsidian Wings' hilzoy: "This is a very good thing, for (at least) two reasons. First, Senators who are corrupt ought to know that there is a non-negligible possibility that they will be convicted of felonies and sent to prison. Second, the Republicans might lose another Senate seat because of this, a fate they might well have avoided had they either induced Stevens not to run for re-election or fielded a successful primary challenger against him."
• Daily Kos' Markos Moulitsas: "Had the trial been postponed until after the election, we'd still have a dead heat today, the indictments a minor political annoyance. But today, the jury didn't just remind people about the indictments, they announced to the world that Stevens was guilty of corruption, and it's game over in Alaska. He should've had the trial delayed. He might've pulled it off, and worst case scenario, with a post-election indictment, Sarah Palin could've named his replacement keeping the seat in Republican hands. Now, this is yet another piece as we close in on 60."
• TPM's Eric Kleefeld: "With Stevens now officially a convicted felon, any good will he built up with voters will probably be falling away very quickly. Over the next eight days, voters are likely to swing heavily to Begich in a state that hasn't elected a Dem to federal office since 1974. And this also puts the Democrats one step closer to that magic number of 60 seats."
• Klein: "The GOP can kiss that seat goodbye."

digby isn't quite ready to declare Begich the next AK Senator: "Keep in mind that Alaska is a very red state. They have even been known to elect wingnut Wasilla mayors to the governorship rather than a highly qualified Democratic ex-governor and mayor of Anchorage. So don't count on Stevens' conviction not leading to his reelection. It could happen. Obviously, he wouldn't be able to serve out his term. But one Sarah W. Palin would be the one to appoint his replacement to the Senate. It wouldn't surprise me if she appointed herself. I think she's got the chutzpah (and the wardrobe) to do it, don't you?"

Meanwhile, several liberal bloggers are arguing that Stevens' conviction is bad news for Palin:

• MyDD's Josh Orton: "The biggest remaining question...is the extent to which Sarah Palin's close ties to Stevens weigh down on the Republican ticket in light of this verdict. At the least, this is yet another lost day for the McCain campaign, which can ill afford to have missed opportunities this late in the game."
• Benen: "[Palin is] likely to face new questions -- assuming she ever actually speaks to the media -- about her support for and long-time association with Stevens, whose political group Palin helped run and whose support she relied on to get elected."
• AMERICAblog's Joe Sudbay: "Sarah Palin was the one who set the standard for associations. She's pals around with a convicted felon -- a felon who can't even vote for her or himself. And, apparently, Palin has no problem with a felon serving in the Senate."

STEVENS II: Don't Let The Door Hit You On The Way Out!

Conservative bloggers have little sympathy for Stevens:

• Townhall's Jonathan Garthwaite: "[Stevens] should have been gone a long time ago. It's hard for me to think of another elected official that is more of a poster-child for the damaged Republican brand."
• Glenn Reynolds: "He will not be missed."
• NRO's Kathryn Jean Lopez: "I know that numbers in the Senate matter, but this is one seat I didn't care to win with. Republicans should have pressured him to resign long before today. But they, of course, didn't. And so here we are."
• Hot Air's Ed Morrissey: "Quite frankly, the Republicans deserve to lose [this Senate seat] for not doing a better job of defeating Stevens in the primary."
• Right Wing News' John Hawkins: "Begich was running a little bit ahead of Stevens even before the guilty verdict, so this should seal Stevens' fate -- and make no mistake about it, Stevens richly deserves to lose. So, here's the real question: why didn't the people in the Republican Party who call themselves leaders have the courage to stand against Stevens when it could have made a difference?"
• RedState's Directors: "Good conscience compels us to advise Alaskans not to vote for Ted Stevens for Senate or Don Young for the at-large House seat in Alaska. We leave it to the individual voter whether to abstain or take the step of voting affirmatively for Mark Begich, the Democrat mayor of Anchorage, and candidate for the U.S. Senate, or for Ethan Berkowitz for the at-large House seat in Alaska. [...] But Ted Stevens and Don Young have been a pox on the Republican house for too long -- too addicted to the pork barrel, too fast and loose with ethics. Stevens' conviction in federal court today is the exclamation pointon an era in Republican politics in general and Alaska politics in particular that needs to end (and which Gov. Sarah Palin has been battling to clean up)."
• The Next Right's Jon Henke: "Inexplicably, some Republicans have been arguing that Sen. Stevens could still win. They should have been discussing how Republicans can be rid of him. Republicans should not be relying on juries and courts to be the ethics enforcers."

DEAN BARNETT: The Rightroots Mourn One Of Their Own

Dean Barnett, a respected conservative blogger who suffered from cystic fibrosis, passed away yesterday at the age of 41. A number of righty bloggers are paying tribute:

• Malkin: "Dean was brilliant, hilarious, and gracious -- one of the OG's of the blogosphere, a trenchant essayist, and a talented radio host to boot. He will be missed."
• Hot Air's Allahpundit: "One of the smartest and sweetest people I've ever met, online or otherwise."
• NRO's Peter Robinson: "Laughter, wit, a tough Boston charm, and perpetual ebullience -- those are the characteristics I associate with Dean Barnett."
• Townhall's Hugh Hewitt: "Dean told me early in our friendship that his disease had forced him to deal with the possibility of living too short a life and that he thus threw himself into everything. This ferocious desire to live well and fully is what I will always tell people marked Dean Barnett."
• Power Line's Paul Mirengoff: "[Barnett] emerged as a blogger, first on his own SoxBlog, then on Hugh Hewitt's blog, and finally with The Weekly Standard. But he considered himself a writer, not a blogger, and the quality of his prose fully justified this assessment. Indeed, at The Standard Barnett contributed frequently to the magazine itself. It was no accident that, of all the conservative bloggers out there, Barnett was the one that Bill Kristol wanted to bring 'in house.'"
• NRO's Jim Geraghty: "He had made us laugh and made us think so many times since he started blogging back in 2004, that when he recently reentered the hospital, there was a palpable absence in the conversation about the campaign. I had already started to miss reading his take on the latest twists and turns of the campaign, and I don't think it's going to get any easier."

THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Degrading The Discourse

David Bernstein:

"It's true that most Americans, when asked by pollsters, think that it's emphatically not the government's job to redistribute wealth. But are people so stupid as to not recognize that when politicians talk about a 'right to health care,' or 'equalizing educational opportunities,' or 'making the rich pay a fair share of taxes,' or 'ensuring that all Americans have the means to go to college,' and so forth and so on, that they are advocating the redistribution of wealth? Is it okay for a politician to talk about the redistribution of wealth only so long as you don't actually use phrases such as 'redistribution' or 'spreading the wealth,' in which case he suddenly becomes 'socialist'? If so, then American political discourse, which I never thought to be especially elevated, is in even a worse state than I thought."

LEST WE FORGET: Ouch

The American Conservative's Daniel Larison presents "The Key To Understanding The McCain Campaign" (h/t John Cole):

'Lost, I also like Lost.' -- John McCain in an interview with Radar magazine

"This explains so much. Now we have found the real reason why McCain's campaign has been an interminable series of twists and turns that promises some payoff but always leads nowhere."

Posted by Ian Faerstein at October 28, 2008 02:04 PM