April 03, 2009

4/3: Abandoning The Dodd Ship

How much longer are the netroots willing to stand by embattled Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT)? Not much longer, it appears. After yesterday's Quinnipiac poll showed ex-Rep. Rob Simmons (R-CT) leading Dodd by 16 pts, liberal bloggers have begun to talk about either pushing the five-term senator to retire or fielding a primary challenger. Arjun Jaikumar declares that Dodd is "screwed" and warns that "if [Quinnipiac's] polling numbers are legitimate, we need a new candidate." Several bloggers are mentioning CT AG Richard Blumenthal as a potential replacement, while Nate Silver suggests CT Reps. Rosa DeLauro, Chris Murphy, and Joe Courtney. Silver then articulates what appears to be the consensus view in the liberal blogosphere: "[I]f the Democrats want to have any realistic hopes of picking up a 60-seat majority in 2010, they can't afford to be underdogs in states like Connecticut."

What else is happening in the blogosphere?

• Conservative bloggers (Steyn, Johnson, Malkin, Greenwald) are criticizing Pres. Obama for bowing before shaking Saudi King Abdullah's hand at the G-20 summit.
• Liberal bloggers (Benen, Sudbay, Yglesias, Aravosis) are criticizing House Min. Whip Eric Cantor (R-VA) for praising Rush Limbaugh and suggesting that Washington was "over-reacting" to the economic crisis.
• Liberal bloggers (Marshall, Lewison, Benen, Drum) are defending Obama's nominee for State Dept. legal adviser, Yale Law School dean Harold Koh, in response to conservative attacks.

Finally, please check back later today for our interview with AMERICAblog's Joe Sudbay!

DODD: The Netroots Want A New Candidate

Now that a new Quinnipiac poll shows Simmons leading Dodd by 16 pts in a hypothetical 2010 Senate race, liberal bloggers are just about ready to give up on Dodd:

• Daily Kos' Jaikumar: "Dodd [is] screwed. There's no other way to put it. [...] Even assuming this is a crazy outlier, Dodd is in huge trouble, and has been for months. If this polling is in the least accurate -- and Quinnipiac's last poll, along with Research 2000's March poll for Daily Kos, differ substantially -- Dodd is dead in the water. [...] We can only hope this is an outlier. Because if these polling numbers are legitimate, we need a new candidate."
• MyDD's Todd Beeton: "The one way to ensure that we keep the seat would be for Dodd to step aside and let CT Attorney General Richard Blumenthal jump in. Dodd has insisted that he has no intention of stepping aside but that was before a poll showed him with a double digit deficit. If subsequent polls confirm Quinnipiac's findings, I think Dodd's really got to revisit that decision."
• Open Left's Chris Bowers: "[R]etaining this seat will probably require either Dodd not seeking re-election, or Simmons being defeated in a Club for Growth fueled primary. If Dodd were to step aside, it is a lock that Attorney General Richard Blumenthal would be able to retain the seat for Democrats. A February Q-poll recent poll showed Blumenthal defeating [Sen. Joe] Lieberman by 28% in the general election, and with a 79%-12% approval rating. While it would be unfortunate to lose such a rock-solid chance to defeat Lieberman, recent polling from Research 2000 has shown that Ned Lamont is still primed to defeat Lieberman in 2012 if he decides to run again."
• FiveThirtyEight's Silver: "While we have a long way to go until November 2010, it's fairly startling to see a four-term Democratic incumbent down by 16 points in a deeply blue state. And make no mistake: this is all about Dodd's negatives, rather than anything in particular that former U.S. Rep. Rob Simmons, the declared Republican challenger, is doing. [...] On paper, the most compelling alternative is probably Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro, a longtime champion for working class interests. But DeLauro was Dodd's former chief of staff, and it's hard to envision her running against her old boss. Chris Murphy, however, could present a compelling alternative, as could potentially Joe Courtney."

Meanwhile, conservative bloggers are offering their own thoughts about the upcoming CT Senate race:

• NRO's Ramesh Ponnuru: "Dodd's numbers are bad news for Republicans, aren't they? If the Democrats get Dodd to withdraw, or someone beats him in the primary, the seat becomes much harder to take. Republicans need him bleeding but not dead."
• Hot Air's Ed Morrissey: "[O]ne commenter noted that the worst thing that could happen to Republicans would be to have Dodd retire instead of run for re-election. Ned Lamont might wind up taking Dodd's place, and you can bet the netroots would love to see that happen. After a couple more years of Dodd fronting for Democrats in the Senate on financial policy, though, even Lamont and the netroots won't be able to save this seat."
• AmSpec Blog's W. James Antle, III: "If these numbers hold up, they will also make the Republican primary more competitive. [State Sen.] Sam Caligiuri is more conservative than Rob Simmons. While Simmons continues to look like the strongest candidate, Caligiuri supporters will be able to argue that their candidate could potentially win the seat."

OBAMA: Bowing And Scraping?

Conservative bloggers are furious and disgusted that Obama bowed before shaking Saudi King Abdullah's hand at the G-20 summit:

• NRO's Mark Steyn: "So let me see if I understand American protocol in the age of Obama: The First Lady hugs Queen Elizabeth as if she's some granny at a seniors' center photo-op, but the President of this republic prostrates himself before King Abdullah as if he's a subject of the Saudi pseudo-Crown."
• Power Line's Scott Johnson: "Americans do not bow to royalty. In my view, when the royal is the ruling tyrant of a despotic regime, the wrong is compounded. Putting aside the breach of American protocol, it is akin to Jimmy Carter succumbing to [Leonid] Brezhnev's infamous kiss at the signing of the arms accord in Vienna in 1979. It is a disgrace. As in Carter's case, Obama's supplicant attitude signifies his spirit. In this respect I distinguish it from George Bush's otherwise embarrasing handholding with the the king."
• Michelle Malkin: "I hope all the lefties who tore into Bush over his Saudi prostration will express equal disgust with President HopeAndChange's literal bowing and scraping to King Abdullah. [...] Bleccch. Is this diplomatic protocol? And if so, when did diplomatic protocol start mattering to Obama, anyway?!"
• Townhall's Carol Platt Liebau: "The image actually highlights what, for me, seems to be one of the biggest problems for this administration: The line between courtesy and symbolic subservience."
• The American Thinker's Clarice Feldman: "I am quite certain that this is not the protocol, and is most unbecoming a President of the United States."
• Jules Crittenden: "Al Qaeda's going to love this: Apostate House Negro of the Hated Crusaders abases himself before Abdullah the Crusader lackey and apostate Zionist-lickspittle."
• RedState's Jeff Emanuel: "Look, I know he said he was going to go out of his way to get on other world leaders' good sides, but this seems to be going a bit overboard."
• Commentary's Abe Greenwald: "Barack Obama has literally bowed before King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia. Here's the question: Was this unprecedented embarrassment the result of the Obama team's inexperience, incompetence, or inclination toward American humility on the world stage? Here's the answer: Who cares? Whatever the cause, the fallout will be the same. Among Muslim democrats and human rights advocates, utter dejection that the 'leader of the Free World' has offered himself as a 'subject' of the Saudi monarch; among Islamists, bliss over America's seeming prostration before Salafist Islam; among international bad actors, assurance that America poses no threat; and among our allies, depression about the new systemic instability of the most dependable superpower in history."
• Hot Air's Allahpundit: "If this is a bow, it's more than Elizabeth got when The One met her yesterday. Maybe if she started beheading people for not practicing the state religion, she'd have received a little more deference."

Meanwhile, liberal bloggers are mocking their conservative counterparts for making a big deal about this incident.

CANTOR: Guys, I Know The Economy Sucks, But Let's Not Overreact

Liberal bloggers have spent much of the past 24 hours criticizing Cantor for praising Limbaugh and suggesting that Washington was "over-reacting" to the economic crisis:

"As far as Rush, Rush has got ideas. He's got following. He believes in the conservative principles that many of us believe in -- of lower taxes, of making sure that we turn back towards a focus on entrepreneurialism in this country, to promoting innovation and not stamping that out by over-reacting, if you will, which this town often does, to crisis."

Many liberal bloggers are blasting Cantor for suggesting that Washington was "overreacting" to the economic crisis:

• The Washington Monthly's Steve Benen: "It's hard to imagine what Cantor was thinking. Democrats care too much about fixing the economy? That's the pitch from the House Republican leadership?"
• Oliver Willis: "From the people who brought you John McCain's 'the fundamentals of the economy are strong'. Republicans remain completely and absolutely out of touch with the people."
• AMERICAblog's Joe Sudbay: "Eric Cantor just pulled a McCain. He showed just how out of touch the Republican Party is. It's bad enough that Cantor and his fellow Republicans created the economic crisis. It's worse that they're doing everything possible to prevent it from being fixed."
• Think Progress' Matthew Yglesias: "Hm...it seems that rising star Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA) thinks Democrats are 'overreacting' to the economic crisis and ought to do less to try to help the economy recover. [...] I think this is criticism Obama can survive. I wonder if Cantor really wants to repeat the 'fundamentals of the economy are strong' fiasco of last fall? Obviously, we're dealing with some extremely serious problems and most people are looking for action to be as forceful as possible in response."
• Ezra Klein: "I'm getting the sense that the Eric Cantor bubble is bursting."

Other liberal bloggers are criticizing Cantor for praising Limbaugh:

• Daily Kos' BarbinMD: "Eric Cantor embraces Rush-o-nomics."
• AMERICAblog's John Aravosis: "Are these guys nuts? After a month debating whether Limbaugh was the intellectual leader of the party, the number 2 Republican in the House confirms that Limbaugh is the guy inspiring their solutions to the economic crisis?"
• Firedoglake's Blue Texan: "Keep praising super unpopular public figures, Eric. Electoral gold."

CANTOR II: Nice Try, Eric

Cantor's spokesperson reportedly claimed that Cantor wasn't referring to Democrats when he suggested that certain people were "over-reacting" to the economic crisis. However, the netroots don't buy this argument:

• Benen: "Cantor's office is arguing, aggressively, that he wasn't referring to Democrats when he talked about the 'overreaction.' It's unclear, though, who else he might have been referencing."
• BarbinMD: "[I]f Cantor wasn't talking about the Democrats, what did he mean? Who was he talking about?"
• Aravosis: "Who did GOP leader Eric Cantor mean when he said that Rush Limbaugh had great ideas for fixing the economy, versus other people 'in this town' who were 'overreacting'? If he didn't mean Democrats, which we hear he's now claiming, then who 'in this town' is taking the economic crisis too seriously, according to the number two Republican in the House? Maybe folks should call Mr. Cantor's office and ask them who he was talking about."

KOH: Fighting The Smears

During the past week, conservative bloggers and pundits have been attacking Obama's nominee for the post of Legal Adviser to the Sec/State, Harold Koh. After Slate's Dahlia Lithwick wrote a column complaining that the mainstream press was ignoring the right's "character assassination" of Koh, liberal bloggers have begun defending him:

• TPM's Josh Marshall: "Koh is a highly respected and utterly mainstream figure who the right-wing echo chamber is now accusing of wanting to apply Sharia law in US courts. It's really ugly stuff and deserves some strong push back."
• Benen: "There is no excuse for this character assassination. The conservative movement is obviously incapable of shame, but now would be an excellent time for some."
• Daily Kos' Jed Lewison: "[D]espite the obvious malice behind the assault on Koh, it continues unabated in the wingnut-o-sphere and on Fox and on Glenn Beck's program. Lithwick writes that the silence of the mainstream media in the face of these vicious attacks is effectively complicity in the face of character assassination, and she's right. Reporters may not feel like it's their obligation to come to Harold Koh's defense. But if they continue to let falsehoods about the Koh's of the world stand, one day some of them will find that they have become the targets of Rupert Murdoch's media empire. When that happens, will they wish they had spoken up when they still had a chance?"
• Mother Jones' Kevin Drum: "The right-wing nutcase machine really does seem to have picked up from its [Bill] Clinton-era follies without missing a beat. [...] We can't stop the wingnuts, but we can take the wind out of their sails by taking away their platform. After all, is there really any reason why the Senate needs to confirm the legal advisor to the State Deparment in the first place? No? I didn't think so."

digby explains why the netroots were relatively late in coming to Koh's defense: "If there were any chance that [OLC nominee Dawn] Johnson and Koh could actually be denied their places, I would guess that the liberal blogosphere would be intensely engaged. But from what I understand, the filibuster threat on Johnson is just hot air and that nobody takes the nutty Koh critics seriously. There is a certain amount of procedural kabuki that these targets have to undergo, but in the end they'll be confirmed. It's horrible that people have to put up with this, of course. But the modern conservative movement has a malignant, destructive impulse at its very core that will persist in doing this no matter what."

Meanwhile, The Washington Post's Greg Sargent notes that ex-Bush atty Theodore Olson is defending Koh, calling him a "man of great integrity."

THOUGHT OF THE DAY: The Naive Opposition

On Wednesday, Ezra Klein complained that the GOP alternative budget was a political messaging device instead of a serious proposal, writing: "It's not what you do when you're responsible for running the government. It's what you propose when you're responsible for running the messaging." The Atlantic's Ross Douthat disagrees:

"I understand what [Klein]'s getting at, but this phrasing makes it sound like the House Republicans' budget is an exercise in cynicism and partisan political calculation -- which is exactly the wrong way to look at what's going on with the House GOP. Sure, there may be some cynicism involved in how the [Rep. Paul] Ryan proposal makes its numbers add up. But the overall outline -- an across-the-board tax cut and a flatter tax code, substantial means-testing for Social Security and Medicare, and a five-year discretionary spending freeze -- strikes me as the opposite of cynical. Rather, there's a kind of deep innocence about it: The purity of its small-government vision is more detached from the grubby realities of American politics than any similar document I can remember. It's as if the Democratic Party, in the aftermath of it's 2002 and 2004 defeats, had proposed an alternative to George W. Bush's wartime budgets that slashed defense spending dramatically, raised income taxes across the board, and invested all of the resulting revenue in a revivified AFDC, a massive cash grant to the UN, and a big new federal jobs program for 'green-collar' workers, community organizers, and Planned Parenthood clinicians.

Now maybe the Democrats should have done just that. Certainly there are left-liberal voices who would have welcomed an explicitly social-democratic alternative to Bushism, as a means of widening the bounds of political discourse, and opening new vistas on the left. Sometimes naivete in the short run is wisdom in the long run. And maybe by providing such a rigorously small-government alternative to Obamanomics, the Congressional GOP will succeed in pushing the conversation rightward, and moving important but hard-to-sell ideas like means-testing entitlements into the mainstream where they belong.

But sometimes naivete is just naivete. Sometimes, putting your least-popular ideas together in one agenda just makes it easier for your opponents to run circles around you. And right now, I think the country could use a right-of-center party that paid a little more attention to its messaging, and a little less attention to its blueprints for the ideal small-government society."

(Klein responds here...)

LEST WE FORGET: Cheering Fans, Thrilling NCAA Tournament Disgust BCS Officials

From The Onion:

"DETROIT -- Claiming that determining an unquestioned national champion through a playoff system 'went against the very idea of sporting competition,' and that the sheer exuberance of college basketball fans was 'a shocking and nauseating display of everything wrong with collegiate athletics,' top BCS officials roundly condemned the NCAA Tournament Monday.

'I frankly cannot even believe what I'm seeing, and I can't stomach the sight for long,' said a pale, trembling Jack Swarbrick, the Notre Dame athletic director who, along with the commissioners of the major conferences, manages the complicated system of polls and computer rankings that make up the Bowl Championship Series in college football. 'The elegant logic of actually having teams play one another instead of having a council of their betters select which team is superior to which -- that is not what sports is all about.'

'And the fans...urgghh...simply enjoy their teams' triumphs or mourn their defeats. Where are the heated arguments? Where are the unsettled disputes that will fester forever?' said Swarbrick, a sheen of feverish sweat curdling on his face. 'Oh, God, I think I got vomit on my tie.'"

Posted by Ian Faerstein at April 3, 2009 12:31 PM