Category Archives: Politics: US

Over at The Agonist, Sterling Newberry does a three-part Jeremiad about the state of modern politics.

• The Decade is Done Part I
• The Fall of the House of Gusher
• The Decade is Done: Hillary Reagan Clinton

Bottom line is that we're into a new politics of scarcity and fighting over a pie that isn't growing and may shrink. Rather than try to assemble a progressive coalition, however, the leading Democrat is playing to the (richer) suburbs.

I'm sympathetic to the claim that a big difference between progressives and neo-conservatives is one favors universalizing programs (rural electrification, health care) and the other thinks it saves money by leaving poor people behind (give the unemployed tax breaks for health care). I am not as persuaded by the description of the coalitions:

Let me summarize then the different cleavages:

1. Within the Democratic Coalition there was a three fold divide: rural Democrats, suburban Democrats, Urban Democrats. The first Republican victory was to cleave the Dixiecratic, if not in location, in cultural pattern vote away from the Democrats, by having resource inflation and big defense budgets. Reagan then cleaved away the suburbanists as a bloc and formed a coalition.

2. Within the surburbanists, there is a division between those that make their money from cities, and those that make their money from defense, resources and sprawl. It was the Rovian understanding that the resource suburbanists were more closely tied to the resource exurbanites than the city suburbanists were to the urbanists. That in a series of political conflicts, the resource bloc would vote as a bloc against two blocs that could easily be divided over a variety of issues.

3. Within the present Democratic coalition, there is a conflict between whether the urbanist or suburbanist wing of the party will be dominant. This division is rapidly closing, because Iraq and corruption are seen by all of them as benefiting the exurbanists.

4. Within the Republican coalition there is a division between the resource extractionists tied to oil, and those tied to agriculture. The agricultural rural voters have been slapped silly by both the war, which has bled them of precious young people, and by high energy prices.

I think it is too economically determinist, for one thing.

But this part sounds right:

Washington is out of touch with, however, a fundamental, and essential, indeed crucial change that is happening: the rift between cities and financial suburbs is rapidly healing, over issues which are in the short term more important than the dwindling wins of offshoring and the rapidly disappearing differences over inflation containment of health and education versus universalization. For one thing, both groups are pro-immigration: since both groups rely on waves of new entrants. For another, off-shoring is now gutting suburbanist jobs as fast as urbanist jobs. For a third thing, the urbanists have an ideology which makes cities, not rural hinterlands, seem the cutting edge of political, economic and social values.

And I worry that this might be right too:

It is into this environment that Hillary Reagan Clinton steps. On one hand she is the only figure in the Democratic party that can unify the suburbanist bloc of the party. The only one. This gives her a base of between 35% and 40% of the party. Enough to win the nomination doing nothing but playing defense. …

In short, Hillary moved far enough to the left to convince self-deluded suburbanists that she won't gut the cities. But she is proposing exactly that, and the cities, and the rural voters, understand this. She offers exactly nothing.

…However, the very “no brainer” road to the White House as a liberal Reaganite dooms Hillary in the short Thousands as much as it makes her the obvious choice in the long Thousands. This for the simple reason that while the city facing suburbs can defeat the rural and urban elements of the Democratic party as long as those elements are divided, it cannot govern. It cannot govern because of the packing of urban districts, which are now filled with legislators who are immune to suburban pressures, since they have almost no suburban voters any more. A generation ago the pizza slice districts combined urban and suburban votes. It cannot govern because the suburbs do not float above the rest of the planet. It cannot govern because the oil resource Republicans are going to demand enormous, and unpayable, concessions to not attack Hillary into the ground.

There is not enough money in the treasury to bribe the hinterlands, and fix the suburbanists problems with medicare and social security.

Sterling promises a part four, that sounds like it might be more optimistic. But then, what good Jeremiad doesn't end with a path to redemption, while of course lamenting that it is unlikely to be followed?

Worth a read, even if it raises your blood pressure.

Firedoglake, Correspondence School, walks us through how to communicate with Congressfolk & Senators for maximum impact. Apparently, sending letters to DC, and the district office and making a phone call are likely to get you triple-counted sometimes.

MSNBC.com does a real public service by publishing this State-by-state list of deficient or obsolete bridges. A deficient bridge is what it sounds like; obsolete means that while the bridge doesn't have major maintenance issues, the design isn't sufficient for modern traffic volumes.

Not surprisingly, the North-east, with the oldest infrastructure and a vicious freeze-thaw-heat cycle does worst overall, although the Midwest isn't doing great. Florida, being a fast-growth Sunbelt state has more troubles with “obsolete” bridges (is every bridge in Miami on that list?) than deficient ones.

IN CONGRESS, July 4, 1776.

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.—That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, —That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.—Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Brittish brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

I make it 600 more days of the Bush admnistration

“Most people are under-reacting” to the latest Bush scandals.

That's what Jonathan Chait (& The Carpetbagger Report) say. And indeed, people are awfully calm about this stuff. The question is why.

So which is it: Is this seeming calm

(a) A classic case of boiled frog;
(b) A recognition that there's a light at the end of the tunnel, even if it is still 641 days away;
(c) Because we trust Congress to staunch the wounds now;
(d) A media illusion; or,
(e) Real, because it's not really such a big deal?

Or is there an (f) I'm overlooking?