Category Archives: Politics: US

It's just amazing how much of the important domestic news these days is either about economic troubles (defict, declining dollar, jobless recovery) or about conflicts over the role of the national security apparatus. Here's today's first haul of the national security related news:

• Military Lawyer Blasts Tribunal Rules—more very justified complaining about the rules of engagement before the military tribunal at Guantanamo
• Easing of Internet Regulations Challenges Surveillance Efforts: the spooks are at it again. Their campaign to retain their total access to all of our communications is in danger of being frustrated by…cable modems. So they're pulling out all the stops to make them as transparent to FBI (and NSA?) intercepts as ordinary telephones.
• Meanwhile, Congress has a small case of heartburn over the renewal of certain sections of the Patriot Act. The fix to renew may be in, but Lawmakers Not Rushing to Take Up Terrorism Act…certainly not going to happen until safely after the election. Who knows, it's so unpopular that there might even be hearings to discuss the effects of the statute before Congress votes on it….
• And, Ex-C.I.A. Aides Ask Inquiry by Congress Over Leak of Name. That darn Palme case just won't go away, and the CIA won't let go of the issue. Now they are pressuring Congress in order to create pressure on the Justice department. (While I completely agree with the CIA view here, and think this is the sort of issue they have a right to go to Congress about, I always get nervous when the secret services get involved in politics….)

And a bonus item: things are not so great in Canada either.

At least it's still newsworthy (and legal to publish).

Matthew Yglesias exercises his counterfactual imagination, and it's a doozy in which he speculates about

what if Nixon had won in 1960 and had to deal with the pressures of the Civil Rights movement. At the time, the allegiances of African-American voters were roughly split. The GOP in the aggregate was more supportive of civil rights than were the Democrats, but the leading civil rights advocates in the government were northern liberal Democrats. There's a fair chance that the circumstances would have forced Nixon to become a civil rights champion (as they forced Kennedy and LBJ), no Goldwater campaign, and no southern re-alignment. You might have seen northern liberals move into the GOP which then would have become something like a European liberal party dominated by Olympia Snowe types while the Democrats became a vehicle for white class politics.

On auspicious occassions African-American Republican politicians would speak proudly of their membership in “the party of Lincoln, the party of Nixon.”

I think it must help to have been too young to be a Watergate Wallower (like I was) to come up with something so…weird and transgressive.

A hotly contested Democratic primary season that stretches to the wire — even to a brokered convention — could be either the best or the worst thing for the Democrats. It's the best thing if a bunch of plausible and photogenic candidates suck up all the media's time and attention bashing Bush; Bush's negatives are already rising fast, and they'll keep on going up as Democrats have the limelight and use it against him. Once a nominee is selected, the press attention will shift elsewhere for a while, and he'll bounce back.

Of course, a hotly contested Democratic primary season that stretches to the wire — even to a brokered convention — could also be a disaster if the candidates spend all the time beating up on each other. And while one can spin Iowa to say that non-negative explains Edwards, it could also be argued that negative is what stopped Dean cold…

OK. Looks like Kerry, Edwards (!), Dean, Gep, Other.

Gep will drop out, removing the Democrats' least viable major candidate, as the GOP would not even had to caricature him to call him a protectionist in the pockets of the special interests (unions). I don't have a good sense of the man, who seems generally decent and honorable, so I can't predict if he'll endorse anyone. The sensible thing would be to hold off, but at moments like this personal feelings can swing it.

Kerry and Edwards get a boost to New Hampshire. Kerry can now survive a (small) loss in his back yard. Edwards gets Big Mo and a huge increase in news coverage. Dean is wounded but not fatally. Coming in anything worse than a close second in New Hampshire would be major trauma time.

The biggest loser is the GOP. Not only are they deprived of a great target, but they have to spend more on opposition research for longer as there are so many targets.

The biggest question mark is whether the non-Edwards candidates will decide that Iowa is different from the rest of the USA, or if they will read Edwards's strength as a strong lesson that it does NOT pay to go negative against other Democrats. Here's hoping.

Update: See also my second take.