Author Archives: Josh Eidelson

I BET HE WANTS TO MASSACRE THE ANTI-ZIONIST JEWS TOO

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Over at the Corner, Mark Steyn links the story of one (yes, one) protester yelling “slaughter the Jews” at Israel’s Deputy Foreign Minister and smirks

But don’t worry. I’m sure it’s only “anti-Zionist.”

Besides humor (failed), what is Steyn’s point here? Maybe the “slaughter” guy can’t distinguish between the country Israel and the Jewish people. I can. Most Jews can, including the ones who live in Israel. Can Mark Steyn? (More in this vein here)

Meanwhile, Steyn’s corner colleague John Derbyshire (the Marty Peretz of the National Review is defending Tom Tancredo’s call for literacy tests at the polls. But don’t worry. I’m sure it’s only “literacy supremacism.”

BEN EIDELSON ON THE FILIBUSTER

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Read my brother’s new piece up on Slate about the filibuster:

When Republicans have been in the majority, the filibustering minority has actually represented the majority of Americans 64 percent of the time. When Democrats have been in the majority, that figure plummets to 3 percent. So the charge that it is somehow hypocritical for Democrats to decry Republican filibusters as affronts to majority rule—if they also stand by their past decisions to filibuster the Republicans—is easily answered. When Democrats have filibustered Republicans in recent years, they have very often represented more Americans than the Republican majority; the same is almost never true in reverse.

Hopefully, responding to the responses will force Ben to start blogging again.

WHAT’S THE PLAN?

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Two weeks ago, lots of folks were predicting that Scott Brown would win the next day’s election. I don’t think as many people predicted (I didn’t) that by February it would still be left to Washington Kremlinologists to try to figure out what exactly Obama, Pelosi, and Reid want to see happen, and how quickly, on healthcare. I thought by February, the American people, let alone the American Congress, would have a clear idea what the leadership wanted to see. I definitely would not have predicted that an hour after the vote Barney Frank would be on TV talking about scuttling the bill.

It’s like a thousand-times-magnified version of the 2006 dust-up over who would chair the Intelligence Committee in the new Democratic majority. It didn’t captivate the media, but it did provide a slow burn of embarrassing stories for the Speaker-to-be speculating whether she would tap hawkish Harman or impeached-as-a-judge Hastings. In the end, she went with the 3rd most senior Democrat. In the weeks it took Pelosi to make that call, I kept wondering: Why didn’t Pelosi mull this one over ahead of time in October when it looked clear she was headed to victory?

Speaking of what Dems should do now, Jon Stewart got at something last week: “No matter what you do, the Republicans are not going to let you into the station wagon. They’re never going to let you in. And here’s the worst part: You’re the majority. It’s your car!”

If Pelosi and Reid’s folks are indeed working on how to make the reconciliation sidecar work (we can only hope), now would be a good time to be reminding the members why it’s gotta happen. Nature abhors your vacuum, but Dick Armey doesn’t.

CHOOSING THEIR WORDS

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Over at the National Review, Ramesh Ponnuru is defending anti-choice folks against criticism for highlighting Tim Tebow’s mom’s choice not to have an abortion while pushing to take that choice away from her. I’ll grant that it’s not contradictory for someone to both want abortion to be made illegal and to like it when women who legally could have abortion choose not to. But it’s intentionally misleading for a movement seeking a ban on abortion to appeal to the electorate’s good feelings about choice by invoking individuals’ choices as an argument for prohibition. It’s especially cynical given that it’s the pro-choice movement that stands up for women threatened coercive abortion or sterilization by the government or their employer. I wrote more about this (in an exchange with my brother, who’s sadly hopped off the blog wagon) here and here.

As for Tim and Pam Tebow, apparently they share Focus on the Family’s belief that it should be illegal for women like Pam whose doctors advise them to terminate their pregnancy to choose to follow their doctors’ advice. So why won’t their ad say that? Why not say:

“I’m Tim Tebow, football great. I’ve been blessed with so much in life. I know my life itself is a blessing. Doctors in the Phillipines recommended my Mom abort me because of serious complications in pregnancy. Good thing abortion was illegal in the Phillipines. It should be illegal here in America too.”

I think Focus on the Family isn’t running an ad like that because they know the median American has discomfort about abortion but doesn’t want to see it banned. But what does Ramesh Ponnuru think is the explanation?

LUCY, FOOTBALL, ETC.

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Folks who were hoping that a lame duck Dodd would be more inclined to push for more aggressive financial regulatory reform should be disappointed to hear that Dodd, who chairs the Senate Banking Committee, is now considering negotiating away creation of a Consumer Financial Protection Agency in an attempt to win over Republican senators. Actually, all of us should be disappointed. What’s as discouraging as the move is the motivation: Dodd is saying he wants a financial regulatory reform that Richard Shelby, the ranking Republican on the committee, can support. He’s created a team of four Democratic senators and four Republicans to try to hash out a deal.

Does this sound familiar to anyone? Dodd and Shelby seem to be reading from the Max Baucus – Charles Grassley script that consumed the healthcare process in the Senate for long enough that now a special election result in January has the chance to blow up the bill again. What did they get to show for it? Olympia Snowe voted the bill out of the Finance Committee but then voted with every other Senate GOPer to declare it unconstitutional.

What’s most frustrating about this is that it’s just bad negotiating. Chris Dodd only weakens his position by giving Richard Shelby (and thus Mitch McConnell) a veto over financial regulatory reform. Republicans have no motivation to help Democrats pass a strong bill regulating the banks – first, because Republicans are in bed with the banks, and second, because Republicans want to keep bashing the Democrats for being in bed with the banks (a strategy which is paying off, judging by the polls in Massachusetts).

Even if the Democrats are desperate for Republican votes (whether to give moderate Democrats cover, to make up for Democratic defections, or to earn a bipartisan aura), the best way to get them is to show you’re ready to pass a bill without them. Then there’s a shot a Republican offers to support a weaker version. The worst strategy to win Republican votes is to try to show how reasonable you are by offering them veto power in exchange for being willing to talk to you. We call that negotiating against yourself.

And as Matt Yglesias observes, there are worse things that could happen than a Republican filibuster of financial regulatory reform.

POSITIVE PEACE WHICH IS THE PRESENCE OF JUSTICE

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From Martin Luther King’s Letter from Birmingham Jail:

I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action”; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a “more convenient season.” Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.

I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and that when they fan in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress. I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that the present tension in the South is a necessary phase of the transition from an obnoxious negative peace, in which the Negro passively accepted his unjust plight, to a substantive and positive peace, in which all men will respect the dignity and worth of human personality. Actually, we who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive. We bring it out in the open, where it can be seen and dealt with. Like a boil that can never be cured so long as it is covered up but must be opened with an its ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must be exposed, with all the tension its exposure creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured.

More on MLK Day here.

JARRING

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I think Matt Yglesias is going too easy on Harry Reid when he says

To clarify what I said yesterday it’s the very lack of having really done anything wrong that makes Reid’s situation to sticky. It’s just jarring for those of us under a certain age to think of an old white guy walking around saying “negro” and wielding political influence. But Reid can’t really apologize for being the sort of old white guy who would say that because he is, in fact, just such an old white guy. On the merits, the observation that it’s a political asset for Obama that he doesn’t speak in a manner that’s racially coded as black is pretty much banal conventional wisdom.

First, I’m sure are plenty of senior citizens, including African-Americans, who still find it jarring that the US Senate is run by a guy who uses the word “Negro” in conversation with journalists. Beyond that, I don’t think Matt believes that Harry Reid is just physically incapable of not saying Negro. I’m sure he’s done much harder things in thirty-some years in public life.

There’s a range of readings of what someone could mean by using the word “Negro” to describe the “dialect” Obama doesn’t use, from “the way Black people talk in my racist stereotype,” to “the way Black people talk in the minds of ignorant racists,” and I don’t know any way to discern exactly where Harry Reid’s intended meaning falls on the spectrum. But he was right to apologize.

That said, any comparison between Harry Reid’s comments about his support for a Black man for President and Trent Lott’s support for a White supremacist for President can only make Harry Reid look very, very good. And Republicans’ attempts to conflate the two just leave the impression that they never really understood what was wrong with what Trent Lott said in the first place. On this, I agree with Matt entirely.

YEAR IN REVIEW

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Resurrecting an old tradition, here’s a post from each month of 2009, followed by those months in ’08 and ’07 when I posted:

December 2009: Give Me Bipartisanship Or Give Me Death
November 2009: History: Not Over Yet
October 2009: This Intrigued Me Enough to Transcribe It
September 2009: Tzom Kal (An Easy Fast)
August 2009: 30 Rock, Race, and Current Events
July 2009: 30 Rock’s Racial Humor: Not So Hot
June 2009: This Annoyed Me Enough to Transcribe It
May 2009: Reactionaries Retrench: Homosexuality Shouldn’t Disqualify You From Judging, Just From Marrying
April 2009: House of Rock
March 2009: Twitter Textual Analysis
February 2009: Majority Ain’t What It Used to Be
January 2009: I Dream of Nicholas Kristof

December 2008: Fighting Words (As Framed By Your Liberal Media Edition)
November 2008: A Lot Can Happen in Four Years
October 2008: If By “Carefree” You Mean Heterosexual
September 2008: Culture of Life/Choice
August 2008: Wife Swap Conservatism
July 2008: A Campaign About Change Versus a Campaign About McCain
June
June 2008: Breaking: Barack Tries to Reconcile Hope, Policy Differences With Opponent
May 2008: Fun WIth Collective Bargaining
March 2008: No Surprises Here
February 2008: Fighting Words (FISA Edition)
January 2008: Sympathy for the Satyr?

December 2007: The Meaning of the Word “Criminal”
November 2007: Meta Is As Meta Does
October 2007: Stand By Me
September 2007: Whiter American Natalism? (Or “David Brooks’ White Fertility”)
July 2007: World’s Shortest Political Quiz
June 2007: Put Down the Female Candidate And Nobody Gets Hurt
May 2007: Mother’s Day
April 2007: Politicize Away
March 2007: Nice Work If You Can Get It
February 2007: They Don’t Do That, Do They?
January 2007: The McCain Strategy

For Dad, posts from each month of 2003-2006 are here.

DODD 2012!

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As of this afternoon, Connecticut Attorney General Dick Blumenthal is officially running for Senate. Folks who’ve spent time in Connecticut may remember that Blumenthal was famous until today for almost running for higher office every cycle but never pulling the trigger. For comparison’s sake, Elliot Spitzer used to be mentioned in the same breath as Blumenthal as a rising star Attorney General destined for bigger things. In the time Blumenthal’s been Attorney General, Elliot Spitzer went from government attorney to private attorney to Attorney General to Governor to Slate Columnist.

It’s good to see Blumenthal step in to run for Chris Dodd’s now-open seat. It does raise the question though of who will run against Joe Lieberman if Joementum tries to test his luck again in 2012 (there was a rumor Blumenthal would run against Lieberman in ’12, although then again they said the same thing in ’06). I suspect Ned Lamont will take another go at it, assuming he doesn’t become the Governor of Connecticut first. That would be fun. More outlandish: A restless Chris Dodd, figuring the sheen of scandal has faded, unretires himself to run for the other Nutmeg State Senate seat. After all, Joe Lieberman makes most anybody look good. Even if Joe ran as an Indy and not a GOPer, I think he’d pull more GOP than Dem votes. An outlandish scenario I guess, but a fun one to ponder.

GIVE ME BIPARTISANSHIP OR GIVE ME DEATH

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Just watched the Senate vote for cloture on the healthcare amendment – and David Gergen on CNN declare it “tragic” to see “major social legislation” move forward without a bipartisan supermajority. Please remind me the last time Gergen (et al) spared a moment for the tragedy of thousands of Americans dying needlessly for lack of health insurance.