The Strike Returns: What is Wrong with the Democratic Party?

Good afternoon! After a month long absence, I am back to write an entry for this blog. In the meantime, thanks to The Big Picture for his thoughtful entry on the so-called "Ground Zero Mosque" which I agree with wholeheartedly.

I was intending to write today about the state of the elections this fall, but I feel like to do that, I have to provide a little context. As things stand right now, I think the Republican Party is on track to regain control of the House of Representatives, and has a reasonable chance of taking over the Senate. I base these projections on the myriad of polls I've seen from individual races, including internal polls from both parties, as well as the GOP's steady leads in the generic congressional ballot. As you can see on the sidebar, I have too many "tossup" races listed to officially project control of the House, but as things stand now, the momentum is completely on the Republican side. As for the Senate, I think the Democrats could control anything between 49-54 seats.

Political scientists will tell you that the economy largely dictates the fate of the incumbent party. I think that, of course, is true this year. But there's more to the story. It's not just that the economy is bad, and getting worse. It's that the Democratic Party is handling the economic downturn in the worst possible way.

Democrats in Congress have passed some small measures to help get the economy back on track. But they have not shown any push or urgency in getting more jobs bills through. It's not just about improving the current jobs picture (which will be difficult to do before the November elections). It's also about showing people that the government is still competent to play a role in growing the economy and restoring prosperity to the middle class. Yes, I get that Republicans have been obstructionists. But it almost seems like the Democrats aren't even trying. Have you seen any Democrat, including the President, talk at all in the past three weeks about the urgency of acting to get the economy back on track? Have you seen any Democrat, including the President, articulate at any point in the last year exactly what we need to do to get the economy on track, and why we need to do it? It's been, frankly, disgusting to me that President Obama has been golfing and vacationing in Martha's Vineyard, while not offering a peep about the constant barrage of disturbing economic data. He has also made the CRUCIAL mistake of dilly dallying on his Federal Reserve nominees. The inaction of the Federal Reserve during the recent spate of bad economic news is just as troublesome as Congress' inability to act.

It's equally disturbing that despite the economic catastrophe unfolding, Democrats didn't consider cutting short the 6 week Congressional recess to, at the very least, show that they actually care about average Americans.

It's not just their silence that's problematic. The Democratic party has completely conceded the economic policy debate to the Republicans. I have seen more Democrats in the last month call for an extension of the Bush tax cuts for the rich than I've seen advocate any liberal policy prescription, like a larger state-aid bill, public works projects, and cuts to the payroll tax. I've even seen many Democrats, like 10 of them, run advertisements trashing their own party while touting themselves as an "independent voice." If poll numbers show that the public prefers failed Republican policy solutions, Democrats have chosen not to articulate their position, but rather to bow to poll-crazy political consultants. Democrats across the country seem to think that they can only win by trashing their own party and succumbing to failed Republican economic policies.

This election is going to be brutal, there's little doubt about that at this point. But this is about so much more for the Democratic Party, and President Obama. When are Democrats going to realize that we can only win by fighting and advocating for the interest of the middle class? When the middle class sees that we're not out there fighting for them passionately and intelligently, they're not going to vote for us. When the middle class sees us trashing our own philosophy and ideals, they're going to think there's something serious wrong with us, and will probably never vote for our side again.

It may be too late for Democrats to change the fundamental direction of the upcoming election, but they can at least they should get their heads above water and get back to defending the core Democratic principle: doing what needs to be done to give hope, security and prosperity to working Americans.

The Big Picture: We Should All Be Strongly Supporting the Mosque Near Ground Zero

The Park51 Mosque, approved by the appropriate regulatory commission in New York City several weeks ago, has attracted nationwide controversy due to its allegedly provocative nature. Many liberal defenders of the mosque have, in typical halting, self-doubting, weak-willed fashion, tried to argue that the mosque is not really "at" Ground Zero, but rather several blocks away, one among hundreds of buildings in the region, so this shouldn't be such a big deal. I think this is a very misguided argument because it is so defensive, with "it isn't a big deal" carrying the connotation that the mosque is something to be grudgingly tolerated, and the implication that if the mosque were actually more prominent at Ground Zero, that would be a bad thing. This argument will not be persuasive because it is very clear that the opposition is not actually being driven by those who would be fine with mosques everywhere in America except within sight of Ground Zero. Far from it. As the New York Times and many others have reported, this is part of a national movement to prevent mosques from being built everywhere in America. It is driven by prejudiced people who feel that Islam is a "cult" that does not deserve First Amendment protection, because they view Muslims as a dangerous, un-American Other that we need to fear, similar to how these people view Latinos, blacks, and Americans with descent from Asia, with the commonality being darker skin, different religion, different language. These people are white supremacists, or at the least are exploiting the belief in white supremacy for political gain, and they will not be satisfied until at the very least all these "Others" have been put back in their place, un-equal with self-proclaimed "Real Americans". Denying Muslims the right to build mosques, detaining people because they look like immigrants - this is about showing that white people are still superior, still in charge. Many are disturbed not only that these Others are asserting their equality and even supremacy (represented by President Obama), but are more generally disturbed that at the number of non-whites, non-English speakers, non-Christians and want to forcefully "encourage" those Others to leave. I think that the depth and breadth of these white supremacist anxieties has been enhanced by the anxiety of the Great Recession for working and lower-middle class whites. It has also been strengthened by the reinvigorated right-wing populist sense that Democratic government means liberals and "uppity" minorities, from the big cities and the universities and the banks too, empowering themselves and helping out all these Others, at the expense of "Real Americans". So that's where I think the anti-mosque criticism is coming from. Those who oppose the mosque but don't consider themselves anti-Muslim, anti-diversity, white supremacists should take a hard look at whose cause they are serving. Not only are they serving the white supremacists, but they are also enabling the weakening and undermining of America in a number of important ways, rather than embracing the Ground Zero Mosque as a positive good for America.

Building the mosque will be of great benefit to our national security, while preventing its building will make us less safe and threaten our troops. By building this mosque at the site where these extremists killed 3,000 innocent people, we would be sending an enormously powerful signal that Al Qaeda was wrong about America. Al Qaeda attracts recruits and sympathizers on the notion that America hates Islams and wants to oppress and kill Muslims, that we are a latter-day Crusades state. The invasions and occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq, compounded by hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths and the torture at Abu Ghraib and Bagram, greatly strengthened Al Qaeda's message. Nothing will undo the horrendous human cost, nor the destructive blow to our image. Still, building a mosque would present a very different side of America and be a paradigm-shattering shock to Muslims around the world who have looked at Israel/Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan, and military bases in Saudi Arabia, our support for oppressive dictators elsewhere in the Muslim world, and concluded that America is anti-Muslim. Building the mosque will at the least put some in doubt in the minds of many who would sympathize with the extremist anti-Americanism of Al Qaeda, and just the seeds of doubt help stop suicide bombers, who need to feel absolutely certain they are right to carry out their work.

Building the mosque will strengthen the hand of moderate Muslims, who get a chance to show that those who believe in democracy and human rights are not brainwashed saps, and that multiculturalism and an embrace of freedom are compatible with Islam. One of the greatest flaws in the whole neoconservative policy is that it unified Muslims in opposition to America and in opposition to anything we said we stood for, like democracy and human rights. It will greatly strengthen our national security if we put a dent in this unity, and stoke a debate between moderate and radical Muslims. In contrast, when opponents constantly say that the liberal Muslims building this mosque are "radical Islamic extremists" they are not only engaging in the deeply prejudiced racism of saying that all Muslims are the same as the most evil people in their ranks (do Christians really want that kind of racism applied to them, considering the despicable people who called themselves Christians?). They are also playing right into Al Qaeda's hands - Bin Laden's greatest dream is that Al Qaeda becomes the standard-bearer for all Muslims, that his perverted extremist version of Islam becomes orthodoxy. The last thing we want to do is to insist that all Muslims are radical extremists and our sworn enemies. More moderate Muslims will then see that America does hate all Muslims, just as Al Qaeda is saying, and move toward the Al Qaeda camp. So opposing the building of this mosque will strengthen those who hate Americans and that will have real and devastating consequences for American soldiers and aid workers in Muslim countries, and possibly American civilians at home. Those who oppose the mosque are putting their own political ambitions and their own white supremacist anxieties ahead of keeping Americans safe. Of course this is not surprising coming from a Republican Party that has intentionally undermined economic recovery to suit its own political ambitions and ideological dogma.

Building this mosque at Ground Zero is, as Mayor Bloomberg and President Obama have said, of vital importance to reaffirming the First Amendment and the principles of freedom of religion, freedom of expression, and freedom of congregation upon which this nation was founded. Yes America was founded in large part by the greedy and land-hungry, the slaveowners and the takers of indigenous land for power and profit. But the part of the American tradition that created all that is good about this country, all that is free and democratic, comes from the people who came here because they were oppressed everywhere else for who they were and what they believed. We should not only defend the rights of Muslims and everyone else to freedom of religion and expression and congregation. We should be celebrating the building of the mosque at Ground Zero because it means that America is still the nation that draws its vitality from those who come here from everywhere, "yearning to breathe free" as it says on the Statue of Liberty. Furthermore, multiculturalism and the unencumbered, unrestricted expression of beliefs and values is the lifeblood of our culture and enriches us all. Refusing to build this mosque would strike a blow against the very elements that have given us what freedom, democracy, and vitality we have.

Finally, I feel particularly strongly about the importance of building this mosque because I am Jewish. I think that Jews, and really all people who have ever been or could ever be part of a religious minority, would be incredibly shortsighted if they opposed this mosque. As a Jew think it might not be the best idea to let the prejudices of a majority trample on the basic rights of a religious minority. Preventing the mosque at Ground Zero would greatly strengthen those who want to ban mosques everywhere in America. First of all, this would be deeply oppressive for Muslim-Americans. But what about Jewish-Americans, or Hindu-Americans, or Catholic-Americans, or Protestants of different denominations? Do we really want to go down the road of undermining First Amendment rights of different religious affiliations from the majority? As the famous quote from the Nazi era says, "First they came for the Communists, and I didn't speak up, because I wasn't a Communist ... then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up, because I wasn't a Jew ... then they came for the Catholics, and I didn't speak up, because I wasn't a Catholic ... finally when they came for the Protestants, there was no one left to speak up for me."

The Daily Strike-7/29/10-Special Announcement

Good evening and welcome to the Daily Strike. Beginning tomorrow, I will be embarking first on a cross-country road trip, then on to three years at law school. As a result, I will no longer be able to write for this blog daily. I will come back periodically to write bigger picture entries (not to be confused with The Big Picture, who hopefully will also continue to contribute sporadically) and I will continually update my race rankings for this year's elections. So make sure you keep the blog as a bookmark, because you'll never know when we'll pop up again.

I originally started this blog as a way to catalog what I anticipated would be major accomplishments for the Obama administration. The first official entry to the blog was on January 29, 2009, just over a week after Obama's euphoric inauguration. I wasn't just hopeful about President Obama's legislative agenda. I thought we had entered into a new political paradigm. The economic theories of the Reagan/Bush years had been thoroughly discredited by a massive financial crisis. The politics of division and distraction had seemingly been overcome with an extraordinary candidate, one of the most inspiring American stories. The country was feeling extremely hopeful, which was remarkable given the economic conditions. People traveled miles and stood out in the bitter cold to witness a special moment in history, and the spirit of the day moved me deeply. People of all races and backgrounds gathered by the millions because we felt an immense amount of pride in our country and faith in our new President. I mean, what other event with 1.8 million people would lead to zero arrests??

After that euphoria, it's very hard to understand how we got to where we are today. Today, the unemployment rate is hovering just below 10%, but we can't even get a tiny jobs bill through Congress. The President of the United States, today, had to beg the Senate to approve a small business lending bill, and the bill was still filibustered by the full Republican conference. A bill that essentially is the main plank of the Republican platform, was blocked by the Republicans for basically no reason at all. Today, energy form is pretty much dead. Immigration reform is dead. Many of the old battles we thought we'd transcended, like race and social issues, are everyday items in an often embarrassing national conversation. We're three months before an election that will most likely produce heavy Democratic losses, which will kill any reasonable chance of creating the lasting change we were promised and so desperately needed.

So how did we get from there to here? That's what I've tried to explain daily in this blog, and it hasn't been pretty. Don't get me wrong, this has been the most productive Congress and the most progressive President in generations, and we have a lot to be thankful for. The list of accomplishments is quite impressive (you can view it on the right sidebar of your screen). But several obstacles got in the way of broader, sweeping change. Here are a list of reasons we are where we are:

1. The current Republican party is the craziest, most nihilistic, psycho political party imaginable. They are purposely obstructing progress for their own political gain. Their policy preferences are to massively redistribute money from the middle class to the wealthy. To today's Republicans, our nation's problems are the fault of the most vulnerable, while the only virtuous ones are those who make a lot of money for themselves while doing nothing to improve society. Why aren't the unemployed working hard enough to get jobs? Why are illegal immigrants ruining this country? Why is there so much black-on-white racism? It's hard to negotiate in good-faith with these people.

2. It's one thing to have a nihilistic minority party, but it's another thing to have that party contain major institutional power. Republicans, with a tiny minority in both the House and the Senate, have the institutional ability to basically put a stop to government. The root of the problem, of course, is the filibuster. The 60 vote threshold is fundamentally undemocratic, that we've mentioned a million times. I promise I'll think the same thing when the Republicans are in the majority again. Perhaps more bothersome, are the endless delays caused by the filibusters. Even if they don't have the votes to stop legislation, Republicans still have the ability to delay legislation and appointments, and thus run out the clock on the Democratic agenda. The small business bill is a great example. Republicans will not grant "unanimous consent" to any Democratic request to hold votes, so Democrats are constantly forced to invoke cloture, a process that can take up to 3 days. It also doesn't help that Majority Leader Reid refuses to keep the Senate in session when Republicans engage in these delay tactics.

3. Two groups have absolutley undue influence in our political system. The first is the corporate world and their army of lobbyists. A good swath of the Democratic party will vote against good bills or amendments just because the Chamber of Commerce, the NRA, hedge fund managers etc., told them to. It happens all the time. And the Democrats are supposed to be the good party! Some people try to minimize the influece money has on politics. They tell us money doesn't really change how citizens or legislators vote. I'll just point you to a poll out of Florida today that shows two billionaires, one of whom is a criminal, are leading the Republicans nomination for Governor and Democratic nomination for Senate respectively.

The other group with undue influence are small states. It doesn't seem right to me that one Senator from Nebraska can kill an entire unemployment benefits bill because his tiny state is lucky enough to have an unemployment rate. Even before we talk about the filibuster, the Senate is an undemocratic institution!

4. The last major problem is that the Democrats, and specifically President Obama, are not trying hard enough to sell a progressive agenda, despite the massive political capital they were given in the 2008 election. Obama and the Democrats had the opportunity to change the terms of debate on every major issue. Obama could have consistently, in every speech, argue that Bush's economic policies put us in this enormous ditch, and that we have to invest money now to get the economy moving again. He could have explained that the short-term deficit wasn't as important as job creation and that the long-term deficit was the product of reckless Republican tax cuts, endless wars, and unsustainable health care costs. Instead, the President and Congressional Democrats missed messages. They fed into Republican talking points about the deficit, to the point that they forced themsleves to scuttle important items on the agenda. They didn't fight hard consistently for more stimulus, which was desperately needed to counter the massive loss of demand in the economy. In fact, some Democrats in Congress decided that it would be easier to just act like Republicans! The Blue Dogs harped constantly about the deficit and intrusive government, but then would vote for major war spending bills without a whimper.

The public never got a coherent narrative of what the Democratic party was about, what it stands for, and what it will do to help their lives. As a result, they began to distrust Democratic policies and politicians.

I write about these difficulties not because I've lost hope. Barack Obama's election will always be proof that anything is possible in American politics. I write more to underscore how far we have to go before we make the change we need. It's not just politicians who have to change. All of us do. We have to stand up for our values, and we have to organize and inform our peers to put pressure on our representatives. That probably means I should get off the computer and start actually doing something with my life, right?

I want to thank everybody who helped with the blog, wrote comments, and read our entries. Please keep following my Twitter feed if you want my stream of consciousness thoughts on politics, and make sure you follow what Congress is doing as much as you can! Congress Matters is a great resource, as well as the websites for the House and the Senate.

Thanks again, and we'll see you again in the future!

The Daily Strike-7/28/10-Going Small

Good evening and welcome to the Daily Strike. The President spent the day today in New Jersey and New York City, first talking jobs, then going to some elite fundraisers. Not exactly a good political juxtaposition.

THE SENATE: It's becoming very apparent that Congress won't be doing much of anything for the rest of this election year. Republicans seem pretty content to not only filibuster Democratic agenda items, but to grind the Senate to a halt until the Democratic majority is reduced or eliminated. Take the bill on the floor right now, the small business lending bill. The bill has been on the floor for almost a month. Republicans have refused to allow votes on amendments or the bill itself, despite the fact that the bill is basically a Republican idea. The party that talks daily about tax breaks to businesses doesn't want to allow a vote on a bill that gives money directly to small businesses. We've said it a million times, but Republicans knee-jerk opposition is becoming a disturbing matter of habit.

Tomorrow, finally, the Senate will vote whether to cut off debate on the small business bill, and hopefully will send it to the House quickly so that it can go straight to President Obama's desk.

Then there's the issue of energy. Majority Leader Reid has taken the idea of a comprehensive energy bill off the table for this session of Congress. He has instead proposed a much narrower bill, that will raise the liability cap for BP in relation to the oil spill, and will also contain some small investments in alternative energy. Reid was hoping to bring the bill to the floor early next week. But Republicans are howling in opposition even to this small measure, ostensibly because they are against new regulations on "hydro-flacking" which is a way to extract onshore natural gas. Is there any question whether they'll let this bill go through? I don't think so.

Given these restrictions, I think it's time that the President use some of his executive powers to make changes. For one, he could have the EPA place restrictions on carbon emissions. At the very least, the EPA could issue that threat to spur some sort of action on climate change. On the jobs front, Obama could put some backhanded political pressure on the federal reserve to take more measures to pump money into the economy short-term, or as Matthew Yglesias suggests, do some strategic talking.

THE HOUSE: While the Senate spent a day dilly-dallying, the House actually did some minorly important work. This morning, the House unanimously passed a bill that would bring parity to sentencing for crack and cocaine users. There has long been a policy that punishes crack users far more than cocaine users, which has a disparate impact on minorities. The Senate has already passed the bill, so it will go straight to President Obama for his signature.

The House also passed the first of 12 annual appropriations bills today, the bill funding Military Construction and Veterans Affairs. This is usually the least controversial of the spending bills, and today was no exception. The bill passed by a vote of 411-6. All of the no votes came from Republicans. The House will take up another spending bill tomorrow, though they will almost certainly not complete all 12 bills prior to the end of the fiscal year, which will require Congress to pass some continuing resolutions to keep the government funded.

That's it for today, we'll see you tomorrow, at which point we'll have a special announcement.

The Daily Strike-7/27/10-Undisclosed

Good evening and welcome to the Daily Strike, on what's been a somewhat depressing day in politics.

THE SENATE: The Senate today failed to advance the campaign finance bill known as the DISCLOSE Act. The bill, which passed the House, would place new disclosure requirements on corporations and unions donated to political campaigns. Republicans decried the bill as as trampling on free speech, even though many of these same Republicans voted for a far more expansive campaign finance bill in 2002. The vote on the motion to invoke cloture on the motion to proceed to the bill (that's about 4 votes away from final passage, if you're keeping track) was 57-41, and it broke down strictly on party lines. Every Democrat voted for the bill, except for Majority Leader Reid, who voted no for procedural reasons. Every Republican voted no. Senators Lieberman (?-CT) and Ensign (R-NV) were absent.

Today's vote means that the bill is killed for the remainder of this Congress, and for the foreseeable future. As bad as our political system is now, it will only get worse, as corporations have unencumbered access to political candidates. Today's vote also proves that Republicans care far more about their own political interest than they do about the integrity of our democratic system, though you probably knew that already.

The Senate is limping towards the finish line of this month's session. Tomorrow, Senators will continue consideration of the Small Business Jobs bill, which would provide for loans to small businesses during the economic downturn. If only Democrats could find ways to add some other stimulus money to this bill, like money for state and local governments.

After the Senate finishes the work on that bill, they'll vote on the Kagan Supreme Court nomination next week and skip out of town, having done very little to address the myriad of problems facing the country.

THE HOUSE: The House voted today to give final approval to $60 billion to fight the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. For all the deficit hysteria we've seen over much smaller spending bills, this bill passed by a huge margin of 308-114. 102 Democrats and 12 Republicans voted against the war funding. Democrats had originally tried to attach domestic measure to the war funding bill, like aid to states, summer and youth jobs programs, and other jobs measures. Democrats were unable to get enough support for these items in the Senate.

It still amazes me that a tiny jobs bill gets bottled up in the Senate almost weekly, while a much larger funding bill for endless wars passes without a whimper.

The House will move on to consideration of appropriations bills over the next couple of days. The House will skip town at the end of the week, but hopefully they'll ratify whatever the Senate does on Small Business lending legislation.

THE WHITE HOUSE: The main event at the White House today was a meeting with bipartisan Congressional leadership about the rest of the legislative agenda this year. The meeting didn't produce much news, but we were able to glean some tension between House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Majority Leader Reid. Pelosi is furious at Reid for abandoning a comprehensive climate bill in favor of a scaled-back piece of energy legislation. Pelosi forced her vulnerable members to support a cap-and-trade bill with the promise that Reid would follow suit in the Senate, which will not happen. I obviously sympathize with Pelosi on this one, but I'm not sure what else Reid could have done. There clearly weren't 60 votes for the climate bill, and the White House has shown almost no leadership in advocating for the legislation.

That's it for today. See you tomorrow!