Dropping into pure-political analysis mode for a minute, I’ve been looking at the upcoming Senate races. Everyone is projecting a bad year for Democrats, and barring something completely unforeseen, that looks to be the case. When Barbara Boxer, Harry Reid, and even Russ Feingold are in tight races, that means that the Democrats are in serious trouble, with many projecting about five seats switching to Republicans, with some putting the outside chance at ten. But, unless that unlikely circumstance were to happen, the Democrats will look to hold on to the Senate, so it won’t be too disastrous.
The real trouble, however, is that this year is the class of 2004 – the last year the Republicans held the majority in the Senate. Right now, the number of Senate seats up for election are split evenly between Republicans and Democrats at 18 each. The next two elections will be for the classes of 2006 and 2008 (which were heavy anti-Republican years), where Democrats won a number of close races they normally would not have. Republicans that won, however, won under the worst circumstances they could expect to endure, thus proving themselves as strong candidates that probably won’t lose in the future. So the Democrats will be defending a number of candidates in weak positions whereas Republicans will be running candidates that were able to pull it out in a very anti-Republican election.
Additionally, the side-effect for the Democrats of winning all those elections is that now they have many more incumbents to defend – 20 to the Republicans 10. The same story goes for 2014, where 19 Democrats are up against 13 Republicans.
Between having to defend incumbents in Republican-friendly states and the sheer imbalance in number of incumbents to defend, barring some sort of massive turn against the Republicans on the scale of 2006, the Democrats can look at raw attrition losing them, reasonably, 10 seats in 2012 and 2014. Combine that with what look to be a number of losses in traditional Democratic strongholds this year (Illinois, Nevada, Delaware) in addition to other, expected Republican victories in Republican states, the Republicans could see seats in the high-50′s quite reasonably in 2015.
Basically, it looks bad for Democrats in the Senate over the next six years. At best, Democrats will have a majority for the next two years only.
I try not to fall into the meme that Democrats hate America that many on the right do. I assume that they simply have different points of emphasis from conservatives regarding patriotism. But, then, I read stuff life this:
He said U.S. officials did not whitewash the American record and in fact raised on its [sic] own a new immigration law in Arizona that requires police to ask about a person’s immigration status if there is suspicion the person is in the country illegally.
I’m
The United States and China reported no major breakthroughs Friday after only their second round of talks about human rights since 2002.
The Obama administration wants to push Beijing to treat its citizens better, but it also needs Chinese support on Iranian and North Korean nuclear standoffs, climate change and other difficult issues. …
[Assistant Secretary of State Michael] Posner said in addition to talks on freedom of religion and expression, labor rights and rule of law, officials also discussed Chinese complaints about problems with U.S. human rights, which have included crime, poverty, homelessness and racial discrimination.
I’m sorry, but criticizing the US on crime, poverty, homelessness and racial discrimination? These are problems in *every* society on the face of the Earth. You can’t tell me that China’s problems of crime, poverty, homelessness and racial discrimination are in *any way* better dealt with than the way they are dealt with in the US.
The fact that Obama’s envoy not only accepted the criticism as justified, but then, on his own, bashed America for having a state that let police officers arrest people for being in the country illegally is beyond comprehension. We’re taking human rights criticism from a country that revers a person who killed 40 million of his own people not 50 years ago. That ran over it’s own democracy movement with tanks not 25 years ago. That still arrests people for political crimes or practicing a non-state sanctioned religion.
Does Obama think that the US is no better than China when it comes to the subjects of freedom, liberty and human rights?
Ξ May 16th, 2010 | → Comments Off | ∇ Interesting|
Went to see Robin Hood with Bob, Kat and Brian. Very odd movie. The first half was an interesting and fresh reinterpretation of the story, along with some very nice nods to those of us familiar with the Plantagenet dynasty (decent portrayal of Richard the Lionheart, the source of the financial woes of England, Eleanor of Aquitaine). Then, about halfway through the movie, it lost all coherence. Good, strong history replaced by outright wackiness. Even allowing for artistic license, the movie just stopped making sense.
For instance, the French decide to invade England by attacking the Cliffs of Dover. Now, the Cliffs of Dover are a gorgeous backdrop to any movie, but it staggers the imagination to think, of all of the possible places to invade England, that attacking cliffs would be the place to start.
Additionally, the whole scene has a very Saving Private Ryan circa 1199 feel to it, with wooden landing craft dropping their front ramps to unload men and horses.
The English arrive just as they begin unloading, and for some weird reason, decide to run down the narrow path to the beach, rather than simply wait at the top of the cliff and rain arrows down on them. Oh, and Cate Blanchett decides to show up in a suit of armor and lead a group of orphans in the battle. I don’t feel this is a spoiler because it doesn’t make a bit of sense. It was completely out of place – in fact the whole thing was so ridiculous I couldn’t help but laugh at what was suppose to be a serious scene. In fact, I’m beginning to think that I’m going to steer clear of any movie that features Cate Blanchett in armor. She showed up to Tilbury in armor in Elizabeth: Golden Age and proceeded to ruin one of the best speeches in history. Not a good track record.
Apparently, the original script was re-written about fifty times, and it shows as the movie goes on. I really enjoyed the first half of them movie – it was all fairly original story-telling – relating the tale of a group of soldiers trying to make it back home following the death of the King. Then Russell Crowe’s character get’s caught up trying to help the feudal manor of Nottingham in spite of himself. Then . . . well, I don’t really know what happens. It’s just that incoherent. Suffice to say stuff happens, and a battle takes place.
Oh, and this is the first Robin Hood I’ve seen that sets up for a sequel. Just a really odd movie. The first hour or so had a lot going for it, then Ridley Scott just sort of seemed to lose interest and just threw everything else together in order to get a movie out to audiences.
Elena Kagan is about as good a liberal judicial nominee as Republicans could hope for (outside Laurence Tribe), but that doesn’t mean she’s a good nominee. Her credentials and temper seem to be impeccable, but her underlying ideology is incompatible with conservative judicial philosophy. These judicial nominations should be battlegrounds for arguing that, but instead we have this frustrating whirlwind of personal attacks on her. It’s an equal-opportunity problem – the left did the same to former Pentagon spokesman Pete Williams in ’91 in an effort to embarrass Republicans.
The point is that it is strongly in both men’s interest to refuse to betray, assuming a high-trust environment where they could expect the other to refuse to betray. But because neither man has full trust in the other (and can’t work out a binding contract to this effect with the other), their “best move” turns out to be betraying the other, even though this results in a bad outcome for both men.
If they could communicate, establish trust, and forge a binding contract — if they could cooperate — they could both have the optimal result. But they can’t, and that forces upon both of them a sub-optimal result.
It seems to me the dirtier aspects of politics are just like this. If both parties could really agree on what smears were out-of-bounds and forge a binding contract to avoid such smears, both parties could achieve what many long for, an optimal sort of politics, in which smears (and invasive questions) were not on the menu.
But the two parties can’t cooperate, for a variety of reasons (including the fact that the parties can’t actually control any of their millions of members, so any single person can decide to void the contract and go dirty, thus making any such contract between the parties meaningless).
So both are forced into a suboptimal solution in which each “betrays” the other with smears and arguably dirty tactics.
The two sides have fundamental, often irreconcilable differences. That doesn’t mean that the various political actors can’t be civil and rational. I’ve seen Al Sharpton on the Sunday morning talk shows completely transform himself from the firebrand image he puts on for mass-consumption. The thing is, people only pay attention to politics when there are elements of drama, otherwise they become cynical and apathetic. So rather than have a civil, meaningful discussion that will influence only a small percentage of the population (the rest quickly losing interest), they both make a grab for the large chunk of undecided voters:
The public — and when I say “the public,” I don’t mean all of the public, I mean the 20-25% “moderates” who are largely apathetic and apolitical and tend to vote according to things like gut-level reaction to a candidate’s charisma and presentation — does not like ideological spats and in fact prefers to believe that ideological spats flow only from emotional pique and meanness of character, and that, if everyone just coolly and amicably sat down together and rolled up their sleeves, such spats would disappear altogether, because they’d find a Magic Compromise which achieves all goals simultaneously while imposing no costs.
They refuse to believe that choosing one theory of governance will come with associated costs. They like the Republicans’ idea of cutting taxes; they don’t like the Republicans’ ideas about cutting spending (except in theory).
They like the Democrats’ idea of voting ourselves all a big raise in the form of new social spending given to almost everybody (except the ultrarich). They don’t like the Democrats’ plans about upping taxes, or, as Democrats call it, “investing in our future.”
Choosing is an act that requires both intellectual effort and a certain amount of moral effort, too. If you decide to take money out of someone’s pocket, or cut the subsidies they’ve grown accustomed to, you need a certain level of moral surety that you’re doing the right thing.
. . .
I’d like to deal with them as if they were adults and just say “Hey, here’s their ideology, here’s theirs; they’re probably not bad people, on the whole, but their ideas are bad, and you have to finally chose their ideas or mine,” but, on a political level, they’re not adults.
They are in fact children, and you don’t explain to a small child the moral consequences of lying or the nuanced cases in which a lie might be justified or inconsequential.
You tell a small child that if he lies, his Mommy and Daddy will cry, and hope that that blunt emotional messaging does the trick.
So how does that apply to the “Kagan is lesbian” rumor? Because it’s what will get that middle %25 to pay attention.
Here’s what politicians can never say, but I’m not running for office, so I can: There are a lot of fucking Dummies in this country and they’re lazy to boot and the only way you can hope to engage them in politics is through Punch-and-Judy puppet-shows with lots of slapsticking and crude drama.
And if for a lot of these Dummies, the only question they’re asking about Elena Kagan is “Is she a lesbian?” — because it’s a fun question like they often see on Melrose Place, except with much hotter women — that is one more question than they were ever interested in as regards Sonia Sotomayor
And because that’s the only question regarding Kagan the Dummies have even heard of, that limits the actual political content of the debate they’re willing to even hear to “Does that mean she supports a guarantee to gay marriage?”
It’s not my fault, it’s not your fault, it’s not our politicians’ fault. Frankly, I gotta say, it’s often not even the Democrats’ fault.
It’s the Dummies’ fault. Our politics is fundamentally stupid because those marginal voters that are the key to every election are fundamentally stupid — at least as regards politics.
Ace is very right-wing, and sometime a bit too crude for my tastes, but this blog post isn’t just spot on, but it’s enlightening and transcends ideological lines – I think even liberal can find a lot to agree with in his observations. Read the whole thing.
Now I know why all those weed commercials use dandelions as their foil – they’re damned annoying. I easily could have let my lawn slip into next week based on the height of the grass, but all the dandelions towered over the rest of the lawn. It looked like I hadn’t mowed it in a month. Ugh – next year I need to invest some effort into the lawn.
A Bit of Wit
“Obviously I was either onto something, or on something.”
