Saturday, January 19, 2008

The candidates on the imminent recession

Krugman had a comprehensive piece in Monday's New York Times about the candidates and what they are actually saying about the economy and what they propose doing to help it:

Take, for example, John McCain’s admission that economics isn’t his thing. “The issue of economics is not something I’ve understood as well as I should,” he says. “I’ve got Greenspan’s book.”

...
Meanwhile, Rudy Giuliani wants us to go for broke, literally: his answer to the economy’s short-run problems is a huge permanent tax cut, which he claims would pay for itself. It wouldn’t.
About Mike Huckabee — well, what can you say about a candidate who talks populist while proposing to raise taxes on the middle class and cut them for the rich?
...
But Mr. Romney, who really needs to take chances at this point, apparently can’t break the habit of telling Republicans only what he thinks they want to hear. He’s still offering nothing but standard-issue G.O.P. pablum about low taxes and a pro-business environment.
On the Democratic side, John Edwards, although never the front-runner, has been driving his party’s policy agenda. He’s done it again on economic stimulus: last month, before the economic consensus turned as negative as it now has, he proposed a stimulus package including aid to unemployed workers, aid to cash-strapped state and local governments, public investment in alternative energy, and other measures.
Last week Hillary Clinton offered a broadly similar but somewhat larger proposal. (It also includes aid to families having trouble paying heating bills, which seems like a clever way to put cash in the hands of people likely to spend it.) The Edwards and Clinton proposals both contain provisions for bigger stimulus if the economy worsens.
...
Anyway, on Sunday Mr. Obama came out with a real stimulus plan. As was the case with his health care plan, which fell short of universal coverage, his stimulus proposal is similar to those of the other Democratic candidates, but tilted to the right.
For example, the Obama plan appears to contain none of the alternative energy initiatives that are in both the Edwards and Clinton proposals, and emphasizes across-the-board tax cuts over both aid to the hardest-hit families and help for state and local governments. I know that Mr. Obama’s supporters hate to hear this, but he really is less progressive than his rivals on matters of domestic policy.
...

So if I go by McCain's example, I can go out and read Greenspan's book and then I'm suddenly qualified to run the country? Sweet.

Labels: 2008, economy

posted by Suchita Shah at 9:43 PM 8 comments Post to DemWire

SC Results

CNN exit poll posted for South Carolina Republican Primary.

Doesn't look good for Huckabee. Apparently McCain won both men and women, although Huckabee won those under 45, with McCain much stronger among older voters.

UPDATE: MSNBC reporting that 58% of caucus goers were evangelical Christians. While you'd think that would be good news for Huck, if he decisively lost the remaining 42% of caucus goers then not so much.

UPDATE: AP calls SC primary for McCain.

I have to say, a race between Clinton and McCain was always the one I feared the most in terms of electability. But with politics you just NEVER know. Seriously, McCain is old, he might not have Clinton's energy. There are scandals that pop up. McCain has never been super popular with the Republican base, especially their anti-immigrant wingnuts. Clinton will be favored with women. We never know what is going to happen. No need to despair. And of course, the primaries aren't over yet, even if the media tells us so.

FINAL UPDATE: Really good summary of how McCain won SC. Solid support from independents and moderates and division between 3 other candidates among the conservative base, while in 2000 Bush consolidated the anti-McCain conservatives as the only viable candidate.

posted by Ryan Greenfield at 6:47 PM 0 comments Post to DemWire

Ron Paul Comes in 2nd in Nevada

It looks like Ron Paul might have edged John McCain for the 2nd place finish in the Nevada Republican caucuses. And it is absolutely irrelevant.

Meanwhile, in South Carolina the race is supposed to be tight between McCain and Huckabee. Anybody want to make a case for who we should be rooting for?

posted by Jack Craver at 4:47 PM 1 comments Post to DemWire

Effects of Nevada Results

What does the Hillary victory in Nevada mean for the upcoming South Carolina primary. Is this a crucial tide-turning win that will give Hillary even more support?

posted by Jack Craver at 3:12 PM 5 comments Post to DemWire

Hillary Projected Winner in Nevada

Looks like Hillary Clinton has held on to enough support in Nevada to prevail, despite Barack Obama's support from the influential Culinary Union.

Although I haven't seen this backed by any numbers yet, I think it's very possible that Hispanic support for Hillary played a crucial role in countering the effect of the union endorsement. Expect to see a similar trend in California, as well as other states with large Hispanic populations.

posted by Jack Craver at 3:02 PM 0 comments Post to DemWire

Friday, January 18, 2008

And the GOP Wonders...

President Bush and other leading conservatives have mused publicly in recent years why more African Americans don't support the Republican party. I can't imagine that Governor Huckabee's comments help their cause at all. South Carolina flies the Confederate battle flag in front of their state capitol. When Mr. Huckabee was asked what Arkansas would do when faced with a similar problem, he responded by saying that:

Arkansans wouldn't be swayed by out-of-state pressures, nor should South Carolina on the flag issue.

"We tell them, you're going to tell us what to do with our flag? We'll tell you what to do with the pole," Huckabee said.

The quotations are taken from the Arkansas News Bureau.

posted by Oliver Kiefer at 11:12 PM 0 comments Post to DemWire

Thursday, January 17, 2008

Feingold and Kohl Stay Votin'

Sens. Russ Feingold and Herb Kohl were present at every one of the U.S. Senate's 442 roll call votes in 2007, making Wisconsin one of only two states that had perfect attendence from both of its senators (article here).

This should make us proud, however, there are certainly plenty of sconnies who would gladly exchange some attendence bragging rights for a Feingold presidential campaign.

I actually picked up a Feingold for President shirt at Goodwill a few months ago for $2.99.

posted by Jack Craver at 2:26 PM 6 comments Post to DemWire

Obama Wins in Court

A federal court ruled in favor of allowing Nevada Democrats to hold some caucuses in 9 different casinos this Saturday, over the objection of the teacher's union, who has endorsed Hillary Clinton.

The lawsuit brought by the teacher's union was derided by Obama supporters as a cynical ploy by the Clinton campaign to make it harder for casino employees, who make up a large share of the Culinary Union, who endorsed Obama, to vote.

Here's an insightful article about the division in the labor community about the race.

posted by Jack Craver at 1:30 PM 0 comments Post to DemWire

Giuliani and the Packers

Seen on WXOW.com of La Crosse:

At a campaign stop in the southwest Florida town of Punta Gorda yesterday, the Republican presidential candidate refused to autograph a white Green Bay Packers cap. The New York Giants face the Packers in the NFC championship game in Green Bay Sunday.

The former New York City mayor scribbled his name on a series of placards and papers but wouldn't sign the hat. He says it would be bad luck.

That's not the only bad luck Rudy has.

posted by Suchita Shah at 12:27 AM 0 comments Post to DemWire

Wednesday, January 16, 2008

What's Wrong with Louisiana?

It wasn't enough that their former Democratic senator, John Breaux, has teamed up with Trent Lott to start a lobbying firm in D.C. (this is after Lott decided to cut his senate term five years short despite telling the people of Mississippi during his re-election bid that he could not "in good conscience" abandon them after Hurricane Katrina).

Or that another member of the congressional delegation was indicted on 16 corruption charges. They have a former governor in federal prison.

Now Rep. Richard Baker has announced that he will resign and head a hedgefund lobbying firm. Coincidentily, Baker had been a longtime member of the House Financial Services Committee, whose jurisdiction includes the regulation of such enterprises. Well, at least he's getting a pay raise of upwards of $1 million.

posted by Jack Craver at 1:54 PM 0 comments Post to DemWire

Democrats For Mitt Campaign A Miserable Failure

As I mentioned in a comment a few days ago, Markos Moulitsas from Daily Kos recommended that Democrats vote for Romney in the open Michigan primary since Obama and Edwards were off the Democratic ballot and thus the race would be meaningless.

That campaign appears to have not been very successful. But wait, you might say, didn't Romney just beat McCain in the Michigan primary today? Yes but it was due to the votes of solid Republicans, who made up 68% of the Republican electorate. They voted for Romney 41% vs. 27% for McCain according to exit polls.

Turnout among evangelicals and conservatives was up. Less independents turned out (25% vs 35% in 2000) and Democrats either voted meaningless Democratic primary or stayed home. Part of the reason may have been the campaigning for supporters of Obama and Edwards to vote uncommitted (which could matter if the DNC relents and actually allows the Michigan delegates to be seated at the convention, because in every congressional district with at least 15% of voters uncommitted, the delegates won't be required to stand for the winner of the CD: Hillary Clinton). The Democrats who did turn out for the Republicans overwhelmingly voted for McCain.

I thought the campaign would be more successful, but what I take away from it is more just the cruel reminder that the vast majority of voters (to say nothing of Americans in general) don't read blogs much less participate in their grassroots campaigns. But I'm quite happy Mitt won, even though he pretty much bought the state. McCain was beginning to look unstoppable.

One more interesting thing was Hillary's weakness among key demographic groups such as the young and minorities who overwhelmingly chose "uncommitted" over Clinton even though she was the only legitimate candidate on the ballot. Foreshadowing of South Carolina perhaps?

posted by Ryan Greenfield at 12:08 AM 1 comments Post to DemWire

Tuesday, January 15, 2008

Bush releases $3.7 billion in contingency emergency funding to the Department of Veterans Affairs

Great news!

Some background by the Army Times:

Several military service organization officials fear that because of some last-minute budgetary wrangling, $3.7 billion promised to the Department of Veterans Affairs health care program might not make it into the coffers.
Ten organizations have written a letter to President Bush asking him to sign an emergency designation to approve the funds immediately.
When Congress rolled a number of appropriations bills into one massive omnibus “Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2008,” it included extra funds for VA that Bush had already said he would approve. Congress added the money — $3.7 billion more than Bush asked for in his 2008 VA budget proposal — because VA still has a backlog of 600,000 pending benefits claims and needs to hire and train people to process those cases, said Dave Autry, spokesman for Disabled American Veterans. The money would also go toward medical research for conditions such as traumatic brain injuries.
Under provisions of the Consolidated Appropriations Act, Bush must sign off the emergency designation for VA by Jan. 18 for VA to receive the funds — and the veterans’ groups are concerned that he may renege on his earlier commitment.

Fortunately, today IAVA reports the $3.7 billion in question was released by Bush, so the DVA's existing benefits backlog will not be unanswered by the federal government.

posted by David Lapidus at 6:06 PM 0 comments Post to DemWire

Let's Go Theocracy

Great Huckabee moment caught on camera. The governor delivers a blow to the secular naysayers once and for all. Watch it here.

posted by Jack Craver at 4:37 PM 5 comments Post to DemWire

Lieberman Campaigning Hard for McCain

Joe Lieberman, who has already endorsed McCain for president, has appealed to Michigan Democrats and independents to come out for the Arizona Senator in today's primary.

Of course, what Dems really should do is go out and vote for Romney.

posted by Jack Craver at 4:35 PM 1 comments Post to DemWire

Monday, January 14, 2008

Possible running mates

Alright, I'm sure we've done this before, somewhere in the blog archives. But let's do it again, because perceptions change. Real easy and fun question -- who do you think our likeliest vice-presidential candidates are?

Of course, there are tons of leading contenders, but my pics are Tom Vilsack or Evan Bayh if Clinton is nominated, and John Edwards if Obama is nominated. I would have said Bill Richardson for Clinton, but I doubt they're on speaking terms after the Iowa caucuses.

What do you think?

posted by Eric Schmidt at 8:19 PM 7 comments Post to DemWire

Nevada Polls Show Edwards Competitive

I know, I know...how can we possibly ever trust polling again?

But I like polls, so here's the first one done in Nevada since the NH primaries.

Democrats:
Obama: 32%
Clinton: 30%
Edwards: 27%

Edwards does have a fair amount of union support in Nevada but it's hard to believe that he would be statistically tied with Hillary and Obama in light of his recent losses. Again, we really don't know what the turnout is going to be for the caucuses so it's extremely hard to poll.

posted by Jack Craver at 1:14 PM 1 comments Post to DemWire

Teenage Pregnancies Rising

According to the Times, the teenage birth rate rose for the first time since 1991 in 2007.

The graph provided by the Times shows the remarkable progress that was made throughout the 1990's and early 2000's on reducing teenage pregnancies. The part that specifically stuck out to me was the sharp decline (by about 50%) in the birth rate for black teenage girls in the last 20 years.

This should remind us that sex education and access to contraceptives are issues that the Republican Party is fundamentally wrong on. The "abstinence only" policy pursued by the Bush administration is at odds not just with reality but with American public opinion.

Still, the administration has plenty of powerful apologists:
"Robert Rector, a senior research fellow with the Heritage Foundation, said that blaming abstinence-only programs was “stupid.” Mr. Rector said that most young women who became pregnant were highly educated about contraceptives but wanted to have babies."

What country does he live in?

posted by Jack Craver at 11:06 AM 0 comments Post to DemWire

Sunday, January 13, 2008

Red State Dems Endorsing Obama

Barack Obama won another endorsement from a Democratic senator today. Claire McCaskill of Missouri described the optimism and inspiration of Obama in explaining her decision to endorse the guy whose only been in the Senate 2 years longer than she has.

Obama now has 6 senate endorsements compared to Hillary's 9. From what I know, Kerry is the only non-midwesterner in his column.

posted by Jack Craver at 10:00 PM 3 comments Post to DemWire

Recession, recession

A very scary piece on the possibility of a long worldwide recession which would trigger a credit default swap (CDS) crisis. Don't panic yet (I almost started)-- this is worst-case-scenario stuff. But it should still make us take pause, as any signs of a recession should.

Could this election become about the economy? Looks that way. A successful economic stimulus package seems unlikely -- the Democrats don't want to make Bush's tax cuts permanent (for good reason), and Bush doesn't want to let Democrats fund too many programs in the process. It's a mess.

And how does this affect our party at election time? Conventional wisdom says that the out-of-power party always benefits from a poor economy, and that Democrats have the traditional edge on economic issues. Any thoughts?

posted by Eric Schmidt at 9:58 PM 0 comments Post to DemWire

"a potential Watergate"

A gem of a piece from a couple weeks ago, by Andrew Sullivan. It concerns the CIA's destruction of interrogation videotapes. Money quote:

Any reasonable person examining all the evidence we have - without any bias - would conclude that the overwhelming likelihood is that the president of the United States authorised illegal torture of a prisoner and that the evidence of the crime was subsequently illegally destroyed.
Congresswoman Jane Harman, the respected top Democrat on the House intelligence committee in 2003-06, put it as simply as she could: “I am worried. It smells like the cover-up of the cover-up.”
It’s a potential Watergate. But this time the crime is not a two-bit domestic burglary. It’s a war crime that reaches into the very heart of the Oval Office.

I wish our Democratic candidate(s) could have the chance to debate George W. Bush again about his record. I feel like we are more confident than we were in 2004 (although Kerry won every debate), and we know a lot more about the impeachable crimes Bush has committed. Our party has disagreements which matter, but we have found a collective voice against renditions and torture. But alas, we'll have to settle for trouncing our opponent on the torture question. (Unless it's McCain, of course.)

Incidentally, Andrew Sullivan is coming to campus on April 8th as part of the Distinguished Lecture Series. Sullivan self-identifies as a conservative, but he is supporting Barack Obama in 2008 and has been an outspoken advocate against Bush's foreign policy, especially the covert approval of torture. It should be a fantastic talk.

posted by Eric Schmidt at 9:37 PM 0 comments Post to DemWire

Kucinich Demands Recount in NH

Rep. Dennis Kucinich, after receiving 1% of the vote in the New Hampshire primary, has demanded a recount.

In accordance with New Hampshire election law, which says that any candidate who receives "one vote or more," the votes will be recounted by hand.

Kucinich is hoping to prove that computerized voting is imperfect and should be barred. He probably is right.

posted by Jack Craver at 9:00 PM 2 comments Post to DemWire

McCain Taking National Lead

In the last month John McCain's favorability rating has increased 20%, according to a new CBS/New York Times poll. Conversely, Mitt Romney's has dropped 13%, as he is now viewed favorably by only 23% of Republicans nationwide (in all fairness 50% are undecided).

With Democrats, Obama is now seen as more electable than before, although not as much as Hillary Clinton. (After the Iowa caucuses Obama was ahead but he has fallen behind again)

Go Mitt.

posted by Jack Craver at 6:06 PM 2 comments Post to DemWire

Come on New York Times...

The New York Times added conservative pundit Bill Kristol to their Op-Ed page. Kristol, a leading neo-conservative, as well as the son of Irving Kristol, who was considered one of the founders of the neo-conservative movement.

Ironically, Kristol, in 2006, wrote a column suggesting that the Times should be prosecuted for treason because it disclosed a secret government program that was surveilling international banking transactions. In 2003 he wrote that the Times was "not a first rate newspaper," and that it was "irredeemable."

I guess he is the one who has come to redeem it?

His first column is dedicated to the great Mike Huckabee.

posted by Jack Craver at 5:47 PM 1 comments Post to DemWire

On Clinton, Obama, and my blogging dynamic

An anonymous reader responds to a previous post I wrote emphasizing my strategic and ideological disagreements with the Obama campaign:

more obama bashing from eric schmidt...how typical.

Yikes! "Obama bashing" is a strong term. I prefer "thoughtful and polemical exploration of the differences between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, with strong emphasis on why our party needs to be honest about its internal struggles."

But I digress. First off, I hope I'm not coming across as ugly or mean towards Barack Obama. I like Senator Obama. I liked his keynote speech at the Democratic National Convention. I understand and respect his appeal. Joe Biden was my initial choice for President. After that fizzled out, I was genuinely torn between Clinton and Obama for a while. That I ultimately sided with Clinton is a choice I prefer to be honest about. This is a blog, after all!

And it goes without saying that if Obama is nominated, I'll support our candidate happily, and be waving Obama '08 signs alongside everybody else all summer. The reason I blog about Hillary and Obama so much is because we need to have a conversation about party vision and strategic choices before we choose a nominee. I offer myself as evidence of the serious internal battle for the future of the Democratic Party. If I can't convince everybody (anybody?) of the merits of Clintonism, I still hope people take our internal battle seriously. The differences between our two leading candidates have not been this clear-cut or extreme since 1968.

In another response, the aforementioned anonymous blogger asks "do you ever write anything that doesn't bash obama and support clinton?" Of course I do, even though I wouldn't call my prose "bashing." I wrote a post earlier last week defending Barack Obama against Christopher Hitchens' recent op-ed piece -- Hitchens wrote the ugliest and most bigoted op-ed of this campaign season, and I don't like seeing our candidates slandered. And I should note that Ms. Clinton's recent comments about Martin Luther King, Jr. and Lyndon Johnson were among the stupidest I've ever heard by a leading contender. Not enough to lose my vote, but shallow and brainless nonetheless.

But if the anonymous blogger had asked if I ever write anything that minimizes or apologizes for Democrats' heated internal debate, my response would have been that I hope not. We cannot bury the ideological disagreements we're having. We should have them, loudly and vigorously. Feelings will get hurt. And there will be political casualties, both personal and ideological. But we might be a more thoughtful party at the end, and the discourse will make us stronger.

posted by Eric Schmidt at 5:01 PM 3 comments Post to DemWire

So Much to Learn from the French

Says the New York Times about Carla Bruni, the new girlfriend of French president Nicolas Sarkozy:

She is monogamous from time to time, as she remarked to the magazine Le Figaro Madame. “But I prefer polygamy and polyandry,” she said.

Unfortunately for Sarkozy, he has plunged in the polls since.

What would Mike Huckabee say?

posted by Jack Craver at 11:46 AM 0 comments Post to DemWire

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