Light(er) Posting And a Warning

I'm managing this conference this week so it will be lighter posting here. Discuss among yourselves: is the "stolen election" narrative taking on susbtantial life and blocking out real self-assessment of the Democratic defeat? Tell me NO....

P.S. I HAVE DELETED A STACK OF LONG, BORING, HERMETICALLY SEALED, INACCESSIBLE, LUGUBRIOUS, AND GENERALLY TEDIOUS "COMMENT" POSTINGS FROM THE GORE VIDAL POST IMMEDIATELY BELOW.

THIS IS THE LAST TIME I WILL PERMIT TWO OR THREE PEOPLE TO COMPLETELY MONOPOLIZE THE COMMENTS SECTION ON THIS BLOG TO CARRY  ON AN EXCHANGE BETTER SUITED FOR PRIVATE EMAIL.

IN PRINCIPLE I AM LOATHE TO BEGIN FILTERING COMMENTS. UNFORTUNATELY, THE RAMPANT ABUSE OF COMMENTS BY SOME IS BRINGING ME RIGHT TO THE BRINK. I AM BEING DELUGED WITH EMAIL FROM READERS WHO ARE FRANKLY BORED TO TEARS WITH THE TROLLISH ANTICS OF A FEW.

IF YOU POST SOMETHING AND YOU DON'T SEE MORE THAN ONE OR TWO PEOPLE RESPONDING TO YOUR BRILLIANT COMMENTS, THEN HAVE THE GOOD SENSE TO REMAIN SILENT. OR ELSE I WILL SILENCE YOU.

Comments

[steve]

Exhibit A in defense of the "no" vote:

http://thenation.com/

[GMRoper]

Steve is correct Marc, The Nation thinks that the Republicans out energized the Democrats. I think they energized more than there base given that Bush did better in all catagories except young adults (Ken, are you there?). He even increased his numbers in Conneticut and Mass.

On the other hand, you have Slate wondering if the Blue States can secede or if the Canuks will take Americans in.

On the whole, I either see fingers pointed at fellow democrats, "we wuz gypped," blame at middle america (how could those yokels vote against their own best interests?), blame on the Mayor of SF for making gay marriage an issue.

Now, here's a conspiracy theory for you. Clinton and company want Hillary in, so he pushes certain judges and mayors to push for gay marriage knowing that there will be a backlash and defeat kerry opening the path for Hillary in 08. Nah, that can't be.

60% of America have no problem with Gay Marriage or Civil Unions, so that can't be it either.

Hmmm, maybe Rove really is an evil genius. Nah, I think, given the newsweek expose of Kerrys campaign machinery the whole enterprise was just incompetent.

[Woody]

RNC Chairman Ed Gillespie was on C-Span on 11/4, and his talk was re-played today. It was an interesting summary of the results and what they learned from the turnout.

He spoke about the Republican successes and gave much credit to their extensive organization to get out the vote. Given the record turnouts, both parties did well.

Also, the Republicans picked off a higher percentage of black, Jewish, and Catholic voters than they did in 2000.

While I don't have the transcript, I remember him saying something to the effect that in 2000 the Democrats got four more percent of registered Democrats to the polls than did Republicans of registered Republicans. This year, the percentages were equal, so the Republicans made a gain there.

I haven't figured if the Rock-the-Vote/MTV crowd really got many to the polls. I think that they may have been effective in some places, but not effective enough to take states away from Bush. Maybe they were too stoned.

I don't think the Republicans out-hustled the Democrats, but I think that their efforts were good enough when added to the voters who were sick of the left-wing press (like CBS and the NYT) trying to tell us how to vote--so they were energized to go out on their own. Yes, these folks really do exist.

I haven't seen the Newsweek article yet, but I heard about Kerry's staff having to hide Kerry's cell phone because he kept going back and forth about whether or not to contest the election and kept calling all of his friends for advice. Maybe so much vacciliation was going on his campaign that they never could focus on their positions or startegies.

If someone can't even run his own campaign right, you sure don't want him running the country.

[Ken]

" I think they energized more than there base given that Bush did better in all catagories except young adults (Ken, are you there?)."

Thank you for the acknowledgement GM. Generation Y isn't lost to the GOP yet though. Like the "greatest generation" their chief criteria in presidential elections will be competence, but just as with the "greatest generation" (who was initially very opposed to the draft), this election was for them about both the prospect of a draft *and* competence. If Bush's performance improves markedly in the next four years, the gen Y vote could swing dramatically to the GOP and could well remain loyal Republicans for decades, draft or not (in much the same way that the greatests were loyal majority Democrats for decades.) We'll know which party will own the gen y vote by the 2008 and 2012 elections.

I wholly agree with the rest of your analysis, and I think the lynchpin of Bush's gains across all these demographics was national security and foreign policy. Democrats believed that they could play the war hero card, and that image would trump subtance on foreign policy. That wasn't the case. Whether or not you support Mr. Bush's neoconservativism, his vision of mideast democracy was correctly judged to be more compelling than John Kerry's liberal internationalism.

Bush's policy may or may not succeed, and may or may not be sustainable, but the point is that transforming the political, economic, and cultural map of Arab world offers the hope of ending the threat of radical Islamism, and Americans understand this point (note to Democrats.) All John Kerry could offer was containment. As I said, I believe Kerry could have won this election as a liberal hawk, even if he lost a few more percent off the left to Nader. Or he could have run as an isolationist and lost on principle. Democrats seem to be interested in neither principles nor power.

PS If you're interested in generational demographics read William Strauss and Neil Howe's "Generations" or "the Fourth Turning."

[Ken]

PS Does anyone remember my prediction that if Democrats lost this election their impulse would be to shack up with libertarians and become the party of liberal-libertarian federalism, even though the tides of history are moving in precisely the opposite direction, and towards strong central government populism?

Go to dailykos and enter the word "federalism" in the diary search. Literally dozens of posts advocating exactly this position have appeared since the election. Surprise, surprise.

Here's one:

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2004/11/7/16714/0385

[steve]

"Democrats believed that they could play the war hero card, and that image would trump subtance on foreign policy. That wasn't the case."

They also needed someone who could take a populist message full of alternative passion that spoke to that base Kerry didn't turn out. The irony is that Kerry thought that by proclaiming the truth that he wasn't a very liberal senator...that would help him with swingvoters, ignoring the reality that in a war of voter mobilization, his *not* being a liberal is what hurt him most:

http://counterpunch.org/cockburn11062004.html

[Ken]

"They also needed someone who could take a populist message full of alternative passion that spoke to that base Kerry didn't turn out."

I agree, at least with respect certain crucial states, most notably Ohio, which has last 200,000 jobs since Bush took office. A strong but realistic program of economic populism might very well have been some of the southern border states in play as well, most notably West Virginia and North Carolina.

Interestingly, I tend to think it was actually Joe Lieberman (rather than Gephardt or Dean) who had the best idea economic program with respect to "old" economy interests (most notably manufacturing and textiles.)

Lieberman ran (in part) on the issue of Asian currency manipulation (and also authored a bill last year to put an end to the practice), which is the single most important cause of the decline of America's manufacturing sector in the last 30+ years (since the collapse of Bretton Woods in the early 1970s.)

As long as America allows Japan, and now China and India to manipulate the value of their currencies against the dollar (which is a form of monetary protectionism, and illegal under WTO rules), American goods and services will remain artificially expensive in critical Asian markets, and Asian goods and services will remain artificially inexpensive here in the US. Jobs will continue to go abroad (and not just manufacturing jobs - currency manipulation is driving tech outsourcing as well), Asian economies will remain closed to American goods.

Blue collar Democrats began voting GOP in 1968, and en masse in 1980, largely because neither the Dems nor the GOP have anything to offer them on economics and trade, and between nothing and the Republicans' cultural populism they have chosen the latter.

This demographic isn't stupid. They understand that there's little difference between the Democrats and the GOP on economic issues. Bush was for "retraining." Kerry was for "retraining." Bush was for "middle class tax cuts." Kerry was for "middle class tax cuts." And Kerry's proposal to "stop rewarding companies from shipping jobs overseas" was incomprehensible and at best a minor, shallow gesture.

The problems are deep and structural, and although Asian currency manipulation is hardly the stuff of soundbytes, it happens to be a big part of the problem, and the Democrats could have found a way to communicate the importance of this issue. Too bad Kerry didn't try.

[steve]

"Lieberman ran (in part) on the issue of Asian currency manipulation (and also authored a bill last year to put an end to the practice), which is the single most important cause of the decline of America's manufacturing sector in the last 30+ years (since the collapse of Bretton Woods in the early 1970s.)"

If that's his thesis he's dead wrong. Read Robert Brenner's The Boom and The Bubble", the Japanese revaluing the Yen is a big part of what drove the boom of the 90's...

[Marc Cooper]

Steve, Ken (and others)... please read the warning I have just posted on the top of the blog. Dont even think of turning this thread into a lengthy ongonig pimg-pong exchange among two or three people. Use some common sense.

[Ken]

Since I think most sane people would agree that the Democrats have effectively ceded their potentially greatest strength (economic issues) to the GOP, and that any Democratic revival depends upon genuinely fair and effective policies, I don't feel like such a hog for posting more than once on this issue.

If I was a Democratic strategist, I would see to it that my candidate for president in 2008 pledged the following:

1) An end to Asian currency manipulation.

The Democrats can talk all they want about adding labor and environmental standards to trade agreements, but WTO members can't agree whether an ass is an ass, or if an ass is actually an elbow, let alone rewrite multilateral trade agreements to include these things. It's a fine long term goal, and a fine thing to bring up in the campaign season, but voters can generally smell a pipe dream a mile away.

And in any event ending Asian currency manipulation (see above) would do more in the medium and long term for American manufacturing and textiles than modifying any trade agreements.

In the near term it may well collapse the dollar and send the Chinese economy into a tailspin (and the Japanese economy into a further tailspin), but it ultimately would revive goods production in America, put an end to this silly neo-liberal fantasy of a services and finance based economy (see Kevin Phillips' great book "Wealth and Deomcracy" for more about that), lead Americans to save more, and Asians to spend more.

2) End corporate welfare as we know it.

Do we all recognize that oil companies receive more than a billion in subsidies every year? What about the many millions we *pay* mining and timber companies to pillage natural resources from public lands, when they should be paying royalties to us? To say nothing of the billions we dish out to big ag conglomorates that monopolize the supply chains and crush environmentally sustainable small farmers both here and abroad.

For a supposedly capitalist country, one can smell the pork all the way down in Mexico City.

This is a political winner for the Democrats, if they have the political courage.

3) Downsize the federal bureaucracy

Americans suspect that a vast army of Dickensenian paper pushers is stealing their money in Washington. While the numbers aren't as dramatic as they think, they are essentially correct. Tony Blair has promised to elimate more than 100,000 jobs in Whitehall. The Tories want to eliminate more. The Liberal Democrats want to eliminate even more.

Why aren't we having this conversation in America?

The Democrats are in bed with the public employees unions, and the GOP seems more interested in privatizing jobs (ie helping enrich corporate campaign contributors) than cutting them. If the Brits can cut 100,000 jobs, surely America can cut 300,000 paper pushers out in Washington, no?

Show us the era of big government is still over.

4) Progressive taxation.

This is the centerpiece of any serious program of economic populism. The tax burden on the middle and working classes has grown markedly every year for the past 30 years, and the loopholes for wealthy indviduals and corporations grow larger by the year.

Do we recognize that between the years 1996 and 2000 60% of corporations paid absolutely no taxes whatsoever?

What kind of a Democrat allows that to happen?

Do we recognize that a person who earns 6 million a years pays a smaller percentage on average of their income in taxes than someone that earns 60,000 a year?

What kind of a society allows this to happen?

Democrats need to get serious about tax reform of their own. And until that happens they will continue to lose the country.

[Ken]

"Steve, Ken (and others)... please read the warning I have just posted on the top of the blog. Dont even think of turning this thread into a lengthy ongonig pimg-pong exchange among two or three people. Use some common sense."

My posts are entirely on topic in this thread. If you want me to go away there are plenty of other blogs.

[Marc Cooper]

I dont want you or anyone else to go away. I do want you and others to end what have essentially become serialized monologues.

[Ken]

"I dont want you or anyone else to go away. I do want you and others to end what have essentially become serialized monologues."

Whatever. Every blog has regular posters, and threads take on a life of their own. This isn't radio or a cable news talk show. That's the way the blogosphere works. You can endeavor to impose whatever order you want on it, but you're overreaching.

The best and most highly trafficked blogs (like kos) have a few basic rules, and virtually no censorship of any kind. The poor guy had his ass raked over the coals months back about the infamous "merc" comment, and he allowed the criticism to stand.

If you want your blog to be a cult of personality, then switch off comments and be like Sullivan or Josh Marshall, and risk the possibility of considerably less traffic. If you want your blog to be a community, then sit back and let what happens happen.

[Ken]

I guess the bottom line is that if I'm going to be singled out and berated for making mostly thoughtful, civil comments here it's not a place I should be spending any time.

Buh bye.

[John y Moore]

I recognize that this is your blog and you can do whatever you want. But I have never seen a blog where chains of discussion were discouraged. It is simply a fact that in most cases, there are a few prolific commenters who go back and forth, sometimes triggered by specific elements of comments. Otherwise, there are dangling charges, unanswered. Anyone can get in, throw out a bunch of crap, and know that people will be afraid to answer it.

As a member of the deleted chain, I am disappointed. I was finally starting to learn some things about lefty people, the main reason I come here.

I am alao curious why you would get all these email complaints. On my blog, I sometimes get email complaining about a very offensive poster, but not about ones going back and forth.

Disagreements typically produce more information than agrerements, unless they become repetitive. It is a form of dialog that both sides can learn from.

So now, I'll never know when I post some response that puts me over the line. That would be too bad - I'd have to find another blog with better rules and a supply of lefties.

Perhaps you should write an essay explaining what you would like the comments section to be, and why.

[John y Moore]

A little extension to above. If the comments section is going to be about anything other than gardening, it will have controversial statements in it. As the only right-winger commenting (that I know of), I am likely to find these focused on me. Now I feel like I won't be able to work those controversies to a conclusion. As the sole right winger, it is highly likely that the only way to resolve something is to beat on it for a while. Chances are, the resolution will be an agreement to disagree. But such exchanges produce knowledge.

Do you want a comment section without disagreement?

[John y Moore]

Also, how the heck can a few people "monopolize" the comment section? It's not like the blogging system prevents other commmenters! And how can a comment be hermetically sealed? Anyone can respond to it, or respond about it.

Roger Simon's blog gets along just fine without these restrictions. The biggest problem there now is that those on the left seem to have stopped commenting there.

Okay... enough metadiscussion. It's been interesting. I don't know if it will be in the future.

[Ms. Peepers]

Ken, Steve & other serial posters --

Please notice your own pattern of posting replies to your own postings. It is tedious. Imagine how annoyed people must have become with you BEFORE they bothered to complain. And now many are complaining repeatedly. Instead of leaning something from this reaction to your behavior from reasonable people, you act like victims of some random discrimination.

Marc has been exceedingly tolerent and issued far too many warnings for my taste. And now you even lecture him on the workings of the blog world...

Had we readers been given the chance, you would have been voted off the island long ago.

[Ms. Peepers]

Pardon my own serial post, but my comments also apply to John Y Moore.

[Ms.Peepers]

Who posted THREE messages while I composed the first of these three.

[Marc Cooper]

Hey Ken, John... This blog exists primarily to stir controversy. I couldnt care less WHAT you post. But as Ms Peepers notes, it's the mind-numbing frequency of posts that do not involve others. If this offends you, nothing I can about it. But I and many many readers are tired of reading the endless series of one-on-one screeds. I have taken great pains to keep the discussion on this blog open and civil and diverse. But if you guys will stop yapping for a moment or two... you will notice that the more you post... the quieter it gets all around you. Get the message.

[Ken]

I can't believe I agree with John about anything, but this blog seems to function in a kind of strange parallel universe according to anal retentive laws entirely unknown elsewhere in the blogosphere.

Must be a leftist thing.

As John said, this is your blog and you're entitled to do with it what you will, but realize your obsessive, capricious, and downright quirky rule mongering and censorship is literally unknown in the greater blogosphere. And if you've genuinely been receiving hordes of letters complaining about your frequent postings on your comments threads, one suspects your readership isn't typical for the blogosphere as well.

I'll stick to tacitus and kos from now on. There's a faint whiff of Stalinism in these parts.

[Mr. Peepers]

"Please notice your own pattern of posting replies to your own postings. It is tedious. Imagine how annoyed people must have become with you BEFORE they bothered to complain. And now many are complaining repeatedly. Instead of leaning something from this reaction to your behavior from reasonable people, you act like victims of some random discrimination."

One suspects it is the content rather than the frequency that offends. Poor poor lefties never learned to stomach dissent.

"Please notice your own pattern of posting replies to your own postings. It is tedious. Imagine how annoyed people must have become with you BEFORE they bothered to complain. And now many are complaining repeatedly."

What I find most annoying about this blog are not serial posters but all Marc's sycophantic groupies like you Ms. Peepers.

[silent cal]

Sorry to see Ken go - of all the hectoring, annoying, repetitive serial posters, he's the most interesting. Somehow I think that if Steve would simply ignore the egregious and wildly self-absorbed casualty of war, John Moore, the problem would dissolve and snide, mean-spirited jerks such as myself would have more opportunity to get on other people's nerves.