[PassedOut]

 luke warm, on 2010-November-07, 08:58, said:

yes, but it doesn't get to your question; that question is "why?" btw there was a huge shift in 2008's undecided (or "independent") voters... it's true that some were more motivated than others to get out and vote... the question is, why were they?

Do you have any answers to that question?

Bill Moyers offers an explanation for the anger of quite a few voters: Bill Moyers: "Welcome to the Plutocracy!".

[luke warm]

 PassedOut, on 2010-November-07, 09:01, said:

Do you have any answers to that question?

Bill Moyers offers an explanation for the anger of quite a few voters: Bill Moyers: "Welcome to the Plutocracy!".

i don't know that i buy his premise, although if it is true it indicts both the republicans and the democrats imo

i believe there are many answers to "why?"... some, out of true belief or because of well-funded political ads, actually believe the 'obamba is a socialist' line... others simply believe that the federal gov't has assumed more power unto itself than it was meant to have... still others are simply redneck racists (although i've seen racists from both political parties, rarely have i seen a redneck democrat racist)

it's my opinion that the tea party is doomed *unless* it excludes social issues as a plank in its nat'l platform... if it can somehow do this (for example, by simply stating that such issues are not the business of the federal gov't, for the most part, and should be left to the states)... if it runs on a more traditional conservative platform, it might have legs

[PassedOut]

 luke warm, on 2010-November-07, 09:21, said:

i don't know that i buy his premise, although if it is true it indicts both the republicans and the democrats imo

I do consider the increasing gap between the very rich and the rest of the people to be a serious problem for the US. And it's not just that our businesses need customers with money. History shows that people get angry enough to start revolutions when that gap gets too wide.

[Bbradley62]

 hrothgar, on 2010-November-06, 10:59, said:

The change in the electoral results between 2008 and 2010 was all about turn out. Relatively few individuals shifted their votes from Democrat to Republican.

Republicans showed up to vote.
Democrats didn't.
And this made all the difference.

 luke warm, on 2010-November-07, 08:58, said:

yes, but it doesn't get to your question; that question is "why?" btw there was a huge shift in 2008's undecided (or "independent") voters... it's true that some were more motivated than others to get out and vote... the question is, why were they?

One obvious part of this equation is that African-Americans (almost entirely Democrats) were super-motivated in 2008 to show up to vote for America's first black president; even if they simply returned to usual turnout levels in 2010, that was a big decrease for Democrats. In addition, "far right" turnout was lower than usual in 2008 because they were not happy with McCain as the Republican nominee. So, even before Tea Party activism increased Republican turnout in 2010, simply removing the unusual circumstances of 2008 was a noticeable swing to the Republicans.

[y66]

From Nate Silver's analysis of the "enthusiasm gap"

Over all, the enthusiasm gap averaged 8 points in presidential swing states. But it was virtually nonexistent — favoring Republicans by just 1 point, on average — in states that weren’t competitive in 2008. It didn’t much matter whether the states (like Vermont and Hawaii) went heavily for Barack Obama in 2008, or (like Texas and Arkansas) went for John McCain: there wasn’t much of an enthusiasm gap in these non-competitive states.

On the surface, this looks like horrible news for Democrats: the enthusiasm gap was the largest in precisely those states that a Democrat (or a Republican for that matter) needs to win the Presidency.

But there is something else to keep in mind. Mr. Obama’s campaign had a terrific turnout operation, and — like any good turnout operation — it was concentrated in swing states. Mr. McCain’s campaign, by contrast, de-emphasized its “ground game” (a mistake that Karl Rove and George W. Bush would never have made), hoping to nationalize the election and win on the basis of television commercials.

What we’re probably seeing, then, is the “hangover” from the Mr. Obama’s turnout efforts in 2008. In states like Ohio and New Hampshire and Indiana, where Democrats registered tons of new voters and made sure that all of them got to the polls, a lot of them didn’t participate this time around. In other states, the electorate wasn’t much different and the people who were voting this year strongly resembled those who voted in 2008 — although Republicans still did better because the preferences of independent voters shifted toward them.

This sort of phenomenon is actually quite typical. In general, the bigger a President’s coattails, the more his party tends to suffer at the next midterm.

The key question for 2012 is whether those new voters will re-enter the electorate when Mr. Obama is on the ballot again. If so, Democrats should be in reasonably good shape — and they’ll also win back quite a few of the House seats that they lost in these states.

[kenberg]

 pooltuna, on 2010-November-07, 08:35, said:

The object when you move should not be to sell your house at the same price but to be able to buy a house equal(not in terms of price though) to the one you now own. Prices are falling at your potential new location as well

This applies just fine to me, as I have noted before. I don't have a mortgage. As prices rise and fall, my house continues to have the value of one house. If I want to move, I can do so and since real estate commissions and other expenses are a percentage of the price, a low priced market would be somewhat preferable.

I was addressing the plight of someone now "underwater", someone not at a level where the future employer would be offering strategic help, and who is in a depressed area. I only have distant anecdotal stories about this without detail, but my thought is that they really cannot move. The one case i heard a bit about is being solved by foreclosure. Basically: "OK, I am moving, you get the house, take it."

Much of the mobility of modern American living is job related. At the upper levels, no doubt any mortgage problems arising from a move will be handled either by the person himself or by the employer, maybe with a short term loan, maybe just a "We'll take care of that". The guy who made a living changing piston rings for a now closed auto shop won't have access to that sort of assistance.

[y66]

 PassedOut, on 2010-November-07, 09:01, said:

Do you have any answers to that question?

Bill Moyers offers an explanation for the anger of quite a few voters: Bill Moyers: "Welcome to the Plutocracy!".

Enjoyed that, esp. that Alice Walker poem and Zinn's "Is this a private fight" line. Plutocrats are most definitely the elites of the new zombie class and John Boehner is their main minion. Scary.

Even scarier that Obama doesn't get this. Will he find his inner Tallahassee in 2011? I am not betting my last box of Twinkies.

[PassedOut]

 luke warm, on 2010-November-03, 05:24, said:

any particular bullshit you're speaking of?

Too Good to Check

Quote

Instead of giving specifics, [Representative Michele] Bachmann [of Minnesota, a Republican and Tea Party favorite] used her airtime to inject a phony story into the mainstream. She answered: “I think we know that just within a day or so the president of the United States will be taking a trip over to India that is expected to cost the taxpayers $200 million a day. He’s taking 2,000 people with him. He’ll be renting over 870 rooms in India, and these are five-star hotel rooms at the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel. This is the kind of over-the-top spending.”

Quote

Rush Limbaugh talking about Obama’s trip: “In two days from now, he’ll be in India at $200 million a day.” Then Glenn Beck, on his radio show, saying: “Have you ever seen the president, ever seen the president go over for a vacation where you needed 34 warships, $2 billion — $2 billion, 34 warships. We are sending — he’s traveling with 3,000 people.” In Beck’s rendition, the president’s official state visit to India became “a vacation” accompanied by one-tenth of the U.S. Navy. Ditto the conservative radio talk-show host Michael Savage. He said, “$200 million? $200 million each day on security and other aspects of this incredible royalist visit; 3,000 people, including Secret Service agents.”

I know people who actually listen to these bullshit artists.

[kenberg]

I also know such people, of course. In order to grasp how this happens, you have to understand that they do not regard the fact that the claims are false as being particularly relevant. Their view is summarized as: Obama is bad. Perhaps he really is a citizen. Doesn't matter, he's bad. Perhaps the trip didn't cost $200,000,000 per day. So what, he's bad. There will be a new story tomorrow. It will be equally false, and that will be equally irrelevant. If Michelle Bachmann were to say "Oh, I guess I got that wrong, I must try to be more careful", that would be news. She doesn't care, and her followers do not care,that the story comes from a source with no actual information or that it is unchecked. They don't care that it is false. If anything, false is a little better: If I guy is felled by his own mistakes, he can learn from them. Doing a guy in with total fabrication provides him with no way to cope.

[PassedOut]

 kenberg, on 2010-November-17, 12:57, said:

She doesn't care, and her followers do not care,that the story comes from a source with no actual information or that it is unchecked. They don't care that it is false. If anything, false is a little better: If I guy is felled by his own mistakes, he can learn from them. Doing a guy in with total fabrication provides him with no way to cope.

Mitch McConnell has stated that the republican goal is simply to defeat Obama in 2012. To that end, any attempt by Obama to get folks back to work before the election must be blocked. And so we see this: Axis of Depression.

Quote

Meanwhile, the incoherent: Two Republicans, Mike Pence in the House and Bob Corker in the Senate, have called on the Fed to abandon all efforts to achieve full employment and focus solely on price stability. Why? Because unemployment remains so high. No, I don’t understand the logic either.

So what’s really motivating the G.O.P. attack on the Fed? Mr. Bernanke and his colleagues were clearly caught by surprise, but the budget expert Stan Collender predicted it all. Back in August, he warned Mr. Bernanke that “with Republican policy makers seeing economic hardship as the path to election glory,” they would be “opposed to any actions taken by the Federal Reserve that would make the economy better.” In short, their real fear is not that Fed actions will be harmful, it is that they might succeed.

Economic hardship as the path to election glory? What a bunch of jerks.

[luke warm]

 mgoetze, on 2010-November-03, 16:20, said:

Yes, I am already learning Chinese to prepare myself for the next masters.

i for one welcome our billions of asian overlords

[PassedOut]

Most of us have noticed that many folks in the US (not me and not you, but many others) change their minds about substantive issues the moment the other political party takes power. Seems like people root for a political party like they do for a football team, no matter what the reality happens to be. Conservative columnist Ross Douthat wrote about that yesterday: The Partisan Mind.

Quote

Instead of assessing every policy on the merits, we tend to reverse-engineer the arguments required to justify whatever our own side happens to be doing. Our ideological convictions may be real enough, but our deepest conviction is often that the other guys can’t be trusted.

How potent is the psychology of partisanship? Potent enough to influence not only policy views, but our perception of broader realities as well. A majority of Democrats spent the late 1980s convinced that inflation had risen under Ronald Reagan, when it had really dropped precipitously. In 1996, a majority of Republicans claimed that the deficit had increased under Bill Clinton, when it had steadily shrunk instead. Late in the Bush presidency, Republicans were twice as likely as similarly situated Democrats to tell pollsters that the economy was performing well. In every case, the external facts mattered less than how the person being polled felt about the party in power.

As funny as it looks when the talking heads completely reverse themselves on every issue once the "other team" takes office, it is just as sobering to observe how few folks notice it. Their worldview trumps hard evidence every time. I hope Ross Douthat comes back to this theme now and then.

[helene_t]

 PassedOut, on 2010-November-29, 09:04, said:

(not me and not you, but many others)

I'm afraid cognitive dissonance is universal. Not restricted to "many others". Not restricted to politics (and football). Not restricted to USA.

[y66]

I am often guilty of the partisan mindset Douthat describes although I think I've actually become somewhat more circumspect and less reflexive about a lot of stuff, not just politics, as a result of reading some of the thoughtful posts on this forum, esp. the bridge related posts.

[kenberg]

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.


I freed myself from this hobgoblin long ago. Whatever a hobgoblin is.

There are times when I think one of the necessary qualifications for success in politics is the ability to on Wednesday be passionately in favor of something that you were passionately against on Tuesday, and to be totally oblivious to any sense of the contradiction.

[luke warm]

 kenberg, on 2010-November-30, 18:36, said:

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.

i've always thought this to be a very witty quote, although the use of the word "foolish" is its only saving grace (and even that is subject to debate)

[kenberg]

 luke warm, on 2010-December-01, 06:58, said:

i've always thought this to be a very witty quote, although the use of the word "foolish" is its only saving grace (and even that is subject to debate)

I agree entirely, and only object to a couple of your points.

[luke warm]

lol

[PassedOut]

Sometimes doing the right thing comes with a heavy political cost.

In 1994 Clinton's insistence on restoring fiscal responsiblility -- over the unanimous opposition of the republicans -- cost his party the congress. But the result was a huge gain for the country while he held office.

Now Obama's party has lost the House of Representatives, but the 111th Congress accomplished a lot in two years:

1. American Recovery & Reinvestment Act
2. Children's Health Insurance Program Extension
3. Credit Card Accountability, Responsibility and Disclosure Act
4. Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act
5. Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act
6. Unemployent Compensation Extension
7. Repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell
8. New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) with Russia
9. Health Care for 9/11 Responders

I very much wish that Obama had been able to to hold off the tax cut extensions demanded by his fiscally irresponsible opponents. And restoring fiscal responsiblity over tough opposition will certainly have to be his big fight over the next two years.

But the way the lame duck session turned out, I (reluctantly) suppose Gail Collins is right: Lame Ducks Triumphant

Quote

But let’s admit it. Nothing would have gotten done if Obama hadn’t swallowed that loathsome compromise on tax cuts for the wealthy.

If he’d taken the high road, Congress would be in a holiday war. The long-term unemployed would be staggering into the new year without benefits. The rest of the world would look upon the United States as a country so dysfunctional that it can’t even ratify a treaty to help keep nuclear weapons out of the hands of terrorists. The people who worked at ground zero would still be uncertain about their future, and our gay and lesbian soldiers would still be living in fear.

It’s depressing to think that there was no way to win that would not have involved giving away billions of dollars to people who don’t need it. But it’s kind of cheery to think we have a president who actually does know what he’s doing.

Maybe so. But it's essential to get tax revenues and expenditures in line as soon as possible. And the free lunch crowd will fight that tooth and nail in the months and years ahead.

It took Clinton six years to completely reverse the fiscal irresponsibility of the Reagan-Bush years, but it only took Bush the younger six months to put the country back in the hole. It will likely take Obama six more years to fix it.