Friday, November 7, 2008

07 Nov 2008 08:39 am

The Centrist Emanuel

That's the message Obama staffers are sending Ambers about the rationale behind the pick of Rahm. It's about getting things done and having someone with real Congressional clout to manage Capitol Hill. I don't see it as an ideological pick. But then I've never believed that Obama is about ideology as such. Emanuel is as much a sign of governing seriousness as Palin was the opposite for McCain.

07 Nov 2008 08:14 am

Purity Purges

John Cole on the GOP circular firing squad:

If they were smart, they would regroup, and decide what they stand for and present it to the American people. Instead, I suspect we will get several more months of infighting over tactics and appearances, and more purges of those who wish to engage in a debate over the party’s direction.

Continue reading "Purity Purges" »

07 Nov 2008 07:46 am

Leaving Palinism Behind

David Frum charts a new GOP course:

College-educated Americans have come to believe that their money is safe with Democrats - but that their values are under threat from Republicans. There are more and more college-educated voters.

So the question for the GOP is: Will it pursue them? This will involve painful change, on issues ranging from the environment to abortion. It will involve even more painful changes of style and tone: toward a future that is less overtly religious, less negligent with policy, and less polarising on social issues.

That's a future that leaves little room for Sarah Palin - but the only hope for a Republican recovery.

Thursday, November 6, 2008

06 Nov 2008 08:41 pm

Faces Of The Day

Nikki Eddy and her girlfriend Dawn Miller comfort each other during a Proposition 8 opposition rally at the San Diego Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Community Center November 5, 2008 in San Diego, California. Proposition 8, which bans same sex marriage, passed in yesterday's California election. By Sandy Huffaker/Getty Images.

Eugene Volokh differs from the California attorney general in thinking that existing marriages will be saved. 18,000 couples may therefore be divorced soon by their fellow Californians. One reader got a robocall from Hugh Hewitt, urging that gay married couples be stripped of protections in their relationships.

I'm happy to say that Proposition 2 passed, providing minimal humane protections for pigs, chickens and other farm animals. How odd for people to restrict cruelty for animals and simultaneously inflict it on some humans.

06 Nov 2008 07:31 pm

Closing Gitmo, Ending Torture

Alex Massie:

...there will come a time, not immediately but sometime, when flesh needs to be put on those rhetorical bones. A time when promises must be followed by action. A time for cheques to be cashed. And that means action on Guantanamo Bay and Extraordinary Rendition.

Continue reading "Closing Gitmo, Ending Torture" »

06 Nov 2008 06:39 pm

Lederman For Head Of OLC?

A.L. proposes. Greenwald and Orin Kerr agree. It would be an inspired pick. Marty led the way in exposing the legal abuses within the Bush-Cheney torture regime. He was an invaluable guide and resource and a brilliant lawyer.

06 Nov 2008 06:32 pm

Dissent Of The Day

A reader writes:

I'm sorry, I absolutely flat-out refuse to believe that she didn't know Africa was not a country:

1. Grade-school kids know that Africa is a continent;
2. She has a frickin' degree in journalism;
3. Before she was selected as veep candidate, I understood numerous people met her (from outside Alaska) and came away impressed;
4. She gives a decent speech, and fared reasonably well against Biden, reputed foreign-affairs expert (explain that!);
5. There's no way she could have got as far as she did and been that misinformed.

So why has this anecdote in particular not been denied? Look: you think they keep a veep from a press conference because that's good for a campaign? You think they refuse to allow their veep to go on Meet The Press because she's too charismatic? This was the craziest decision in the history of modern American politics. In a sane world, Palin would be a plaintiff on Judge Judy - and not potentially vice-president of the United States. And Judge Judy would have been a lot better at sussing her out than the national press corps.

I think the Kristol Meth-heads still do not understand quite how deep the con was. But they will at some point.

06 Nov 2008 05:57 pm

No On 8: "Don't Say 'Gay'"

I have long despaired of the Human Rights Campaign approach to gay politics. They don't get it; they never have; they never will. That goes for state organizations staffed and run by people with the same mentality. A reader writes:

I worked for both the No on 8 campaign and the Obama campaign this year and cannot tell you how far apart those two were in style and substance.  One was top down, the other bottom up.  Ironically, it was the presidential campaign that was the grassroots model, not the state-level proposition campaign. As soon as I started working for the No on 8 campaign I was amazed at the level of scripting: "don't say 'civil rights,' don't say 'constitution,' don't say 'gay.'" I couldn't believe it.

Continue reading "No On 8: "Don't Say 'Gay'"" »

06 Nov 2008 05:41 pm

An Answer To Prop 8

Greenwald advocates repealing DOMA. Well: it's part of the Obama platform. But my own view is that the advocacy work should take precedence. I'm uncomfortable with a legal strategy alone. We need to do a much better job of communicating the moderate, conservative reasons for why marriage equality is a great thing for all of us. We need especially to get more serious about the African-American community. I've been writing about the racial divide on gay rights and HIV since 1990; there has not been much progress since. And there are still some gay black leaders whose refusal to accept that gays have a huge problem with the African-American population has impeded efforts to foment change.

06 Nov 2008 05:36 pm

Von Hoffmann Award Nominee

"If [Hillary Clinton] gets a race against John Edwards and Barack Obama, she's going to be the nominee. Gore is the only threat to her ... Barack Obama is not going to beat Hillary Clinton in a single democratic primary. I'll predict that right now," - Bill Kristol, the man behind Sarah Palin, December 17, 2006. (Hat tip: Salon.)

A Dish Award glossary is here.

06 Nov 2008 05:29 pm

The Right Choice

Todd Purdum on Rahm Emanuel:

He doesn’t piss people off for the sake of scoring debating points or asserting his purity. He pisses people off because he cares about things, and sometimes pushes too hard. He lives by an old saying prevalent in F.D.R.’s Washington: “Keep all the balls in the air without losing your own.”

He's still an asshole. But assholes often get things done. And his brother, Zeke, knows more about healthcare than most mortals can absorb without a brain-freeze. (I went to grad school with Zeke and found him insufferable too. A good person and very brilliant, but, man, a pain in the ass.)

06 Nov 2008 05:26 pm

Those Already Married In California

Will not be divorced:

The California Attorney General, Equality California, and the nation's leading LGBT legal groups agree that the marriages of the estimated 18,000 same-sex couples who married between June 16, 2008 and the possible passage of Proposition 8 are still valid in the state of California and must continue to be honored by the state.

Now those 18,000 married couples will be the prime argument for reversing this in due course. At the ballot box. This is how inter-racial marriage became accepted: because of the wonderfully reassuring fact of inter-racial couples, even in states where miscegenation was still outlawed. Chin up, guys. Be proud. You are the tip of the spear. Become the change we want to see in the world.

06 Nov 2008 05:18 pm

What Happened Tuesday?

Gelman has a bunch of fancy charts. This one is telling:

06 Nov 2008 05:12 pm

Know Hope

(Photo: at the White House today by Paul J Richards/AFP/Getty.)

06 Nov 2008 04:46 pm

About Those Promises...

Megan gages what the economic situation will allow:

Democrats do not have the luxury of proposing unpassable legislation in order to look like they're doing something.  They can't make good on Obama's electoral promises about global warming by putting up a program the Republicans hate enough to take down, because there aren't enough Republicans to credibly blame for the bill's destruction.  So they either have to actually pass a carbon bill that will be massively unpopular when it raises energy prices, or explain why Obama didn't really mean it.

Continue reading "About Those Promises..." »

06 Nov 2008 04:29 pm

The Uncontrollable Marriage Movement

Yglesias counters Megan on the role of the courts. Matt is right that there is not some Gay Politburo deciding strategy in civil rights movements. I know something about this. I spent over a decade trying to persuade the HRC Politburo to take marriage equality seriously. But the only people the gay rights muckety-mucks take seriously are very very rich donors. But then actual, real, living gay couples sued for their equality, against the wishes of the gay establishment. That's how this movement started in Hawaii, and Alaska, and Massachusetts. The Gay Politburo at a national level tried to stop it. Do you realize that no gay legal group would take on the first mariage case in Hawaii? A straight guy did it. I'm so glad Matt understands:

Say you’re living your life with your partner and you want to get married. But then the local legal authorities tell you that you can’t get married. That seems like unfair discrimination to you, so you inquire with an attorney. The attorney says, yes, your state has never allowed a man to be legally wed to another man, but he agrees with you that it’s unfair. And not just unfair, illegal, a violation of your state constitution’s guarantees of equal rights.

Continue reading "The Uncontrollable Marriage Movement" »

06 Nov 2008 04:22 pm

Quotes From The Cocoon

Michael Ledeen shows impressive resistance to reality:

The continued trashing of Sarah Palin — IMHO the most qualified and by far the most exciting candidate of the four — is very disappointing, and the rash of unseemly whining from the McCain camp just shows once again why so many of us were depressed when he won the nomination.

Italics mine. Gabriel Malor has the same affliction. But they're missing the point. Palin was a farce; but McCain was a bigger farce for picking her. It's his responsibility, not hers. He was a total cynic who revealed his decision-making was as ludicrous as it was reckless. In that one decision, he disqualified himself from the presidency.

06 Nov 2008 04:09 pm

The Crumbling Of Christianism?

People of faith should be proudly part of public life. I am. But equally, they need to recognize a distinction between religion and politics as well as church and state. Some are recognizing this. Mark DeMoss:

I'd like to see evangelicals look for competent, qualified candidates who share our values, whether or not they share our faith or theology. I believe it's wrong to oppose a candidate because of his faith (Mitt Romney), and equally wrong to support a candidate primarily based on common faith (Mike Huckabee, Sarah Palin).

Along the campaign trail I met so many people, including pastors and religious leaders, who could tell me only that their choice for president was a "good Christian," or "one of us." This, in my view, is a dangerously inadequate approach to choosing our highest leaders. We don't choose people for any other positions using this test; why would we apply it to one of the most important positions on the planet?

06 Nov 2008 03:47 pm

A Closeted Campaign Never Works

Virginia Postrel on the lessons that should be learned from 8's passage:

Conventional wisdom maintains that the hide-the-gays strategy was good politics, but a) it insulted voters' intelligence on an issue that was not hard to understand b) it seemed desperate c) it suggested that gay marriage is, in fact, something to be ashamed of instead of an extension of normal family life and, of course, d) it didn't work.

Continue reading "A Closeted Campaign Never Works" »

06 Nov 2008 03:21 pm

Weirdness In Alaska, Continued

Nate Silver is on the case. Something has happened there in this election that requires an explanation.

06 Nov 2008 03:19 pm

How Good Was 538?

This good. The only state their model got wrong was Indiana, where they expected a narrow Obama loss. He won the state by a hair. Nate Silver owned this election on the polling front: one young guy with a background in baseball stats beat out the mainstream media in a couple of months. And he beat out the old web: I mean if you consider the total joke of Drudge's recent coverage and compare it with Silver's, you realize that the web is a brutal competitive medium where only the best survive - and they are only as good as their last few posts.

If you want to know why newspapers are dying: that's why. They're just not as good as the web at its best. This election proved that beyond any doubt. For the record, I think the WSJ and the WaPo and the NYT and the Anchorage Daily News rocked in this election. Most of the rest of the old media: not so much.

06 Nov 2008 03:17 pm

Kristol Spins Back

The man most responsible for the Palin fiasco is now fighting for his career:

06 Nov 2008 03:07 pm

They Took His Blackberry Away

Hilarious tale of neocon-on-neocon violence from the McCain campaign.

06 Nov 2008 02:58 pm

How Big A Farce Was She?

Larison sighs:

The claim that she didn't know Africa was a continent is the sort of thing that almost sounds as if it belongs to a caricature of a person who knows nothing, but it seems remotely possible that it is true.  Americans' knowledge of world geography is notoriously poor, which does not excuse it in this case if true, but neither is it all that far-fetched. The troubling thing is that I get the sinking feeling that a lot of people who want her to become the future of the party couldn't care less about this.

Continue reading "How Big A Farce Was She?" »

06 Nov 2008 02:56 pm

Butters Loves Rahm

Lindsey Graham sends the new chief-of-staff a Valentine.

06 Nov 2008 02:47 pm

Dead!

For the record, Rahm was channeling "Animal House."

06 Nov 2008 02:45 pm

Weirdness In Alaska

This is very odd:

Four years ago, 313,592 out of 474,740 registered voters in Alaska participated in the election-a 66% turnout. Taking into account 49,000 outstanding ballots, on Tuesday 272,633 out of 495,731 registered Alaskans showed up at the polls; a turnout of 54.9%. That’s a decrease of more than 11% in voter turnout even though passions ran high for and against Obama, as well as for and against Sarah Palin!

Continue reading "Weirdness In Alaska" »

06 Nov 2008 02:41 pm

The Rural Rump

What's happening to the GOP is uncannily like what happened to the Tories after 1997:

"It is a problem for Republicans. As they continue to cater to their culturally conservative rural base, they continue to alienate educated voters," said Rep. Tom Davis, who is retiring and whose Fairfax County district was taken over by the Democrats on Tuesday. "The suburban vote is steadily slipping away, and the party's trying to ignore it and pretend it's not happening."

Score one for Judis.

06 Nov 2008 02:34 pm

Obama Doesn't Have A Mandate?

Allahpundit fisks Novak.

06 Nov 2008 02:14 pm

Yglesias Award Nominee

"I supported George W. Bush in 2000 because I thought he had a conservative bone in his body somewhere. I supported him in 2004 because I thought him the lesser of two evils. At this point, I wouldn't let the fool park his car in my driveway," - John Derbyshire.

06 Nov 2008 01:58 pm

"Change You Can Motherfucking Believe In"

Michael Weiss explains the acquired taste for Rahm Emanuel's conversational erudition. It's 1992 and Clinton's enemies are discussed in a post-campaign release:

Suddenly Emanuel grabbed his steak knife and, as those who were there remember it, shouted out the name of another enemy, lifted the knife, then brought it down with full force into the table.     ''Dead!'' he screamed.     The group immediately joined in the cathartic release:

''Nat Landow! Dead! Cliff Jackson! Dead! Bill Schaefer! Dead!''

Toss in a deeply uncomfortable but funny line about cementing his assistant's asshole shut, and you've got Gold, baby.

06 Nov 2008 01:45 pm

Battering Rahm

Whenever I've come across him, he has seemed like a massive, world class, meshuggena asshole. Goldie explains:

I've known Rahm for a long time, and he's yelled at me for no good reason on many occasions. This, of course, is the way he expresses affection.

He loves me! Then this:

Rahm, precisely because he's a lover of Israel, will not have much patience with Israeli excuse-making, so when the next Prime Minister tells President Obama that as much as he'd love to, he can't dismantle the Neve Manyak settlement outpost, or whichever outpost needs dismantling, because of a) domestic politics; b) security concerns, or c) the Bible, Rahm will call out such nonsense, and it will be very hard for right-wing Israelis to come back and accuse him of being a self-hating Jew.

Time for Krauthammer to panic. David Corn, on the other hand, is worried:

Continue reading "Battering Rahm" »

06 Nov 2008 01:14 pm

The Prop 8 Legal Challenge

A California legal reader I trust writes:

I've just read the NCLR brief challenging the validity of Prop. 8, and it is not at all frivolous: The difference between a constitutional "revision" and a constitutional "amendment" is quite important under California constitutional law, and I have worked on cases dealing with it in the context of insurance regulation.

Briefly, an amendment to the constitution may be accomplished by a simple vote of the people, but a revision to our constitution must begin in the Legislature and then go to the voters.

Continue reading "The Prop 8 Legal Challenge" »

06 Nov 2008 01:09 pm

Losing And Losing And Losing The Youth Vote

Patrick Ruffini sounds the alarm. The GOP won't have a future until it appeals to young voters again. Bush turned an entire generation blue. Obama merely mobilized it.

06 Nov 2008 01:00 pm

Rahm And Gibbs Say Yes

A hard-ass is chief-of-staff and the campaign media manager is press secretary.

06 Nov 2008 12:58 pm

What Conservative Future?

George Will is depressed:

Although John McCain’s loss was not as numerically stunning as the 1964 defeat of Barry Goldwater, who won 16 fewer states and 122 fewer electoral votes than McCain seems to have won as of this writing, Tuesday’s trouncing was more dispiriting for conservatives. Goldwater’s loss was constructive; it invigorated his party by reorienting it ideologically. McCain’s loss was sterile, containing no seeds of intellectual rebirth.

Agreed.

06 Nov 2008 12:49 pm

Another Leak

Sources in the McCain camp just put out this previously unknown Palin home video:

06 Nov 2008 12:37 pm

Owning Foreign Policy

Dave Schuler is listing good things about an Obama administration:

From my perspective by far the best thing about an Obama Administration with solid majorities in both houses of Congress is that Democrats will need to take ownership of our foreign policy. That gives us at least a chance of having a bipartisan foreign policy for the first time in decades. This is make or break time for the Democrats on foreign policy and the military. If they take the horse by the reins and are successful, it will strengthen our hand in the world enormously. If they fail or, Hamlet-like, are unable to decide one way or another it will be a generation before a Democrat sits in the Oval Office again.

I've long made a similar argument.

06 Nov 2008 12:31 pm

Operation Leper

Erick Erickson has declared war on anyone who trashes Palin. Let's have a beer soon, Erick, shall we?

06 Nov 2008 12:21 pm

The Rot Is Deep

Jon Henke has some bullet points on the failure of the GOP:

• Some of you will say "we have learned our lesson", and then try to pass off cosmetic changes as Reform.  You are the problem.

• Some of you will say "Republicans need to fight/hold Democrats accountable", as if it is sufficient to be against Democrats.  The pendulum may eventually swing back to you, but you won't know what to do with it.

Continue reading "The Rot Is Deep" »

06 Nov 2008 12:02 pm

The County Palin Called The Real America

It voted for Obama.

06 Nov 2008 11:51 am

The Civic Responsibility Of Carl Cameron

Look: I understand that information given strictly off the record cannot be used. I am a stickler for that myself and there's stuff I know that I cannot tell Dish readers because of those rules. But at the same time, my commitment to you is never to bullshit my opinion that reflects that information. And the reporting of Palin fell into that category at times. I became convinced very early - just from public information - that she was obviously a disastrous choice, made on a whim, and obviously not ready for prime time. On August 30, I posted the following quotes from serious leaders in Alaska who knew Palin:

"She's not prepared to be governor. How can she be prepared to be vice president or president?" said Green, a Republican from Palin's hometown of Wasilla. "Look at what she's done to this state. What would she do to the nation?"

And this:

Anchorage Democratic state Sen. Hollis French said it's a huge mistake by McCain and "reflects very, very badly on his judgment." French said Palin's experience running the state for less than two years hasn't prepared her for this.

But actual reporters were soon finding this out for themselves - and not even conveying the gist of that to their viewers and readers. Why not?

Continue reading "The Civic Responsibility Of Carl Cameron" »

06 Nov 2008 11:34 am

The Scheuneman-Kristol Axis

Scheuneman was always a McCain man. In my own not very deep off-the-record inquiries into what the hell was going on these past two months, he was not regarded at first as a Palin-pod. But at some point, he became one. Scheuneman is a close friend of Palin's patron, Bill Kristol, which might help explain the shift (Kristol was desperately trying to defend Palin because his entire career was at stake). Or maybe Scheuneman just felt pity for this shopaholic picked out of nowhere and told to become a replacement president overnight.

Continue reading "The Scheuneman-Kristol Axis" »

06 Nov 2008 11:26 am

What Is This Strange Feeling?

Palinfreude!

06 Nov 2008 11:10 am

News From The Not-Real America

Harvard Yard celebrates the Obama victory. They found the band:

06 Nov 2008 11:09 am

Quote For This Week

"The greatness of America lies not in being more enlightened than any other nation, but rather in her ability to repair her faults," - Alexis de Tocqueville.

06 Nov 2008 11:07 am

Children, Please

Megan is getting testy:

Every time we have an election, the partisans confuse the fact that the independents disliked the opposition candidate, with the idea that the independents joined their party.  The independents did not want to stomp the Democrats in 2004, and they do not want to stomp the Republicans now.  They are not interested in advancing the electoral fortunes of the Democratic Party, any more than they were preparing to hand the Republicans a "permanent majority" in 2004.  And when the various parties act as if it is so--as if the independents had actually voted to join their power-hungry two-minutes-hate, rather than voting for the guy they thought would best shelter them from the vicissitudes of fate . . . well, for the last few elections, they've had their asses handed to them on a silver platter two years later.

06 Nov 2008 10:32 am

Change Is Coming

Here's a clip from Southpark's post-election show last night:

You can watch the whole episode online here.

06 Nov 2008 10:09 am

Brrrr

Larison throws some cold water on Fred Kaplan:

What I am trying to say is that we should not set up the next President for failure by making such grandiose, unfounded claims about what his election will mean for our relations with the rest of the world.  The next administration is going to enjoy a long honeymoon, and that’s fine as far as it goes, but we should all be as sober and clear-eyed as possible about what a President Obama is realistically going to be able to do and what he isn’t.

06 Nov 2008 09:48 am

The View From Your Window

London, England, 4.30 pm.