Thursday, December 9, 2010

Hey, Republican - reconcile this...

With the elections just two years away, campaign season will soon be in full swing. Dems should be armed with questions that cut through the muddled, nonsensical thangs that are so much of the R philosophy and that will separate the women from the girls. Or, in the R's case, the old white men from the other old white men. And the young beauty queen. Is it just me, or does the Republican party sound like your typical strip joint? (I don't intend to insinuate that Sarah Palin is a stripper, or any other degrading sex object. I respect her as a woman and former Governor, who quit halfway through her first term. On second thought... that's worse.) Some ideas:

Stem Cell Research

Scientists generally agree that embryonic stem cell research poses the greatest promise for uncovering a new way to heal people from diseases like cancer and injuries, including spinal injuries that result in paralysis. If your daughter / son was in a car accident and they became paralyzed from the neck down due to a spinal injury, would you still oppose embryonic stem cell research that could one day allow your child to walk once again and to play with your grandchildren? Would you oppose this research that could allow your own child to lead a normal life, out of the confines of a wheelchair?

Abortion

1) You are vehemently opposed to abortion on the grounds that it is the taking of a human life. If your daughter became pregnant as a teenager, would you demand she have an abortion or would you just talk with her about this choice? If you wouldn’t demand it, why do you seek to demand it for every daughter in the country?

2) I understand that you are someone who believes that abortions are the murder of a fellow human. Given that abortions are occurring everyday across America, do you believe there is a genocide going on in your own country? And would you intervene militarily, if need be, to save these human lives? Would you intervene militarily in foreign nations that allow for abortions, since you truly believe these are human lives being lost?

Torture

1) If US forces captured a high level al Qaeda operative in Afghanistan with potentially valuable information on future planned attacks, what if water-boarding doesn’t yield results? Would you allow our forces to pull their fingernails off or surgically remove limbs if conventional interrogation techniques did not work? And if not, why would you put American lives at risk just to uphold the human rights of a single terrorist?

2) Would you permit water-boarding or other forms of torture to be employed on American criminal suspects in local police stations across the country if the suspect had information that could save lives? If not, why not?

Sexual Orientation

1) So much of politics is considering the world from someone else's shoes. If your son or daughter were gay, would you be disappointed? And would you sit them down and explain to them why you don’t believe they should ever have the right to get married?

2) As a gay man, I am telling you that I never chose to be gay. I grew up in a normal two parent household in the suburbs, went to public schools, and played with toy trucks as a kid. My father was a journalist who loves basketball and my mother a preschool teacher and small business entrepreneur. Like many gay people, I spent many years wishing I weren’t gay, trying not to be gay, because people in society like you told me it wasn’t normal, that it wasn’t natural, and that I had a choice. Do you still think being gay is a choice and do you think that message coming from many national leaders is harmful to children and encourages prejudice at all levels of society?

3) If you are open to the idea that being gay is a choice, when did you choose to be straight? And could you choose to be gay right now? If so, my number is 555-658-5326.

4) Do you believe there is rampant homophobia in America, and if so, do you see it as a problem?

Taxes

1) Due to the estate tax, when someone dies, all of their money over the $5 million mark will be taxed at 35% once it is inherited by their heirs, and I understand you are opposed to this tax. At a time of record deficits, why do you believe a person should not pay any taxes on the money they inherit above $5 million, while a working mother making $35,000 each year who doesn’t come from a wealthy family should pay taxes on her hard earned income?

2) You seem to believe that taxing wealthy Americans to pay for programs for the poor is a destructive redistribution of wealth. At a time when the financial divide between rich and poor in America is setting records - with the wealthiest 1% owning more than the bottom 50% of Americans combined - do you believe that taxes should be raised on the poor so they can finance their own social programs?

3) Much has been made of the statistic that 50% of Americans are too poor to pay federal income taxes. Does this statistic outrage you? If so, which part is outrageous - that 50% of Americans are that poor, or that the wealthier 50% of the country has to pay federal income taxes? Would you suggest raising taxes on the poorest Americans to rectify this divide?

4) Do you support the flat tax? If so, wouldn’t that be the largest tax increase in history on the middle class and an enormous tax break for the wealthiest? If not, what do you say to Republicans who would accuse you of punishing the rich by making them pay a higher tax rate than the poor pay on some of their income?

5) Most economists agree that unemployment insurance is an exponentially greater economic stimulator than tax cuts for wealthy people. In the name of stimulating the economy, why do you support debt financed tax cuts for the rich but insist on paying for unemployment benefits with cuts in federal programs?

6) Since President Bush lowered taxes and then initiated two wars, do you believe we should ever raise taxes again in order to pay for those wars or should we always just cut spending on domestic priorities when we are forced into foreign conflicts?

Gun Rights

Do you believe Americans should be allowed to own pistols, machine guns, bazookas, and grenades since the Second Amendment guarantees the people “the right to keep and bear arms”? It does not specify which arms, so what information informed your activist interpretation of where the Constitution draws the line? At the time our nation adopted that amendment, with the blessing of our Founding Fathers, “arms” were quite different than they are now.

Climate Change

We all learned in elementary school about CFC’s from manmade products damaging the ozone layer. Did you believe the experts at the National Academy of Sciences when they came forward with this research? And if so, why do you not believe the National Academy of Sciences and NASA when they say that strong evidence from countless sources of research suggests that manmade greenhouse gas emissions are significantly contributing to climate change

Racism and Civil Rights

It wasn’t but half a generation ago in the 1970s that “Whites Only” signs really came down in the South. Do you believe racism is still a significant problem in America, and do you believe there is any lasting fallout from the very recent days of impoverished segregation that lingered for over a century after slavery was abolished? If so, is there anything the government can do about it, seeing as the hangover poverty among this community is largely considered to be a product of systemic policies and mainstream racism that disadvantaged black Americans for generations?

Tuesday, December 7, 2010

What Democrats Got Wrong: 2008-2010

If Democrats wish to win coming elections, and I know I, for one, do, it would be productive to examine what we got wrong during these past two years in power so that we can practice what we preached to President Bush and learn from our mistakes. Here's my shot.

We need to 1) perfect the art of compromise, 2) offer more effective soundbites, 3) take better credit for our accomplishments, 4) focus our agenda more concisely, 5) assign blame where it belongs more frequently, and, finally, 6) we need to pick our heads up ‘cause we ain’t doing so bad.

1) If a compromise is made in Congress but no one knows it's a compromise, does it make a sound?

Dems, and President Obama in particular, made a bad habit of proposing moderate legislation riddled with good Republican ideas. Why is that a problem? Because the Republicans wouldn't support those ideas unless they were publicly able to take credit for them. Negotiation 101: come to the table with your ideal offer knowing it will be whittled down through negotiations. The stimulus, Wall Street reform, even health care reform were largely composed of moderate ideas that Republicans previously supported. When one third of the stimulus was devoted to tax cuts at its inception, what was President Obama expecting the Republicans to do? Be thankful that the President came out with such a moderate proposal?

When compromises were publicly made, Democrats did not highlight them, even when they were major. The public option was far and away the most controversial component of the Democratic health care proposal. Liberals held it up as a holy grail, conservatives pointed to it as a communist government takeover of the health care system. Wouldn't you know it, the public option was not in the final health care bill, but liberal Democrats neglected to even claim credit for conceding this high priority component in the name of bipartisanship. In fact, just about every provision in the health care bill that ultimately passed has been supported by Republicans in the past - even the mandate for Americans to purchase insurance was proposed by Republicans in the Senate in 1993 as an alternative to the Clinton proposal. That is the only provision in the Obama bill that receives less than 50 percent public support in polls, and it was previously proposed by Republicans.

2) Soundbites have cooties.

President Obama and Democrats seem loathe to resort to concise, persuasive statements that can be easily echoed by members across the spectrum in support of their policies. Why? Perhaps they feel that they are above this alleged dumbing down of complex issues, or perhaps they are just disorganized. Either way, the message does not always get out.

For example, the recession could easily have been dubbed "the Bush recession" to lay the blame where it belongs with every mention of the struggling economy, yet Republicans claimed Obama owned the economy after month three in office and Democrats never responded with a consistent message. As for the economic recovery, Clinton adviser James Carville, who coined the phrase "It's the economy, stupid," widely regarded as the most effective message of Clinton's campaign, rightly pointed out that Obama had the wrong message on the economy. Instead of saying, as President Obama does, "What we are doing is working," which could understandably anger the millions of Americans who haven't felt the "working" piece of that statement, Carville rightly suggests the message should be, "We are standing up to the Wall Street CEO's who got us into this mess, and we are fighting for you every day to make this economy better." The unprecedented 24/7 news cycle is having an untold effect on the public debate, and seems to make messaging on complex matters that much more difficult. President Bush was the first President to really be confronted with the ups and downs of that cycle, and President Obama is still experimenting with governing techniques that work in that environment.

3) We won! Unfortunately.

There are a whole host of Democrats in Congress who have decided upon the worst political strategy ever - support legislation, but only after letting it be known far and wide how absolutely terrible they believe that legislation is. Perhaps if Democrats learned to withhold some of their most aggressively angry whining about their fellow Democrats and proposals that they will ultimately end up supporting, they would be better off. Every individual member of the party is stronger when the party as a whole has a unified and clear message. By all means, air concerns and offer critiques, but maybe try to avoid damning legislation to hell before casting a vote for it. I'm looking at you, Mary Landrieu (and tons of House members) during health care reform. And Barney Frank with the Senate Wall Street reform bill. And Mary Landrieu again during the latest tax cut deal between President Obama and top Republicans. If you hadn't heard, she called the deal "almost morally corrupt," before adding, "If I end up voting for this bill..." I'm sorry, after calling it morally corrupt, voting for the deal is still an option?! Great way to build the public's confidence for a vote you are going to have to defend when you're up for reelection.

Keep the infighting to a toned-down minimum as much as possible, and try to stay positive while looking out for the interests of the home district.

4) Lack of focu... oh, oh, oh, something shiny!

A common criticism of the Democrats' recent performance is that the Dems were not focused on the priorities of the American people. In the midst of a fragile recovery, Democrats took on the broken health care system. I understand this concern, but I don't believe that tackling health care was the wrong decision for President Obama to make. Given that health care reform was his most ambitious, and perhaps most important, campaign promise, it would have been nothing short of criminally disastrous were he to avoid this issue while he had historic Democratic majorities in Congress and enough political capital to actually get it accomplished. That being said, politically speaking, there may well be a lesson to be learned here. Following 9/11, George W. Bush devoted several of the ensuing years in office almost exclusively to fighting terrorism, and, for a time, his singular focus worked for him because it was similarly the highest priority on the minds of the American people. There is always something to be said for simplicity and focus.

5) The other guy filibustered and it's all your fault.

One problem is the mindset of some citizen Democrats – we may forget how difficult governing can be in a Democracy, and too often, we have ended up blaming other Democrats for the obstruction by Republicans. This is in part a result of the failure of effective messaging from the Democratic party, but it's also a problem in its own right. We have little patience and at times seem to forget that, when change ultimately does happen in the form of legislation passing through Congress, it is the product of hours, days, months, or years of negotiations and consensus building - and ultimately, agreement.

Case in point, Don't Ask, Don't Tell repeal. President Obama is President, not dictator, and there are 60 Senators and 218 House members who also must support any given bill for it to pass. As for DADT, Republicans in the Senate have so far been intent on filibustering the repeal, going so far as to delay funding our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan to prevent this repeal from taking effect. All of this after President Obama has spoken forcefully in favor of repeal during his campaign, at public rallies, and in his State of the Union address earlier this year, worked with the military leadership to come up with a path to repeal, ordered the largest survey of the military ever to build support, instructed his Republican Secretary of Defense to rally support for the legislation in Congress and in the military, requested hearings be held on the issue, and asked repeatedly that Congress pass the repeal bill. Yet, the frustration among Democrats appears to be aimed at President Obama, of all people, and not at Senator McCain and his fellow filibustering friends.

It is important that we direct our anger at our opposition, our advice and advocacy toward our allies, and try to understand the positions of both. As Middle East envoy George Mitchell said of his experience with the Northern Ireland peace accord he helped broker years ago, "if the objective is to achieve a peace agreement, until you do achieve one, you have failed to do so. In a sense, in Northern Ireland, we had about 700 days of failure and one day of success." Wise words, Mr. Mitchell. Wise words. Let us not call ourselves failures every day we don’t succeed.

6) Last, and most importantly...

Put it all in perspective. Everything listed here as something Democrats at times got wrong is also something we often got right. And governing decisions are made after careful analysis of the realities of the moment – the future is unpredictable, so good decisions of the moment may prove to have been terrible decisions down the road, but what more can we do? These are also issues that every President and Congress wrestle with, some more successfully than others. None of these problems is unique to Democrats, or to President Obama.

The Democrats, led by President Obama, Speaker Pelosi, and Majority Leader Reid, have accomplished great things for the American people at a pace unmatched in perhaps seven decades. Without reviewing all of the details of our accomplishments, it is safe to say that the economic stimulus plan, health care reform plan, and the Wall Street reform plan enacted by the Democrats (with the help of a few straggling Republicans) were each historic in their own right, and together are... ultra-historic. After fighting each of these massive battles in the midst of a faltering economy with unprecedented economic anxiety and a national unemployment rate of around 9.8 percent, President Obama maintains an approval rating of 45 percent or higher, depending on the poll - a rating greater than either Clinton or Reagan enjoyed following their first midterm losses in Congress. So chin up! We must be doing something right.

Tax Cuts for All! My 4 cents on why the latest Obama tax cut deal is all good

1) From my liberal standpoint, the worst part of the deal is our ideological opposition to lower tax rates on the wealthy at a time when America needs to be as fiscally responsible as possible without damaging the economy. However, the tax rates are only extended for two years (not five or ten) at a cost of about $160 billion (including the lower estate tax rate), and in return, we got a host of needed middle class tax cuts, funding for unemployment insurance for a full year, hopefully avoided deadlock on the New START treaty and Don't Ask Don't Tell repeal, and a major symbolic compromise with Republicans to follow up the disastrous midterms, giving moderates (if not liberals) a little more confidence in government, and in Obama.

2) Additionally, three other potential benefits of this deal: 1) the tax cuts for the wealthy are estimated to help create jobs to some degree, just not as high a degree as other stimulative measures would, including the unemployment insurance that is part of this deal. 2) Obama has disarmed the potentially effective Republican talking point that the recovery was not as robust as it could have been because Obama raised taxes. 3) The two year extension of the tax cuts for the wealthy ensures the tax rate for the wealthiest Americans will be an issue during the next election, just as it was heavily debated in 2008 - and look who won that argument.

3) Down side - for the next two years, the richest Americans, who have more money in a society facing a greater class divide than ever before, will not be paying their fair share to our country at a time when our deficits are historically high and our economy is struggling to gain steam. The harm that comes with $160 billion over two years, however, in the grand scheme of things, is more in the form of psychological/ideological repugnance than actual long-term economic damage.

4) The alternative to this deal is NOT a better deal - other options likely would have been worse for the economy, psychologically abusive to the country, and politically damaging to the Democrats. This was (pathetically) the single most important item to Republicans in the last two years, and they were not about to let it go. Obama could have turned down any deal that extended tax cuts for the wealthiest people, which would have continued Republicans on the path of obstruction for the next two years and sent a message to the public that Obama is unwilling to compromise. The tax rates for the middle class may have expired, at least temporarily, if we couldn't get a vote to extend them, putting the country on a bit of a roller coaster ride in the middle of our fragile economic recovery, and START, DADT, and every other priority of the Democrats would have immediately gone by the wayside. With Republicans set to take the House come January 1, Democrats have very little leverage to work with and a limited time frame. Perhaps Obama ultimately could have gotten slightly more concessions from Republicans, but it is no sure thing, and it would have taken time and cost valuable capital better spent on other priorities, all for very little policy gain.