| Jan 31 | Preemptive SOTU Pushback |
| Jan 30 | I'm It! |
| Jan 30 | One of These Things Just Doesn't Belong |
| Jan 29 | Bigger Media Nicholas |
| Jan 19 | Joe, Joe, Joe |
| Jan 17 | The Fuzzy Math of CBS News |
| Jan 13 | Exploiting the "Crazy Quilt" |
| Jan 11 | Joe Lieberman: A Popular Guy |
| Jan 10 | Things I don't understand |
| Jan 8 | Terrorists ... in .... spaaaaaaaaaaaace! |
| Jan 3 | Lie Down With the Dogs, Wake Up With Fleas |
| Jan 3 | Progress |
| Jan 2 | Strategy vs Tactics |
| Jan 1 | Most Played Songs of 2005 |
By all accounts, the State Of The Union will include a hefty dose of health savings accounts, some security talk, and some greenwashing efforts to make it look like the President is a Carteresque tree-hugging conservationist. Along with -- get this -- President Bush scolding Congress for its ethical problems. This is great theater, but the facts on the ground tell a different story. The political reality for the Blue Team looks something like this:
That's 70 words, and it covers what are likely to be all four major themes of the speech.
'Cowboy up, everybody.
Drinking Liberally starts at 5:45 pm this week in preparation for the SOTU Drinking Game. In addition, free beer for anyone who shows up in Seahawks gear.
Via Urs, ten views I hold without any evidence to support them (or disprove them):
I tag Battlepanda, Phoebe Maltz Professor B****, and Neil The Ethical Werewolf.
I'm having a hard time understanding why Rasumssen Reports has Bush Job Approval inching towards 50%, while most other polls show his numbers stabilizing at 41-43%.
Now, the increase in RR's numbers started on the 27th, after all of the tradition polls had completed, but I can't imagine that Hamas' victory in Palestine caused seven percent of Americans to suddenly morph into Bush lovers.
[Ed note: I was on vacation and unable to post thanks to the use of byzantine non-web-based blogging software and crummy network connections in Costa Rica]
The Seattle chapter of Drinking Liberally scored a very nice full-page write-up in this week's edition of The Stranger. I had no idea I was "soft-spoken", but all in all it's a good piece. Thanks Cienna.
I'm going to have to find some other sources for polling and policy news before this becomes the "All-Lieberman-All-The-Time" show.
Nonetheless, the Swing State Project produces numbers that suggest that the junior Senator from Connecticut is currently as vulnerable as Arlen Specter (R-PA). The recent Q-poll puts his job approval significantly below December's SurveyUSA poll, whose results give him the same negatives but a higher positive rating. So the picture is a bit murky, but let's remember that lots of institutions will likely line up to protect their own. In addition to Matt Stoller's list, challenging Lieberman risks crossing Chuck Schumer of the DSCC, who has done a great job recruiting strong Senate candidates who are mostly "proud Democrats". Forcing the Senate campaign committee ... which are poised for a landslide ... to spend time and money in Connecticut strikes me as a really crappy use of time, money, and man-hours.
I don't like Lieberman's permanent Sistah Souljah act, but this isn't the northern version of Zell Miller. Lieberman has a decent record when push comes to shove, so this comes down to style. We'd be better off finding a way to get him out of his mad descent into hawkery and spend the money in the Ohio.
While the rest of the world covers the colossal failure that is the Medicare prescription drug "benefit", CBS demonstrates that it is in the tank for the White House with a puff piece on how Medicare enrollment is exceeding White House projections. This is, to put it bluntly, ridiculous.
First of all, the White House deliberately lowballed projections to hide the true cost of the bill from members of Congress, knowing that they would lose a number of votes on the Republican side of the aisle if it were too expensive.
Second, as has been well documented, the drug "benefit" is a policy failure of staggering proportions. Eligibility requirements are confusing, certain drugs are excluded from coverage for what appears to be no good reason, the "donut hole" leaves lots of seniors without any prescription help ... it's really just a gargantuan pain in the derriere for no good reason.
There aren't any successes that can make up for these failures. The bulk of enrolled seniors were enrolled automatically by a pre-existing healthy plan, so at the moment, only 2.5% of all seniors have used the program to increase their drug coverage, and it's possible some of them may have switched from an existing prescription plan.
Is there anything this executive can execute on successfully, other than short-term political tactics?
One way to force national action on health care is to make the problem so complicated that large business simply decide to give up. Imagine if Maryland passes its employer mandate, Montana passes a different employer mandate, San Francisco passes a law exempting small businesses, the state of California passes a similar law but with a different definition of "small", Massachusetts has a state run plan, Oregon does things its own way, West Virgina has its own solution, and so on and so forth. Soon enough, the HR departments at Wal-Mart, Qwest, Limited, and other nationwide companies, not to mention the insurance business, are tearing their hair out trying to manage their tax and spending requirements in umpteen different states and municipalities, so they call for a unified national solution. Kate alludes to this possibility over at Healthy Policy.
Paul Roberts suggested a similar strategy in The End of Oil, where a patchwork of state regulations on carbon emissions eventually leads energy and car companies towards a stricter set of national emissions standards. How exactly such scenarios would play out given the current configuration of Washington, though, is unclear.
Charlie Cook's Political Report suggests that there simply aren't enough competitive seats to put the House into play. I find this curious, especially given the rapid movement away from Generic Republicans on the congressional ballot. Sure, incumbency gives the GOP a bit of an advantage, but when your party's approval rating is below forty percent, it's tough to pull it out of the danger zone.
Drinking Liberally is this week and every week at 8pm. Roger Goodman, President of the King County Bar Association, will be on hand to take questions.
The jokes write themselves. (via caribom@dailykos).
Weekend posts on everyone's least favorite topics: Joe Lieberman and the total and utter insufficiency of throwing DeLay overboard.
Perhaps the most striking thing about the Abramoff plea deal is the extent to which he's more interested in his own self-preservation more than anything else. Casino Jack spent the better part of the nineties making seven figures a year engaged in a high-stakes legalized protection racket. When the game was up, he snitched on his Congressional supporters before even demanding a plea bargain. Most party hacks can be counted on for a bit more loyalty than that; after all, once he gets ouf of prison, he'll have is own talk radio show waiting for him, right? The conservative political machine is by and large subsurvient to the goals and desires of elected officials, but Abramoff seems interested in increasing his own personal power more than preserving the institution of Republican politics.
The lesson for Congress is that when you do business with self-interested snakes who are just in it for the money and the muscle, they don't have any reason to stay loyal when the chips are down. Caveat emptor, indeed.
Charles Kuffner takes a look at Congressional filings in Texas and finds more Democratic challengers. The Democrats found someone to run in every Congressional race except one, and have candidates in 104 out of 150 state legislature races. All of which is a much better showing than in 2004. Since most of these new candidates are running in intensely Republican districts, it's too much to expect a significant number of wins. But, it's certainly progress.
With all the chaos caused by having two independent candidates in the governor's race, there is a chance for some real upheaval in '06. In Texas, of all places.
My vision on this subject is blurred by the fog of campaigning, but contra the Ethical Werewolf, the Fighting Dems are more likely to convey a tactical advantage than a strategic one. That is, they will generate increased Democratic support in the districts where they're running, but won't immediately lead to a broader increase in Democratic party identification elsewhere.
One could imagine scenarios where the Fighting Dems did lead to such a shift. Congress could grind to a halt over veterans' benefits or military procurement reform. The DCCC could start a massive earned media campaign hilighting the biographies of several members of the Fighting Dems and use these candidates as point-men (and women) to "declare victory and go home". The party could start opposing all new base closings and emphasize the value of national service. But at the moment, no such PR push exists, and it's not immediately clear that it would directly improve Democratic support, so I don't yet count them as likely to happen.
Update: I should be clear that the tactical advantage of the Fighting Dems is quite large. Some of these candidates may turn out to be duds, but some of them will turn out to be Paul Hacketts.
Passed along without comment, these are the fifty songs I've played the most this year, according to iTunes:
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updated by Nicholas Beaudrot on 07:15 10 January 2006