Democracy in Action
Yesterday's Gallup poll finding that the town hall protests are having the desired effects of gaining sympathy for the protestors and increasing doubts about health care reform efforts is getting a lot of attention. Those results don't surprise me, however. (They do surprise Mickey Kaus.) What is interesting is this: Frank Newport: There is a fair degree of consensus among Democrats, independents, and ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on August 13, 2009 08:32
Un-American
The Outrage of the Day, apparently, is a USA Today op-ed by Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer in which they assert "Drowning out opposing views is simply un-American." Weekly Standard, Gateway Pundit, The Huffington Post, Top of the Ticket, Moe_Lane's blog, The Moderate Voice, JammieWearingFool, JustOneMinute, The Atlantic Politics Channel, Le·gal In·sur·rec· tion, The Jawa Report, Boston Globe, Los Angeles Times, ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on August 10, 2009 15:47
Winning the Healthcare Fight
David Frum frets that conservatives might be in for a Pyrrhic victory in the health care fight if they define winning as "beat back the president’s proposals, defeat the House bill, stand back and wait for 1994 to repeat itself." [W]e’ll still have the present healthcare system. Meaning that we’ll have (1) flat-lining wages, (2) exploding Medicaid and Medicare costs and ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on August 9, 2009 07:24
Are Americans Stupid?
Bill Maher has a piece at HuffPo arguing that Americans are a bunch of idiots who should just shut up and let people who know what they're talking about make decisions on tough issues like health care reform. [T]ake the health care debate we're presently having: members of Congress have recessed now so they can go home and "listen to their ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on August 8, 2009 08:11
Congressional Revolution Needed?
Ezra Klein and Steve Benen are recirculating this somewhat interesting chart on political polarization in America by political scientists Nolan McCarty, Keith T. Poole, and Howard Rosenthal. Ezra argues that "this level of polarization makes it virtually impossible to govern in a system that is designed to foil majorities and require a constant three-fifths consensus. It's not good if the country ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on August 2, 2009 08:08
Better to Be A Pessimist and Proved Wrong . . .
Responding to a rather harsh reader email criticizing him for a recent series of posts expressing his disappointment with President Obama, for whom he note only voted but wrote a whole series of pre-election mash notes, Andrew Sullivan responds, I am not a cheer-leader and I don't think Obama wants cheer-leaders. He wants and deserves criticism when merited. Methinks Sully is setting ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on July 30, 2009 12:28
Ideological Wind Tunnels
Glenn Greenwald rebuts those who think his strident attacks on Presidents Bush and Obama for abusing their power make his blog "an ideological wind tunnel" and that he is "oblivious to the practical considerations policymakers must contend with." By the design of the Founders, most American political issues are driven by the vicissitudes of political realities, shaped by practicalities and resolved by ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on July 30, 2009 11:29
Get Married Or Leave Town
In answer to James' query below about when a state or county have forced unmarried people not to live together, meet Olivia Shelltrack, Fondray Loving and their three children. Welcome to Wednesday afternoon at 12475 Parkwood Lane in Black Jack, Mo.: In his room on the second floor, 8-year-old Cortez Loving wages an intergalactic battle with dozens of action figures; next ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on July 28, 2009 16:05
Federalism and Democracy
Continuing a long-running theme at his blog, Matt Yglesias laments that Senators from small states wield so much power. The latest fuel is a NYT feature on six moderates who are supposedly the linchpins to putting together a bipartisan health care deal and who routinely hash out the details of same over snacks. [V]ast power is being wielded by people who, ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on July 28, 2009 14:37
President Obama = President Carter?
That is what Matt Welch and Nick Gillespie argue in their Washington Post article. Barely six months into his presidency, Barack Obama seems to be driving south into that political speed trap known as Carter Country: a sad-sack landscape in which every major initiative meets not just with failure but with scorn from political allies and foes alike. According to a ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on July 22, 2009 19:46
Obama Health Care = Bush Social Security
Patrick Ruffini has used considerably fewer than 140 characters to make an interesting point: "Obama Health Care = Bush Social Security." The analogy is a strong one. You will recall that President George W. Bush, fresh off re-election in 2004 pledged to use his "political capital" to pass a major reform of the Social Security system that included a private option. Despite ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on July 20, 2009 10:15
Obama Approval Dropping as Hard Choices Made
As President Obama settles into his fifth month in office, his personal popularity remains high but his job approval is slipping drastically, according to a new NYT/CBS News poll. A substantial majority of Americans say President Obama has not developed a strategy to deal with the budget deficit, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll, which also found ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on June 18, 2009 09:26
Great Compromise Not So Great?
Matt Yglesias has discovered the facts that 1) each state gets two Senators and 2) some states are bigger than others, a condition that has obtained since the inception of our current system in 1789. There was, as some may recall having read, this thing called the Great Compromise whereby delegates representing sovereign states under the extant Articles of Confederation ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on June 16, 2009 11:50
Right Wing Extremists
There's been much back-and-forth since Wednesday's tragic shooting of a guard at the Holocaust Musuem about the rise of right wing extremists and the need for the federal government to treat them as a threat. Inevitably, we're seeing the perennial "their extremists are worse than our extremists" debate. Oddly, we're even seeing some "No, he's actually a Left-wing extremist!" arguments. Rather ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on June 13, 2009 08:17
Europe’s Fringe
The press had a field day with the election of various racist and oddball parties to the European Parliament over the weekend. A quick scan of the headlines: "European election results Battered and bruised" (The Economist); "European elections 2009: far-Right and fringe parties make gains across Europe amid low turnout" (The Telegraph); "European elections: extremist and fringe parties are the big ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on June 11, 2009 11:39
