Turf War

Former mayor and assembly-speaker Antonio Villaraigosa will likely announce his candidacy for U.S. Senate this coming week. If Tony runs, he'll be taking on the Democratic front runner, California Attorney General Kamala Harris. Harris is coffee-colored and from the Bay Area and Villaraigosa is an Elay homeboy with an Hispanic name, so the media have made the sensible decision to present the competition in a way that's simple and easy-to-understand: black against Latino, SanFran vs SoCal. The alternative would be to waste endless column inches and seconds of airtime evaluating the candidates' records and explaining their policy differences, and no one wants that. The only snag in the epic ethnic showdown scenario is that the candidates don't fit the required templates -- Harris is the offspring of an Indian physician mother and Jamaican economist father and Villaraigosa was still struggling with español as recently as his run for mayor -- and may balk at being cast as ethnic stereotypes.

Oh, well. It's not their choice to make.

Head count

Democrats got a boost of one in the Senate today.

The newly elected independent from the State of Maine, Angus King, said he will join the Democratic caucus: "Affiliating with the majority makes sense." That gives Democrats 55 seats in the upper house, with 45 seats for the Republicans. 

Time was when that would have been perceived as a majority. 

We'll see.

2012: Straight talk on the campaign trail

Elizabeth Warren is leading débutant Republican Senator Scott Brown in Massachusetts. In case you're wondering why:

I hear all this, you know, ‘Well, this is class warfare, this is whatever.’ No. There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody.

You built a factory out there? Good for you. But I want to be clear: you moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for; you hired workers the rest of us paid to educate; you were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn’t have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory, and hire someone to protect against this, because of the work the rest of us did.

Now look, you built a factory and it turned into something terrific, or a great idea? God bless. Keep a big hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along.
- Elizabeth Warren

Elizabeth Warren: "There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own" by Lucy Madison (CBS News 2011-09-22)
Elizabeth Warren for Massachusetts (campaign site)
Donate to the Warren campaign (ActBlue)

Action: Senate Candidates Worth Fighting For

The Blue America Senate endorsement page on Act Blue is trying to help six progressive challengers in winnable contests against reactionary Republican obstructionists. These contests will go a very long way in determining whether the U.S. Senate will be more progressive or more conservative next year.

Spread the word. And more to the point, donate.

See, also: Roxanne Conlin (IA); Jack Conway (KY); Paul Hodes (NH); Elaine Marshall (NC); Scott McAdams (AK); Joe Sestak (PA).

Among Blue America PAC pages you will find actions dedicated to other specific endeavors, such as defeating Blue Dogs, rewarding members of Congress who have been fighting for meaningful health care or for ending the disastrous occupation of Afghanistan. There is even a page dedicated specifically to giving props to progressive hero Alan Grayson and one to send a message to the inside-the-beltway establishment by supporting the people's Democrats, i.e., the non-corporate kind.

Politics: Those Wacky Republicans - a series

Although it looks like wealthy businessman William Binnie will unload a ton of his own money into his bid for the GOP nomination for U.S. Senate in New Hampshire, the state's attorney general, Kelly Ayotte, still seems a safe bet to eke out a win. One thing she probably doesn't need to worry about, though, is this guy:

Must See TV: Abolish the Senate

AfterDowningStreet's David Swanson makes the case for ditching a dysfunctional and anti-democratic anachronism:

The Filibuster

The Subpoena

Q&A

Q&A (cont.)

Reform: Can the Senate II

Two-hundred and ninety bills passed by the House of Representatives this year, some major, some minor, have seen no action by the Senate.

According to a report by The Hill, "The list of stalled bills includes both major and minor legislation: health care reform; climate change; food safety; financial aid for the US Postal Service; a job security act for wounded veterans; a Civil War battlefield preservation act; vision care for children; the naming of a federal courthouse in Iowa after former Rep. Jim Leach (R-Iowa); a National Historic Park named for President Jimmy Carter; a bill to improve absentee ballot voting; a bill to improve cybersecurity; and the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act." Nor does that take into account the dozens of presidential appointees still awaiting Senate confirmation.

Government is not broken. The Democratic Party is not broken. The Senate is broken. It will stay broken as long as it misapportioned -- as long one citizen ≠ one vote, as long as .5 million people in Wyoming have the same ballot power as 37 million Californians. It will stay broken until senators are chosen by the people instead of the corporate oligarchy, until it is no longer America's most exclusive country club, until campaign finance reform levels the playing field. Fixing it won't be easy. But until it's fixed, it will be all but impossible to fix anything else.

See, also How to fix the Senate? by Mack McClarty, Norman J. Ornstein, Mark J. Penn, Warren Rudman, Sarah Binder and Forrest Maltzman, Dana Perino, and Rob Richie (The Washington Post, 2010-02-21)

Democracy: Can the Senate

If we don't keep in mind what a working democracy would look like we won't achieve even the minimum changes we need to address our most pressing problems. It might be widely understood that the Senate is a failure as an instrument of governance, but, okay, we can't can it yet.

In the meantime, reform is the word of the day. Campaign finance reform. Electoral college reform. And, this week, filibuster reform. A point of order, supported by 51 votes, could get rid of the filibuster today. More likely, we'll have to wait til the Senate reorganizes next January. Will the Democrats, shellshocked from the shellacking they're going to suffer in November, still be in the mood for change by the new year? Will they even have 51 votes when they convene in January? While we wait to find out, we have Sen. Tom Harkin's chuckle-headed mini-reform to keep us busy.

Question: why doesn't the majority just call the minority's bluff and let them get out the bottled water and sleeping bags and filibuster if they dare? That would be fun.
Reforms should target two-party stranglehold, power of incumbency

George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley doesn't think the most widely supported reforms go nearly far enough. "For decades," he wrote in an op-ed the other day,

political reform in the United States has largely meant campaign finance reform. It is a focus the political mainstream prefers, despite the fact that it is akin to addressing an engine with a design defect by regulating the fuel.

Many of our current problems are either caused or magnified by the stranglehold the two parties have on our political system. Democrats and Republicans, despite their uniformly low popularity with voters, continue to exercise a virtual monopoly, and they have no intention of relinquishing control. The result is that "change" is often limited to one party handing power over to the other party. Like Henry Ford's customers, who were promised any color car so long as it was black, voters are effectively allowed to pick any candidate they want, so long as he or she is a Democrat or Republican.

Both parties (and the media) reinforce this pathetic notion by continually emphasizing the blue state/red state divide. The fact is that the placement of members on the blue or red team is often arbitrary, with neither side showing consistent principles or values.

The Supreme Court's recent decision to strike down restrictions on corporate campaign giving has prompted some members of Congress to call for a constitutional amendment to reinstate the restrictions. But that would merely return us to the same status (and corrupted process) of a month ago.

We can reform our flawed system, but we have to think more broadly about the current political failure.

On this page, we have made the point that without third parties viable representative democracy is impossible. Turley argues forcefully that barriers to third parties need to be removed or modified, including complicated registration regulations and impossible petition requirements. "Moreover," he writes,

we should require a federally funded electronic forum for qualified federal candidates to post their positions and material for voters. And in races for national office, all candidates on the ballot in the general election should submit to a minimum of three (for Congress) or five (for the presidency) debates that would be funded and made publicly available by the government.

Turley's list of needed changes is no less urgent for being familiar. He would end gerrymandering and require that congressional districts be apportioned uniformly. He would make it easier to run in primaries and mandate that the top two vote-getters in primaries would be the candidates in the general even if they were from the same party. He would abolish the electoral college. And he would require a majority for a president to be elected.

If no candidate receives more than 50 percent of the vote, there should be a runoff of the two top vote-getters -- as is the custom in most other nations. This would tend to force candidates to reach out to third parties and break up monopoly control of the two parties.

None of this is likely to happen any time soon, unfortunately. The small states will not willingly give up power, no matter how unfair their advantages, so putting together the required majorities in the Congress is a lost cause. Turley might be willing to risk a constitutional convention despite the likelihood that it would be dominated by corporate interests and could get sidetracked by divisive social issues like same-sex marriage and abortion.

Finally, I think Turley agrees that third parties offer the best mechanism for pursuing reform. Voters who live in states like New York and California that already have third parties in place would do well to get involved. For people residing elsewhere, it's time to get to work. If you've been persuaded by the argument that a third party vote is "wasted," consider this: there is nothing to be lost by combining strategies, for example, challenging incumbents in the primaries and then supporting third party candidates in the general election if they better represent your political values. Democratic primary candidates like Jonathan Tasini for U.S. Senate in New York or Marcy Winograd who is running against security state representative Jane Harman in Califoria are worthy of support, although it would be helpful to the causes they believe in if they would commit to supporting independent and third party pro-labor and anti-war candidates in November if their primary bids fail.

The rest of the story: Reforms should target two-party stranglehold, power of incumbency by Jonathan Turley (Baltimore Sun 2010-02-15)

See, also: Rachel Maddow On Busting The Filibuster (video - MSNBC)

Democracy: How do we achieve One Person, One Vote?

The  so-called Gang of Six -- three conservative Democrats and three conservative Republicans on the Senate finance committee -- have been struggling for months without much luck to devise a health insurance reform plan acceptable to them all. Together representing less than 3% of the U.S. population, they were selected by the White House to forge the chimerical "bipartisan" reform package that was somehow to gain legitimacy by encompassing the values of the party that lost the last congressional and presidential elections instead of merely reflecting the will of the majority. Why these six conservatives, an equal number of them Republicans despite the outcome of the last election, were picked instead of a full spectrum of democratically chosen representatives is one for the history books, but the result so far is that the Senate has had before it a series of proposals far less extensive than polls indicate is desired by voters.

The harebrained elevation of the Gang of Six to the status of super-senators reflects a bigger problem that confounds and constricts our democracy: the Senate itself is a surpassingly undemocratic institution. Born in 1787 of a necessary compromise between the larger and smaller states, the upper house was created to protect the less populous entities from being overwhelmed in the national legislature by those that had more people. At a time when no one thought of himself as an American, it made sense to protect the political sovereignty of the "state" that did hold a person's allegiance.

The nation and the concept of democracy under which it operates have evolved enormously since then; it is no longer tolerable, let alone necessary, to permit vast differences in the value of the individual franchise. The concept represented by the phrase "one person, one vote" is the accepted measure by which we judge democracy today. By that standard, no institution that allots equal power to .5 million citizens in Wyoming and 36.5 million citizens in California, to take one example, can by any reasonable measure be called democratic. The existence of the Gang of Six is emblematic of the sorts of mischief that follow from stunting democracy.

The most efficient way to deal with the Senate would be to get rid of it. Delegates to the Constitutional Convention originally envisioned a Congress consisting of a single chamber but ran into a wall over representation. Delegates from the larger, more populous states wanted the Virginia Plan, which called for the number of each state's representatives to be based on population. Delegates from smaller states liked the New Jersey plan, under which each state would select an equal number of delegates. Roger Sherman and Oliver Ellsworth of Connecticut proposed a "bicameral" legislature as a compromise; the Congress would have two chambers, one representing the people, the other the states. Now that the impasse that engendered the Senate is long past, the simplest solution would be to revert to the unicameral model.

In a country as conservative as ours, though, it may not be possible make such a seemingly radical change. If we haven't even been able to eliminate a dysfunctional relic like the electoral college, how likely is it that we will throw out the Senate, no matter how profoundly it violates democratic ideals? We ought to do what we can, however, to make the body more democratic. The smallest step would be to remove one senator from the 16 least-populous states and grant an additional senator to the 16 with the most citizens. Under such a plan, California, Texas, New York, Florida, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Georgia, North Carolina, New Jersey, Virginia, Washington, Arizona, Massachusetts, and Indiana would have three senators each; Nevada, New Mexico, West Virginia, Nebraska, Idaho, Maine, New Hampshire, Hawaii, Rhode Island, Montana, Delaware, South Dakota, Alaska, North Dakota, Vermont and Wyoming would each have one. The other 18 states would continue to have two senators.

Depending how strongly we revere democracy, for most of us this plan wouldn't go nearly far enough, of course. While more fair and equitable than the current arrangement, it would still vastly tilt power toward the inhabitants of small and rural states. If this configuration were adopted, each of those folks in Wyoming would still be worth 32 Californians, although that's a considerable improvement over 72-1; it would take five California senators to Wyoming's one to cut the disproportion in representation to 14-1; and you would need 72 California senators to one from Wyoming to approach the ideal of One Person One Vote.

Simpler just to dump it.

Health Care Insurance Reform: 30 senators sign letter backing public option

"In the past, it's been House Democrats who've been most vocal in supporting the public option. Now, Senate Democrats are getting on the bandwagon.

"30 Democratic senators (really, 29 Democrats and one independent who caucuses with them, Vermont's Bernie Sanders) joined together on Thursday to send a letter to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid in which they ask him 'for your leadership on ensuring that the merged health reform bill contains a public insurance option.'"

The rest of the story: 30 senators sign letter backing public option (Salon 2009-19-08)

Stimulus: Sanity returns -- briefly -- to the debate about fixing the economy

According to a report in this morning's Times, the Democratic majority is "short of the 60 votes needed to advance a $161 billion economic stimulus package toward approval in the Senate."

You may recall from civics class that it used to require a simple majority to pass most laws in the federal legislature. But since 2006, the Democrats have adopted a new theory of democracy under which no law can be advanced that is not veto-proof. The practical effect is to have the legislature held hostage by the president.

Some Democratic senators insist that the House stimulus plan, adopted under the super-majority theory, is a lousy bill that will benefit people who don't need help, hurt people who do, vastly increase the deficit, and not do much of anything for the economy.

Instead of crafting a responsible bill to address a perceived crisis -- and perhaps first determining whether there is a crisis, the House Democratic leadership, as is now its custom, caved in to the Bush administration's aversion to any economic program not made up primarily of tax cuts and payouts to the rich.

The senators are right. The House bill is pretty bad.

It creates humongous deficits at a time when we are already consumed with how we are going to continue to fund essential existing programs like Medicare and Social Security, let alone find the resources for important new efforts, such as universal health care. Because it consists largely of tax cuts, the resulting deficits will cause long-term interest rates to go up, an outcome more likely to further slow down the economy than to stimulate it, and add billions to the deficit by greatly increasing the cost of servicing the national debt.

And, of course, by agreeing not to raise revenues to pay for the expenditures, the Democratically controlled Congress is irresponsibly compounding an already catastrophic problem, passing it on to future generations of Americans and, more to the point, future generations of politicians.

Most important, as the latest sally in the administration's class war, the package continues the policy of redistributing national resources to those at the wealthiest end of the economic spectrum, not only sending money in the wrong direction but in this case dispatching huge amounts of it there. The average tax dividend dollar will go to superrich recipients whose primary source of income is taxable dividends, in other words, to people who not only don't need it, but, belying the rationale for the stimulus, to people who will have no incentive to spend it.

Conversely, the House proposal doesn't include immediate infusions of cash into the economy, as an expansion of the food stamp program would do; doesn't offer help to those who would be hurt by a recession, as an extension of unemployment payments would do; doesn't help state governments -- already suffering from declining tax revenues -- that bear most of the costs of social programs; and doesn't include expenditures -- on infrastructure projects, for example -- that would create jobs and improve the longterm strength of the economy.

President Bush, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the House Republican leader John A. Boehner of Ohio, and the Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky have all urged the Senate to adopt a slightly cheaper version of the stimulus plan that was approved by the House on Tuesday.

But Senate Democrats, including the majority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, have insisted on pressing ahead with their own package [is that sound the Times tsk-tsk-ing?], which was approved by the Senate Finance Committee on Wednesday.

Only 3 of the 10 Republicans on the committee voted in favor of the plan, though — an early sign that the bipartisan cooperation that drove negotiations over the stimulus plan in the House was crumbling in the Senate.

The Senate stimulus plan would cost nearly $200 billion over two years, about $30 billion more than the House package [tsk-tsk] — and Democrats said they still intended to offer amendments that could add even more to the cost [tsk-tsk].

Sixty votes are needed under Senate rules to shut off debate on a measure and move to consideration of the measure itself, a step known as cloture. Without cloture, opponents of a Senate bill would be able to prolong the debate indefinitely.

This pathetic charade is an example of the behavior that has led to the public's contempt for the legislature. The senators know as well as you do that the House bill is seriously flawed, but in an election year looking responsible trumps being responsible -- we have to do something, even if we all know it's the wrong thing -- and because "(w)ithout cloture, opponents of a Senate bill would be able to prolong the debate indefinitely," the leaders of the Senate have already indicated they, too, are ready to cave.

Here's Democrat heavyweight Charles Schumer, New York's senior senator:

“If it fails, we’ll pass the House bill. But we’ll give it a try.”

Wow. The Republicans must be quaking in their Berlutis.

In case you're keeping track, here's another name you won't find in the next edition of Profiles in Courage:

Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, the assistant majority leader, said that Democrats’ strategy was, first, to seek approval of the Senate’s stimulus bill along with a small number of amendments. If that failed, he said, they would then turn to holding a series of votes to add components to the House’s version of the bill, and then ultimately call a vote on that plan.

The Democrats’ willingness to publicly discuss such a fallback strategy verged on the waving of a surrender flag: It indicated that they knew Senate Republicans could block the more expensive Senate stimulus plan, and that any delay in approving the House package would be dangerous politically, since it would leave the Democrats vulnerable to charges that they were impeding efforts to prop up the economy.

As it emerged from committee, the Senate bill that Durbin and Schumer have already abandoned is a big improvement on the Bush-league House bill. For example, the Senate proposal provides payments of $500 each -- not rebates, but cash that in most cases will be spent immediately -- to about 20 million low-income Americans over the age of 62 who survive on Social Security benefits, and to about 250,000 veterans dependent on payouts from a grateful nation. In a perfect example of what's wrong with the lower body's proposal, neither of these groups would receive a penny from the House.

Both stimulus plans are meant to encourage spending through a combination of income-tax rebates, tax incentives for businesses, and stipends for tax filers who report at least $3,000 in earnings but do not pay enough income tax to qualify for rebates.

The House plan was forged in swift negotiations among Ms. Pelosi, Mr. Boehner and Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. In those talks, Ms. Pelosi ultimately [swiftly, is more like it] dropped Democratic demands that unemployment benefits be extended and food stamps be increased, in favor of sending rebates and stipends to 35 million low-income families that would not have received them under a Bush administration proposal.

You are supposed to be excited and uplifted by the sight Democrats and Republicans voting in large numbers for the same bill, as if bipartisanship and not policy was the point of this is exercise. We are expected not to notice that, like every outbreak of bipartisanship in Washington, the legislation is a by-product of the Democratic majority's abdication of its responsibilities in the face of intransigence by the Bush administration. The unpopular, failed, corrupt, incompetent, lame-duck Bush administration.

Instead of fighting for better policy, the Democrats have decided to play political games with the legislative process. Having conceded ultimate victory to the conservatives, the Democrats hope to use the committee's bill and amendments from the floor to make "some Republicans potentially [pay] a steep political price, by voting against amendments that would be popular in their home states."

For instance, the Democrats were nearly certain to propose an amendment to increase government assistance for rising home heating costs and other energy expenses — a program for low-income families that is hugely popular in the Northeast. Republican Senators up for re-election this year, like Senator John Sununu of New Hampshire, would be forced to choose between casting a yes vote that would break with the Republican leadership or a no vote that would be unpopular with their constituents.

Not only is the Democratic plan cynical, it's a loser. Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell already knows he's going to get the House bill. Do you think he won't free up his team to vote in favor of amendments their constituents favor? Sununu, for example, can vote for the heating fuel subsidy, thus gaining an advantage with the huddled masses in New Hampshire, then vote against the final version of the Democrats' bill in the name of, oh, i dunno, "fiscal responsibility."

Praising the House bill, Mr. McConnell said: “Republicans and Democrats rose above politics and put the people and our economy first.”

He continued: “Then all eyes turned to the Senate. Would we put our individual interests aside, or would we throw the whole plan into jeopardy by loading it down with gifts for anybody who came calling? Apparently the temptation for giveaways was too great for some to resist."

This is how "bipartisanship" works. The White House -- not the legislature -- decides what is "acceptable." Under the 60% theory, the majority introduces legislation that will head off the threat of a veto or, in the Senate, a filibuster (the 66% theory, I guess). I stress threat. Bush has vetoed only eight bills, and you could run a decent Democratic campaign for office on most of them (stem cell research, children's health insurance, health and human services expenditures, water resources, a timeline for withdrawal from Iraq). And while there have been a large number of cloture votes in this session, the Senate majority has not forced the minority to hold real, public filibusters with whatever political consequences such confrontations might hold. All you really need to do to intimidate the Democrats is to frown at them.

In opposing improved legislation, McConnell, whom the Times, as is its custom, gives the most ink and the last word, caps a recitation of the usual refrain about Democratic profligacy with a final tip of the hat to the bi-partisan, i.e., Bush-certified, House proposal.

“As soon as the bill hit the Senate, it started to look a lot like Christmas over here. Chairman Baucus added 10 new provisions before the bill was even considered in committee. Three more amendments were added in the committee. You could almost hear Bing Crosby’s voice coming out of the Finance Committee.

“So the stimulus train is slowing, grinding to a halt here in the U.S. Senate, all of which only reinforces my view that the only way we’ll get relief to the people soon enough for it to work, will be to insist on speed over spending. And the only way to do that is to pass the bipartisan, House-passed bill.”

Bi-partisanship is a smoke screen used to obscure the fact that -- forget Democrats or Republicans -- the Congress is dominated by a conservative majority.

How about this instead:

Pass the best bill you can. If Bush wants to veto it, so what? If the Republicans want to uphold the veto, same thing. Whether they succeed or fail, go to the American people in November and let them decide. Draw a clear line between the party of the people and the party of the rich. If they have an unambiguous understanding of whom they're voting for, no matter how it turns out, at least Americans will get the government they deserve.

2008: Another progressive with a shot at winning a seat in Congress

Nothing would set the tone for the upcoming primaries and the fall election more than strong early wins by progressives in the Democratic primaries.

In four weeks there will be a special primary election in Illinois' 14th Congressional district to find a replacement for Dennis Hastert, who just ducked out the door, conveniently in time to beat the new law extending the waiting periods for special interest lobbyists.

One of the candidates in the race is John Laesch, who as the Democratic nominee in 2006 pulled 40 percent in the general election against that very powerful incumbent. With numbers like that, and especially given the shift in public sentiment in the last two years, the Laesch campaign thinks this is a very winnable race.

Laesch supports an immediate end to the occupation of Iraq, wants to shut down NAFTA, will vote for single-payer health care, and favors a host of other progressive positions. He spoke out in favor of impeachment two years ago and wants hearings in the House Judiciary Committee now.

These early elections are important because strong showings by real progressives will put immense pressure on all sitting Democratic members to start listening more responsively to their constituents. It will also discourage the Senate and House campaign committees from supporting conservatives against progressives in primaries as the Schumer/Emanuel-led committees did in 2006. A new member of Congress will be seated no later than March 8. A huge victory for John would send a real message to the do-nothings in the legislature that the days of ignoring the people are over.

John Laesch donations: <http://www.usalone.com/donations_laesch.php>

See Bitter Primary to Succeed Hastert (Washington Post)