Useless Arguments

I have long had a hypothesis that there are two steps involved in a person's reaching a policy position. The first step involves the broad, fundamental goal, value, or priority involved. The second involves translating that goal, value, or priority into a specific, discrete policy. I came up with this framework during arguments with a conservative friend of mine in which, again and again, our arguments collapsed onto the same basic disagreement, namely whether or not it was good to tax the rich to provide services for societal gain. I said yes, he said no, neither of us ever convinced the other, so every time that question needed to be settled before you could decide something, we would disagree.

The lesson I took from these debates is that, while it is definitely fruitful to argue with people you share fundamentals with about specific policies, and while it can often be fruitful to argue with people about fundamentals when you disagree over them, it is essentially pointless to try to argue policy specifics with someone you do not share the relevant fundamental goals, values, or priorities with. You cannot come up with an agreement except by sheer dumb luck, if there happens to be a policy that satisfies both of your goals. Now, when such a policy exists, you're in luck, but there is no particular reason it should exist.

This relates, I think, to Obama's reaction to the midterm elections as a referendum on policy. (See this article by Jonathan Chait, which gave me this idea.) Obama likes to say that no party has a monopoly on wisdom, and he wants to hear good ideas wherever they come from. I think his point there is that he's willing to cooperate with Republicans, within the framework of his own fundamental goals, values, and priorities. But he isn't going to abandon his own fundamentals. He is not going to accept policies that promote Republican fundamentals but are antithetical to Democratic/progressive/center-left/Obama fundamentals. Yet another reason why that press conference was awesome, and made me feel much better about short-term future prospects.

O-BA-MA!

Why I Don't Feel That Depressed Today

Yeah, last night sucked. But I find myself in almost an eerily good mood today. I think I know a few reasons why. First, I don't think that the Republicans are going to experience long-term success. My previous post detailed why I think the Republican Death Spiral is alive and well, and I will add that I think it could bite them between now and 2012, for instance if they refuse to raise the debt ceiling and therefore cause a global financial meltdown, and it backfires. Could happen. Another reason is that Obama's press conference was pitch-perfect; he has himself perfectly positioned to use the Republicans' inability to compromise against them. Another is that essentially all of the candidates I was really personally invested in won, including Rush Holt, my home Congressman, and Lincoln Chafee, my future governor. (One of my Congressman is still a rocket scientist, the other Congressman is gay, and my governor's name is Linc. Seriously.)

The final reason, I think, is that I remember what this is like. By "this," I mean the business of living under a government that the Republicans control at least part of. And intellectually it's a very easy world to live in: much easier than actually having to wrestle with the difficult choices of governance. Now, that doesn't change the fact that the Republican House is going to inflict major, major suffering on the world over the next two years, which sucks and which I will get vehemently mad at them about when they actually do it. Nor does it change the fact that it will be mildly tricky for Obama to convince people that he is completely hamstrung in the business of governing by the fact that the Republicans took back the House, and if he fails, we could be in trouble. But it's almost just sort of relaxing to know that the politics of the next two years, and figuring out what to think over that time, will be so damn easy. No worrying about, is health care good enough? How about financial reform? And what does Joe Lieberman think? No one will ever care again, because he's irrelevant in the 112th Congress and will lose, badly, in 2012. So, here's to two years of not having our intellectual faculties taxed at all by the day's political events. We might as well enjoy something.

Oh, and also: the most directly effective thing you can do to increase the amount of happiness in the world is to enjoy your life. Never forget that.

The Republican Death Spiral Is Not Dead Yet

The Republican Death Spiral, you'll recall, was Nate Silver's idea, conceived the day after a full no Republicans in the House voted for the stimulus, that the Republican Party is stuck in a trap:

Thus the Republicans, arguably, are in something of a death spiral. The more conservative, partisan, and strident their message becomes, the more they alienate non-base Republicans. But the more they alienate non-base Republicans, the fewer of them are left to worry about appeasing. Thus, their message becomes continually more appealing to the base -- but more conservative, partisan, and strident to the rest of us. And the process loops back upon itself.

Since the name of this hypothesis is the "Republican Death Spiral," something that sounds similar to the predictions of 40 years of Democratic domination, etc. etc., that have just supposedly been rejected by, well, a massive electoral victory by Republicans, it would be easy to say, no, that didn't happen. But I want to make the case that the Republican Death Spiral is alive and well, and that the Republicans are still very much in danger of spinning rapidly down it.

Give 'Em Hell, Barry!

There are, I think, two fundamental models for how a President should cope with losing big in their first midterm election in office: Harry Truman and Bill Clinton. Both the 1946 and the 1994 elections were very similar to the 2010 election, in terms of results in the House of Representatives. Democrats had big, big majorities, and Republicans picked up 50-60 seats, flipping the majority. The numbers from 1946 are eerily similar to this last election, actually. Clinton, in the popular narrative at least, largely cooperated with the Republicans, going along with right-wing policies like welfare reform. Truman, on the other hand, and again in the popular narrative, took a very combative stance, hammering the Republicans as a "do-nothing Congress." Both won re-election. Which strategy should Obama take? Compromise, or fight and denounce? My attitude is, he should anticipate a Truman-style strategy, though he should begin by sounding like Clinton. Here's why.

The 113th U.S. Senate

So, two years of getting nothing done. So stipulated. Let's see if we have the slightest chance in the 2012 Senate elections, going line-by-line.

Speaking of Not Deserving To Lose

A message to liberals. Stolen from Rachel Maddow, but I'd noticed it prior to her brilliant piece on it tonight, so whatever. Suppose that the 111th Congress had not passed the stimulus, health care, or financial reform, the three big-ticket items. What would the legislative achievements of that Congress look like? Mind you, I'm not talking about the fact that without the stimulus we'd be in Great Depression #2; I'm just asking, if you compare policy achievements under this Congress minus the Big 3 to policy achievements in other Congresses, how does it stack up?

Well, let's see. Fair pay for women. S-CHIP expansion. Tripling AmeriCorps. Land management. Pentagon contracts reform. Credit card reform. Regulation of tobacco. Reforming veteran's benefits. Iran sanctions and divestment. Student loan reform (a biggie!). Most of these would be major, major accomplishments for many or most Presidents. Many of them are on par with things like the ADA, Clintonian welfare reform, NCLB, etc., some of the signature accomplishments of the last three Presidents, like them or otherwise. That's ten major legislative accomplishments, by the way. Big ones. Not even counting the variety of small bills, or the reasonably failed programs like the mortgage restructuring thing that didn't work.

If we now add back in a) the largest tax cut, the largest infrastructure spending, the largest investment on clean energy, the largest fiscal stimulus, etc. in American history (with apologies to inflation), b) the largest expansion of health care in this country since 1965, and c) the first attempt at rolling back the deregulation of the Carter-Reagan-Clinton-Bush era, I think we have a pretty impressive Congress.

And all of this in the face of totally unified opposition from the Republicans, a balky caucus in the House (though a brilliant Speaker to manage them!), and a not-quite-governing majority in the Senate most of the time. We didn't have the majorities that FDR, or LBJ had. And we got an amount done in two years that is quite frankly comparable to those storied Presidents and Congresses. We also didn't get a lot done: cap-&-trade, immigration reform, DADT, DOMA, etc. etc. The lesson is that no President certainly since LBJ has been in office with so long a list of things that needed doing. So Obama entered office with a massive list of Important Things to get done. He got a lot of Important Things done. There are a lot of other Important Things he didn't get done, some of which are ostensibly in the same policy area as some of the things he did get done. It would've been nice if he had gotten more Important Things done. Maybe you think some of the Important Things he didn't get done he should've done instead of the Important Things he did get done. But he's done a whole lot. And he'll do a whole lot more if he has power going forward. Here's hoping.

Their Just Desserts

Just for fun, I thought I'd make a list of candidates who either really deserve to lose or really deserve to win. Excluded will be incumbents who deserve to win and will do so easily and were never really in play this cycle. Some of the "deserves to win" nominations will be in the form of "doesn't deserve to lose," usually in the case of an incumbent who seems likely to lose. And no, I'm not going to be 100% pro-Democratic. Don't believe me? Just watch (very long, so below the fold.) [Also, some of these are pretty obvious. Some of them aren't. It's basically just sort of a summary of the election campaign minus the results.]